Claudia and the Disaster Date Read online

  “I know.” I sighed. “I’ll figure out something.”

  “You will,” Stacey said.

  I felt reassured, but not entirely. Going out with Alan seemed very complicated. Was he worth it?

  When your mother is in charge of the library, you get to go in early on your first day of work. (Well, actually, you don’t have a choice.) Mom and I arrived at the Stoneybrook Public Library at eight forty-five, an hour and fifteen minutes before the doors officially opened.

  We weren’t the only ones who were early. Erica was just locking her bike to the rack at one side of the door.

  “Yo,” I said to Erica, mimicking the character from the old movie Rocky.

  “Hey,” Erica replied. She and I have only recently become friends. I was glad we were going to work together this summer.

  My mother nodded approvingly. “You’re early, Erica.”

  “You’re never late when you’re early,” Erica replied.

  “That sounds like something a parental unit would say,” I commented.

  Erica grinned. “My father. He keeps all the clocks in the house fast. And there are a lot of clocks, believe me.”

  The door swung open and Mom motioned us inside. We followed her as she flicked on the lights. As we passed the mural in the hall leading to the children’s room, I said, “Wow. It’s starting to look kind of faded. I could give it a touch-up in no time. And maybe bring it up to speed. I mean, it is a little dated, you know?”

  My mother said, “It’s nice of you to offer to help. But your job is in the kids’ room, helping Ms. Feld.”

  Behind my mother’s back, I made a face at Erica. Parents, I mouthed.

  “Maybe in my free time,” I offered.

  “You won’t have much of that, if I know Dolores Feld,” Mom commented.

  As if on cue, Ms. Feld burst through the front door. “I’m here,” she sang out, in what was not a quiet, library voice. “Oh, good, you girls are too. Give me half a minute to get organized … and get some coffee.”

  “I was just about to ask Claudia to show Erica where the break room is and how to put the coffeepot on,” my mother said.

  “Oh, good.” Ms. Feld beamed at us. “Until I have a cup of coffee in the morning, I’m practically sleepwalking.”

  “This way,” I said to Erica. The blast of Ms. Feld’s energy was making me feel slow and tired.

  When we were safely in the break room, which was hardly more than a long, narrow cubicle with a high, narrow horizontal window in the back of the library basement, Erica said, “Whoa. If she calls that sleepwalking, I’d hate to see it when she’s awake.”

  I laughed. “Tell me about it. You’ll get used to it, though. The kids love her.”

  Working carefully in the tiny, cluttered room (which, in addition to a table with a small refrigerator beneath it, a sink with two cabinets on the wall above it, and a lumpy sofa with a folding chair at either end, also contained a bookcase — as if there weren’t enough already in the library!), we made coffee. It was just dripping into the pot when Ms. Feld stuck her head through the door, her brown curls springing up every which way on her head.

  “Oh, good,” she said. Her curls bobbed emphatically. Although Ms. Feld is a small woman, the break room suddenly seemed much more crowded. Reaching into the cabinet for a cup, Ms. Feld said at top speed, “We’ll take it sort of slow today, let you learn the ropes. The morning reading group is a read-aloud for very young children. Short attention spans. Lots of forgetting to listen. Some parents drop them off and go to the adult section for that half hour, so it’s important to keep the door closed and not let any of the little darlings wander away. Tears. I keep plenty of tissues at my desk, don’t worry.”

  As she talked, Ms. Feld snatched the coffeepot from beneath the stream of coffee and shoved her cup under. Coffee hit the hot plate beneath and sizzled. She didn’t seem to notice. She pulled out her half-full cup, replaced the coffeepot on top of the drops of liquid sizzling and burning on the warmer, and took a long swallow of the steaming coffee.

  I winced and so did Erica. That had to hurt.

  But Ms. Feld said, “Ah. That’s better.” She drained the cup on the second swallow (watching this made my own throat and stomach burn), rinsed the cup out, and set it in the drainboard. Then she gave us a sunny smile. “Okay, then. Let’s get started.”

