Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race

by Chris Grabenstein

  “How do you know this?”

  “I’m a huge fan!”

  They made it to the jet ten seconds before Katherine and Elliott.

  The door opened and a staircase eased down.

  “Welcome aboard, Kyle and Abia,” said the flight attendant at the top of the stairs. “Do you have your permission slips?”

  “Yes!” said Kyle and Abia, gasping for breath.

  “Then Mr. Lemoncello’s private jet is all yours.” She looked to Katherine and Elliott. “You two will be flying to North Carolina in Mr. Lemoncello’s recently retired Lemon Drop Prop.” Then she smiled and waved. “Buh-bye, now. Have a good day. Buh-bye.”

  Katherine and Elliott slumped off toward the propeller plane.

  Feeling triumphant, Kyle and Abia scampered up the steps to the jet’s door.

  The interior of Mr. Lemoncello’s private plane was unbelievably amazing. There were four Barcalounger-type recliner chairs facing one another around a circular game table. Each of the chairs had its own computer on a swivel that you could tuck away into the armrest. The jet was decorated with so many bright colors, it was sort of like flying inside a jumbo-sized crayon box.

  “There is a hot tub in the lavatory,” said the flight attendant. “If you need towels or bathing suits, you will find them in the changing room just off the gymnasium with the stationary bikes.”

  “Will we have time to take a dip?” asked Kyle.

  “Probably not. It’s just a short hop to North Carolina. But please enjoy all the features of our in-flight entertainment system.”

  She gestured toward the bulkhead wall. It was a giant flat-screen TV where you could watch movies and satellite TV or play Mr. Lemoncello’s latest video games.

  “There is also a Goofitacious Gooseball table in the game cabin, which, as you may know, is a lot like foosball, but the players are shaped like geese and the ball like a goose egg, so it wobbles unpredictably when you whack it.”

  Kyle and Abia sniffed the delicious scents wafting through the cabin and followed the aroma into the galley, where a chef in a tall paper hat was pulling fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies out of an oven.

  “Today’s in-flight meal service offers a choice,” the chef announced. “Chicago-style hot dogs. Or, from our halal menu, chicken and falafel over rice with white sauce and pita bread.”

  “The chicken, please,” said Abia.

  “Me too,” said Kyle. “And the hot dog. And some of those cookies. I’m kind of hungry.”

  “This is the captain speaking,” said a voice from the cabin’s overhead speakers. “We are number one for takeoff. Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for departure.”

  Kyle and Abia plopped into their plush recliners and strapped on their seat belts.

  “We should probably skip all the fun stuff and do Wright brothers research instead, huh?” said Kyle.

  Abia nodded. “Pre-research might help us identify the fact we’ll need to find when we land in North Carolina.”

  “Good.” Kyle settled into his seat. “I want to win this thing!”

  “As do I.”

  The jet gently lifted off.

  Abia turned to Kyle. “We make quite a formidable team.”

  “Yep. We sure do!”

  Then they actually leaned in and slapped each other a high five.

  “You folks are now officially ahead of the other team by thirty minutes,” said the pilot when the banana jet landed at First Flight Airport in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. “Outside, to your south and east, you will find the Wright Brothers National Memorial and Museum.”

  “Thank you, sir!” said Abia.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.”

  “And thanks for the food and stuff,” said Kyle, who had eaten the halal meal, the hot dog, and maybe six of those chocolate chip cookies. “Will there be more snacks on the way back?”

  “Roger that,” said the pilot. “And they will be all yours—provided, of course, you two are the first team planeside with the fascinating fact Mr. L is looking for.”

  “You mean the race for the jet is still on?” said Abia, burping up a little of the spicy white sauce from her chicken and rice.

  “Affirmative. With Mr. Lemoncello, no race is ever over until it is over, ma’am. Enjoy your thirty-minute head start.”

  He saluted.

  Kyle and Abia dashed down the staircase. They could smell salt water in the air because the ocean was just on the other side of the sand dunes. But neither one of them knew what they were looking for. Some sort of fascinating fact? It could be anything!

