1
Luigi L. Lemoncello was ready to give away everything—his entire empire!
And Kyle Keeley was eager to win it all.
In TV ads, posters, billboards, and social media posts, Mr. Lemoncello asked the same question over and over: Who wants to be a bazillionaire?
Me! was Kyle’s response every time he heard or saw the question.
Me, me, me, me, me! Kyle had just turned thirteen, so he was officially eligible for the big, final game. He’d also already earned his titanium ticket, because after Mr. Lemoncello’s Library Olympics, he became a member of the Lemoncello Library’s board of trustees. The other thirty-two members of that board were all entitled to TTs, too—if they wanted them.
But Kyle knew none of them wanted to win Mr. Lemoncello’s grand prize more than he did. He was obsessed with it, the way he had been obsessed with Mr. Lemoncello’s wacky games his whole life. To be the one in charge of making all that fun was all he could think about—even while he was giving his great-aunt Margaret a tour of Mr. Lemoncello’s library in downtown Alexandriaville, Ohio.
“What are those?” his aunt asked.
“Um, what are what?” said Kyle, because he’d been distracted, happily imagining himself as the new Luigi L. Lemoncello.
“Those floating platforms.”
His great-aunt pointed at the three-story-tall wall of fiction with the umbrella she was, for some strange reason, carrying indoors. She was also wearing two clunky strings of beads the size of gumballs, a sequined cap decorated with plastic flowers, and a monocle.
“Oh,” said Kyle, “those are the hover ladders. They take you up to whatever book you’re looking for. They also have a browse feature, so you can bounce around. That’s what I mostly do. Bounce around.”
Kyle’s great-aunt, Margaret “Maggie” Keeley, used to hang out with the young Luigi Lemoncello when they were both kids. She was also Kyle’s grandfather’s sister. That’s why she was his “great” aunt. (Not just because she sent awesome birthday presents all the way from Paris, which she also did.)
“We never had a library like this,” Aunt Maggie said as they strolled across the Rotunda Reading Room. “We had the amazing Mrs. Tobin at the old library on Market Street. This building was the Gold Leaf Bank. The safe-deposit boxes were downstairs. Chad Chiltington’s father ran the bank. . . .”
Kyle’s ears perked up.
“You guys had a Chiltington?”
His aunt laughed. “Most kids do, I guess. Anyway, this one summer, Chad and his buddy Jimmy Willoughby tried to make life miserable for us. . . .”
Kyle’s great-aunt had never visited Mr. Lemoncello’s library. In fact, she hadn’t been back to Alexandriaville since she left home right after high school. Legend had it that her eccentric uncle Clarence (he wasn’t a Keeley) had given her a “tremendous gift” that paid for her to study fashion in New York City, London, and Paris. Now she was a famous designer known all over the world by one name: Marguerite. And even though
she had never returned to her hometown, some of her creations had. She secretly designed most of Mr. Lemoncello’s flamboyant costumes.
“Let’s check out the gift shop,” she said. “I want to see how my new puzzle shirt worked out.”
“Puzzle shirt?”
“Hello?” she said. “It’s a Lemoncello! Even the souvenir T-shirts need to be puzzles.”
2
“Over this way,” said Kyle.
He and his aunt Maggie strode across the Rotunda Reading Room. Kyle couldn’t help but notice all the kids (most of whom looked to be his age) lined up at the desks. They were patiently waiting their turn to use the library’s computers and superfast free Wi-Fi to enter the titanium ticket competition.
“Deadline’s in two weeks,” Kyle heard Nia Cabahug, a friend from school, say.
“Is it going to be a random drawing?” asked the boy behind her in line.
“No,” said Nia. “You have to answer a bunch of questions.”
“What do they ask about?”
“Lots of stuff,” said the kid seated at the desk tapping in answers. “For instance, ‘What’s the best way to maximize cash flow?’ ”
“Open the faucet?” cracked Kyle.
The kids signing up for the competition turned to stare at him.
“You already have a titanium ticket, Kyle,” said Nia.
Kyle shot her a wink. “I know.”
Kyle and his aunt exited the rotunda, crossed through the marble entry hall (with its statue of Mr. Lemoncello spouting water in a gurgling arc), and stepped into the newly opened gift shop.
The room was stuffed with displays of what Kyle called “merch.” Lemon and cello magnets. Mugs featuring Mr. Lemoncello’s mug (his whiskers curled upward when you poured in a hot beverage). There were 3-D postcards, talking bobblehead dolls, hoodies, mountains of Lemoncello board games, and, on a pair of mannequins, two lemon-yellow ringer tees with rainbow-colored letters spelling out:
NS. MFNPODFMMP’T MJCSBSZ
“Clever,” said Kyle after studying the letters for a minute. “You used a shifted alphabet code. Every letter is one letter off.”
“It’s my artistic tribute to Luigi and, really, me too, I guess. All our lives, people have told us that we are ‘a little off.’ ”
Kyle watched a fuzzy fake feather drift away from his aunt’s billowy pink boa. Yes, she was definitely different. But in a fun way!
“So,” said Kyle, ready to solve the T-shirt puzzle, “ ‘N’ equals ‘M,’ and ‘S’ equals ‘R,’ because you shifted up the alphabet one letter. ‘NS. MFNPODFMMP’T MJCSBSZ’ is code for ‘MR. LEMONCELLO’S LIBRARY’!”
“Well done, Kyle.”
“Thanks.”
Something on a shelf near the cash registers caught his aunt’s eye.
“Whoa. This brings back memories.”
She picked up a small wooden box—a five-inch cube with an angled roof and small flapping slot.
“It’s just a model of the sidewalk book return box,” explained Kyle.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Aunt Maggie rotated the purple cube a few times and then, finally, saw something. A hidden button in the far corner of the bottom panel. She poked it. The box’s top popped open.
“It’s a puzzle box!” said Kyle.
“Of course it is. Luigi and his design team would never build an ordinary souvenir when they could create one that was extraordinary. Look at all the tiny treasures hidden inside. A dozen miniature books. Several little-bitty DVDs. Even a dollhouse-sized model of a Clue board game.”
Kyle nodded. But he wasn’t paying attention.
His eyes had drifted up to one of the several screens hanging on the walls of the gift shop. Mr. Lemoncello had just appeared.
“Who wants to be a bazillionaire?” he asked, waving his arms like a used-car dealer. “Because you—yes, you, right here in my gift shop—you could be the lucky winner of everything in my entire empire, including all of this merchandise. Why, you’ll never need to buy another souvenir T-shirt or water bottle again because you’ll already own them all! So, hurry! Don’t delay. Enter today! Win a titanium ticket and you will advance to the final round, where you’ll be playing for all the marbles. Literally. We make a lot of marbles, folks.”
And, thought Kyle with a confident grin,
I’m gonna win every single one of ’em!
Copyright © 2024 by Chris Grabenstein. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
