Public Library Enemy #1 Read online

  “Some people are Raspberry Jam People,” Jasper said. “Some people are Strawberry Jam People. And some people are Blueberry Jam People.”

  “But what about the Marmalade People?” Ori asked.

  “See what’s in your fridge,” Jasper said. “Bring it over tomorrow.”

  Chapter 10

  At school on Monday, Jasper and Ori told the class about the Toast Restaurant. They invited all their friends to come by after school.

  “A toast restaurant!” Isabel said. “I love toast!”

  Zoë said, “But our Cheeky Club is after school, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” Isabel said. “Not today.”

  The girls went back to stuffing their socks with pinecones.

  After Mom picked up Jasper and Ori from school, she offered to make them a snack before they started work.

  “The thing is, we’re opening our restaurant,” Ori said. “We’ll make you a snack.”

  Mom laughed. “Okay. I’ll drop by when I get hungry.”

  Jasper and Ori carried out the things they needed: Jasper’s small table and two small chairs, a cardboard box that they turned on its side to be a counter and a cupboard for the bread, butter and jam. They brought out plates and the empty jar for tips. They found a so so so long extension cord that reached all the way inside the house. Then they plugged in the toaster. Ori taped the Toast Restaurant Fine Dining sign to the tree.

  They waited.

  “I hope Rollo doesn’t come,” Ori said. “He’ll eat all the toast.”

  “Except that Mandy would pay us,” Jasper said.

  “You’re right. I hope Rollo comes!”

  They waited some more. Mom looked out the window and waved. Jasper waved back.

  Ori said he was hungry. Jasper handed him a menu. Ori studied it for a minute, then said, “I think I’ll have toast.”

  “That’s a good choice,” Jasper said. He went behind the counter, took a slice of bread from the bag and put it in the toaster. “Light or dark?”

  “I can choose?” Ori asked.

  “That’s what this knob is for.” Jasper showed him how to adjust the toast color.

  “You really do know how to cook toast, Jasper!” Ori chose light.

  Jasper turned the knob. A few minutes later, when the toast popped up, it was a perfect light brown.

  “Butter?” Jasper asked. “It’s included in the price.”

  Ori nodded.

  “And what kind of jam? Strawberry, blueberry or raspberry? Or you can have all three.”

  “All three!” Ori said.

  “Mixed or in stripes?” Jasper asked. “Stripes keep the flavors separate.”

  Ori picked stripes. Jasper jammed the toast with the three jams, put it on a plate and carried it over to Ori sitting at the table.

  “That’s one dollar and fifty cents plus fifty cents plus fifty cents.”

  “What?” Ori said.

  “Fifty cents extra for each different kind of jam. Remember?”

  Ori frowned. “You’re not really going to make me pay, are you? I’m helping you.”

  “You can owe me,” Jasper said. “Look! A customer!”

  It was Ori’s mom coming along with the Watermelon in the stroller.

  “Oh, good,” she said as she got closer. “I was just starting to feel hungry. May I see your menu?”

  Jasper handed it to her. Ori’s mom ordered toast with butter.

  “And what about the Watermelon?” Jasper asked.

  “She’ll share with me.”

  Ori’s mom asked Ori if he minded sitting at the same table with her.

  “You can if you pay for my toast,” Ori told her.

  Mom looked out the window again. When she saw Ori’s mom, she came out of the house and joined her for a piece of toast. There weren’t any more chairs so she sat on the grass. She was a Strawberry Jam Person.

  While the two mothers were eating and chatting, and the Watermelon was sucking on her crust, Jasper walked back and forth in front of them with the tip jar. He drummed his fingernails against it.

  Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

  The mothers didn’t notice. The Watermelon laughed.

  Ori’s mom finished her toast. “I just realized, Jasper, that I don’t have my wallet with me. I’ll pay you later. Ori, time to come home.”

  “Already?” Jasper said.

  Ori stood to go. “Bye, Jasper,” he said. “I hope you make some money. You need it.”

  Jasper frowned good-bye.

