Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Guess she got old,” said Akimi.

  “She’s a granny,” added Angus.

  “Yeah,” said Kyle. “She sort of looks like one of those Mrs. Maplebutter syrup bottles.”

  She also looked extremely sad in the photograph as she held up her 1969 Family Frolic game board with one hand while pointing to the Family Frenzy board spread out on a table in front of her.

  “This is horrible,” said Akimi, reading the text next to the photograph:

  In 1969, Irma Hirschman, now a kindly grandmother residing in Smithville, Missouri, was working as a stenographer when she created a board game she called Family Frolic.

  “It was based on my happy memories of my big family. I wanted to share that joy and cheerfulness with children all around the world.”

  Her simple game, with its race from the Local Neighborhood to My First Job to Baby Makes Three to Millionaire’s Mansion, was never a huge hit, but several copies, all manufactured by a local printer in Smithville, were sold by a traveling salesman to homes in the American Midwest.

  “I guess that peddler sold a game or two up in Ohio,” Mrs. Hirschman remarked over tea in a recent interview. This interviewer paid for the tea, as Mrs. Hirschman is currently living in a homeless shelter. “That’s where little Luigi first got his sticky fingers on my game.”

  Five years later, Mr. Lemoncello, the zany billionaire game maker, took Family Frolic and turned it into Family Frenzy.

  “He tells everybody that the game was based on his big Italian family,” said Mrs. Hirschman, sniffling away her tears, the tears she has been shedding for over four decades. “He says some local librarian helped him put together the prototype, lending him charms from her bracelet and trinkets she had tucked away in her desk drawer to use as playing pieces. That she even gave him a Barbie doll boot! But the truth is the truth. He stole my game. He stole my memories. He even stole my boot! When I called his big, fancy company—the Imagination Factory in New York City—to complain, those city slickers hung up on me!”

  Mr. Lemoncello’s entire multibillion-dollar fortune was built on the success of his debut board game, Family Frenzy.

  He has never shared a penny of his profits with Mrs. Hirschman, now seventy-five years old, who currently gets by on Social Security, disability insurance, food stamps, and “the kindness of my neighbors here in Smithville and its lovely homeless shelter.”

  “Man,” said Angus. “Who does Mr. Lemoncello think he is? That is one hundred percent disgusting!”

  “Only if it’s true,” said Kyle angrily.

  “Hey, we have two sources. The box lid and this website.”

  “Neither of which should be considered completely reliable,” said Abia.

  Angus blew her a raspberry. “What? Somebody dummied up this board game and planted it here at the library while somebody else posted a bogus website?”

  “It’s a possibility!” insisted Kyle.

  “Wait a second,” said Angus. “There’s a link to Mr. Lemoncello’s Wikipedia page.” Angus clicked the mouse. “Oh, snap. Mr. L got kicked out of high school for cheating at chess? He was one seriously bad dude when he was a kid. Cheating, stealing…”

  “Anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry,” said Akimi.

  Angus leaned back in his beanbag chair. “Look, I know you guys are locals….”

  “I’m not,” said Abia.

  “Okay. Fine. Y’all just love Mr. Lemoncello. Heck, I do, too. I mean, I did. But face it, the truth is the truth.”

  “I don’t know,” said Akimi. “This whole thing smells like the dumpster behind a Long John Silver’s to me.”

  “Fishy?” said Abia.

  “Exactly.”

  Kyle felt sick to his stomach (and not because of Akimi’s stinky fish thing).

  “Look, Angus,” he said, “if this truth is somehow actually the truth, it’ll still be true tomorrow, right?”

  “Unless somebody edits the Wikipedia page again,” cracked Akimi.

  “I still believe in Mr. Lemoncello, and I am not ready to ruin his reputation,” said Kyle. “Not without more facts.”

  “Me neither,” said Akimi.

  “I concur,” added Abia. “We should dig deeper.”

  “Fine,” said Angus. “Let’s go ask the holographic Lemoncello for a delay of game. But when we find out the truth…”

  “You and Akimi win,” said Kyle. “A deal’s a deal. You two can be the ones who go on tour with all the new Lemoncello Library exhibits.”

