CHAPTER ONE

Scare Proof

Baru Reddy locked his bike to the rack in front of the T. Middleton Nightingale City Library. He checked the lock and slipped the key into his pocket.

He glanced at his watch as he climbed the steps to the huge metal doors of the massive library. 10:39. He had just over twenty minutes before his shift as one of the library Pages began. More time to pick out books to read.

“Good morning to you, Sir Baru,” Rolene, the front desk librarian, said as he entered.

“Hi, Rolene,” Baru replied. “How are the poems this morning?”

Rolene patted an old, worn hardcover. “Sad and tragic,” she said. “Just how I like them.”

“Well that’s . . . good?” Baru said, then laughed. “I guess?”

Rolene sighed. “I suspect that means I have strange tastes in literature.”

Not any stranger than mine, Baru thought.

For Baru, it was horror books. And the scarier, the better. He was fascinated by monsters and anything paranormal.

Baru headed directly for the fiction shelves. He needed to find a horror book or two he hadn’t read yet. As he scanned through the authors with last names ending in “S,” he saw movement to his right.

“Boo!”

Without flinching, Baru turned to see Javier McLeary, the Community Outreach Librarian, who was also in charge of the Nightingale Library Page Program.

“Hi, Javier,” Baru said.

“Well, that’s no fun,” Javier said, crossing his arms around his clipboard. “You really don’t scare easily, do you?”

“Afraid not,” Baru said. “Maybe someday.”

Javier smiled. “You know what’s scary to me? How disorganized this library gets,” he said. “I’m so glad to have you and the rest of the Pages to help out.”

Baru nodded. “Do you mean help with straightening the shelves or help with the . . . changes?”

Javier raised an eyebrow and glanced around. “Honestly?” he whispered. “Both.”

T. Middleton Nightingale Library had an amazing secret. Every Saturday afternoon at exactly noon, it went through a change. The library mysteriously morphed into a setting from one of the hundreds of thousands of books in the massive library. Javier said it was like being “inside the mind of an author.” He, Baru, and the three other Pages, however, were the only ones who experienced the change.

“I really wish the horror books were in one section. It’s tricky when they’re scattered in with the rest of the fiction titles,” Baru said.

“Oh?” Javier said. “Afraid you might find something else besides horror to read?”

“Now that would be scary,” Baru said with a laugh. “No, it’s just that I spend most of my time trying to choose a book I might like instead of using that time to read.”

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Javier said. “You can work the fiction shelves today if you promise to give at least one non-horror book a try.”

“Deal,” Baru said. “I’ll see what I can find.”

* * *

When the rest of the Pages arrived, just before noon, Javier handed out their assignments. He kept his promise to Baru. In the fiction section, Baru did his part shelf reading and reshelving titles. He lost track of time.

Even though his brain was a little fuzzy, he did find a mistake. There was a B author between two S authors. Warlord of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

How did this get here? Baru wondered. As he reached for it, he heard the distant gong of the clock. It was the gong that other library visitors could not hear. Baru glanced at his watch.

It was noon.

Before Baru could even touch the book on the shelf . . .

. . . the library changed.