  After they left, Jasper told Mom, “Now I have to close the restaurant!”

  “But it was fun, wasn’t it?” Mom said. “I’ll help you put everything away.”

  She picked up the table and carried it inside. Jasper started to load the cardboard box, but he had to stop because he was mad. So so so mad! Mad tears were pricking at his eyes.

  “It wasn’t fun!” he told Mom when she came back out. “Nobody paid me anything! Do you think people leave a real fine dining restaurant without paying? And nobody gave me a tip!”

  “You’ll get your money, Jasper,” Mom said.

  “How long till Wednesday?” Jasper asked.

  “Two days.”

  “I have two days to find twenty-five dollars!” Jasper shouted.

  “Why do you need so much money? And why by Wednesday?” Mom asked.

  “Because that’s the next time Molly is at the library! Nan wants to go with me!”

  A loud rumble interrupted his shouting. He turned and saw the nose of the garbage truck poking out of the alley into the street. Then the truck turned and rattled right past them, trailing a horrible stink. It was the stink of the dead library book.

  Jasper burst into tears.

  He was crying because he had killed that book. He’d killed the book and still owed twenty-five dollars to the library for it. Then he was crying because he’d probably never get a turn to read to Molly. He only calmed down when Mom popped a piece of bread into the toaster that was sitting on the lawn attached to the so so so long extention cord. She jammed the toast with stripes — raspberry, blueberry and strawberry — and handed it to him.

  “Thank you!” Jasper wailed.

  When Dad got home from work, Mom was waiting with crossed arms. Jasper was still puffy from crying.

  Dad looked from Mom to Jasper. “What happened?”

  Jasper burst out, “I told her about the book!”

  At first Dad didn’t seem to know what book Jasper was talking about. Then he remembered. “Oh, that book.” To Mom he said, “We had a little accident with the book, Gail. When the bill comes, I’ll take care of it.”

  Mom said, “But David, poor Jasper thought that he had to pay twenty-five dollars to the library before he’d be allowed back. He even had a bad dream about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Jasper,” Dad said. “I didn’t realize you were upset.”

  They decided to talk about it over supper, so Jasper went to set the table. The library book that was still alive, 100 Party Ideas, was lying there with the mail.

  “No bill yet,” Jasper told Dad as he collected the pile of flyers.

  After they sat down to eat, Dad told Jasper, “I’ll give you the money to take to the library the next time you go. I would have done that earlier if you’d asked me.”

  “You shouldn’t have to pay for the whole book,” Jasper said. “I’m the one who drowned it.”

  “You drowned it,” Dad said, “but I set it on fire.”

  “And shot it,” Jasper said.

  “Oh,” Mom said, laying down her fork. “The things that happen around here when I’m not home!”

  “Since you only drowned it, but I shot it and set it on fire,” Dad said, “you pay one-third and I’ll pay two-thirds.”

  “Except I told you to shoot it,” Jasper said.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “We’ll go halvesies then.”

  “This is math, isn’t it?” Jasper said. “How much do I have to pay?”

&nbs
p; “I’m paying twelve dollars and fifty cents,” Dad said.

  Then Jasper laid down his fork, too. “How am I going to get twelve dollars and fifty cents by Wednesday?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Mom said. “You always do.”

  “Hmm,” Jasper said.

  This time the idea came fast. All Jasper had to do was glance at the counter where he had stacked the library book and the flyers.

  Chapter 11

  On Wednesday they didn’t go to the library. Instead of waiting for Jasper and Ori at the front of the school, Mom met them in the classroom. She brought their flyer to show Ms. Tosh. They wanted her permission to tell the class about their plan.

  Ms. Tosh said, “Are you telling me that these two boys who are always whispering and laughing in the Book Nook are actually putting on a reading party?”

  “It’s a Read to Your Pet Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration,” Ori said.

  “With toast!” Jasper said.

  Ms. Tosh studied the flyer. “I see you’ll have stations for Dogs, Cats, Hamsters, Bears, Spiders and Other Pets. Are you sure about Bears? Won’t that be Very Dangerous?”

