Public Library Enemy #1 Page 3

  “What’s that for, Jasper?” Nan asked.

  “It’s the tip jar,” Jasper said.

  He opened the book. It was an old one of Dad’s — so old and so so easy to read. “This is Rover,” Jasper read. “Rover is a dog. See Rover sit. See Rover run.”

  Jasper thought of Molly and her frown. Even though this book was about a dog, she’d be bored by it. He glanced at Nan. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling. Nan was enjoying sitting beside Jasper and listening to the sound of his voice.

  “See the ball. See Rover fetch the ball. Good boy, Rover.”

  Jasper slapped the book shut. “The end!”

  Nan opened her eyes. “That was excellent reading, Jasper. Thank you so much.”

  “Did I do a good job?” Jasper asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Nan said.

  Jasper smiled at Nan, showing all his teeth. Then he smiled at the empty crystal bowl between them. When Nan still didn’t get the hint, he lifted the crystal bowl and tapped it with his finger the way Ms. Tosh tapped on Jasper’s desk whenever he lost focus.

  Ping! went the bowl.

  “Oh, your tip!” Nan said. “I’m sorry, Jasper.”

  “I wasn’t asking for it,” Jasper said. “You’re not allowed to ask. You can only hope.”

  “I’ll go get it, Jasper.”

  Nan pushed herself off the sofa with a grunt and left the room. Jasper heard her rustling around in the kitchen. Then she came back with Jasper’s tip.

  “Here you go,” she said, pouring more jujubes out of the package into the bowl. “You can eat them all. You don’t even have to beat me at cards.”

  Chapter 7

  After supper, Dad picked up Jasper from Nan’s and drove him home. When they came out of the garage, Jasper saw the garbage bin and remembered that the book they’d killed was inside it.

  Jasper thought of something. The book was in a plastic grocery bag. If Mom took out the garbage, she might notice the bag already there holding something rectangular, like a book. She might open the bag and see the dead book. If she did, she’d make Jasper take it back to the library right away. Then the librarians would know Jasper was a Book Killer and make him pay.

  Jasper had to put the book in somebody else’s garbage bin.

  “I’m just going over to Ori’s house for a second,” he told Dad. “I’ll be right back.”

  It was still light out so Dad said okay.

  Jasper waited until Dad went inside the house. Then he opened the lid of the garbage bin. He yucked because it stank. It stank of garbage and dead book. Jasper pulled out the bag.

  He slipped through the back gate and looked up and down the alley. The coast was clear. Right there, across the alley and one house down, stood Ori’s garbage bin.

  Jasper sprinted over. Ori’s garbage bin stank of diapers. Yuck! Jasper was just about to drop the book in when he thought of something else. Ori’s mom might take out their garbage and notice the rectangular shape of the bag already in the bin. She might be curious and open it. When she saw the dead book, she might think Ori had killed it.

  Jasper hurried farther down the alley, all the way until he reached the last garbage bin. That bin belonged to people they didn’t know. He opened it and, gagging, dropped the book in.

  “Jasper!” Mom called.

  Jasper ran back home. Before Mom could ask what he’d been doing, he asked her, “Did the mail come?”

  “It’s in the kitchen. Why?”

  Jasper was already halfway there.

  He leafed through what was lying on the table — a flyer about lawn care and a flyer advertising houses for sale, a coupon book and a reminder card from the dentist. At the bottom of the pile was the phone bill. There wasn’t any bill from the library asking Jasper J. Dooley to pay twenty-five and two zeros dollars for the book.

  He went to his room and lay on the bed. Mom came in a minute later. “You look tired, Jasper.”

  “I’m thinking,” Jasper said. Ori had to be wrong about what the book cost. “What’s a twenty-five and two zeros?”

  “You’re thinking about math?” Mom sat beside him and put her hand on his forehead. “Should I call 9-1-1?”

  Jasper didn’t laugh.

  “It’s two thousand five hundred.”

  Jasper sat up with a gasp. “Dollars?”