  Silently, we trailed after Ms. Feld to the children’s room.

  “Story time,” she said briskly. “Monday through Fridays, eleven A.M. to noon at the latest. Tuesdays and Thursdays we read picture books. Mondays and Wednesdays we read short chapter books for a slightly older audience. Fridays are for children of all ages to listen to Storybook Wanda, a professional storyteller who volunteers her time.”

  Before we could ask questions, Ms. Feld pointed to one corner of the room where pillows and a few munchkin chairs were scattered over an area with its own dark blue plush carpeting. A platform with a big armchair facing outward occupied the extreme corner. Next to the armchair was a small table. To one side of the platform were two stacks of more chairs, one stack also munchkin-sized, the other adult-sized.

  Although I don’t get along with textbooks, I like the children’s room at the library. When I was little, children had to go to the second floor to a shabbier, darker room that had a few child-sized chairs and a couple of those posters of the award-winning books that librarians like to recommend to children instead of Nancy Drew. This newer room is really two rooms that take up one window-paneled corner of the first floor of the library. The main room holds the children’s librarian’s desk, the card catalog computer, and the fiction section. In the smaller room, there are two newly acquired computers that kids can sign up to use, along with all of the nonfiction books. Both rooms are full of books, and nooks and crannies where kids can curl up and read. The smaller room even has a puppet theater. A giant Raggedy Ann doll, just waiting to be cuddled, sits on one of the child-sized chairs. Most of the read-this-award-winning-book posters have been replaced by cool prints of illustrations from picture books. I recognized several artists’ work that I admired and saw a few that were new to me.

  But before I could grab a chance to examine the new artists, Ms. Feld stepped in. “Why don’t you two arrange the story corner to get started? Adult chairs in a semicircle in the back, smaller chairs in front of those, and pillows on the floor — facing the platform, of course. When you’re finished there, I’ll show you how to shelve books. We don’t ask the children to return the books to the shelves. It leads to chaos, since some of them are too young to understand the shelving system. Enjoy!” She wiggled her fingers, beamed, and adjusted her flight pattern toward her glassed-in cubicle by the door.

  Dazed and potentially confused, I glanced at Erica. She grinned. “Let’s enjoy!” she said.

  * * *

  The place was a zoo. It was eleven-fifteen, and I couldn’t decide whether these were children or human jumping beans. It’s not that I didn’t know how to handle a bunch of little kids. I did. I just didn’t know which of them were my responsibility.

  Although story time officially began at eleven, it quickly became clear that we weren’t on a strict schedule. Ms. Feld stood to one side of the platform, holding several picture books and a large brass bell. She was talking to a thin man with a plump baby slung in a baby carrier in front of him. The baby was asleep, amazingly enough. I say amazingly because although this was a library, it was anything but quiet. I decided that the children’s room must be sound-proofed at the very least. Otherwise, adult patrons would be slamming through the door, expecting to find a riot.

  And they wouldn’t be far from wrong.

  Towers of books were stacked on all the tables. A few children flipped the pages. One little girl, holding a book about Big Bird upside down, was pretending to read and laughing hysterically. A boy wearing what looked like parts of several Halloween costumes had commandeered Raggedy Ann and was dragging her around by the arm.

  I saw it com
ing but couldn’t stop the inevitable. As he crossed the room toward the puppet theater, Raggedy Ann’s feet swept out and a much smaller boy tripped and went down on his bottom.

  The little boy’s brown cheeks turned ruddy, and he began to scream.

  I reached him at the same time his mother did. “Ricardo,” she said. “Why are you crying?”

  “The doll kicked me!” he howled.

  “A doll can’t kick you,” his mother said, picking him up matter-of-factly and setting him on his feet.

  “Story hour is about to begin,” I said brightly to Ricardo. “Why don’t you pick out a chair just your size to sit in. Remember how Goldilocks had to try all three of the bears’ chairs before she found one that was just the right size?”

