Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (11 page)

It sounded like fiction. A made-up story. It had to be in the Children’s Room.

As Charles crossed the slick marble floor, something else struck him.

This was like Hüsker Dü?, a memory game he had played when he was in kindergarten. He was on a hunt to find a hidden match for the football book cover he had just memorized. This was, in short, another memory game—that was why the Staff Picks display had been subtitled “Our Most
Memorable
Reads.”

“Clever, Lemoncello,” he mumbled. “Very clever indeed.”

Charles entered the children’s department. It didn’t take him very long to find the book, because
In the Pocket
was propped up on a miniature stand on top of a shelf.

“Found it!” Charles proclaimed. Then, savoring the moment, he picked up the book and read the title out loud:
“In the Pocket: Johnny Unitas and Me.”

All of a sudden, a row of animatronic geese tucked into a corner of the room started honking and singing.

“They call him Mr. Touchdown, yes, they call him Mr. T.”

The squawking birds startled Charles so much he dropped the book.

When he did, a four-by-four card fluttered out from behind its cover.

Charles bent down to pick it up.

Printed on the card was a black-and-white silhouette. A quarterback, wearing a number nineteen jersey (just like Johnny Unitas), was arching back his arm to throw a pass.

Charles grinned.

He was definitely on the right track.

He tucked the silhouette card into his pocket and hurried back to the lobby to memorize more book covers.

“Ouch! I’m stuck! Help!”

Haley Daley’s cries sailed up the staircase as Kyle led the charge down the steps into the Stacks.

“So, what exactly are the Stacks?” asked Akimi, three steps behind Kyle.

“It’s where the library stores its collection of research material,” said Sierra, who was two stairs behind Akimi.

The three of them reached the basement. It was filled with tidy rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving units.

“Help!”

Haley sounded like she was on the far side of the room, behind the walls of metal storage racks crowded with boxes, books, and bins.

“What is all this stuff?” said Kyle, looking for a passageway, trying to figure out how to get to wherever Haley was.

“Mostly rare books and documents you can’t check out,” said Sierra. “But if you fill out a call slip, you can use this material up in the reading room.”

With a whir and whoosh of its electric motor, a shiny robot the color of the storm troopers in
Star Wars
scooted across an intersection between bookshelves. It moved on tank treads and had what looked like a shopping cart attached to its front.

“Let’s follow that robot!” said Kyle. “It might know the fastest way to reach Haley.”

The trio dashed up a narrow pathway to where they saw the robot extending its quadruple-jointed mechanical arm to pluck a flat metal box out of a slide-in compartment. The box had been stored in a section of shelving with a flashing LCD that read “Magazines & Periodicals. 1930s.”

“Somebody upstairs wants an old magazine?” said Akimi.

“They’re probably researching the Gold Leaf Bank building,” said Sierra. “I think it was built in the 1930s.”

“Help!” screamed Haley. “I’m stuck.”

“Hang on!” shouted Kyle. “We’re coming.”

“Well, hurry up already!”

“This way,” said Kyle.

They scampered up another aisle, turned right, and saw Haley, her hand jammed through a horizontal slot near the top of the basement wall. To reach it, she’d had to stand on an elevated treadmill maybe thirty feet long. Since the thing was rolling, Haley was jogging in place so
she wouldn’t fall on her face. The high-tech conveyor belt was actually a series of rollers. Ten robot carts—staggered so no two were directly across from each other—were lined up on either side.

“I think it’s an automatic book sorter,” said Sierra. “That laser beam near Haley’s ankles probably scans a book’s tag and tells the conveyor belt which of the ten sorting trays to shove it into.”

“You guys?” screamed Haley. “Hurry up and rescue me!”

Kyle stepped back. Tried to assess the situation.

“What is that slot you’re hanging on to?”

“The bottom of the stupid book drop,” said Haley, trotting on the treadmill. “I saw it on the floor plan. People can walk up to it on the sidewalk and return their books. I figured it had to lead down here.”

“Smart move,” said Kyle. “You could crawl through the slot and escape.”

“
If
you were the size of a book,” Akimi said sarcastically.

“I never got that far,” said Haley. “The minute I stepped onto this belt thing, it started moving.”

Kyle nodded. “Probably a weight-activated switch.”

“A book falls in,” said Akimi. “The sorter starts up.”

“Clever,” said Kyle. “Plus, it gives our game its first booby trap.”

“Well, the game is no fun if you’re the booby stuck in the trap!” said Haley.

