فصل چهل و یکم

chapter-41

“You need to look up at the Wonder Dome,” said Sierra.

“Huh?” said Kyle.

Sierra and her whole team were standing together outside the door to Community Meeting Room B. She hadn’t been this happy or excited in a long time.

“Um, Sierra?” said Akimi. “Why exactly are you suggesting we all give ourselves a crick in the neck by staring at the ceiling?” “Okay. This is a game some of us play online called What’s the Connection? I put up a list of authors and you have to figure out how they’re linked by the titles of their books.” “Whoa,” said Akimi, sort of sarcastically. “Sounds like fun.” “It is. But believe me, it’s not easy.” “What’d you figure out?” asked Miguel.

“Well, like Curtis said, Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward, Angel and Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass. That got me thinking. And running computer searches. Stephen Sondheim wrote a book called Look, I Made a Hat. Maya Angelou wrote Even the Stars Look Lonesome, and Pseudonymous Bosch wrote This Isn’t What It Looks Like.” “They all have ‘look’ in the title,” said Kyle.

“What about the other five authors?” asked Akimi. “Did they write ‘look’ books, too?” “No, they’re up there for a different word.” “Huh?”

“Booker T. Washington wrote Up from Slavery and Shel Silverstein wrote Falling Up.” “And Dr. Seuss?” said Kyle.

“Great Day for Up. George Orwell did Coming Up for Air, and Todd Strasser has a book called If I Grow Up.” “So the ten statues give us two words,” said Miguel.

“Yep. ‘Look’ and ‘up.’ So I did. I looked up. At the Wonder Dome. There! Did you see it? That string of numbers that just drifted across the two hundreds screen under the Star of David?” “220.5203,” said Miguel.

Akimi knuckle-punched Kyle in the arm. “This is just like that bonus code thingie you showed me on the school bus!” “Of course,” said Kyle. “This is a Lemoncello game. He always hides secret codes in screwy places. Way to go, Sierra!” “Thanks,” said Sierra, realizing how much more fun it was to play this kind of game with real friends instead of virtual ones on the Internet.

“But we already found that same two hundreds number playing Bibliomania,” said Miguel.

“True,” said Kyle. “Check out the sections for numbers the cards wouldn’t give us.” Everybody craned their necks and focused on the graphics swimming across the ten panels overhead.

“Here comes another one!” said Sierra. “In the six hundreds. Right underneath the floating stethoscope.” “Got it!” said Kyle. “624.193.”

“Whoo-hoo!” said Akimi.

“Sierra, you’re my new hero,” said Kyle. “You saved the day.” Sierra blushed. “Thanks.”

“The spinner,” said Akimi.

“Huh?” said Miguel.

“That was another clue. The Bibliomania game was pointing us to the ceiling, too. Because in Dewey decimal mode, the Wonder Dome looks like a giant 3-D version of the board game’s spinner.” “Awesome, Sierra,” said Miguel. “Absolutely awesome.” Sierra and her teammates stared up at the ceiling for over an hour. At 12:30, they finally lay down on the floor so they wouldn’t cramp their neck muscles.

Because every fifteen minutes, the animated ceiling looped through call numbers for every Dewey decimal room in the library.

Except one.

And then the sequence repeated itself.

“How come there’s no three hundreds number?” said Miguel.

“Probably because that’s the one book we really, really, really need,” said Kyle.

“That Lemoncello,” said Akimi. “What a comedian.”