THE QUESTIONING BOOK StoryTime, Excerpt Book 2, Chapters 1-4 - cupiderosbooks.com – Engaging, pragmatic, entertaining, spiritual fiction with a touch of humor!

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BOOK TWO – JAKE’S LAST PAGE

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PART ONE: THE BOY WHO HATED ENDINGS

CHAPTER ONE: THE BOY WHO HATED ENDINGS

Nine-year-old African-American Jake Lawson had never finished a book in his life.

Not one.

Not a picture book when he was four. Not a chapter book when he was six. Not a graphic novel when he was eight. Not a wacky, silly one that started off fast with lots of action and conflict. And not even the short ones, the ones with big print and small pages, the ones his teacher assigned for “independent reading time.”

He got close. Always close. Three pages before the end. Sometimes four. Sometimes two. But never the last page.

His mom found books everywhere.

Under his bed. In the laundry basket. Behind the television. In the freezer once, he stored The Frog Prince next to the Chocolate Chip Cookies ice cream, because Jake said he was “cooling it down,” and his mom said books were not pies, and Jake said endings were not food, and his mom said she was too tired for this conversation.

“You have to finish something eventually,” his mom said one morning. She was holding a romance novel from her romance book club. It had a bookmark on page 247. The romance book had 250 pages.

“I’ll finish it later,” Jake said.

“You said that last week.”

“I meant it last week.”

His mom stared at him. She had the kind of stare that made Jake want to confess to things he hadn’t done.

“Why won’t you finish books, Jake?”

He thought about it. He could not tell his mom the truth that depended on the truth—she taught him to hate endings and reading by always jumping to the end of a book first. “Jake, reading is fun. Not scary. See, we’ll just jump to the end and see that everything turns out all right!”

And that is what his mom always did. In wanting to keep Jake safe because his dad wasn’t with them, she created Jake’s hatred for endings. Even the romance novel in his mom’s hand, she had already read the ending. There was no adventure or mystery, fear or worry, because she had destroyed it by reading the ending first!

“Because endings hurt,” he said.

His mom’s face softened. “What do you mean?”

“Endings mean goodbye. Goodbye means the story stops. And if the story stops, there is nothing left to look forward to.” He looked at his hands. “So I stop three pages early. That way, the story never really ends. It’s just… waiting.”

His mom sat down next to him.

“Jake,” she said quietly, “is this about your dad?”

Jake didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. They both knew.

His mom and dad argued a lot. Then one day, his dad had walked out two years ago or was forced to leave for financial reasons unexplained. Three days before Jake’s birthday. His dad had said he was going to the store to get milk. He never came back. Either his dad, with his bare hands, was trying to carry home the wife cow of Paul Bunyan’s Blue Ox Babe, or that must be the heaviest, tallest, most awkward, and most fragile carton of milk in the world, thought Jake.

That was an ending.

And Jake had not been three pages early for that one. He had been right there. Living it. Feeling it.

He never wanted to feel an ending again.

So he stopped reading three pages early.

Every time.

The other problem—the one he told no one about, the one that lived in his chest like a small, angry animal—was math.

Jake hated math.

Numbers made his head itch. Fractions looked like typos. Word problems felt like personal attacks. When the teacher wrote a problem on the board, Jake’s eyes glazed over. Not because he couldn’t do it. Because he didn’t want to.

Math had answers.

Hard, final, unforgiving answers.

Unlike in literature or stories, in math, you were either right or wrong. There was no “three pages early.” There was no “I’ll finish it later.” There was only the answer, staring at you, waiting for you to get it right, to finish it, and to fetch up the answer.

He hated that.

He hated math.

He hated endings.

And he had secretly vowed to never finish a book in his life.

CHAPTER TWO: THE PENCIL

Elara had dressed in a variation of the French flag colors: light-pink tights, her cousin’s powder-blue button shirt, and white bows tied to her black hair in singular French braids. She always pulled off a French aesthetic by adding stylish pink Isabel Marant boots. Of course, she wore a French beret—red today. Casually, she went semi-unnoticed. “That’s the French girl, Elara,” they whispered. The ‘Cool Kids’ always went casually unnoticed by most of the children in prestigious Maplewood Middle School.