  “Teddy Bears,” Ori told her.

  Ms. Tosh’s favorite was the Read to a Spider Station.

  “It’s a toilet-paper-tube spider,” Jasper told her. “Or you can bring your own spider.”

  “Something special is going to happen at the end,” Ori said.

  “So you’re putting on this party to pay back the library?” Ms. Tosh asked.

  “That’s right,” Jasper said. “I owe them twelve dollars and fifty cents. But twenty-five dollars would be better.”

  “So the more people who come, the more you’ll make?”

  Jasper nodded.

  “Then why not have a Squirrel Station? Everybody’s crazy about those Cheeky books.”

  Jasper stared at Ms. Tosh for a second. Then he clapped his hand across his forehead.

  “Ms. Tosh, you astound me. We didn’t think of that.”

  The day before the Read to Your Pet Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration, while Jasper and Ori and Ori’s dad walked around the neighborhood pushing the Watermelon in the stroller and delivering flyers, Jasper counted seven clouds in the sky. Ori said not to worry. They were the white, cotton-bally kind of clouds, not the gray, rainy kind of clouds.

  The morning of the Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration there were more clouds. They didn’t look like cotton balls.

  “What if it rains?” Jasper said over his toast at breakfast.

  “I don’t think it’s going to,” Dad said.

  “But if it does? The pages of all the books will stick together, and the toast will get soggy. And nobody will come to our Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration.”

  “It won’t rain,” Dad said.

  After breakfast, Ori came over with the special thing that was going to end the Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration — the rocket he’d made out of a soda bottle. They set up the signs for the stations. Under each sign they spread a blanket and left a pile of books. At the Read to Your Bear Station they also put a teddy for the people who forgot to bring bears. At the Read to Your Spider Station, they put the toilet-paper-tube spider that Jasper had made, for the people who didn’t have their own spiders. They didn’t have a toy squirrel. Mom found a picture in a calendar to tape to a tree.

  “I think we should put the Squirrel Station in the front yard. It’s getting crowded back here,” she said. Then she saw Ori’s rocket. “Ori, what is that? It looks dangerous!”

  “My dad’s going to help me fire it,” he promised.

  Dad plugged in the extension cord and set up the Toast Station. Jasper brought out a shoebox with a slot he’d cut in the lid for collecting the money.

  Mom got to work tying streamers to the fence. When she was nearly finished, Jasper came to ask the time.

  “You tell me.” Mom showed him her watch.

  Ugh! Hands! “Is it one o’clock yet?”

  Dad checked his watch. “I’d better go pick up Nan.”

  As soon as Nan arrived and took her place at the ticket table, some of the girls from Jasper’s class showed up wearing pink ballet outfits and tights with lumps. They started twirling and cartwheeling and waving their Cheeky books around.

  Mom rushed over.

  “Isabel? Margo? Zoë? The Squirrel Station is right here.” She pointed to the blanket under the squirrel picture taped to the tree.

  The girls chanted, “Cheeky! Cheeky! Cheeky!” and twirled some more.

  People began lining up with their pets. They dropped their money in the slot in the lid of the shoebox and took their ticket. Everybody but the squirrel readers headed to the backyard. Rollo came with Mandy and a white dog Jasper had never seen before. The yellow Lab from across the street came with her owner. A Grade Four girl brought two gerbils in a cage. Someone brought a cat, but when it saw the dogs, it squirmed out of its owner’s arms and ran away.

  Paul C. brought Hammy the Hamster from school. It was his turn to look after Hammy for the weekend. Patty brought her caterpillar in a jar. There was even a woman they didn’t know with a parrot on her shoulder.

  “Thank you very much!” the parrot screeched when Nan gave the woman a ticket. “Thank you very much!”

  More and more squirrel girls came, and so so many kids with stuffed toys. The sound of stories filled the yard, stories and toast popping and crunching.

  “Once upon a time …”

  “And they lived happily ever after …”

  POP! POP! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!

