Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (8 page)

All the educational video games had 3-D visuals, digital surround sound, and something new that Mr. Lemoncello
was developing for his video games: smell-a-vision. When you sacked Rome with the Visigoths, you could smell the smoky scent of the burning city as well as the barbarians’ b.o.

After an hour, Dr. Zinchenko ushered everybody else into the Electronic Learning Center. They’d been watching George Washington debate George W. Bush (both were audio-animatronic dummies) in the “town square” at the center of the 900s room.

At ten p.m. they all tromped into the IMAX theater, also on the third floor, to see a jukebox concert. 3-D images of the world’s best musicians (living and dead) performed their hits “live.” The best part was Mozart jamming with Metallica.

Finally, around three in the morning, Clarence and his twin brother, Clement, came to escort the kids to their sleeping quarters. The boys would roll out their sleeping bags in the Children’s Room, just off the rotunda; the girls would be upstairs on the third floor in the Board Room. Charles Chiltington would be luxuriating all alone in Mr. Lemoncello’s private suite.

Exhausted from the excitement of the day—and crashing after eating way too much sugar—Kyle slept like a baby.

He only woke up because he heard music.

Loud, blaring music.

The theme song from that boxing movie
Rocky
, his brother Mike’s favorite.

“Whazzat?” he mumbled, crawling out of his sleeping bag.

Kyle glanced at his watch. It was eleven a.m. He figured the library lock-in was officially over and this was the group’s wake-up call.

The music kept blaring.

“This is how they wake up astronauts,” groaned Miguel.

“Turn it off!” moaned Andrew Peckleman.

Kyle slipped on his jeans and sneakers and staggered out into the giant reading room.

“Dr. Zinchenko?”

His voice echoed off the dome. No answer.

“Clarence? Clement?”

Nothing.

The
Rocky
music got louder.

Akimi leaned in from the third-floor balcony.

“What’s going on down there?”

“I think they’re trying to wake up astronauts,” said Kyle. “On the moon.”

He made his way to the front door and reached for the handle.

It wouldn’t budge.

He jiggled it.

Nothing.

He jiggled harder.

Still nothing.

Kyle realized that the library lock-in might be over but they were still locked in the library.

“Everybody, please take your seats,” Dr. Zinchenko said to the parents gathered in a conference room at the Parker House Hotel.

“When do our kids come home?” asked one of the mothers.

“Rose has soccer at two,” said another.

The librarian nodded. “Mr. Lemoncello will—”

Just then, an accordion-panel door at the far end of the room flew open, revealing the eccentric billionaire dressed in a bright purple tracksuit and a plumed pirate hat. He was eating a slice of seven-layer birthday cake.

“Good morning or, as they’re currently saying in Reykjavik,
gott síodegi
, which means ‘good afternoon,’ because there is a four-hour time difference between Ohio and Iceland, a fact I first learned spinning a globe in my local library.”

Mr. Lemoncello, his banana shoes burp-squeaking, stepped out of a room filled with dozens of black-and-white television monitors—the kind security guards watch at their workstations.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on this grand and auspicious day. Today I am pleased to announce the most marvelously stupendous game ever created: Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library! The entire library will be the game board. Your children will be the game pieces. The winner will become famous all over the world.”

“How?” asked one of the fathers.

“By starring in all of my commercials this holiday season. TV. Radio. Print. Billboards. Cardboard cutouts in toy stores. His or her face will be everywhere.”

Mrs. Daley raised her hand. “Will they get paid?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, you’ll probably want to call me The Giver.”

“And what exactly does Haley have to do to win?”

“Escape! From the library. I thought the game’s title more or less gave that bit away.” Mr. Lemoncello tapped a button in his pirate hat and an animated version of the library’s floor plan was instantly displayed on the conference room’s plasma-screen TVs.

“Whoever is the first to use what they find
in
the library to find their way
out
of the library will be crowned the winner. Now then, the children cannot use the front door or the fire exits or set off any alarms. They cannot go out the way they went in. They can only use their wits, cunning,
and intelligence to decipher clues and solve riddles that will eventually lead them to the location of the library’s super-secret alternate exit. And, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you, such an alternate exit does indeed exist.”

The parents around the table started buzzing with excitement.

“Participation, of course, will be purely optional and voluntary,” said Mr. Lemoncello, clasping his hands behind his back and stalking around the room.

Several parents pulled out cell phones.

“And please—do
not
attempt to phone, email, text, fax, or send smoke signals to your children, encouraging them to enter the competition. We have blocked all communication into and out of the library. Only those who truly wish to stay and play shall stay and play. Anyone who chooses to leave the library will go home with lovely parting gifts and a souvenir pirate hat very similar to mine. They’ll also be invited to my birthday party tomorrow afternoon.” He held up his crumb-filled plate. “I’ve been sampling potential cake candidates for breakfast.”

Mrs. Keegan crossed her arms over her chest. “Will this game be dangerous?”

“No,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Your children will be under constant video surveillance by security personnel in the library’s control center. Dr. Zinchenko and I will also be monitoring their progress here in my private video-viewing suite. Should anything go wrong, we have paramedics, firefighters, and a team of former Navy SEALs—each with
the heart of a samurai—standing by to swoop in and rescue your children. It’ll be like
The Hunger Games
but with lots of food and no bows or arrows.”