How he got into Maplewood Middle School was no fluke. He loved literature, and he overcompensated for not reading the endings by being hyper-aware of other literary aspects other children missed. He did study after all. Future lawyers, Jake concluded, had to study well and smarter. He liked study hall best: quiet, focused, and with no one looking over his shoulder to make sure he read the endings. No one noticed how good he was at math. No one is trying and pressuring him down the STEM class routes like in his public school. In study hall, he was his own man. And the environment stimulated his long-term ambitions, even if some children used study hall to read comics and take naps.

She spotted him. Alone. “Good,” Elara whispered.

She sat down across from him without asking. Without saying hello. She did not engage in any of the usual courtesies that people typically observe before entering someone’s study space. She adjusted her red beret on her head to the left—out of habit. She was braver than she looked and braver after her encounter with the horrible, massive, multilingual Scary Questioning Book. Others would have faked like they were researching a book pulled from a nearby bookshelf before sitting down across from Jake.

Not Elara. She was on a mission. She just sat down and waited, waited for Jake to finish his book.

Jake’s short, curly black hair always looked neat. He wore white gym shoes with a brown swoosh in the middle where his white shoelaces were tied. His dark gray slacks matched his cobalt-blue hoodie and light-blue jeans jacket. On the floor by his feet lay his brown backpack. He had cool brown eyes that never looked fazed or afraid. The word “stoic” accurately described his demeanor every day that Elara saw him. His long black eyebrows and a full set of pearly white teeth inside his narrow, thin, black-skinned lips gave him an attractiveness all the girls liked.

Jake remained stoic and cool. For a white girl, he thought, she didn’t talk that much. Though she had some nerve as a ‘cool kid’—that was that French girl, ‘Elara’—he’d give her a pass. She didn’t start drama like most Black girls who tried to reverse-engineer his stoic demeanor into one of being frantic about winning their “for them only” love. Jake looked up from his Black Wall Street book. “Can I help you?”

“You hate endings,” Elara said.

Jake patted the Black Wall Street book. “I’m going to finish this one,” he lied. “You’re Milo’s girl, but how do you know about me and the endings of books?”

Elara laughed. “First, I am not Milo’s girl. We are BPF, Best Platonic Friends. I hang out with Milo, a boy, because boys are less dramatic.”

“Katie Lake is drama,” Jake confirmed. “Damn pretty model of a blonde girl, but drama-rama-drama all over the place.”

“She leaves you alone. I’ve noticed.” Elara’s cute face was curious as to his answer.

“That’s because I know about literature and books without reading the endings.”

“That’s a neat trick, but listen, Jake, I know the things I know about you because I used to read too fast. Now, I slow down.” She pulled something from her pocket. A #2 yellow pencil. Worn down. The wood was smooth from being held. The eraser was almost gone. “I know a book that won’t let you stop before the end.”

Jake frowned. His big brown eyes lit up, though, and became lighter and sharper. “What book? How can a book stop me from putting it down and walking away?”

“The Questioning Book.”

She opened a book from her book bag—not the ancient one, a normal book, one of her favorites—and she turned to page forty-five.

She turned it around so Jake could see.

There was a note inside it that read, “a math problem at the bottom of the page.

IF A GIRL READS A SENTENCE WITH 12 WORDS AND SKIPS 8 OF THEM BY READING TOO FAST, WHAT FRACTION OF THE STORY DID SHE ACTUALLY FEEL?

Below it, in handwriting that looked like a nine-year-old’s scribble, someone had written:

ELARA WAS HERE. SHE SLOWED DOWN.

Next to the words was a small lightning bolt.

African-American Jake stared at the math problem note. He solved it immediately—one-third—but he had to make this seem difficult. Black boys were not supposed to be smart in math.

His eye twitched. His head itched.

“There’s a math problem on page forty-five,” he said.

“There is.”

“I hate math. I loved literature even when I didn’t finish it, though.”

“I know about the math, Jake. I can help you.”

Jake looked at the worn-down #2 yellow pencil. Then at Elara. Then at the study hall door.

“Why should I go? I’m not in your clique.”

Elara had thought it through but paused anyway.

“Two reasons, Jake: first, you are one of the ‘Cool Kids,’ just like Milo and me.” No one messes with us. So, in fact, you are in my clique—the ‘Cool Kids’ clique. And two, because you’re smarter than you look,” she said. “You’re tired of being afraid of book endings. I don’t understand why you hate finishing books, but you can’t be a lawyer without learning to read the entire book.”

African-American Jake’s chest tightened.

She was right.

He was frustrated.

