It wasn’t hard to find the C books.
That’s where Aunt Min had told Eddie to go. She said that the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar was Eric Carle. “Carle” started with C, so the book would be in the C section of picture books. Picture books were right beside the story-time carpet. Easy!
What Aunt Min hadn’t mentioned was how many other authors had names that started with C.
Cleaver, Cooney, Crews, Cronin . . .
I’ll be here all day, thought Eddie.
But of course, that couldn’t happen. A bug with a sticky on his back would be spotted in an instant.
So Eddie started to run along the C shelf. As he beetled past the books, his eyes skimmed the titles. Was this speed-reading, he wondered? He had heard the Teacher mention such a thing but had never guessed he might actually do it. If his mission hadn’t been so important, this speed-reading might be fun.
Then, suddenly, there it was! The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Closed, of course. Tucked among the others. One day, Eddie might be lucky enough to find it open. . . .
For now he focused on getting the sticky off his back. Without Min’s help, it was tough. He had to do a lot of grunting, pulling, and twisting before the sticky came free. Then he had to figure out how to attach it to the book—without re-gluing it to himself. Lastly, there was the problem of size. The spine of the book was much narrower than the sticky. Eddie had some tricky moments trying to be loyal to the caterpillar hero inside. There were so few insect heroes—the caterpillar book really did deserve a sticky all to itself. But in the end, he had to attach the sticky to several other books as well.
And finally, there it was. His first written word. And it was on a library shelf! Eddie beamed like a glowworm.
He was walking proudly away along C Shelf when . . . he sensed something.
A change.
That’s when he heard it—the faint click of the Library door being closed, when he hadn’t even heard it open.
“Ohmygosh. She’s here? Already?”
He turned.
The Grischer moved quickly—from door to desk in a gray-beige blur. Pulling a wet wipe from her purse, she swished it across the desktop, then placed the purse neatly on one corner. Her pale gray coat was hanging on a hook almost before she took it off.
Then she turned.
“Hmm,” she muttered. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” echoed Eddie in his head.
But he knew.
Eric Carle’s sticky. She had already spotted it.
Yes. Here she came, charging across the room like an army ant. Before Eddie could react, there she was.
At C shelf!
Limbs shaking, he tried desperately to think.
Run?
She’d see him.
But if he stayed where he was, she’d see him anyway.
She snatched up the sticky and raised it to her metal-rimmed glasses. “‘Please’?” she read out loud.
Slowly, she glanced around the Library. Eddie could see her eyes now. Blue with pink edges. He could hear her suck in her breath.
She spat out a single word.
“Bug!”
The pale hands groped wildly—a weapon, a weapon! Eddie watched, still paralyzed, as she snatched up a magazine.
A nanosecond later, it was rolled and in the air. Eddie gasped! He skittered between two books just as the magazine smashed—THWACK!—where he’d been standing, frozen.
THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!
Eddie raced to the rear of the shelf and zoomed left.
THWACK!
The space behind him was suddenly empty. C books were disappearing! The Grischer was ripping them off the shelves!
THWACK!
Eddie ran on. And then—
A hole! At his feet. A tiny gap where C shelf and the back of the bookcase didn’t meet. Big enough? Eddie jammed himself into the hole. Wriggling hard, he managed, barely, to squeeze through.
He skittered to the shelf below and glanced around. Was this D shelf? Wedging himself into a corner, he stopped. Listened.
CRASH! BONK! THUNK! The Grischer was still yanking books off C shelf and hurling them to the floor.
He waited. Would she empty D shelf next?
“Could I have a word, Ms. Grisch?” Someone had entered the Library.
“Oh, thank you!” whispered Eddie to his rescuer. “Whoever you are, thank you.”
He took a long gulping breath. Listening, he heard children’s voices as a class arrived. He heard the Grischer greet the new arrivals. He tried to calm himself.
Once again, books helped. Of course, they did.
If a time ever comes in your life when you have to hide from an enemy, as Eddie did, and if you happen to be a passionate reader, as Eddie was, then there is no better place to hide in all the world than behind a wall of books. The smell soothed Eddie’s raw and jangled nerves. He breathed it in deeply. He leaned hard against the covers. Inside those covers, he knew, there were characters just as frightened as he was—pursued by evil forces, running for their lives, desperate to escape. Anything awful that comes along in life—anything!—has always been felt first by a character in a book. Eddie understood this. And even though he couldn’t open the books, he was calmed by their presence. Surrounded by stories, he felt less alone.
He didn’t mean to doze off. Not on a library shelf, for Pete’s sake. But it had been such a long night.
He woke up when he heard the word sticky. Recognizing the Grischer’s raspy voice, he crawled forward between two books and peeked out.
She was facing a group of children on the story-time carpet. Eddie didn’t know how old they were, but definitely much younger than the fourth graders in Room 19. The way he could tell (aside from their small size) was this: one was facing backward, two were lying down, and one had its finger up its nose. The Grischer scolded those four and made sure she had everyone’s attention before holding up the sticky.
“Does anyone know anything about this?”
Hands flew up.
“Something’s written on it,” said a child who’d been lying down. “Funny writing. What does it say?”
A child at the front stood up to see better. “It says ‘please.’ And the writing is skinny. Must have been a teeny-tiny pen.”
“A fine-tipped pen!” said another child, jumping up too.
A third child rose. “Or a fancy paintbrush,” she said, “with blue ink like my dad uses in his art.”
Eddie was thrilled. Not only had they been able to read his writing—they had also complimented his footwork.
More children stood up.
“Sit down!” said the Grischer. “All of you. What I want to know is—who put this sticky on the books?”
The children looked around. No hands went up.
The Grischer kept asking questions. Did anyone have blue ink? Did anyone have an extra-fine-tipped pen? Some children had one or the other at home. Nobody recognized the sticky.
All morning, Eddie stayed on D shelf. A second class came and went. The Grischer quizzed those children about the sticky, too. Nobody knew where it had come from, of course.
But the children grew ever more curious. Eddie heard them whispering as they walked past his shelf. Fortunately for him, no one was looking for authors whose names began with D that morning. Everyone was talking about the mysterious sticky.
“Where did it come from?”
“Why does it say ‘please’?”
“Who writes like that? Nobody writes like that.”
When the Library finally emptied for lunch—all the children gone, and the Grischer locking the door behind her—Eddie came out of hiding. He ran to Aunt Min as quickly as he could.
“You’re alive!” she said, lurching toward him. “For crying out loud, Eddie, you’re going to have to stop scaring me that way. When I heard her yell ‘Bug!’ and then all those thwacking noises—”
“I’m fine, Aunt Min.”
“Well, good, I’m so relieved. But Eddie, did you hear the children talking? Your sticky’s a success.”
“Not yet,” said Eddie.
That afternoon they stayed snug in their secret compartment. They listened as the Grischer grilled two more classes about the yellow sticky.
“She must have asked everyone by now,” said Eddie.
“Everyone except you!” said Min.
And somehow they both found that funny. They laughed for a very long time.