“Why not just have the kids play one of your other games?” a parent suggested. “Why all this fuss?”

“Because, my dear friends, these twelve children have lived their entire lives without a public library. As a result, they have no idea how extraordinarily useful, helpful, and funful—a word I recently invented—a library can be. This is their chance to discover that a library is more than a collection of dusty old books. It is a place to learn, explore, and grow!”

“Mr. Lemoncello, I think what you’re doing is fantastic,” said one of the mothers.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Lemoncello, bowing and clicking his heels (which made them
bruck
like a chicken).

“If any of you would like to check up on your children,” announced Dr. Zinchenko, “please join us in the adjoining room.”

“Oh, they’re a lot of fun to watch,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “However, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, I’m afraid your son Kyle does not enjoy the theme song from
Rocky
quite as much as I do!”

Rocky
had done its job.

Kyle—and everybody else locked inside the library—was definitely awake.

Even Charles Chiltington had come down to the Rotunda Reading Room from Mr. Lemoncello’s private suite. The only essay writer not with the group was Sierra Russell, who, Kyle figured, was off looking for another book to read.

“We’re still locked in?” squealed Haley Daley.

“This is so lame,” added Sean Keegan. “It’s like eleven-thirty. I’ve got things to do. Places to be.”

“Look, you guys,” said Kyle, “they’ll probably open the front door right after we eat or something.”

“Well, where’s that ridiculous librarian?” said Charles Chiltington, who was never very nice when there weren’t any adults in the room.

“Yeah,” said Rose Vermette. “I can’t stay in here all day. I have a soccer game at two.”

“And, dudes,” said Sean Keegan, “
I
have a life.”

“Do you children require assistance?” said a soft, motherly voice.

It was the semi-transparent holographic image of Mrs. Tobin, the librarian from the 1960s. She was hovering a few inches off the ground in front of the center desk.

“Yes,” said Kayla Corson. “How do we get out of here?”

The librarian blinked, the way a secondhand calculator (the one your oldest brother dropped on the floor a billion times) does when it’s figuring out a square root.

“I’m sorry,” said the robotic librarian. “I have not been provided with the answer to that question.”

“Will we be doing brunch here this morning?” Chiltington asked politely. “I’m not hungry, but some of my chums sure are. After all, it is eleven-thirty.”

“The kitchen staff recently placed fresh food in the Book Nook Café.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Tobin,” said Chiltington. “Would you like anything? A bowl of oatmeal, perhaps.”

“No. Thank you, CHARLES. I am a hologram. I do not eat food.”

“I guess that’s how you stay so super skinny.”

Kyle shook his head. The smarmy guy was oilier than a soggy sack of fries. He was even sucking up to a hologram.

Chiltington and the others traipsed off to have
breakfast, but Kyle and Akimi stayed with the holographic librarian.

“Um, I have a question,” said Kyle.

“I’m listening.”

“Is the library lock-in over? Are we supposed to go home now?”

“Mr. Lemoncello will be addressing that issue shortly.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mrs. Tobin.”

“You are welcome, KYLE.”

After the librarian faded to a flicker, Akimi said, “By the way, Kyle, before we leave, you need to check out that room I slept in last night.”

“The Board Room?”

“Yeah. They call it that because, guess what? It’s filled with board games!”

“All Lemoncellos?”

“Nuh-uh. Stuff from other companies. Some of it goes way back to the 1890s. I think it’s Mr. Lemoncello’s personal collection. It’s like a museum up there.”

Kyle’s eyes went wide. “You hungry?” he asked.

“Not really. We ate so much last night.”

“You think we have time to check out this game museum?”

“Follow me.”

The two friends bounded up a spiral staircase to the second floor, where they found another set of steps to take them up to the third.

When he entered the Board Room, Kyle was blown away. “Wow!”

The walls were lined with bookcases filled with antique games, tin toys, and card games.

“This is incredible.”

“I guess,” said Akimi. “If, you know, you like games.”

Kyle smiled. “Which, you know, I do.”

They spent several quiet minutes wandering around the room, taking in all the wacky games that people used to play. There was one display case featuring eight games with amazingly illustrated box tops. A tiny spotlight illuminated each one.

“Wonder what’s so special about these games,” said Kyle.

“Maybe those were Mr. Lemoncello’s favorites when he was a kid.”

“Maybe.” But the slogan etched into the glass case confused Kyle: “Luigi Lemoncello: the first and last word in games.”

“But these aren’t Lemoncello games,” he mumbled.

The first spotlighted game in the case was Howdy Doody’s TV Game. After that came Hüsker Dü?, You Don’t Say!, Like Minds, Fun City, Big 6 Sports Games, Get the Message, and Ruff and Reddy.

“It’s a puzzle,” Kyle said with a grin.

“I thought they were games.”

“They are. But if you string together the first or last
word of each game title …” He tapped the glass in front of the first box on the bottom shelf. “You
get the message
.”

“Really?” said Akimi, sounding extremely skeptical. “You’re sure it’s not just a bunch of junk somebody picked up for like fifty cents at a yard sale?”

“Positive.” Kyle pointed to each box top as he cracked the code. “Howdy. Dü you like fun games? Get Reddy.”