  “Bears,” he said, sniffling his tears away.

  He picked a chair in the front and center. Then he made his mother sit on it so he could sit on her lap. Her knees were folded up almost to her chin. Ricardo squeezed in somehow and settled back, looking pleased with himself. His mother’s eyes met mine, and she smiled and winked.

  Ms. Feld took her place in the reader’s chair. She’d put on a pink sweater, which was buttoned wrong, making her seem more like one of the children than the librarian.

  As soon as she sat down the children began to drift toward her from all over the room. Although I wouldn’t have thought it possible, the noise level increased.

  Ms. Feld put the bell on the table and arranged the books. Then she picked up the bell and rang it loudly.

  Silence fell. Every face turned in her direction.

  “Welcome to Stoneybrook Story Time,” she said, smiling. “We’re going to have a few wonderful stories today. One is a fairy tale … does everybody know what a fairy tale is?”

  “Goldilocks!” said Ricardo.

  “Beauty and the Beast,” another child piped up.

  That set off a storm of voices volunteering the titles of tales. Ms. Feld listened, then held her finger to her lips. Gradually, the room grew quiet again.

  “Very good,” she said. “I see you know all about fairy tales. This is a fairy tale that many of you probably have heard. It’s about a giant … and some magic beans. Does anyone know what it is?”

  She held up the picture book.

  The cry of “JACK AND THE BEANSTALK” could probably have been heard all the way across town.

  I glanced at the door, but no one came in to protest.

  Ms. Feld began to read. This was a different Ms. Feld, one who read slowly and clearly, who changed her voice to sound like all the different characters, and who patiently held up the pictures for the children to see. The children on the floor crept closer and closer as she read, and other children slid out of chairs and laps to be closer too. Soon most of the chairs were empty, and almost every child was as close to Ms. Feld as he or she could get without actually being in the librarian’s lap.

  I admit it. I was spellbound too.

  Then Ms. Feld looked up, met my eyes, and nodded in the direction of the door to the children’s room. I looked over at it again just as it began to close. I caught a glimpse of scarlet.

  Omigosh. One of the children had not been as spellbound as I had been. Feeling that I’d fallen down on the job, I ran (discreetly) to the door and opened it. A girl of about five, in red overalls and a red-and-white-striped T-shirt, was trotting down the hall, a book under one arm.

  “Hey,” I said, and then recognized her. It was six-year-old Laurel Kuhn, one of our regular baby-sitting clients. “Hey, Laurel!”

  She turned. “Hi, Claudia.”

  “Where are you going, Laurel?”

  She shrugged. “Those are baby stories. Patsy likes them, but I’m too big for them.” Laurel has always believed that she is much more mature than her five-year-old sister, Patsy.

  I saw that the book tucked under her arm was Black Beauty. I was pretty sure she wasn’t quite up to reading that yet. But I said, “You like Black Beauty?”

  “Mom’s reading it to us. I’m going to find her so she can read some more of it.”

  “Your mom’s in the library?”

  “In the music section. She told us to wait in the children’s room. Jake’s at the computer, playing some kind of computer soccer game. And Patsy’s listening to Ms. Feld read baby stories.” She shrugged.

  I put my hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go back into the children’s room and wait for your mom there, with your sister and brother.”

  A mulish expression came over Laurel’s face. I went on, “You can help me. Today is the first day of my job working at the library, and I need a grown-up kid to help me keep an eye on the other — the little kids — okay?”

  Laurel eyed me. Then she said, “Okay.”

  We returned to the children’s room. Ms. Feld had started to read one of my favorite books, A Baby Sister for Frances. It’s about a badger child coping with the arrival of a new baby in the family, and it is very funny.

  Erica approached me. “Good catch,” she whispered.

  “Ms. Feld saw her leave — even though she was reading. She’s amazing.”