Kyle turned to Sierra. “We need to stop the belt so Haley can yank her hand out of that slot without falling on her butt or cracking open her skull. Have you ever read a book where the hero outwits an escalator or a rolling checkout belt in the grocery store or something?”

“No,” said Sierra. “Not really.”

“How about one where the hero just flips an emergency shutoff switch?” asked Akimi. “Because that’s what I’d do if, you know, I found one.”

Akimi was standing next to a wall-mounted switch box. She flicked it down. The conveyor belt slowed to a stop.

“Ta-da! Another chapter for my amazingly awesome autobiography—if I ever write one.”

Haley yanked her hand out of the book return slot. It sort of popped when it finally sprang free. She collapsed to her knees on the frozen treadmill.

“My hand feels flatter than a pancake,” she moaned.

“Are you hurt?” asked Kyle. “Maybe we should tell the security guys that …”

“What? That I have a boo-boo and need to go home? Forget it, Kyle Keeley. You’re not going to beat me that easily.”

“I’m not trying to—”

Haley showed him the palm of her hand. “Save it, Keeley.” She crawled off the conveyor belt. “One way or another, I’m going to win this game. I just hope starring in Mr. Lemoncello’s commercials earns me some decent money.”

She hobbled around the bookshelves toward the staircase up to the reading room.

When she was gone, Akimi raised her hand. “Question?”

“Yeah?” said Kyle.

“How come the guys inside the control room didn’t flip a switch to shut down the book sorter when they saw Haley doing her cardio cha-cha-cha on it?”

Kyle shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t watching.”

“Actually,” said Sierra, pointing to a square tile on the floor near the book sorter, “I think they were.”

Kyle looked down. The tile was glowing like one of the tablet computer screens upstairs in the rotunda. Kyle read the words zipping across the illuminated square.

“ ‘Congratulations,’ ” he read out loud. “ ‘For helping Haley and being a sport, you’ve earned much more than a good report.’ ”

The tile popped open.

Inside a small compartment was a rolled-up tube of paper with a yellow card clipped to its end.

“Huh,” said Akimi. “I guess somebody
was
watching.”

Kyle pulled the yellow card off the paper tube. It smelled like lemons.

“What’s it say?” asked Sierra.

Kyle flipped the card over so Sierra and Akimi could see what was printed on it:

SUPER-DOOPER BONUS CLUE
.

“Oh, man, that was so dumb!”

Haley could not believe how idiotic she had been.

“Trying to crawl out of a book return slot? Chya. Like that was going to work.”

She was giving herself a good talking-to as she trudged up the steps to the first floor.

When she entered the rotunda, she saw Charles Chiltington slipping out into the lobby again.

Chiltington was a snake. Worse. A garden slug. Maybe a leech. Something oily and slimy that left a greasy trail and liked to mooch off other people’s ideas. That was why Chiltington had tailed the twin library nerds, Peckleman and Fernandez, upstairs during last night’s dessert hunt. Haley was smart enough to know that Chiltington was hoping to steal the book geeks’ ideas.

Actually, Haley was a lot smarter than anybody (except
her teachers and whoever scored her IQ tests) knew. With certain people, mainly grown-ups and silly boys, pretending to be a ditzy princess made getting what she wanted a whole lot easier.

And what she wanted right now was money. Lots of money. Her dad had been out of work for nearly a year. They’d run through all their rainy-day savings. They’d had to borrow from relatives and in-laws.

If Haley could win this competition and become Mr. Lemoncello’s spokesmodel, her family’s money woes would be over and they wouldn’t have to sell their home. And once other people saw her on TV for Lemoncello games, they’d want her for their commercials, too. And movies. Maybe her own sitcom. Something on the Disney Channel.

But for all that to happen, Haley needed a winning idea—and fast. Something better than “crawl through a slot that’s barely wide enough for your wrist.” Maybe she should flush herself down the toilet and escape through the sewers like Charles did in that video game.

She headed over to the Book Nook Café so she could sit down and think.

She stepped into the room and checked out the snack table. There were trays of cookies, strawberries, bananas, and brownies. Sitting down to nibble on a macaroon, she studied the row of cookbooks displayed on the bookshelves lining the wall.

One in particular caught her eye:
Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My!

Because the cover looked extremely familiar: two googly-eyed sheep made out of chocolate-frosted cakes with gobs of mini marshmallows for fleece. Haley had seen the cover before.

In the lobby!

It was in that glass case of memorable reads selected by the library staff.

She went over to the shelf and picked up the book. When she opened the cover, she discovered two cards.

One was a four-by-four piece of white cardboard with the black silhouette of a sheep on it.