Charlie Joe Jackson's Guide to Planet Girl (9 page)

I picked it up, dusted it off, and read the title:
Elizabethan Love Sonnets
.

Hmm.

I didn't know what
Elizabethan
or
Sonnets
meant, but I was familiar with “Love.”

Way
too
familiar.

I picked up the book and started thumbing through it. The first thing I thought was,
I'm pretty sure this is English, but I can't understand a word of it.
The second thing I thought was,
That just proves that love is totally un-understandable.

And the third thing I thought was,
What was that?

“What was that?” Jack asked, proving he was thinking the same thing I was. Then we heard it again. A noise.

We both froze in place and listened. Footsteps that sounded like they were coming from the stairs, and two voices that were getting closer. I could hear a few words here and there:

“Not sure how it got open…”

“Phil is getting the key…”

“Don't tell the boss…”

Then, the footsteps stopped. Jack and I looked at each other and waited, hoping the silence meant that the voices were gone.

They weren't.

Two seconds later, a third voice added: “You guys owe me.” We heard a push … a squeak … and finally, a SLAM!

Jack and I waited another minute and then slowly made our way out of the rare book room and back down the hall toward the stairs. For some reason, though, we couldn't see the stairs. Then, the reason became clear.

The door that led to them had been shut.

Panic rose up in my throat, and I started running toward the door, Jack right behind me. We both knew before we got there that it had been locked tight. But we still tried to turn the giant door handle about a thousand times.

Eventually, we gave up. My heart was pounding.

“Charlie Joe?” Jack said, his voice shaking a little bit.

“Yeah?”

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“Probably not.”

What he was probably thinking was,
We're trapped in the basement and we need to come up with a way to get out, or else our parents are going to kill us.

What I was thinking was,
When you go into a giant building filled with books, bad things are bound to happen.

 

20

Jack and I stared
at each other, as we realized we were trapped in the basement of the New York Public Library. Then we did the only thing that made sense.

We screamed for help.

“HELP! ANYBODY! HELP! HELP!” We pounded on the door, too, over and over and over again.

After about fifty
helps
, we gave up.

“Okay, we need to figure out a way to get back upstairs,” I said, checking my phone. No reception.

“D'uh,” Jack answered. He was glaring at me, as if the whole thing were my fault.

“This whole thing is your fault,” he snapped, confirming my suspicions.

“What are you talking about? How is it my fault?”

He snorted. “Because it was your idea to leave the reception, and it was your idea to go down the stairs.”

Oh, that.

“Yeah, but you're the one who wanted to go in that stupid room full of old books,” I reminded him.

“I don't want to talk to you right now,” Jack said. “Unless you have an idea about how to get back upstairs.”

That ended the conversation.

We walked back down the hall, passing the room with the rare books. There was another room on the left—the door said MAPS AND GEOGRAPHICAL ARTIFACTS. I poked my head in and saw a lot of books. A few feet farther down, there was a room on the right—the door said A HISTORY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE, VOLUMES 1–64. I poked my head in—books and more books. The next room was also on the right—BIBLIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, 1679–1729. I didn't even poke my head into that one.

All in all, it turned out to be the longest hallway in America, with about forty rooms, all of which were completely filled with shelves and shelves and shelves of books. There wasn't a single person in any of the rooms.

Finally, we turned a corner and saw a door that looked familiar.

“No way,” I said.

“Way,” Jack said.

It was the door that we'd come in through at the bottom of the stairs. Which meant we'd spent the last fifteen minutes going in a giant circle. Or, to be totally accurate, a giant square.

“I think we might be trapped for life,” Jack said. He was kidding. Kind of.

All of a sudden I felt incredibly tired.

“You're right, by the way,” I said, slumping down to sit on the floor. “This
is
all my fault.”

“Oh, stop it,” Jack said.

“No, it is.” I paused for a second. “The thing is, I was really looking forward to coming to the reunion, because my life isn't going so great right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm an idiot, that's why.” I found a quarter in my pocket and started scraping the floor with it. “A lot of my friends back home are mad at me.”

“Well, it can't be the first time they're mad at you,” Jack said, sitting down next to me. “I'm sure everyone will get over it. They always do.”

“Not this time.”

“Why? Did you do something terrible?”

I couldn't bring myself to go into the gory details. “It was basically all a stupid misunderstanding,” I said. “I didn't mean to hurt anybody. But I think it might be too late to fix it.”

Jack smacked me on the shoulder. “Charlie Joe, you're the one who told me at camp that you have to stand up for yourself. And when I got back home, I remembered what you said, and I went on strike to get my parents to let me quit some of my activities. And it worked! So now, I'm telling you the same thing: Don't give up. Figure out what's wrong, and fix it. If anyone can do it, you can.”

I looked at Jack and nodded. Even though I'd talked him into leaving the reception with me, and dragged him downstairs just to get trapped in the basement, he was still a good enough friend to try and make me feel better.

