29 Chapter 29

Chapter 29 "Oh, man," said Kyle, leading his team around the balcony, back to the Young Adult Room. "Nine library cards. This is fantastic!" They gathered around a table. "Okay, guys. Time for everybody to put their cards on the table. Literally." The teammates set down their cards. Kyle spread out the five from the discard bowl. Akimi pulled out a pad and wrote all the information on one master list:

BOOKS/AUTHORS ON THE BACKS OF LIBRARY CARDS #1 Miguel Fernandez Incident at Hawk's Hill by Allan W. Eckert/ No, David! by David Shannon #2 Akimi Hughes One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss/Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger #3 UNKNOWN #4 Bridgette Wadge Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume/Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling #5 Sierra Russell The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder/ The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

#6 Yasmeen Smith-Snyder Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne/The Yak Who Yelled Yuck by Carol Pugliano-Martin #7 Sean Keegan Olivia by Ian Falconer/Unreal! by Paul Jennings #8 UNKNOWN #9 Rose Vermette All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor/ Scat by Carl Hiaasen #10 Kayla Corson Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames/Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein #11 UNKNOWN

#12 Kyle Keeley I Love You, Stinky Face by Lisa McCourt/ The Napping House by Audrey Wood "Wow," said Sierra. "That's a lot of good books. But what do all those authors and titles mean?" "It means we need Charles's, Andrew's, and Haley's cards," said Kyle. "Really?" said Akimi. "Because if you ask me, we already have way too much information." "Well," said Kyle, "maybe later we'll find a clue that'll tell us how to read this clue." "And how are we going to do that?" asked Miguel. "Have you ever played this?" Kyle pointed to the Bibliomania box. "Nope. Always wanted to." "We were just about to get up a game." "Does this have anything to do with finding our way out of the library?" "We sure hope so," said Akimi. "Awesome."

"By the way," Kyle said to Miguel, "what'd you find in the Art and Artifacts Room?" "Yeah," said Akimi. "All those papers you kept trying to hide from us." Miguel grinned. "The original blueprints for the Gold Leaf Bank building." "Clever," said Kyle. "That way you could look for old exits that might still exist behind new walls." "Exactly." "Find any extra exits?" asked Akimi. "Nope. No hidden windows, either." "Yeah, what's up with that? How come they built this place with so few windows?" "To discourage bank robbers, I guess," said Kyle. "Yep," said Miguel. "The only way in was through the front door. The fire exits could only be opened from the inside, like at a movie theater. The vault itself was all the way down in the basement." "Mr. Lemoncello kept all that security," said Kyle, "and added his own." "So it would seem."

"Well, hopefully Bibliomania will lead us to some kind of alternate exit." "And fast," said Akimi. "Don't forget, we're not the only ones playing this game. One of those other guys is probably halfway out the door already." "Okay," said Kyle, "game play is pretty simple. You spin the spinner and advance your piece the number of spaces the needle points to. You move around the library and go into each of the ten Dewey decimal rooms, where you can pick up a book by answering a clue card. If you guess wrong, you get a new clue card in the same room on your next turn. The first person to fill the ten slots in their 'bookshelf' and spin their way out of the library wins." "It's sort of like Trivial Pursuit," said Sierra. "And the questions aren't all that hard because they're mostly multiple-choice." "Let's hear one!" said Miguel eagerly. The cards were separated into ten multicolored mini-stacks, one for each room. Kyle grabbed a green card.