Frustrated about stopping three pages early. Frustrated by the Frog Prince book. He was frustrated by the other hidden books he had never finished and frustrated by the endings that haunted him even when he didn’t read them. The endings brought back painful memories of a broken family life, learning to jump to the end of a book first. It was crazy to read the ending first! Who wants to know that in the end—they die? And as Jake had summarized correctly, in all life—everyone died.

He reached out and took the worn yellow #2 pencil. “My dad tried to bring home the wife cow of Babe the Blue Ox of Paul Bunyan.”

Elara’s cute face displayed a look of curious surprise. Then she smiled. Then she laughed. “That’s not in a Paul Bunyan book, wife cow of Paul Bunyan’s Blue Ox Babe, but it is funny!”

Jake started laughing. “I made that up. It helps take the sting out of my family life drama.” The worn #2 yellow pencil felt warm in Jake’s hand.

Warmer than it should have been. Like someone had been holding it for a very long time, waiting for him to take it.

“A book that will stop me from putting it down?” He laughed.

Elara giggled.

The two ‘Cool Kids’ were having fun.

“Where is this ‘woo-woo’ library?” Jake made air quotes with his dark-skinned fingers. “This book that will stop me from putting it down?” Jake finally asked.

Elara was pleased. She had done it—convinced Jake. “Between the old pet store and the laundromat.”

“That’s a blank space or lot.”

“Not anymore.”

Jake stood up.

He didn’t know why. His legs were moving before his brain caught up. The worn #2 yellow pencil felt energetic and warm in his hand. The lightning bolt seemed to glow. Something unusual was afoot about Elara, this worn-down #2 yellow pencil, the mysterious library with the book that would not let him put it down.

“Elara,” he said. “What’s going to happen to me in there?”

Elara smiled. “You’re going to hate the first page. And the second page. And probably the third,” she interrupted herself. “But by page forty-five, you’re going to wish you’d found this book years ago.”

Jake gave a stoic nod.

He got up and, without pausing, turned and walked out of the study hall. When he saw gorgeous Katie Lake walking toward him on his right, Jake immediately turned to his left and kept walking.

He didn’t look back.

CHAPTER THREE: THE LIBRARY THAT WAITED

The disappearing library appeared exactly where Elara said it would. Exactly where it was not supposed to be waiting! But it was!

Between the old pet store (still empty, the mannequin in the window now wearing sunglasses that someone had taped on as a joke, plus a scarf, plus a hat) and the laundromat (still smelling like soap and old socks, always smelling like soap and old socks) run by old Mrs. Patterson, who had a son three years younger than Jake and Elara. Jake had seen Mrs. Patterson’s son sitting in her office fidgeting and not reading well. He was using the picture book as an airplane. Well, Jake thought, the book was not bad since it was about airplanes. But yes, standing there looking into what was supposed to be an empty lot was a building waiting where no building was supposed to be.

Tall and narrow. Gray stone. Stained-glass windows in deep red and midnight blue. The glass seemed to glow from within, even though it was the middle of the afternoon.

By skipping school, Jake figured if this place was a prank or fake, he’d catch Elara in a lie. He’d catch her after school and give her a piece of his lawyer’s mind’s harsh words. He, too, had walked past this empty lot or spot a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. Sometimes bouncing a basketball. Other times, he listened to classical Mozart symphonies. No words to distract him or pull him down destructive life paths. He always reached the end of Mozart’s symphonies.

He had never seen a building here.

But there it was!

Walking up to the mysterious building, he observed that the heavy-looking door was oak, banded with iron. The handle was shaped like a lion’s head. The lion’s eyes were made of something that caught the light. Gold? Brass? Whatever it was, it gleamed.

Jake put his hand on the lion’s head.

The metal was warm. He pushed the door open.

And walked inside.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE BOOK THAT KNEW HIM

The inside was bigger than the outside.

Jake’s first thought was that someone really needed to dust the place. Cobwebs were everywhere. Elara! Jake thought. She didn’t tell him that the mysterious library was filled with hundreds of cobwebs covering the infinitely tall brown bookshelves, which seemed to stretch up into the beyond. Luckily, all the spiders were dead, probably dead hundreds of years ago. The script announcing it was a library and not a museum was an old cursive seventeenth- to eighteenth-century font style. The second thought was that he should have brought a flashlight. His third thought was that Elara had not prepared him for how dark it was.

Bookshelves rose like black trees into the shadows. Their tops were lost in darkness, too. Candles flickered in iron sconces attached to the shelves. What a nightmare to relight those candles. Some of the shelves were so high that the candles looked like stars.