  “I don’t know,” sighed Akimi. “If this Irma Hirschman stuff is true, there may not be a Lemoncello Library anymore.”

  On their way down to the lobby to ask for some extra time, Kyle realized that if all the Irma Hirschman stuff was really true and it forced Mr. Lemoncello out of town, he and Akimi would miss Mr. Lemoncello more than Abia and Angus would.

  “We’ve been with him since he opened this library,” said Kyle.

  “Yep,” said Akimi. “And we might be here when he closes it, too. Especially if people like the Chiltingtons find out he stole his first game idea.”

  “They wouldn’t force Mr. Lemoncello to close the library for theft of intellectual property,” said Angus. “They’d just take his name off the door and ask him to never come back.”

  “They would probably remove his statue as well,” said Abia.

  “True,” said Angus. “And for sure they’d close up that Lemoncello-abilia Room.”

  “And take away his private suite.”

  “Then they’d want to get rid of all those board games in the boardroom and—”

  “Okay, okay, you guys,” said Akimi. “We get the picture.”

  Kyle knew the truth: Without Mr. Lemoncello, the library would still be a library. It just wouldn’t be Mr. Lemoncello’s library.

  The glittering Lemoncello hologram was still standing where they’d left him. But his eyes were closed. And he was snoring.

  “Um, excuse me?” Kyle said to the snoozing hologram.

  The fake Mr. Lemoncello’s eyes popped open. “Oh, hello. You were gone so long I must’ve entered my sleep mode. Do you have an answer? Why aren’t you standing on the lemon square? Would you like a recipe for lemon squares?” The hologram sputtered. “Bob Lemon was an all-star Major League Baseball pitcher who had his heyday in the 1940s and fifties.”

  The Nonfictionator random access memory chips were acting a little too randomly.

  “Whoa, hang on,” said Angus.

  “We need to discuss something with you,” said Akimi, looking around and seeing regular library patrons starting to stream into the building. “In private.”

  “We can use Meeting Room A,” suggested Kyle.

  “Wonderrific!” said the hologram.

  Then it disappeared with a squiggle-blip.

  “Guess the Nonfictionator is sending him to Meeting Room A,” said Kyle. “Let’s go.”

  Kyle, Akimi, Angus, and Abia went into the rotunda and over to the door to Meeting Room A.

  It was locked.

  “This meeting room is reserved for the holographic Mr. Lemoncello and his guests,” said the voice in the ceiling. “Please enter the door code to gain access.”

  There was an alphanumeric pad, like on a telephone, above the door handle.

  “Great,” said Akimi. “Anybody know the pass code?”

  “Yep,” said Kyle. “The same one he uses for every lock, remember?”

  He quickly tapped 7-3-2-3, because those numbers shared key space with the letters R-E-A-D.

  The door opened. The group stepped in.

  The Lemoncello hologram wasn’t in the meeting room, but Mr. Lemoncello was.

  Well, his face, anyway. It was filling one of the room’s walls, which doubled as a video screen. And it was a worried face—without the usual twinkle in the eyes.

  “Um, hello, sir,” said Kyle. “All of us in the Fabulous Fact-Finding Frenzy would like to request a delay of game.”

  “Why?” asked Mr. Lemonc
ello. “Is it raining?”

  “No,” said Abia. “Both teams need additional research time.”

  “Because,” said Kyle, “we don’t want to jump to conclusions.”

  Mr. Lemoncello nodded. “Probably a wise move. Conclusion-jumping often leads to bad answers and twisted ankles.”

  “We want to make sure we know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” added Angus.

  “So do I,” said Mr. Lemoncello, “even if it takes a year down yonder. Therefore, your request is hereby granted.”

  “We might also need your jet,” said Akimi. “In case we have to, you know, fly someplace.”

  Mr. Lemoncello nodded knowingly. “One often does when on a quest for truth. Use whatever tools it takes. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to talk to a detective who reminds me a bit of Timmy Failure when we need Encyclopedia Brown. I suspect mistakes will be made.”

  “A detective?” said Angus. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, nothing much. It seems I’ve been burgled. Someone cracked open my super-secure floor safe.”