  “Radar. They install it in all librarians and teachers,” Erica assured me. “I’ll help you keep an eye on the door.”

  In spite of herself, Laurel had begun to listen to the adventures of Frances. It was clearly a favorite of several children, who said the lines right along with Ms. Feld.

  The story hour went smoothly after that, if you don’t count a chair-tipping-and-howls (no injuries except to pride) and the baby in the baby carrier waking up and bursting into tears.

  Through it all, Ms. Feld stayed calm, cool, and collected.

  When the story hour ended, the children more or less stormed the checkout desk. At the same time, a separate wave of children broke for the door. I made sure that all of the children were with their parents (extensive baby-sitting experience helped here, since I recognized many of them).

  When I’d gotten them sorted out, I turned with a sigh of relief.

  Ms. Feld, radar at full force, said, “Claudia? I sent Erica to check on the nonfiction room to make sure no children had wandered in there. When she gets back, why don’t you two start reshelving the books?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Then I registered exactly how much work that meant. Books stood heaped on and under every table and almost every chair. They were scattered around the library like big squares of confetti from some giant’s crazy party. The library couldn’t have looked more upside down if a hurricane had blown through it.

  Erica and I worked at top speed all day. Helping in the children’s library is like baby-sitting with lots of extra books. No matter how many times we put books away, they somehow magically returned to the tables, chairs, and floor.

  At four o’clock, Ms. Feld said, “Well, it’s slowing down now. We close the children’s room at five today, so why don’t you go home.”

  I was more relieved than I liked to admit.

  “Thanks,” I said with a gasp, and staggered toward the door and freedom.

  “I’m going to stick around awhile,” Erica said as we made our escape.

  I looked at her in surprise. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why? Aren’t you wiped out?”

  “I’m fine.” She laughed. “Although if someone huffed and puffed they could pretty much blow me down right now. No, I want to stay and …” She looked around, then lowered her voice. “Do a little research.”

  “Research? It’s summer. No homework, remember?”

  “Not that.” Erica shook her head and leaned closer. “I want to use the library computers to try to find my birth parents. I want to know their names, who they were.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew Erica had been adopted.

  “Do your parents know you’re going to search?” I said.

  “Well, they know I want to know who and where my birth parents are. But you’ve heard what they say — I’m not old enough, I ne
ed to wait, the time will come. But I don’t want to wait. I’m ready to know now.”

  For half a second I was reminded of Laurel Kuhn’s insistence on her grown-up status.

  “Don’t tell,” Erica went on. “Not anyone.”

  “Of course not!” I said, stung that she’d think I would rat her out. “I’ll even help, if I can.”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know if I need it.”

  Erica headed toward the computers.

  I headed for the door. It had been a busy, exhausting day, and I didn’t really want to think about Erica’s secret search. But I couldn’t help wondering if she was doing the right thing.

  Day two at the library was a repeat of day one. I worked on processing a huge stack of books for Ms. Feld. Somewhere in the stacks, Erica was shelving the last of the books that had been left by the whirlwind of children who had spent a constructive and, er, creatively messy story hour in the children’s room earlier.

  The room had emptied out at lunchtime. After a short break, Erica and I went to work putting it back into some semblance of order.

  I pasted a card pocket into the back of a new picture book, paused to admire the art, then set it to one side. After I’d finished putting a card pocket into the back of every new book, I’d stamp each one with the name of the library. By then, Erica would probably be through with shelving, and she could help me wrap the books in protective plastic covering.

  After that, the books would be entered into the library’s computer tracking system, and then they’d be shelved.

  Paste. Smooth. Set aside. Paste. Smooth. Set aside.

  “Hey there. What’s a big girl like you doing in the children’s room?”

  I looked up. Alan Gray was standing there. “Alan! What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. “I kind of heard you might be around.” He paused. “I called your house and a girl told me that there was a ‘strong probability that you would be at the Stoneybrook Library’s children’s room, since that is where you are currently employed.’ ”