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chapter-22

“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 (except her teachers and whoever scored her IQ tests) knew. With certain people, mainly grown-ups and silly boys, pretending to be a ditzy princess made getting what she wanted a whole lot easier.

And what she wanted right now was money. Lots of money. Her dad had been out of work for nearly a year. They’d run through all their rainy-day savings. They’d had to borrow from relatives and in-laws.

If Haley could win this competition and become Mr. Lemoncello’s spokesmodel, her family’s money woes would be over and they wouldn’t have to sell their home. And once other people saw her on TV for Lemoncello games, they’d want her for their commercials, too. And movies. Maybe her own sitcom. Something on the Disney Channel.

But for all that to happen, Haley needed a winning idea—and fast. Something better than “crawl through a slot that’s barely wide enough for your wrist.” Maybe she should flush herself down the toilet and escape through the sewers like Charles did in that video game.

She headed over to the Book Nook Café so she could sit down and think.

She stepped into the room and checked out the snack table. There were trays of cookies, strawberries, bananas, and brownies. Sitting down to nibble on a macaroon, she studied the row of cookbooks displayed on the bookshelves lining the wall.

One in particular caught her eye: Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My!

Because the cover looked extremely familiar: two googly-eyed sheep made out of chocolate-frosted cakes with gobs of mini marshmallows for fleece. Haley had seen the cover before.

In the lobby!

It was in that glass case of memorable reads selected by the library staff.

She went over to the shelf and picked up the book. When she opened the cover, she discovered two cards.

One was a four-by-four piece of white cardboard with the black silhouette of a sheep on it.

The second card was yellow and about the same size as a Community Chest card in Monopoly. Haley sniffed the card. It smelled like lemons.

She grinned. “For Lemoncello!”

On one side of the yellow card was printed:

SUPER-DOOPER BONUS CLUE

On the other was the clue:

YOUR MARVELOUS MEMORY HAS EARNED YOU EVEN MORE MEMORIES. PROCEED TO THE LEMONCELLO-ABILIA ROOM.

LOOK FOR ITEM 12.

Haley slid both cards into the back pocket of her jeans, pulled out her library floor plan, and found the Lemoncello-abilia Room. It was up on the third floor.

Making certain nobody (i.e., Charles Chiltington) was following her, Haley quietly dashed up a spiral staircase to the second floor. Checking for Chiltington one more time, she tiptoed up to the third floor, where she found the room labeled “Lemoncello-abilia: Mini-Museum of Personally Interesting and Somewhat Quirky Junk.” Haley opened the door and stepped inside.

The front room was like a storage warehouse. Cardboard boxes were stacked on top of wooden crates sitting on plastic bins stuffed with papers. All the boxes, bins, and crates were numbered. She saw one labeled “576.” “Guess Mr. Lemoncello never throws anything away,” Haley remarked as she scanned the heaps, looking for the 12 mentioned on her bonus card.

Weaving her way through the stacks and columns, Haley finally found her Super-Dooper Bonus. Item 12 was an old boot box from an Alexandriaville shoe store Haley had never heard of. Someone had taped a label on the lid: “Paraphernalia, Accoutrements, and Doodads from Mr. Lemoncello’s 12th Year.” Haley lifted the lid. The box was filled with all sorts of confusing knickknacks: hand-whittled prototypes for game pieces; a star-spangled, red-white-and-blue “H-H-H Humphrey” button; a battered clasp envelope sealed up with tons of tape.

Someone had scribbled “First and Worst Idea Ever” on the front of the envelope with a Magic Marker.

There were also a felt pennant from Disneyland and a rubber-banded stack of cartoony cards for something called Wacky Packages. (The card on top was Weakies, Breakfast of Chumps.) Haley knew this memory box had to be an important clue.

Why? She had absolutely no idea.