Dust floated in the air like tiny stars. He got the impression of being in the local amphitheater-omnibus-theater-planetarium.

At the center of the room, the size of a mid-sized study hall table, resting on a claw-footed lectern made of stone that looked older than anything Jake had ever touched, sat a massive book.

Alone, it sat, but it did not seem alone or lonely. It resembled a solitary guard standing in front of a royal palace.

From his faraway view, he squinted in the dull candlelight. He held his hand over his eyes to see better. But a few minutes later, a railroad lantern appeared on a once-empty table nearby. He could safely navigate the three steps down to the library floor, where the stone claw-lectern waited. Jake needed security. He needed to know what he was doing. So he picked up the railroad lantern and soon realized that was an even bigger mistake!

Jake was twice taken aback when seeing the snake’s slit amber eyes, the two-hole snake nose, and an upper jagged-sharp-teeth smiling mouth that moved independent of the second lower jagged-sharp-teeth mouth always frowning. Massive, the Scary Questioning Book rested on a claw-footed lectern made of stone that looked older than all the museums in the city Maplewood Middle School children visited. Cracked burgundy leather. Gold filigree crawling across the cover like frozen vines. What a monstrous image of a book!

“CHILD.” “You have found me,” said the top jagged-sharp-teeth mouth.

Before Jake could react, the lower always-frowning, jagged-sharp-teeth mouth added, “How delightfully inconvenient for you, Reader Ninety-Seven.”

“You… she didn’t say you could talk!”

“Brilliantly observed, but that is not my concern, Jake,” answered the upper jagged-sharp-teeth mouth.

“Jake, you may yet survive this,” continued the lower, frowning, jagged-sharp-teeth mouth.

The lower jagged-toothed mouth smiled, but it was not comfortable doing so, Jake detected.

“I contain every story ever loved and every truth ever feared. But my pages do not turn freely.”

The lower mouth, which appeared more sinister, added, “Before each page turns… you must answer a question.”

Jake decided to cut the strange talking horror book off at the pass. “I don’t do math questions.”

The Scary Questioning Book clarified, “The kind that matters. The kind most people calculate is worth running from.”

“That would be… homework,” Jake maintained his stoic expression as best he could, but the horror of the book translated into an expression of fear on his nine-year-old African-American face. “All right, continue, Old-World craftsmanship.”

Unfazed, the scary questioning book replied, “Thank you for the compliment. I can’t say the same about your appearance, though.”

“I’m doing my best,” Jake responded, “as a single mom with a missing dad who is supposed to bring home a carton of milk.” Jake now wished he had not said something snarky. This was an intelligent book, even if grotesque in its total design.

“Yes, milk from the cow jumping over the moon. I got it!”

Jake laughed.

“Shall we continue the jokes, or shall I say exactly why your dad’s not coming home with that carton of spoiled milk?” HAHAHAHHA—both jagged-teeth mouths laughed. “Nevertheless, didn’t Elara say… I am nothing like homework?”

“Silence! No matter, Jake. Here is your question, child. What is one true thing you believe… that you have never said out loud?”

“That I am smarter in literature than I look.”

“Yes. You are.”

The lower, frowning, jagged-toothed mouth responded, “Well. That was almost poetic. There are only four hundred and fourteen pages remaining.”

“You added two pages?!”

“Boys get harder work. And I see you are a liar who secretly likes math, then. You are ready for every truth ever feared in my 414 pages. Shall we continue?”

“Yeah. Start,” Jake said, trying to regain his stoic face. The Scary Questioning Book was like the Medusa shield; you couldn’t look away because you felt compelled to stare at it—those two jagged-teeth mouths that spoke actual words. The large blue gem in its forehead was humanizing, lending a foreign style of wealth accentuated by old elaborate gold trim.

This was no ordinary book!

Jake did not scream. He wanted to. His throat wanted to. His lungs wanted to. But he didn’t. He remained stoic. He never finished reading about Perseus and Medusa, so he figured he had an advantage.

Jake stood very still and waited.

So did the Scary Questioning Book.

After the creepy intermission, the Questioning Book’s upper mouth opened after the pause. “Reader Ninety-Seven,” the hideous horror Questioning Book said.

The voice was deep and dry. British-American. Like a professor who had been grading papers for three centuries and was very behind schedule. Like someone who had seen everything and was bored by most of it.

“You are late.”