  “If you’re counting dollars. Or two thousand five hundred apples. Or two thousand five hundred oranges.”

  Jasper fell back on the bed again. “I feel sick,” he said, hugging his stomach, and not because of apples or oranges.

  “Ah, math-itis,” Mom said. “Get ready for bed. Then we’ll read.”

  “Read?” Jasper popped right up again. “Okay!”

  After he’d put on his pajamas and brushed his teeth, he took his piggy bank off the shelf. He shook it, but the pig didn’t jangle. The pig was empty. Whatever money Jasper had had, he’d spent it. But now he had to save.

  He fed the tip from Mandy through the slot in the pig’s back. The used tickets he crumpled and tossed on the floor. Then he set the empty tip jar on the bedside table and called to Mom.

  She came and sat beside him. The book in his lap was called 100 Party Ideas. Mom said, “This isn’t really a bedtime book.”

  “I picked it for Molly,” Jasper told her. “Nobody frowns at a party. What should I read? Circus Party? Mexican Fiesta? Halloween Hoopla?”

  Mom said, “You choose.”

  Jasper read the chapter about the circus party. The best place to have a circus party was in your backyard, or in a gym. He read to Mom about the activity stations — tightrope walking and juggling and pin-the-tail-on-the-lion. He read about the circus snacks and decorations.

  After he finished reading, Mom said, “Actually, that was a great book to read together, Jasper. Now I’ve got some good ideas for your next party.”

  “How was my reading?” Jasper asked.

  “Good,” Mom told him. “You’re a great reader.”

  “So I did a good job?” Jasper hinted.

  “You read very well.” Mom kissed him good night.

  “Mom?” Jasper said. He turned his head and looked hopefully at the empty tip jar on the bedside table. When she didn’t seem to get the hint, he reached out and tapped it.

  Ping! went the jar.

  “In this?” Mom asked and Jasper nodded. She picked up the jar and left with it.

  A minute later she brought it back and set it on the bedside table again. Jasper made his Book Killer face.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked. “You wanted a glass of water, didn’t you?”

  Chapter 8

  Jasper had a bad dream that night. He dreamed he’d found the money to pay the library, but he couldn’t remember where he’d put it. He looked everywhere — under his bed, in his lint box, in all his drawers. Then he smelled something. Something was burning! He rushed to the kitchen and looked in the oven window, at the hungry flames and the twenty-five and two zeros dollars going up in smoke.

  In the dream, Jasper screamed.

  At lunch the next day, he and Ori headed for the back of the schoolyard where the playground monitor couldn’t see them. They passed Isabel and Margo and Zoë and Bernadette on the way. They were stuffing each other’s socks with pinecones again.

  “What’s the point of that game?” Ori asked Jasper.

  “I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with that squirrel book.”

  “Let’s get out of here before they start stuffing our socks,” Ori said.

  They sneaked past the girls. Behind the bushes, Jasper flopped down on the ground. He asked Ori to cover him with branches and leave him there when the bell rang.

  “Why?” Ori asked.

  “I owe two thousand five hundred dollars for a library book. I’ll never be able to pay it back.”

  “That’s a lot of money for a book,” Ori said.

  “I think so, too!” Jasper groaned. He reached for a branch, ripped it off the bush and laid it over h
is face. “But it was a so so good book. It was about things you can make with toilet-paper tubes.”

  “You lost it?” Ori asked.

  “I disposed of it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I got rid of it. So nobody would ever find out what happened to it.”

  “What happened to it?” Ori asked.

  Jasper lifted the branch off his face so Ori could see he’d made a tight line with his mouth.

  Ori remembered something then. He leaned right over so that Jasper could smell his breath. It smelled like butterscotch pudding from his lunch. “What you told me yesterday?” Ori whispered. “About taking care of my library book? Did something bad happen to your book?”

  Jasper squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t see the black, soggy book with the so so ugly white crust sticking to it. But closing his eyes made him see it better. He opened them again.