  “Look,” said Kyle. “Over there. Four weird bikes.”

  Outside the small terminal, four bicycles with giant front tires but tiny back tires were propped up on bike stands.

  “How does one even climb up into the seat?” said Abia.

  “Very carefully,” said Kyle.

  There was a sign planted in the ground near the antique bikes that let them know they were on the right track.

  This is what bicycles looked like before the Wright brothers came along.

  Use them to fly to where frozen figures stand in a throng.

  “According to the research I did on the plane,” said Abia, “the style of bicycle we know today was, more or less, invented by the Wright brothers in Ohio.”

  She and Kyle hauled themselves up to the tiny seats above the giant front wheels of the old-fashioned bikes.

  “Now we need to find the statues,” said Kyle.

  “Statues? Why? What are you talking about?”

  “Frozen figures. Those have to be statues.”

  “There!” said Abia, wobbling on her lofty perch. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes!”

  In a flat area below a stone monument on a sandy knoll, Kyle could see several bronze figures chasing after a replica of the Wright brothers’ first-flight biplane. One of the figures was manning a camera on a tripod. One was running alongside the plane. Four were cheering the plane and pilot on, clumped together in a throng.

  “The man with the camera is most likely John T. Daniels,” said Abia.

  “The guy who snapped the photo of the famous first flight,” added Kyle, because he’d actually done some research on the flight from Ohio.

  The teammates pedaled around the looped drive, teetering on their ridiculously high bicycle seats. As they drew near to the statues, they hopped the curb and bumped across dune grass to the edge of the sculpture garden.

  “Dismount!” hollered Kyle, trying his best to keep his balance on what felt like a unicycle with one not-very-helpful training wheel.

  “How?” cried Abia.

  “Tip sideways, close your eyes, and hope for soft sand!”

  They tumbled to the ground. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Are you okay?” Kyle asked.

  “Yes. I have sand in my shoes, but I am otherwise fine.”

  “Good,” said Kyle, running up to the bronze biplane. “That’s Orville lying down and flying the thing,” he said.

  “And Wilbur running alongside the wingtip,” said Abia.

  “So what fact are we supposed to find?” said Kyle, looking around.

  “There!” said Abia. “That statue of the man wearing the military cap. I see something yellow in each of his hands!”

  Kyle and Abia dashed over to the statue. Bright yellow envelopes were sticky-taped to both of his bronze palms.

  “Limit one clue per team, please” was printed on the front.

  “Take the one on the right,” suggested Abia.

  Kyle grabbed it and tore the envelope open.

  * * *

  Here’s a fact that’s fun and not a bore:

  Count the adults and you’ll find four.

  Now tell us more about Johnny Moore.

  * * *

  “Whaaa?” said Kyle.

  “They might be able to help us inside the museum,” said Abia, pointing to a small building several hundred yards away.

  Overhead, Kyle
heard the drone of an approaching aircraft.

  “It sounds like a prop plane!” he said. “It’s Katherine and Elliott!”

  “Back on our bikes,” said Abia. “Quickly.”

  It took about five minutes and a dozen tries—because the weird bikes with the ginormous front wheels weren’t propped up in brackets anymore—but, just as Katherine and Elliott’s plane landed, Kyle and Abia were back in their saddles and pumping pedals frantically.

  Fortunately, when they reached the museum, there was another bike rack with four fairly normal-looking bikes. A yellow Lemoncello sign was attached to the end of the stand:

  You’ve made progress and, thanks to the Wright brothers, so did bicycles.

  Use one of these to travel back to the airfield and your flight home to Ohio.

  Inside the museum, they found a National Parks tour guide named Rachel. She was wearing a lemon-and-cello pin on her brown park uniform shirt. That had to mean she was in on the game!

  “Excuse me,” said Kyle. “Can you please tell us about Johnny Moore?”