  Ori and Jasper made toast as fast as they could. Ori popped the bread in the toaster. Jasper buttered and jammed. Mom and Ori’s dad handed out paper plates of toast to the kids waiting to read to their bears. The dogs licked the crumbs off the grass.

  “Look, there’s Leon,” Ori said. “Leon! What are you doing?”

  Leon was crawling around in the shrubs at the back of the yard.

  “I’m looking for a spider to read to!” he called.

  Then Ms. Tosh dropped by. Jasper and Ori had never seen her outside of school before. “The party sounded like fun,” she said.

  Jasper was so so careful jamming Ms. Tosh’s toast. He jammed so that the stripes didn’t overlap. At school, she always encouraged them to color in the lines.

  After about an hour of toast making, Jasper looked up and saw even more arrivals — clouds. He started to count them but gave up. There were probably seven and two zeros clouds hanging over them, clouds that didn’t look like cotton balls. They looked more like smoke when it pours thick and black from the oven.

  “I’m so glad these books aren’t from the library,” Jasper told Ori. “And I think you should fire the rocket now.”

  “Already?”

  Ori went to get his dad.

  “Stand back! Stand back!” they called, and all the readers and their pets and the people waiting to read moved away from the blankets to the edges of the yard.

  Ori’s dad unscrewed the cap of the soda bottle rocket. Ori opened the package of mints. He looked around at everybody and said, “Watch this!”

  At that moment, just as Ori was about to add the mints to the soda bottle and close the cap and shake it, the black clouds hanging over the Read to Your Pet Fiesta Party Hoopla Celebration let go all their rain.

  It poured down. “Save the books!” Jasper yelled. People rushed around gathering up the books and hurrying to get them in the house. They snatched up the blankets. Dad unplugged the toaster and ran inside with it. When everything that needed to stay dry was inside, everybody and their pets headed for home before they got completely soaked.

  Ori stayed to help Nan and Jasper count the money. They’d sold sixty-seven tickets and earned thirty-three dollars and fifty cents.

  “We did it! Hurray!”

  Jasper and Ori took off running through the house, hurraying, but when they reached the living room, they stopped. Out the window they saw three girls in the front yard. Thr
ee girls wearing lumpy tights, leaping and cartwheeling in the rain.

  Isabel, Zoë and Bernadette.

  Jasper opened the front door. “Hey, you ballerinas! The party’s over!”

  “We’re not ballerinas!” the girls shouted back. “We’re squirrels!”

  Mom came to the door and made the girls come in and dry off. Dad brought towels.

  “Look at your books,” Ori told them. “They’re all wet.”

  “The pages will stick together,” Jasper said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Mom told them. “I know just what to do.”

  She left and came back with the hairdryer. Jasper looked at Dad and Dad looked at him. Both of them groaned.

  Bernadette and Zoë laid their books on the coffee table and took turns with the hairdryer while Ori turned the pages for them. Isabel said her book was fine.

  “I’m a squirrel and I want you to read to me,” she told Jasper.

  She pulled him over to the sofa and thrust the damp Cheeky book in his hands. Jasper tried to stand up again, but she yanked him back down by the arm.

  There was no escape. It was just like when the girls made Jasper and Ori play babies at school.

  Jasper opened the book. “Glub, glub, glub.”

  “I paid for my ticket,” Isabel said. “You have to read properly.”

  She was right.

  “Chapter One …” he read.

  In Chapter One, Cheeky’s mother signed her up for ballet. She bought her a tutu and forced Cheeky to wear it even though it was stiff and scratchy and Cheeky hated it. Then Cheeky got a squirrely idea. She decided to use the tutu for her nest. She stuffed it into a hole in a tree.

  That was as far as Jasper got before he flopped down laughing.

  Chapter 12

  After school on Monday, Jasper’s mom met the boys and hurried them along.

  “The thing is, I’m walking as fast as I can,” Ori said. “But my ankles hurt.”

  “What’s wrong with your ankles?” Mom asked.

  Ori stopped walking to pull up his pant legs.