  Ori asked, “Did you drown the book, Jasper?”

  “Yes,” Jasper blurted.

  “And then you set it on fire?”

  “No. My dad did.”

  “So who shot it?” Ori asked.

  “The fire extinguisher.”

  “Can you tell me where you disposed of the book?”

  “It’s in a garbage can at the end of the alley.”

  “We have to go and look at it,” Ori said.

  Jasper propped himself up and stared at Ori. “Are you sure? It’s so so so so horrible!”

  Mom was on time today. She hardly ever got the lates because she worked at home. Ori asked if Jasper could come over to his house for a playdate.

  “I was going to suggest you come to our house, Ori,” Mom said as they walked. “To set up your Read-to-Your-Pet stand again.”

  “We don’t want to,” Jasper said. “Hardly any pets came. It was boring.”

  “I wasn’t bored,” Ori said. “But today we’re doing something else.”

  They stopped at the alley where Jasper and Ori would turn to go to Ori’s house. “Hmm,” Mom said. “Now I’m curious. What are you doing?”

  The boys made tight lines with their lips. Mom laughed and said, “Oh, go ahead, then.”

  Ori and Jasper walked normally to Ori’s gate. They turned and waved to Mom, who was waiting at the end of the alley to make sure they got to Ori’s house safely. Then they closed the gate behind them and crouched down in Ori’s yard.

  After a minute, they opened the gate and peeked out. The coast was clear. Mom was gone.

  “Follow me,” Jasper told Ori.

  Jasper took off with Ori trotting behind him. Right away, he started to worry that people might see them and wonder what they were up to in the alley, poking around in the garbage bins. He stopped and pressed himself flat against a fence so he wouldn’t attract attention. Ori did, too.

  They ran a little farther, then pressed against another fence.

  “Why do we keep stopping?” Ori asked.

  “It’s that one,” Jasper said, pointing to the bin.

  Ori went and flipped open the lid. When they peeked inside, a so so terrible reek rose up. They staggered back, yucking.

  Jasper took a deep breath and tried again. A new bag of stinky garbage covered the book.

  “We need a stick,” he said.

  They found a long one lying on the ground nearby. Jasper wriggled the end of the stick into the knot of the garbage bag. Together he and Ori lifted it out and placed it on the ground.

  Now when he looked inside the bin, Jasper saw the flat shape of the book. The boys fished it out the same way, by the knot in the bag, and dropped it on the ground. They used the stick to lift the stinky garbage back into the bin.

  When they had pulled the book away from the bin, Jasper bent over the bag.

  Ori asked, “Why are you making that face?”

  Jasper said, “Because I’m a Book Killer.”

  “Just open it,” Ori said.

  Jasper grabbed the bag and ripped it open with the stick. They stared down at the burned mess that used to be a book about toilet-paper-tube crafts. Ori cringed. His nose wrinkled. He looked like a Book Killer, too.

  “What’s that white stuff?” he asked.

  “It’s from getting extinguished,” Jasper said.

  Ori crouched and pulled back the plastic so he could see the corner of the book where the price was printed. He took the stick from Jasper and scraped away some of the burned stuff.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ori said. “Do you see it, Jasper?”

  He pointed with the stick. Jasper squinted.

  “Here,” Ori said. “See the two and the five? See the zeros? See what’s in between them?”

  “Burned stuff,” Jasper said.

  “Burned stuff and a tiny dot.”

  Jasper saw it then. A tiny dot between the numbers.

  “The thing is, Jasper? That dot just saved your life.”

  Chapter 9

  On Saturday morning, Dad took Jasper to soccer. After the game, they stopped at the concession stand.

  “Your coffee costs two dollars and fifty cents,” Jasper said, pointing to the board where the prices were written. “My hot dog costs four dollars.”

  “That’s right, Jasper,” Dad said. He took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it to the server with purple streaks in her hair.