Jake found his voice. It came out steady as a Stoic. He was proud of that.

“I’m nine.”

“So was Reader Ninety-Six. She was also on time.” The Questioning Book’s snake-amber eyes narrowed. “Do better.”

“You know Elara?”

“I know everyone who sits in front of me. She said you hate endings.”

Jake crossed his arms. “If you have eight more buddies like yourself, Monster Questioning Book, there is no way I’m going to make it out of this ancient library alive.”

HAHAHAHAHA—both Scary Questioning Book mouths laughed. “A child with a sense of humor.” There was a legal pause, almost as if the verdict came next. “She did say, ‘You will finish my book.’”

“Yeah, but she neglected to tell me to bring my broadsword!”

“Oh, my, a prankster, too!” The Scary Questioning Book suddenly dropped both smiles. “She slows down now. She only delivered my message, Reader Ninety-Seven. And it’s not a sword but a shield—a mirror shield.” The Questioning Book’s pages rustled. “Tell me, Jake. Why do you stop reading three pages before the end?”

Jake said nothing.

“I’m waiting.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“This is not a courtroom, and you, Jake, are not on trial. But you will send Reader Ninety-Eight, Julie Chen, for her appointment.”

“I know where Julie studies—wait! We’re getting off topic, and I’m still deciding if I should escape from this horror literary show. What’s stopping me from turning around and walking out the front door?” Jake’s face grew angry, then stoic, and then his horror face returned. He wanted to, but didn’t put his backpack up to his face.

“I am not Medusa. I read her story, every version that has ever been written. But you, Jake, cannot say the same. Because—YOU HATE ENDINGS!”

Theatrical booming—his voice caught Jake off guard. It was like some ancient magic, where the person’s mind got directed to the sound of fear, the yell, and the shout, and then next came the not-so-subtle instructions to follow. Jake was becoming a lawyer. He knew the behind-the-scenes tricks of debate rhetoric.

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Jake. But the door doesn’t open until you turn the page. And you cannot turn the page until you answer the question.”

Jake looked behind him.

The door was gone.

The Scary Questioning Book’s upper jagged-teeth mouth answered, “Haha-haha-hahahaha! Three-four, where’s that door?”

Jake saw a stone wall. One flickering candle. No exit. Just stone and shadow, cobwebs like they’d been there for years, and the smell of old paper.

He turned back to The Questioning Book.

Jake exclaimed, “That’s not fair. I do declare.”

“Five, six, life’s hard to predict.” “Hehehehehe,” laughed the Scary Questioning Book, which had a mouth full of lower jagged teeth, before returning to a frown.

Jake countered, “Yeah, open up those bricks.”

“Ohhho-ho, a poet as well.” Grinned the jagged-teeth upper mouth. “Jake, when will you learn? The world is not fair. Books are fair. Books give you exactly what you put into them.” The Questioning Book’s lower jagged-sharp-teeth mouth frowned. “Now. The question.”

The pages flipped.

Words burned onto the parchment in glowing amber cursive. The letters were beautiful. Old-fashioned. Loops and curls and sharp edges, clearly the work of an elevated mind.

WHAT IS ONE TRUE THING YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE NEVER SAID OUT LOUD?

Jake stared at the question. Since escape was impossible, he had to answer the questions.

His heart thumped.

He thought about Elara. About the pencil. About the approaching, predicted math problem on page forty-five.

He thought about his dad, about the milk he never came home with. His parents arguing, sometimes about how his mom babied him by showing him the story endings first. His dad said, “Don’t baby the boy, or he’ll always be scared about life. Reading the endings first is for girls and women who worry unnecessarily and overthink things. Boys need to dare, be responsible, and solve problems and get to the very end.” Jake always wanted to take his dad’s side, but he had to live every day with his mom. He hid books all over the place, trying to send his mom a message. A message she never got. Now he was traumatized and unable to read properly.

He thought about all the books he had never finished. All the stories he had left waiting.

“I am smarter in literature than I look,” he said.

The words came out quiet. Almost a whisper.

The Questioning Book’s eyes softened.

“Say it again,” the lower, sharp-jagged-tooth frowning mouth said. “Louder.”

Jake lifted his chin.

“I AM SMARTER IN LITERATURE THAN I LOOK.”

The Questioning Book’s lower mouth curled into something that was almost warm, almost a smile. The jagged teeth didn’t look so scary anymore.

“Yes,” the Questioning Book answered. “You are.”

The page turned.