Library Girl, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Also by Polly Horvath
Found
What to Do?
Essie’s Babydom Disappears and her Childhood Begins
Books for Trina
The Big Wide World
The Second Saturday
The Boy, the Mummy and the Accident
Escape
Telling
Secrets Revealed
A Miracle Occurs
The End to All Dreams
The End
Acknowledgments
Margaret Ferguson Books
Copyright © 2024 by Polly Horvath
All Rights Reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Printed and bound in July 2024 at Sheridan, Chelsea, MI, USA.
www.holidayhouse.com
First Edition
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Horvath, Polly, author.
Title: Library girl / by Polly Horvath.
Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret Ferguson Books, 2024. | Audience: Ages 10–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: Eleven-year-old Essie, who was abandoned as a baby and lovingly raised by four librarians, meets a mysterious boy whom she believes is her twin brother, but as she gets to know him better, she discovers nothing is as simple as it seems.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023033762 | ISBN 9780823455676 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Abandoned children—Fiction. | Twins—Fiction. | Siblings—Fiction. | Librarians—Fiction. | Books and reading—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H79224 Li 2024 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023033762
ISBN: 978-0-8234-5567-6 (hardcover)
To Audrey Willa Baxter, who may not grow up in a library but to whom I promise always many good things to read
AN OCCASIONAL COW
(Pictures by Gioia Fiammenghi)
NO MORE CORNFLAKES
THE HAPPY YELLOW CAR
WHEN THE CIRCUS CAME TO TOWN
THE TROLLS
EVERYTHING ON A WAFFLE
THE CANNING SEASON
THE VACATION
THE PEPINS AND THEIR PROBLEMS
(Pictures by Marylin Hafner)
THE CORPS OF THE BARE-BONED PLANE
MY ONE HUNDRED ADVENTURES
NORTHWARD TO THE MOON
MR. AND MRS. BUNNY—DETECTIVES EXTRAORDINAIRE!
(Pictures by Sophie Blackall)
ONE YEAR IN COAL HARBOR
LORD AND LADY BUNNY—ALMOST ROYALTY!
(Pictures by Sophie Blackall)
THE NIGHT GARDEN
VERY RICH
PINE ISLAND HOME
PINE ISLAND VISITORS
It was a lovely crisp day in October. Doris, Taisha, Jeanne-Marie and Lucinda would never forget it. They all worked in the children’s department in the main branch of the Huffington Public Library, except Lucinda, who worked in reference. It was a lovely library, with cornices and balconies and scrollwork aplenty, in a lovely redbrick building in a lovely old downtown with Indiana’s first pedestrian open-air mall, built in 1894. Above the library was a charming small museum. It was free. The library sat on a city street corner across from a beautiful green park. The park was surrounded on three sides by enormous old Victorian mansions, all in gray clapboard and known as the Gray Ladies. From the floor-to-ceiling windows in the front of the library you could see into the middle of the park, where there was a duck pond so the ducks would have somewhere to go and toddlers would have somewhere to sail their toy boats. And in all four corners of the park were huge stone fountains that people tossed pennies into to make wishes. And then once a month the pennies were collected and given to the humane society. Huffington was full of such kindness and was just as picturesque as could be.
The adult section of the library, which included both the stacks and periodicals, with its large reading chairs, was also entirely walled in floor-to-ceiling windows, so that the library was nice and light and bright. Inside, the books were kept in neat rows. The bookshelves themselves were made of real oak. The library had a woody, faintly musty old-booky smell that was most inviting. Even if you weren’t a reader, it was a fine place to hang out.
The particular morning this story begins, the one that the four librarians would never forget, Lucinda happened to be in the office of the children’s department because she had brought a big box of homemade donuts for the children’s librarians. She was trying to up her game baking-wise and often brought the children’s librarians baked goods. She had tried to bring them to the librarians in the adult department, but they were all on weird diets, macrobiotic and keto and DASH and such, as grown-ups often are. The children’s librarians, on the other hand, recognized a good cupcake when they saw one and didn’t let it go to waste. In this way did Lucinda become tight friends with Doris, Taisha and Jeanne-Marie, even though usually they excluded anyone who didn’t reread Elizabeth Enright at least once a year.
The librarians had put on a pot of coffee and were having a cup each while savoring jelly, chocolate dip and salted caramel donuts.
“I really think these are the best,” said Taisha, waving around a salted caramel.
“Oh no, you can’t beat a good chocolate dip,” argued Doris.
“Mmmmm,” said Jeanne-Marie, on her second jelly donut and not wanting to waste words when she could be chewing.
It was at that moment that they heard it.
“What was that?” asked Lucinda, who was perhaps the most alert because she wasn’t having a donut, having had two for breakfast at home already.