  “But do you see the dots in the prices?” Jasper asked. “If those dots weren’t there, you’d have to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for that coffee and four hundred dollars for the hot dog. I bet you don’t have that much money in your wallet.”

  “You’re right,” Dad said.

  The purple-streaked server gave Dad his change. He dropped the coins in the plastic cup with the word Tips written on it. The tip cup was almost full to the top. “You must do a good job,” Jasper told the server.

  “I hope I do.” She smiled and handed Dad his coffee.

  “Do you get to keep all that money?” Jasper asked her.

  “Yes, but it’s not that much when it’s dimes and quarters. Here you go.” She nestled his hot dog in the bun and passed it to him. “Tell me if it tastes like a four-hundred-dollar hot dog.”

  Jasper took a bite. “Mmm.”

  He and Dad went to sit on a bench. While Jasper ate his hot dog and Dad drank his coffee, they watched the next group of kids playing soccer. Between bites, Jasper asked Dad, “How much did you tip her?”

  “I’m not sure. Fifty cents, I think.”

  Jasper nodded. Just as he thought. “Not very much.”

  He wasn’t ever going to earn enough in tips to pay for the book, even if it was only twenty-five dollars and not two thousand five hundred dollars. Ori had said the same thing yesterday. He’d said, “We have to think of some other way to earn money.”

  While Jasper ate his hot dog, he waited for some ideas. If he waited long enough, one or two usually came along. He finished eating and wiped his ketchupy fingers on the napkin. They watched the game a little longer.

  No ideas came.

  “I’ll throw this out,” Jasper said, taking Dad’s empty cup and stuffing his napkin in it. He headed for the garbage bin at the corner of the field, walking backward because it was slower and would give the ideas more time. All the way to the garbage bin and back to the bench, backward.

  “I’m glad you didn’t play soccer backward,” Dad told him.

  They both walked forward to the parking lot.

  Still no ideas.

  As they passed the concession stand, Jasper waved to the purple-streaked server, and she waved back. And suddenly Jasper got a so so good idea!

  Jasper explained his idea to Dad as they were driving away. Dad liked it.

  “A concession stand?” Mom said when they got home and told her about it. “In our front yard? After school?”

  “Yes,” Jasper said.

  “He wants to earn some money,” Dad said.

  Mom said, “I have a lot of work this week. I won’t be able to help you after school.”


  “Ori and I will do it ourselves,” Jasper told her. “We want to. Then we’ll get to keep all the money.”

  Jasper ran across the alley and one house down to tell Ori his idea. At Ori’s house, Ori’s baby sister was wa-wa-waing. They called her the Watermelon because that was what she looked like before she was born, like a watermelon stuffed under Ori’s mom’s shirt. Today, Ori’s mom was carrying her around on her hip. With her other hand she was heating up the mushy food that the Watermelon liked.

  Jasper explained his concession stand idea to Ori’s mom.

  “Sounds great,” she said. “But don’t ask me to cook anything. As you can see, I have my hands full already.”

  “We’re doing everything,” Jasper said.

  “The thing is,” Ori said to Jasper, “we don’t know how to cook.”

  “There must be something we can cook,” Jasper said.

  “Cheese cubes?” Ori said.

  Ori’s mom said, “No knives.”

  But there was a food Jasper was good at cooking! He remembered it when Ori’s mom took the Watermelon’s mush out of the microwave.

  On the counter, sitting next to the microwave, was the toaster.

  On Sunday, Ori suggested they make menus.

  “A concession stand shows its prices on a sign,” Jasper told Ori.

  “Do you want to make money?” Ori asked.

  “Yes. Twenty-five dollars.”

  “The food at a concession stand is cheap,” Ori said. “If you want to make money, you need a restaurant.”

  “You mean with plates?” Jasper said.

  “And menus. We went to this restaurant once. It was so expensive! My dad said just the tip was more than he paid for a whole dinner in most restaurants. The more the food costs, the more you have to tip.”

  “Really?” Jasper said. “That’s crazy.”

  “I know. We never went back.”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon making menus.