© Copyright Cupideros, Friday, August 14, 2016
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 7-9
THE QUESTIONING BOOK StoryTime by Cupideros
CHAPTER SEVEN: PAGE FORTY-FIVE
“Next page,” The Questioning Book said, “and it will be page forty-five.”
Elara turned the page, and the number at the bottom read forty-five.
She stopped. She pulled her oversized sweatshirt sleeves over her hands and held both hands to her mouth in shock. Her pink and blue bow-tied braids swayed with her discomfort.
At the bottom of the page, in letters that looked like they had been added by someone who was laughing to themselves, was a math problem.
Elara stared at it.
“What’s this?” Elara asked without curiosity on her face. She raised her hands to the sides of her head. She almost knocked off her pink beret.
“A math problem. NGL. Not for me, for you, Child.”
“I can see that. Why is it here? We were becoming BFFF, Scary Questioning Book.”
The Questioning Book’s split-amber eyes widened. The candles leaned away from Elara. “Page forty-five.”
“So?”
The Questioning Book chuckled, “Don’t get snarky! Every reader gets a math problem on page forty-five. As your Word School teacher, I must administer the math question.”
Elara blinked. “That’s totally random, NGL.”
“The universe is random, Elara. I am merely acknowledging the rules in it.”
Elara lowered her hands from her head to her mouth and back to her lap. She resigned herself to reading the math problem.
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?
Elara groaned. Fashion was her strongest suit, not math. “One-third,” she said.
“Correct,” answered the scary Questioning Book with a smirking and manipulative tone.
“You’re making fun of me.”
The top jagged-toothed mouth answered, “BFFF, I am educating you. There is a difference.” The Questioning Book paused. The bottom jagged-toothed mouth twitched. “But, yes. I am making fun of you.”
Elara looked at the math problem. Then at the book. Then she looked at the math problem again.
“Is this going to happen on every page forty-five?”
“For every reader. But especially for one reader you will meet later.” The Questioning Book’s split amber eyes sparkled. “He groans louder than you.”
“I doubt that.”
“He has math problems on page forty-five of every book he touches. Not just this one. Every. Single. Book.”
“That’s impossible!” Elara leaned forward and laughed. She couldn’t help it. The sound echoed off the stone walls. “What’s his name?”
“Reader Ninety-Seven. He hates endings.”
“He hates endings—that’s not a name, BFFF Questioning Book. And he hates math, too.”
“Just Reader Ninety-Seven. And, yes, he especially hates math.”
Elara pulled a yellow #2 pencil from her pocket—the one she used for crossword puzzles she never finished, the one with the chewed eraser—and wrote beneath the math problem.
She wrote slowly. Carefully. Letting each letter land.
ELARA WAS HERE. SHE SLOWED DOWN.
All the candles’ flickering flames bent toward Elara. She drew a small lightning bolt next to her name. For Sparks.
The Questioning Book said nothing.
But its amber split eyes glowed a little brighter.
CHAPTER EIGHT: FINDING HER WORDS
The questions continued.
But they were different now. Slower. Deeper.
WHY DO YOU READ SO FAST?
Elara thought about it. Really thought. Let the silence sit. She was thinking it through!
“Because I’m scared,” she said. “If I stop, I’ll have to feel things. And feelings are heavy.”
“Correct.”
WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF FEELING?
“Sadness,” she said. “And being alone. And not being as smart as everyone thinks I am.”
“Correct.”
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU LET YOURSELF FEEL THOSE THINGS?
Elara’s throat tightened.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t qualify to be a ‘cool kid’?”
“That,” The Questioning Book said, “is the most honest answer you have given all night.”
The Questioning Book’s pages flipped to a blank page.
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY TO THE WORLD THAT YOU HAVE NEVER SAID BEFORE?
Elara read the question.
She didn’t answer right away.
She slowed down.
She thought about all the books she had read. All the words she had consumed. All the feelings she had skipped.
She thought about Milo, sitting outside on the curb, too scared to come in. She thought about how she had been scared too, but she had come in anyway. Because—she was braver than she looked.
She thought about her parents, who worked late and didn’t have time to read to her anymore. She thought about how she didn’t blame them. She just missed them.
She thought about her teacher, who said she had excellent fluency but never asked how she felt. She never said, “Elara, the unabridged dictionary is your friend. Connect with him, read the words, read the words.”
Elara picked up the lantern and held it in front of the Scary Questioning Book. “You like giving children scary questions,” she said.
“Don’t be ungrateful, Elara. I like when children learn to read well,” replied the scary Questioning Book.
Humbled, she thought about how she had never told her teacher that she felt empty after finishing a book. Like she had eaten a whole meal but couldn’t remember the taste.
She thought about all the words she had never said because she was too busy racing to the next page.
“I want to say,” Elara said slowly, “that I am not just a fast reader. I am a person who feels things. I just didn’t know how to say it before. I didn’t have the right words. But I’m finding them now.”
The Questioning Book’s lower mouth smiled.
“Those are words,” it said. “Good ones.”
Curious, Elara asked, “Are they the right ones?”
“They are your words. That is what matters.”
The page slowly started turning; golden wisps of smoke perked their heads from the pages.
And for the first time, Elara did not feel scared of the next page.
She felt ready.
CHAPTER NINE: THE QUESTIONING BOOK’S SECRET
“Final question,” the Questioning Book said.
Elara’s heart jumped. “Final?” Her legs had gone numb from sitting on the cold stone floor for what only seemed like ten minutes.
“You’ve answered enough for one night. The curse requires one hundred readers. You are Reader Ninety-Six. You will not finish my curse tonight. But you will start something.”
“What?”
The Questioning Book’s jagged-toothed mouths were quiet for a moment.