The others had to stop chewing and concentrate.
“It sounds...,” said Taisha, “like a baby’s cry.”
“Oh no,” said Doris. “It couldn’t be. The library doesn’t open for another hour.”
“Perhaps someone who works in the adult department brought their baby,” suggested Jeanne-Marie.
“Who in the adult department even has a baby?” asked Taisha.
“Well, there’s that new young man who is always putting books away in the wrong places,” said Lucinda, who, unlike the others, was in on the gossip from the adult department to a small degree. It was only to a small degree because the adult librarians knew she fraternized with the children’s librarians and they weren’t having it.
“Does he have a baby?” asked Doris.
“He might,” said Lucinda. “He often comes to work with what looks like spit-up on his collar.”
“It could be his own,” said Jeanne-Marie. “Spit-up, that is.”
“It could indeed,” said Lucinda.
“Or something else,” said Doris. “He could be a dribbler. Mr. Pennysworth was a dribbler.”
Mr. Pennysworth was Doris’s ex-husband. She referred to him by his last name to “put some distance between us name-wise,” as she had explained to the others the first seven hundred times she had done this.
The women resumed their eating, but they could not get the sound of the baby crying out of their ears.
Now it is time to give you the sad news that all four of these librarians had wanted to be mothers and for tragic reasons were unable. When they heard a baby cry it was like knives to their hearts. So one by one they put down their donuts and looked sadly into space, thinking of what might have been.
“All right,” said Doris finally, after they had stood frozen in time for a bit, each mourning her individual loss. “Enough. Let’s go find it. Whosever baby it is, they aren’t doing much for it. Listen to that crying.”
“I think I have a teddy bear somewhere here in the office,” said Doris, looking around the room. “Ah yes, here.”
“That baby is too young for a teddy bear,” said Taisha, who had so many young relatives that she knew to the month how old a baby was just from the sound of their cry. “That cry is a newborn cry.”
“That cry is a hungry cry,” said Jeanne-Marie, who had no young relatives so this was just a guess.
“Whatever it is, we must find it and relieve its distress,” said Lucinda. “Bring the teddy bear, Doris, but don’t expect much.”
“It may provide some small comfort,” said Doris hopefully, and the four of them marched through the children’s department, preparing to storm the fortress of the adult stacks. But before they even got to the door of the massive children’s room, they stopped. The crying, which had been before them, was now behind them.
“That baby is in here,” said Taisha in surprise and a little alarm.
“What is a baby doing in here?” asked Doris. “And who would even dare come in here? We aren’t open yet. And the adult librarians have no business coming in without our permission before we are even open.”
“Leaving babies sprinkled about,” agreed Taisha.
“The thing is,” said Lucinda, trying to keep them all on track, “the thing is to find the baby.”
Up and down the stacks the four women went, each taking a different row. And perhaps it is a good time to tell you what they looked like so you can tell them apart.
Doris was short and plump. She looked like a saltshaker. I cannot even tell you why exactly, except that she had pleasing lines and porcelain skin. She always wore midi dresses, which made her look as if she came from a different era. If she’d been taller or thinner she would have looked more modern, but a short, stout woman in a midi dress gives off a vintage vibe. She had an old-fashioned perm as well, so that her slightly graying mousy brown hair also looked from an earlier era. No one wore their hair that way anymore. She had started to do so ever since ditching Mr. Pennysworth. In her reading she had eclectic taste. Of course she loved children’s books, but she also loved cozy murder mysteries where no one took the murders too seriously and everyone could always be found at four o’clock having a good cup of tea and an iced bun. She didn’t know what an iced bun was, but it always sounded delicious.
Lucinda looked like a raven. She had black hair that came past her shoulders, which, unlike many middle-aged women, suited her. Her nose was long and a bit bent under but not in a scary witch way. More in an interesting woman way. She might have been hired to tell fortunes, she had that kind of look, which was coupled with knowing eyes and a general air of command. She wore midi dresses, too, but they were always of lovely flowing fabric and she wore them with clunky heeled pumps. They did not make her look like a saltshaker. She looked wildly romantic but refined. And knowledgeable, as a reference librarian must be. She liked fiction by women writers and tidy short stories. She liked good nonfiction where the writers kept themselves out of the telling. She had read an entire encyclopedia series up to and including the letter Z. When you asked her a question she rarely had to look it up.