  “Certainly,” said Rachel. “Johnny Moore was a boy, a little older than you two, who just happened to be walking along the beach on December seventeenth, 1903. He heard a commotion. Curious, he went to investigate and became the youngest witness to the Wright brothers’ first flight.”

  “Bingo!” said Kyle.

  “Excuse me?” said the nice park lady.

  “This is our fascinating fact,” added Abia. “Thank you, Rachel!”

  Kyle and Abia bolted out of the museum, hopped on one of the normal bikes, sped back to the airstrip, and climbed into the banana jet just as Katherine and Elliott were wobbling their way on bikes from their plane to the statues.

  “Woo-hoo!” shouted Kyle.

  “Woo-hoo, indeed,” said Abia.

  The jet taxied to the runway and took off.

  This time, the two teammates knocked knuckles.

  Deplaning in Ohio, Kyle and Abia saw the two book-mobiles waiting in the airport parking lot.

  Jessica, their driver from the first leg of the competition, was sitting in the back of her vehicle, zipping up the backpack Katherine and Elliott had dumped in their scramble to race to Mr. Lemoncello’s jet first.

  Jessica saw Kyle watching her.

  “They left their sandwiches,” she said with a smile. “And I’m starving!”

  “Well, you better save them a few crumbs,” said Kyle, still feeling kind of cocky. “I don’t think their prop plane came equipped with a chef and gourmet meals. They were probably lucky to score one of those little peanut pouches and a watered-down pop!”

  “Perhaps we should’ve saved them some of our freshly baked chocolate chip cookies,” said Abia.

  Then she and Kyle looked at each other.

  “Naaaah,” they said together.

  Laughing, they climbed into their bookmobile.

  “Back to the library, Mad Dog,” said Kyle. “And I think you can take your time. Those other guys are probably somewhere over North Carolina!”

  —

  Kyle and Abia climbed up the steps of the library and stepped through the bank vault door. Mr. Lemoncello was standing with Mr. Raymo, the chief imagineer, and two turn-of-the-century gentlemen in high-collared shirts, tweed suits, and bowler hats.

  “Hiya, Orville and Wilbur,” said Kyle. “You guys look just like your statues.”

  “But not nearly as bronzed,” added Abia, who, believe it or not, was actually cracking a joke. “Perhaps you need to work on your suntans.”

  “We can adjust that,” said Mr. Raymo, tapping his tablet computer.

  “She’s joking,” said Kyle. “Right?”

  “Indeed,” Abia said with a slight smile. “I fear it comes from spending too much time with you, Kyle Keeley.”

  Kyle grinned.

  “Congratulicitations,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “You two are the first team to return from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the inner lobby of what used to be a bank in Ohio. Did you find your fascinating fact?”

  “Indeed we did, sir,” said Abia.

  “Johnny Moore was just a kid whose curiosity made him part of history,” said Kyle.

  “He was the youngest of the five witnesses to the Wright brothers’ first flight on that cold and blustery December day in 1903.”

  “It was rather nippy that morning,” said Wilbur.

  “And I was the one lying down on the plane, manning the controls,” added Orville. “So I had to contend with the wind-chill factor as well.”

  “For twelve seconds,” said Wilbur, rolling his eyes at his brother.

  “Fine. Next time you do it.”

  “Boys?” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Don’t make Mr. Raymo dial up your mother on his Nonfictionator.” He turned to Kyle and Abia. “Well done. You two will be moving on to the final round. Your opponents, Elliott Schilpp and Katherine Kelly, will not.”

  “Who won the Emily Dickinson race?” asked Kyle.

  “We did,” said Akimi, strolling into the lobby with her partner, Angus.

  “But they only beat us by like ten seconds,” said Miguel as he and his partner, Pranav, joined the others in the lobby.

  “If I may inquire,” said Abia, “what was the fascinating fact you four discovered about Emily Dickinson?”

  “We’ll show you!” declared Mr. Lemoncello. “Mr. Raymo, if you please?”

  “Certainly, sir.” He started tapping on his tablet.

  Orville and Wilbur Wright disappeared.