  “Did they take anything?” asked Kyle.

  “Yes, Kyle. That’s why we call it a burglary. If they didn’t burgle anything, we’d simply call it an uninvited guest.”

  “What did they pilfer?” asked Abia.

  “My future. They stole the complete set of plans to my Fantabulous Floating Emoji game. My big hit for the holidays has gone missing!”

  “Finding the truth, no matter what truth you are seeking, is more important than finding the thief who stole my blueprints,” said Mr. Lemoncello when Kyle suggested they should call off the whole Fabulous Fact-Finding Frenzy.

  So, early the next morning, the four remaining contestants met at the library to discuss their research strategy.

  “We need to get to the bottom of this,” said Kyle. “Fast.”

  “Where do we start?” asked Angus.

  “The heart of his game-making empire,” suggested Abia. “New York City. Home of Mr. Lemoncello’s Imagination Factory!”

  “Good idea,” said Akimi. “If this Irma Hirschman called them, like she claims she did on her website, somebody at his I.F. headquarters may have already found the answer we’re searching for.”

  With the permission of Ms. Waintraub, the holographic research librarian, they brought the Family Frolic board game they’d found in the Lemoncello-abilia Room with them.

  Mad Dog drove them back to the airport.

  “Do you have your permission slips?” asked the flight attendant on Mr. Lemoncello’s private jet.

  They all handed over their signed scrolls.

  “Our parents are behind us one hundred percent,” said Kyle.

  “Then buckle up!”

  Nobody was interested in all the free food on the flight from Ohio to New York. They were too busy working their armrest computers, digging for information, searching for the truth.

  “This is good,” said Akimi, scrolling through a website. “It says here you can always tell when someone’s lying because they touch or cover their mouths. They also shuffle their feet, point a lot, and stare at you without blinking.”

  Kyle nodded. “Good to know when we start talking to people in New York. Some of Mr. Lemoncello’s employees may not want to tell us the truth. It could cost them their jobs.”

  “Fascinating,” said Abia, clacking keys on her computer.

  “What’d you find?” asked Kyle.

  “It’s more what I did not find. Google allows you to call up patents quite easily. For instance, I found Charles B. Darrow’s patent filing from 1935 for his ‘board game apparatus’ Monopoly. I also located Luigi L. Lemoncello’s 1974 patent for Family Frenzy, complete with a full description of the board, game cards, playing pieces—everything.”

  “And Family Frolic?” asked Kyle.

  “Nothing.”

  “Maybe Irma Hirschman called the game something else when she filed her patent,” suggested Angus.

  “I investigated that possibility as well. Still nothing. There are no patents registered to anyone named Irma Hirschman.”

  “So the game you guys found in the Lemoncello-abilia Room could be a phony?” said Akimi.

  “It is a possibility,” said Abia.

  “Hot dog!” said Kyle.

  Akimi cocked an eyebrow. “Since when do you say ‘hot dog’ when you’re pumped instead of ‘booyah’?”

  Kyle grinned. “I only said ‘hot dog’ because all of a sudden I’m starving. I’m hoping they still have some of those Chicago-style wieners on board.”

  When the banana jet landed at a corporate airfield just outside of New York City, a limousine, molded and painted to look like a harmonica on wheels (because a tiny tin harmonica was another one of the tokens you could pick when playing Family Frenzy), pulled right up to the jet’s steps.

  “Welcome,” said the driver. “You kids have any luggage?”

  “Just this,” said Kyle, gesturing with the Family Frolic game box.

  The driver took off his sunglasses and somberly studied the box top.

  “Family Frolic. Is that the game the lady from Missouri invented before the boss invented his version of the same game?”

  “Well,” said Akimi, “that’s what somebody wants us to believe.”

  “Yeah,” said the driver, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “Irma Hirschman. She’s been on talk radio all morning, sobbing and sniffling and telling anybody who will listen that Mr. Lemoncello stole her idea.”

  Kyle and the others hurried into the limo.

  “Here she is again,” said the driver, dialing up the volume on his radio. “They play this sound bite like every ten minutes.”