Sometimes people can really surprise you, you know that?

“You're right,” I said. “Once we get back to civilization, I'm gonna try and figure it out. Thanks for listening.”

But Jack wasn't listening, at least not anymore. Instead, he was staring down the hall. “Hold on a second. What's that?”

“What?”

He pointed at a small door that we hadn't noticed before.

The door said ELECTRICAL.

We looked at each other. “Electrical what?” I asked.

Jack shrugged. “Books, I guess.”

But there was something about this room that felt different. I put my ear to the door and heard a loud hum coming from inside.

“Let's check it out.” I opened the door and saw a long, flat machine sitting on a table, with a zillion wires poking out in every direction. On top of the machine sat five huge computers, stacked on top of each other, all blinking like crazy.

And, most important, there was a vent at the top of the room that was partially open.

Jack followed my gaze up to the vent and immediately said, “Hey, wait a second,” but he was too late. I'd already started climbing up.

“Watch it!” Jack yelled, but the only thing I was watching was the vent, which was my ticket to freedom.

Jack swore under his breath, then started following me on the great computer climb.

When I reached the vent, Jack was just below me.

“Give me a push?” I asked.

“A push?”

“Yup. Shove me through.”

Jack pushed my back, and I pushed my shoulder into the vent, trying to open it the rest of the way. After about five shoulder shoves, I'd gotten half my body through, but then got stuck, because the vent was actually pretty small. I gave one last push and launched myself off the last computer.

And all of a sudden I was through the vent!

The only problem was, as soon as I made it through the vent and onto the floor above me, all the lights went out.

“That's not good,” Jack said.

“Ya think? I think I must have kicked one of the wires out or something. Can you take a look?”

I heard a sad laugh. “Uh, I would, but the lights are out.”

I started groping in the dark, as I heard voices all around me saying, “What happened? Did the power go out? What was that?”

I looked down and could make out Jack with his cell phone, trying to put the wire back in.

“Any luck?” I whispered.

“I have no idea!” Jack said, not whispering at all. “I'm good at Math and Science, not Shop.” But after a few more seconds and a little more fiddling, Jack somehow managed to figure it out, because the lights went back on. I immediately pulled him up through the vent, and he made it, too!

“We did it!” I yelled.

“I know!” he yelled back.

We lay on the ground, covered in grime and dust balls, laughing and high-fiving each other, enjoying our newfound freedom.

Until we noticed we were surrounded by feet.

Which was when we realized that we'd catapulted right back into the middle of the reception.

We looked up and saw everyone from Camp Rituhbukkee staring down at us. Two hundred people. And standing right in front of us was Dr. Mal.

I scrambled to my feet. “Hey, Dr. Mal,” I said, offering him my filthy hand. “We were just … uh … having a look around the library.”

Dr. Mal cocked his giant, bald head. “Charlie Joe Jackson,” he said. “How I've missed you so.”

I laughed awkwardly and looked around the room. The first person I saw was my mom, who didn't exactly look thrilled. Then I saw George and Nareem and the guys from the cabin, staring at me in shock. I saw Lauren Rubin, who had made it to the reunion after all.

And finally, I saw Katie, who was just staring at me, shaking her head.

I turned back to Dr. Mal, who still had the microphone in his hand. I asked him the first thing that popped into my head.

“Have you been talking this whole time?”

 

George Feedleman's Guide to Romance

GIRLS ARE LIKE BOOKS. YOU NEED TO READ THEM CAREFULLY.

For a long time, I was the dumbest smart person in the world. Meaning, I was good at subjects like History and Geometry, but horrible at subjects like girls and dating. And the thing is, they don't teach you that stuff in school! But then, I realized that girls are like any other subject you don't know a lot about: The more you know, the more confident you get. Now, I'm not talking about studying girls like some weird scientist. I'm talking about just allowing yourself to discover things that make them easier to understand. Like, for instance, most girls do NOT want you to overcompliment them, because then they'll think you're a phony and that you don't mean any of it. But every once in a while, saying they look really nice or that their joke was really funny can make a girl's day. Stuff like that.

So, I guess what I'm saying is, it's good to be smart. But it's even better to be willing to learn.

 

21

After everything got sorted out,
and Jack and I got cleaned up, and we managed to explain ourselves to the point where we knew we were not going to get thrown in jail, and I decided not to let the Katie thing ruin my night, the reception turned out to be really fun. The food was delicious, it was so great to see everyone again, and there was a DJ who actually played decent songs. (If you've ever been to a wedding, you know that's not always the case.) Before dessert, there was a slide show that showed a bunch of fun pictures from camp, like when we beat Wockajocka in basketball for the first time in twenty years (thanks to me, but I don't want to brag).

After the party, we all went back to the hotel, where George, Jack, and I convinced our parents to let us stay up for another hour. We decided to meet in George's room, because his parents said we could order ice cream sundaes from room service.