فصل شانزدهم

chapter-16

Just after dark, Kyle and his teammates put on their opening ceremonies costumes and headed out to the motel’s central courtyard.

A bandstand had been erected at one end of the grassy rectangle situated in the middle of the motel’s chalet-style units. Mr. Lemoncello, Dr. Zinchenko, and the mayor of Alexandriaville stood on the platform, ready to review the thirty-two Olympians.

Mr. Lemoncello was dressed in a shimmering silver toga and silver laurel-leaf crown. He looked a little like the male tribute from District Three in a Hunger Games parade. Dr. Zinchenko was all in red, again. Shiny red sequins. The mayor wore a black trench coat. He wasn’t much on dressing up.

The eight teams marched, one at a time, into the motel’s version of an arena and walked around it, just like the athletes at the ancient Greek Olympic Games did (except those guys didn’t have a sidewalk or running shoes).

A crowd of several hundred spectators ringed the courtyard, which was illuminated by colorful strings of party lights. More people were watching the festivities on giant-screen TVs set up across the highway in Liberty Park.

Kyle was carrying the “Hometown Heroes” banner. He and his teammates were wearing gray-and-scarlet tracksuits (Ohio State University’s colors), brown “buckeye” nut hats, and squeaking banana shoes, exactly like the ones Mr. Lemoncello sometimes wore. The musical sneakers—bright yellow and slightly curved—were one of Mr. Lemoncello’s biggest hits over the holidays. The “game” was to make the banana shoes burp-squeak out a tune by hopping, skipping, and tap-dancing the notes. For the opening ceremonies’ “Parade of Champions,” Kyle, Akimi, Miguel, and Sierra had choreographed the footwork to play a burp-squeak version of “Hang On Sloopy,” Ohio’s official rock song.

Most of the other teams wore wacky costumes, too.

The team from the Pacific states was decked out in board shorts, flip-flops, and way cool Hawaiian shirts. They blew “Surfin’ Safari” on kazoos. Pranav Pillai was the kazoo drum major.

The kids representing the Mid-Atlantic region wore crab costumes, complete with deely-bopper antennae and pinchers.

The Northeasterners went with very scholarly, Harry Potter–style robes and mumbled a chant in Latin while they marched (“Semper ubi sub ubi”); the Southeast team, including Diane Capriola, wore sleek NASCAR race car driver jumpsuits with all sorts of book patches sewn onto every available inch; the Southwest team sported cowboy hats, big belt buckles, and boots and did rope tricks with their twirling lassoes; all the Mountain players wore flannel shirts, lumberjack pants, fake mountain-man beards (even the girls), and furry, flap-eared hats.

The Midwest team, led by Marjory Muldauer, wore khaki pants, button-down white shirts, striped ties, and blue blazers.

Kyle thought the Midwesterners looked like marching real-estate brokers. Or Charles Chiltington’s cousins.

“My dad made it!” said Sierra, waving at a man smiling proudly in the crowd. “And there’s my mom,” she added when the team had hop-skipped and burp-squeaked another twenty feet.

After all eight teams had marched around the courtyard three times, they lined up in front of Mr. Lemoncello’s reviewing stand, ready for him to officially declare the games open and light the Library Olympics torch, which, Sierra explained, is what people in England call a flashlight.

“Welcome, one and all,” boomed Mr. Lemoncello. “I am so glad to see you here this evening, because this afternoon my optometrist gave me eye drops and I couldn’t see a thing! Before I officially illuminate our Olympic torch…” He gestured toward the ten-foot-tall skyward-pointing flashlight.

“…I’d like to say a few short words. ‘Terse,’ ‘diminutive,’ ‘stubby,’ and ‘I,’ which is one of the shortest words I know, until it becomes ‘we,’ as in ‘We the people of the United States,’ the same ‘we’ that secured the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity, which, by the way, would be you, children, and not my fanny, which would, of course, be my ‘posterior-ity.’ ” He took a deep breath.

“Tonight, we light the symbolic flashlight of under-the-covers reading to celebrate those page-turners we can never put down, even on a school night. I am assured that our Olympic torch will never reach a temperature of Fahrenheit four fifty-one, something the Lorax, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe were all quite happy to hear.” Mr. Lemoncello pranced across the stage to a giant cartoon version of a wall switch.

“Gamesters, if you’re game, let the gaming begin!” He heaved up the humongous switch. The ginormous flashlight’s beacon sliced through the night sky. “I now pronounce the games of the first Library Olympiad officially open. I also pronounce my name like a cross between a tart fruit and a mellow musical instrument. Have fun! Play fair! And remember—these games are a quest to find who amongst you is a true champion!” A thousand balloons with glow sticks in their bellies were released into the night air. Fireworks rocketed into the sky. The Ohio State marching band tramped into the courtyard to create an open-book formation while blaring a brassy version of “Paperback Writer” by the Beatles. Laser beams sliced through the smoky darkness in time to the music.

“And now,” announced Mr. Lemoncello after the fireworks had exploded into their grand finale of floating hearts, smiley faces, and interlocking books, “the most stupendously spectacular moment of the entire night, your keys to anything and everything you ever want or need to know, boys and girls, buoys and gulls, dolphins and porpoises—may I proudly present…your library cards!”