  “After all these years, I’ve finally found the courage to speak up,” said a sweet-sounding voice. “The gals in my quilting bee at the retirement home convinced me that it’s never too late to tell the truth. Mr. Lemoncello stole my idea. He should’ve been punished decades ago. But better late than never.”

  “Retirement home?” said Akimi. “I thought she lived in a homeless shelter.”

  “You guys?” said Kyle. “This is way too big of a coincidence. Yesterday we find Irma Hirschman’s board game. Today she’s all over the radio crying about it?”

  “Too bad it’s radio,” said Akimi. “If it were TV, we could see her covering her mouth, shuffling her feet, and staring without blinking!”

  Kyle really hoped Akimi was right.

  He hoped Irma Hirschman was totally lying.

  Everything about Mr. Lemoncello’s Imagination Factory world headquarters in New York City was wild and wacky.

  The front wall of the building at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, in the heart of downtown Manhattan, was filled with grand columns, incredible arches, and wildly imaginative gargoyles—including several that were chiseled to look like Mr. Lemoncello wearing a hooded monk’s robe, his nose stuck in a stone book.

  There was a balloon store, a bookstore, and a bakery on the ground floor of the block-long office building. The arched golden doorway into the Imagination Factory’s lobby was guarded by a pair of mechanical bears in circus band uniforms blowing bubbles out of their trombones.

  Once Kyle, Akimi, Angus, and Abia stepped into the lobby, they smelled cotton candy, popcorn, and caramel apples—even though they were nowhere near a county fair.

  “They’re using Mr. Lemoncello’s smell-a-vision technology,” said Akimi. She pointed to a placard on an easel where the smells of the week were outlined. Today’s theme was “The Circus Is in Town.” Tomorrow would be “Chocolate-Dipped Fruit Day.” The day after that was “A Scentsational Tribute to American Bubble Gum.”

  Robots, similar to the ones working at Mr. Lemoncello’s library, whizzed across the lobby’s shiny floor, silently whisking baskets of mail and trays filled with important packages to wherever they were supposed to go.

  A man named Vader Nix, whose parents had been huge Star Wars fans, was the head of marketing and
advertising at the Imagination Factory. Kyle had called Mr. Nix when the banana jet began its descent into the New York area. Mr. Nix knew Kyle and Akimi from their star turns in Mr. Lemoncello’s holiday commercials (their prize for winning the escape game back when the library first opened). He stepped out of a glass elevator (designed to look like a rocket ship) to greet them.

  “Welcome to Lemoncello world headquarters,” said Mr. Nix. “I wish you kids could’ve come on a happier day.”

  He gestured over his shoulder to a giant brass meter mounted on a wall beneath a mural depicting all the crazy characters and screwy playing pieces from the Lemoncello universe of games. The meter looked like the floor indicator on an old-fashioned elevator, but instead of pointing to a half circle of numbers, the ornately scrolled hand dipped from a toothy happy face past a closed-mouth-smile happy face to a straight-line-mouth semihappy face.

  If it nudged much farther to the left, Mr. Lemoncello’s Universal Happiness Meter might plunge all the way to frowny face and then angry/snarly face.

  “It appears everyone in the world heard Irma Hirschman on the radio this morning,” said Abia.

  “Did Mr. L come with you kids?” asked Mr. Nix.

  Kyle shook his head. “He’s still in Ohio. Talking to the police.”

  “About this Irma Hirschman brouhaha?”

  “No. Someone stole the blueprints for his Fantabulous Floating Emoji game.”

  “And I didn’t think it could get any worse.” Mr. Nix showed the kids the cover of a special edition of Game Maker magazine. “Hot off the presses. It just came out this morning.”

  The magazine had Mr. Lemoncello illustrated like the Mr. Moneybags character from Monopoly being hauled off by a billy-club-wielding cop—just like on the classic “Go Directly to Jail” Chance card. The headline was horrifying:

  MR. LEMONCELLO’S IMAGINATION FACTORY BUILT ON LIES, DECEIT, AND THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

  “Have you heard from this Irma Hirschman before?” asked Kyle.