Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein Page A

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 (excepther teachers and whoever scored her IQ tests) knew. With certain people, mainly grown-ups and silly boys, pretending