  A frail young woman wearing a black dress with puffy shoulders faded into view. Her dark hair was pulled back from her pale face into a tight bun.

  “Most of my poems,” said the holographic Emily Dickinson, “employed what is known as the common meter.”

  “We studied that in school,” said Kyle. “A meter is like six-tenths of a mile….”

  “In poetry,” said Dickinson, “ ‘meter’ refers to the pattern of beats.”

  “Her poems are mostly four beats followed by three,” explained Miguel.

  “So,” added Angus, “you can sing ’em to the tune of ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’ ”

  “Or,” said Pranav, “as we recently learned in our research quest, to the tune of the theme song from Mr. Lemoncello’s favorite boyhood television show, Gilligan’s Island.”

  “Gilligan’s Island? What’s it about?” asked Kyle.

  “Why, it’s a rollicking tale of seven castaways stranded on a desert island!” said Mr. Lemoncello. He started singing the theme song (slightly off-key): “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”

  “I think Miss Dickinson’s poetry might sound better,” said Miguel. “Seriously. I do.”

  “Very well, Miguel,” said Mr. Lemoncello. “Emily, if you please?”

  The flickering Emily Dickinson recited the first stanza of one of her most famous poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song:

  “Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.”

  Everyone in the lobby applauded wildly.

  “And so,” said Mr. Lemoncello after Emily Dickinson had disappeared, “we are down to our final two teams! Kyle and Abia versus Akimi and Angus. Tomorrow we will begin the final leg of the Fabulous Fact-Finding Frenzy. After that, one team, our most fabulous and frenzied fact finders, will be declared the winners and go on a grand North American library tour, where they will be hailed as research heroes and—”

  “And take home the first copies of that new floating emoji game, right?” said Kyle.

  “Right. You took the words out of my mouth. But don’t worry, I gargled this morning. The other team? Well, like today’s runners-up, you will receive lovely parting gifts including a lifetime supply of those Ohio confectionery treats known as buckeyes—chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls!”

  The consolation prize actua
lly sounded pretty good to Kyle, because he definitely loved Ohio’s famous buckeye candies.

  But as anybody could tell you, he loved winning even more.

  “Ready, racers?” asked Mr. Lemoncello as the two remaining teams crowded each other on the lemon square in the library lobby first thing the next morning.

  This was it, thought Kyle. The final race. Akimi and Angus versus Kyle and Abia. There was no tomorrow. Well, there was, but it was just a date on the calendar. Whoever won this one would win everything!

  “Ready,” said Kyle and Abia.

  “Ready,” said Angus, crouching down in a way that sort of shoved Kyle sideways.

  “Careful there, Mr. Harper,” said the hologram of Abraham Lincoln, who stood beside Mr. Lemoncello. Both of them were wearing tailcoats and stovepipe hats. “A house divided against itself cannot stand. Neither can a runner nudged in an unsportsmanlike manner.”

  “Sorry,” said Angus. “Just eager to win.”

  “Oh,” said Lincoln, “if only you had been one of my generals at the start of the Civil War…”

  The eight other data dashers were assembled in the lobby to cheer on the final four contestants.

  “Hurry up and win, somebody!” shouted Elliott. “There’s a humongous Lincoln Log victory cake in the Book Nook Café! With buttercream frosting!”

  “And lemon meringue pie,” added Katherine.

  Mr. Lemoncello gestured toward the open bank vault door.

  “Since we are now down to our final two exhibits, Abraham Lincoln and moi, Luigi L. Lemoncello, we’re shaking things up for this final leg of the great library race. You will notice that we have placed four backpacks on the sidewalk in front of two bookmobiles and four bicycles. The two yellow backpacks will take you on a knowledge quest into my own personal past. The two copper-colored bags with Mr. Lincoln’s portrait on the back will lead you off, via the banana jet, to Columbus, Ohio, where Mr. Lincoln once gave a speech in 1859.”

  “Only fifty people came to hear me speak,” said Lincoln with a sad sigh. “But, like I once said, you have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”