Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (10 page)

As the fire exit door slowly swung shut and Yasmeen disappeared into the bright sunshine outside the library,
Kyle checked out Charles Chiltington, who would’ve been sent home if he hadn’t stumbled and had reached the exit first.

The guy was smirking.

That was when it hit Kyle: Chiltington had faked Yasmeen out. He knew she couldn’t win by going out a fire exit. But he ran down the hall to fool her into thinking she was doing the right thing.

Oh, yeah. Chiltington was definitely in it to win it.

No matter who he had to trample.

Whistling casually, Charles strolled back to the lobby.

“What’s Chiltington doing out in the entrance hall?” said Akimi. “They told us the way out isn’t the way in.”

Before Kyle could answer, Andrew Peckleman started shouting at Miguel, who had wandered over to Peckleman’s table.

“Get away! You’re trying to steal my idea!”

“No, man,” said Miguel. “I just happened to see your screen and I don’t think that particular periodical—”

“You know what, Miguel? I don’t really care what you think! This isn’t school. This is the
public
library and you’re not the boss in here, so just leave me alone!”

Miguel tossed up his hands. “No problem, bro. I was just trying to help.”

“Ha! You mean help me lose.” Andrew stormed up the closest spiral staircase to the second floor and the Dewey decimal rooms. Miguel, looking sort of sad, headed up a separate spiral staircase. Bridgette Wadge trailed after them.

“Want to follow those guys like Bridgette did?” whispered Akimi. “I’ll take Peckleman, you take Miguel.”

“No thanks,” said Kyle, looking up at the domed ceiling. “I’m much more interested in the windows up there.”

Three stories above the rotunda floor, just below the Wonder Dome, there was a series of ten arched windows set between the recessed statue nooks. The windows acted like skylights at the base of the dome, allowing sunshine to flood into the room below.

“Do you think those windows open?” asked Akimi.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ve never let a closed or locked window stand between me and winning a game. Just ask my dad.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Come on.” Kyle trotted over to the cushy chair where Sierra Russell was peacefully reading her book.

“Um, excuse me, hate to interrupt …”

Sierra raised her head. She had a very dreamy look in her eyes.

“I need a book.”

“Really?” said Sierra. “What kind?”

“Like the one you found. Up there.” He gestured to the curving bookcases climbing up the back half of the rotunda.

“Fiction,” said Sierra.

“Right,” said Kyle. “Love me some fiction.”

“Well, what sort of story do you like?”

“Something way up high,” said Kyle. “The higher the better.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that’s an interesting way to put together a reading list, basing it on bookcase elevation.…”

“I’d like something on the top shelf. Maybe right under the hologram statue of that guy hanging out with the Cat in the Hat.”

“That’s Dr. Seuss,” said Sierra. “He wrote
The Cat in the Hat
.”

“Sweet,” said Kyle. “But I just like how close he is to that window.”

“Oh, Mrs. Tobin?” Akimi called out. “I need to use my Librarian Consultation.”

“You sure about this?” said Kyle.

“That’s the beauty of being a team. After we burn through mine, we’ll still have yours.”

The hologram librarian appeared and advised Akimi that
Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain was the book located right underneath the holographic image of Dr. Seuss and the Cat in the Hat.

After Mrs. Tobin vanished, Kyle and Akimi used their desktop computer to find the call number for
Huckleberry Finn
. Kyle grabbed a pen and scribbled it down on his palm.

“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” said Akimi.

“Yep. I’m going to float up there, hoist myself into that nook where the hologram is, reach over to the window,
push it open, and stick out my hand. Technically, I will have found my way
out
of the library. Nothing in the rules said anything about how
far
outside we had to go to win.”

“You could fall.”

“I don’t think so. I’m wiry, like a monkey.”

“Seriously, Kyle. It isn’t worth it.”

“Um, yes it is. Did I mention I want to
win
?”

“You should improvise a safety harness,” suggested Sierra Russell.

“Huh?”

“Well, in this adventure book I read once, the hero was in a very similar predicament. So he removed the curled handset wires from several telephones, bundled them together, and made a safety rope.”

Ten minutes later, Kyle, Akimi, and Sierra had stripped the sproingy wires off a couple of telephone handsets. Kyle looped the cables around his waist and tied the other end to the handrail of the hover ladder. When fully extended, the safety rope would stretch out to a little more than twenty feet.

It should work.

“Be careful up there,” said Akimi.

“Yes,” said Sierra, who wasn’t reading her book anymore. Apparently, watching a real live person risk his real live life by doing something really, really scary was one thing more exciting than reading.

Kyle locked his feet into the hover ladder’s ski boot brackets. “Here we go.”

Serious adrenaline raced through his body as he tapped the call number for
Huckleberry Finn
into the hover ladder’s book locator keypad.

“When you open the window,” said Akimi, “just shout, ‘I found the way out!’ and we win.”

“Right,” said Kyle. “All three of us.”

“Huh?”

“Hey, Sierra came up with the safety rope idea. She’s on our team now, too.”

“Fine. Whatever. Just don’t break your neck.”

“Not part of the plan.”

Kyle pressed the enter button on the control panel. The platform floated up off the ground and drifted slightly to the right.

“Be careful!” said Akimi. “Watch it!”