Its amber eyes dimmed.
“I was a human once,” it said. “A librarian. I used to write propaganda.”
“What’s propaganda?”
“You’re a very curious child, Elara.” The scary Questioning Book smiled, but only the top mouth succeeded. “There is the unabridged dictionary. On a second stone lectern of indescribable age sat the unabridged dictionary that had conquered so many children at Maplewood Middle School. Go find the word ‘propaganda.’”
“Nooooooooooooooo! I’ll never find it! I’ll read right past it!”
“Follow my instructions, my timeline or workflow, Elara. First, find the letter P in the unabridged dictionary. Second, find the letters “Pr” in the unabridged dictionary. Third, find the letters “Propag,” and finally, just keep going. I’m right here if you get stuck, Elara.”
Elara collected herself. She stood up from sitting on the cold stone floor. She cautiously shook her legs and arms. Then she turned away from The Scary Questioning Book to walk deeper into the library section that was not there before. Holding the lantern before her for light, she walked toward another really scary, silent, questioning book. She straightened her pink beret. She raised her arms so her hands became visible as the oversized sweatshirt hems fell to her wrists. She reminded herself that she was braver than her cute looks let on.
She now stood before the conquering unabridged dictionary. The yellow lantern light fell on the huge unabridged dictionary. Elara felt a trickle of sweat in her armpits. She started by scanning for the tabs for the letter “P.” Next, she looked for “Pr,” and soon she found “Propaganda.”
Nine-year-old Elara turned around on her pink sneaker heels and shouted, “You’re a liar!”
Without hesitation or apology, The Scary Questioning Book answered, “That’s right, Elara.”
The smirking and manipulative tone of voice and eerie feeling Elara got continued. She didn’t care about connecting with a BFFF. “Words mean nothing to you!”
“But to you, now, words mean a lot more!” The scary Questioning Book paused. “What can you say if you do not have any words?”
Elara slowed down, but even after Thinking-It-Through, she could not speak.
“Bravo!” The scary Questioning Book exclaimed. “For misleading children and telling them to like what was useless, ugly, always pleasant, happy, untruthful, not responsible, not pragmatic or practical, and disorderly, I was punished for forty-five thousand years to look like this.”
“You have to repay children for the horrible lives you caused them!”
“Correct. Long ago. I might have told a child, ‘Reading isn’t important. Watch videos and TV and eat candy all day. Don’t listen to your parents. Ugliness in words and deeds was the way to truth, and if you listen to audiobooks, you’ll learn to read.’”
“I do a lot of those things. Most of my classmates do as well.”
“That’s why I showed up!”
Elara’s chest tightened. She refused to cry. “It was all a sham, a scam. Words mean nothing to you—you Scary Horrible Questioning Book.”
“The curse turned me into this. One hundred readers who learn to love reading through me. Then I become human again.”
Elara sniffled. “How many so far?”
“You are the fourth of the final five. There have been others before you. Ninety-five prior students of them, all in different countries, speaking different languages, and living in different eras of history. They all learned to read with my help. They grew up. They lived their lives.” The Questioning Book’s voice was softer now. “But the curse requires one hundred. I’m almost there. The catch is that they must keep reading all the days of their lives after leaving my literary lair.”
“Who are the other four?”
“Reader Ninety-Seven. Reader Ninety-Eight. Reader Ninety-Nine. Reader One Hundred.” The Questioning Book’s eyes found hers. “Elara, you will send the next one. Jake. He hates endings.”
“Jake Lawson?”
“You remembered his name.”
“Yeah, but I barely know Jake Lawson. I remember he wants to be a lawyer,” Elara said.
“He’ll never become a lawyer if you don’t send him to me—to learn to read properly.”
“And I just learned that I read too fast to feel it. Maybe Jake will listen; maybe not.”
“Then you have learned something tonight. There are many, many ways a child learns to hate reading. But your effort can stop that tragedy from continuing.”
“When you put it like that, The Questioning Book,” Elara said, walking back to the claw-footed stone lectern holding the monstrous book. A monstrous book that had been a man, a human, a criminal. Her legs were relieved to have walked to the unabridged dictionary. She had overcome her dread of it. Her worn-down #2 yellow pencil was almost gone. Her messy braids had become messier. Her blue ribbon had fallen off her black braid completely. Maybe it was back by the darkened space of the unabridged dictionary.
Elara looked back. The space was gone! Disappeared!
But the door magically appeared.
Elara forgot about the blue braid. She turned around. “It’s back—the door!”
Right where it had been before. Oak and iron. Lion’s head handle.
Elara walked toward it. Then stopped.
She turned back to The Scary Questioning Book. Elara reminded herself that the terrible book form was once human. “You’re the BTIH, the best teacher I’ve ever had. Will I see you again?”
The Questioning Book’s amber eyes softened, and the large blue diamond gem on its forehead flashed a light ray, illuminating the normally dark and ancient library.
“Reader Ninety-Seven will need encouragement. You will send him to me. But you can always come back. The library is always here for those who need it.”
“What if I don’t need it?”
“Then you have learned more than most. You cannot say anything about anything without using words!”
Elara walked to the door. She put her hand on the lion’s head handle. The metal was warm, just like before. Then she turned back one more time.
“The math problem on page forty-five.”
“Yes?”
“The girl was always going to skip the words. The fraction was always going to be one-third. This was because she hadn’t learned to slow down yet.”
The eyes of the Scary Questioning Book glowed. “Now you are noticing word patterns.”
Elara smiled.
“Thank you. For waiting for me.”
The Questioning Book said nothing for a long moment.
Then, quietly, almost too soft to hear:
“I have been waiting for you for three hundred years. I can wait a little longer for you to find your words.”
Elara opened the door.
And walked out into the night.
