فصل چهلم

chapter-40

“Really?” Kyle was astonished. “You’ve got nothing?” “Well,” said Curtis, “the only connection I can see is Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward, Angel and Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass. Both titles have the word ‘look’ in them. But the two books are otherwise completely different. The two authors as well.” Kyle and his whole team stood in stunned silence.

Until Sierra started jumping up and down.

“Of course!” she shouted.

“Your time is up,” announced Dr. Zinchenko.

“Um, okay,” Kyle said to the computer screen. “Thanks, Curtis. That was, uh, really helpful.” “It was!” said Sierra, daintily clapping her hands together like a very polite seal. The computer screen faded to black.

“What’s up?” asked Miguel.

“I think I know how to crack the statue code.” “There’s a code?” said Akimi. “Who knew?”

“It’ll take time,” said Sierra. “And I need a computer.” “Oh-kay,” said Kyle, who was sort of shocked to see Sierra so completely jazzed. “We’ll be in our meeting room, putting together a list of new Dewey decimal numbers from the Bibliomania cards so we’re ready to hit the ground running when the doors reopen at ten tomorrow morning.” While Sierra settled in at a desktop computer pad, the rest of the team returned to the Bibliomania board game.

“We should just start flipping over cards and putting together a list of call numbers,” Kyle suggested.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Akimi.

She plucked a purple card out of the pile.

Lose a Turn was all that was printed on the other side.

“Try a different color,” urged Miguel.

Akimi flipped up a blue card.

Take an Extra Turn was printed on it. So Akimi flipped over all the other blue cards while Miguel flipped over all the purples.

The purple cards all said Lose a Turn. The blue ones all said Take an Extra Turn.

Kyle had been checking out the red and maroon piles.

“The reds all say ‘Pick a Yellow Card,’ ” he reported. “The maroons say ‘Grab a Green.’ ” “The grays do the same thing,” said Miguel. “Only they say ‘Pick a Pink.’ The tan cards say ‘Go Grab an Orange.’ ” “So that leaves the colors we’ve already played.” Kyle flipped over a yellow card. “ ‘In the square root of 48,629.20271209 …’ ” “What the …?” said Akimi.

“Hang on,” said Miguel. “There’s a calculator app in this desktop computer.” Kyle read the rest of the card: “… ‘find half of 4-40-30.’ ” “Well, that’s 2-20-15, again,” said Sierra.

“And the square root of forty-eight thousand whatever is 220.5203,” said Miguel. “The King James Bible we already found.” Akimi flipped through the rest of the yellow cards. “Same with these. They all send us into the Religion section to find that Bible verse.” “Ditto with the greens,” reported Miguel. “All clues leading to Bird Songs, Warbles, and Whistles.” “And the pinks all lead back to 027.4,” said Kyle. “I guess they really wanted to make sure we found Get to Know Your Local Library.” “Which leaves the wild cards,” said Akimi. She examined the orange deck. “Find a rhyme for ‘cart and paperbacks,’ ‘smart and zodiacs,’ ‘tart and potato sacks.’ ” “The Art and Artifacts Room,” said Miguel with a sigh.

“Where,” Akimi continued, “we need to find a rhyme for ‘Randy,’ ‘Sandy,’ or ‘Brandi.’ ” “The Willy Wonka candy,” said Miguel.

“So,” said Kyle, “I’m guessing the Bibliomania game was only supposed to help us find the four clues we’ve already found.” “But we need to know more numbers,” said Miguel. “Because a library should be a know-place for know-bodies.” When Miguel made his pun, Kyle and Akimi both groaned.

But then Kyle thought of something: “This is why Mr. Lemoncello called our time-out a bonus. He knew we’d need a ton of time to find a new source of numbers.” Just then Sierra burst into the meeting room.

“You guys! I found a whole bunch of new numbers!” “What?” said Kyle, Akimi, and Miguel. “Where?” “Up on the ceiling!”