“I’m not doing anything,” said Kyle. “This thingama-jiggy is doing all the work. I’m just along for the ride.”

Kyle gripped the handles as the platform rose higher and higher. He sailed past books by Tolstoy and Thackeray. Tilting back his head, he looked up at the semi-transparent statues projected into the curved niches next to the arched windows.

They were a weird mix. A thoughtful African American man in a three-piece suit and a bow tie. A guy with long curly hair, old-fashioned clothes, and a looking glass. A long-haired dude in a scruffy shirt hiding behind
cutouts of the letters “P” and “B.” A bald guy with a beard.

Since the statues were really holographic projections, they had chisel-type labels floating in front of their pedestals identifying who the famous people were. The ones closest to Kyle were George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, and Maya Angelou.

As he continued to climb, Kyle could hear the soft whir of the electromagnets invisibly lifting him toward the ceiling.

And then he heard something much louder.

“What a ridiculous idea!”

Charles Chiltington. He was standing on the second-floor balcony at the far side of the rotunda.

“You know, Keeley, I thought about doing the same thing. But then I noticed something you obviously overlooked: There’s a wire mesh security screen on the other side of those windows.”

The levitating platform stuttered to a stop.

“Enjoy staring at the ceiling, Keeley. I’m off to win yet another game!”

Kyle ignored Chiltington and grabbed hold of the ledge beneath Dr. Seuss’s berth. He tried to haul himself up but his feet wouldn’t budge.

They were locked in place by those ski boot clamps.

And this close to the skylights, Kyle could see that Chiltington was right—there was a security screen on the other side of the windows.

Kyle checked his wristwatch. It was one p.m. He and
his teammates had wasted an hour on the lame window idea. He sighed heavily and stared up at the quivering Seuss projection in the bowed niche above his head.

The Cat in the Hat’s mouth started to move.

“ ‘Think left and think right and think low and think high.’ ”

Kyle recognized the voice.

It was Mr. Lemoncello.

“ ‘Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!’ ”

In other words, Kyle was back to square one. He needed to think up a whole new escape plan.

The ladder began a slow and steady descent to the floor—even though Kyle hadn’t pushed a button.

“Don’t listen to smarmypants Charles,” Akimi coached as Kyle coasted toward the floor. “It was worth a shot.”

“I agree,” said Sierra.

A bloodcurdling scream came ringing up the staircase from the basement.

“That’s Haley!” said Akimi. “I saw her go downstairs.”

“That’s where the Stacks are,” added Sierra.

“Come on,” said Kyle. “She could be in serious trouble.”

“You should never help your competition, Keeley,” scoffed Charles as he casually strolled down a spiral staircase. “Unless, of course, you
always
play to lose!”

Losers.

That’s what Charles Chiltington thought about sentimental saps like Kyle Keeley. A damsel in distress starts screaming and he forgets all about winning the game to go rescue her?

What a pathetic loser
.

Unless, of course, Haley Daley was screaming because she had already found the alternate exit.

That made Charles laugh.

Impossible
.

Although quite pretty, Haley Daley, the princess of the seventh grade, was a total airhead. There was no way a dumb girl like her could’ve outsmarted Charles Chiltington.

It was time to play his hunch.

Twice already, the head librarian, Dr. Zinchenko, had said, “The library staff is here to help you find whatever it
is you are looking for.” She said it once when they were just about to enter the library, again when she was reading the laundry list of rules.

Well, what Charles was looking for was a way out of the building that wasn’t the front door and wouldn’t set off any alarms.

That was why he kept coming back to the lobby with the gurgling fountain. Why he kept studying the display case labeled “Staff Picks: Our Most Memorable Reads.”

“The staff is here to help,” he muttered. “These are staff picks. Ipso facto, this has to be some sort of enormous clue.”

Inside the sealed bookcase, Charles saw twelve book covers.

One for each of the twelve twelve-year-old players?
he wondered.

The display items weren’t actual books. They were cover art mounted on book-sized foam core. Three covers were lined up on each of the case’s four shelves. Since they weren’t actual books with spines, none of the covers included their call numbers.

Charles focused on the three books lined up on the bottom row.

Hoosier Hospitality
was on the left.
In the Pocket: Johnny Unitas and Me
was in the middle.
The Dinner Party
was on the right.

Charles decided to concentrate on the Johnny Unitas
title. He moved into the rotunda and did a quick card catalog search on one of the desktop computers. When he typed
“In the Pocket,”
a matching cover image popped up.

But still no call number.

In the spot where the identifier should have been, there were instead a censor’s thick black box and the words “I.D. Temporarily Removed from System.”

Scrolling further down the screen, Charles came across a rather unusual annotation: “You didn’t really think we’d make it that easy, did you?”

Charles grinned.

The computer was telling him he was on the right track.

He glanced up from the desk. The Children’s Room was directly in front of him. The book about Johnny Unitas, with its cartoony cover depicting a football player wearing a number nineteen jersey and dropping back to launch a pass, was most likely a children’s book.

Of course, it was also a sports biography.

So would it be shelved with sports books, biographies, or children’s books?

Charles went back to the computerized card catalog. He read the book’s description: “Billy wants to be a great quarterback like his hero, Johnny Unitas, but his coach is worried he’ll get hurt.”