Taisha had a complexion so soft and smooth it was like a bar of triple-milled soap but the color of twilight. Doris envied it and asked her what creams she used. Doris was a great lover of skin creams. She had thirty-seven jars of night cream alone. But Taisha said you had to be born with such skin, you could not acquire it. She had a lovely froth of black hair around her head like moss. She had a beautiful face and eyes that went right to the point. She usually wore dangling earrings from exotic trips she had taken. She alone of the four of them could pull off such earrings. She wore pants to work mostly, although sometimes a dress or skirt. Whatever she wore looked perfect, and yet she wore it as if she didn’t really care, and her eyes carried the slightly wild look of those who have an appreciation and recognition of the absurd. She read all kinds of things. She loved children’s books best and had read almost every one in the children’s library. But her specialty was picture books. She did the library displays because she had the most artistic flair, and she did the story time because the thing she loved most was reading books aloud to children. She would have read them aloud to adults if they’d let her. She felt reading to others was a lost art. To be able to do so was a gift. That was why they called talent a gift. Not because it was given to you but because it was something you were able to give to others.
Jeanne-Marie was thin and spiky and very French-looking, as was only natural as she was French. Her face was all angles, cheekbones and nose and thin lips as if she’d been made out of twigs. She looked worried all the time even when she wasn’t, as if her face didn’t know how to do anything else. Everything about her said French, from her well-cut, well-chosen clothes to her flawless makeup and jewelry. Only her hair wouldn’t behave in a neat orderly fashion. It stuck out in sharp spikes around her head so that she resembled a medieval mace. Her eyes were dreamy because under her French no-nonsense crispness beat the heart of a romantic. She had read the entire fantasy section of the library and also all the romance novels. She was always waiting for something wonderful to happen to her. Just like it did in books.
All around the children’s department the four women went, until Taisha gave a gasp.
“Have you spotted it?” asked Lucinda. She said “it” because they didn’t know yet if “it” was a boy or a girl.
“I see a baby,” said Taisha. “In a bassinet on a shelf.”
“That is probably the one,” said Jeanne-Marie.
“It is almost certainly the one,” said Doris.
“Of course it’s the one,” said Lucinda. “For God’s sake, pick it up.”
So Taisha did and the baby immediately stopped crying.
“Awwwwww,” said all the women at once.
“What’s going on in here?” asked a handsome, tall man in a suit standing in the doorway suddenly.
All four women’s heads, which had been craned in Taisha’s direction, turned immediately to spy Mr. Fellows. The head of the whole library.
“Nothing!” said Lucinda and Jeanne-Marie and Doris as they crowded around Taisha, blocking Mr. Fellows’ view of the baby and the bassinet.
Forever after, none of them could tell you why they had done this.
But that was the beginning.
When Mr. Fellows had gone, the four ladies retired to the inner back office. There were two offices the three children’s librarians shared. There was the outer office, where others might seek them, and then there was the inner office, which was inside the larger outer office, where they might not. It was this private office where they took the baby.
The four of them stood around the bassinet staring down and cooing at the baby as if she were some witches’ brew and they the witches, for which only Lucinda really looked the part.
“Well...,” said Doris eventually. “We must give her back.” (It had been determined that “it” was a her.)
“Must we?” asked Taisha. “Someone was very careless about leaving her.”
“It isn’t a question of must we or must we not,” Lucinda reminded them. “After all, someone somehow clearly got into the library, deposited the baby for a moment on an empty place on the bookshelf and is going to return for her.”
“Well, it was still careless. Careless people should not be allowed to keep their babies,” said Jeanne-Marie, who of the four of them was the one most recently to give up the dream of having a child of her own. She clearly hadn’t entirely given it up. She wanted this one.
“Jeanne-Marie,” said Doris warningly.
“Yes, I know,” said Jeanne-Marie. “But we are all thinking the same thing, aren’t we? We are all thinking that we want to keep this baby.”
“We will keep this baby,” said Lucinda, which so surprised the other three that they stared at her open-mouthed for a moment. “We will keep her until her mother—”
“Or father,” interrupted Taisha.
“Or father,” amended Lucinda.
“Or very careless babysitter,” said Jeanne-Marie.
“Or whoever is in charge of her returns. Now, is there a bottle in this bassinet? Baby may well be hungry,” said Lucinda.
There was none, so Lucinda suggested that Doris go to the nearest drugstore and buy a bottle and some baby formula and diapers.
“And a rattle,” said Doris.
“Oh, I’ve so many things like that at home still,” said Taisha.
The others did too but no one was admitting to anyone else that they had sadly gathered all the paraphernalia for having a baby and then when the baby had not transpired, instead of giving the baby things away, had kept them carefully packed in pretty boxes under their beds. Or in the case of Lucinda, who had the largest apartment, in a closet especially chosen for this.
“Yes, but no sense dragging it out, Taisha,” said Lucinda, who just naturally fell into the take-charge role. “I’m sure the mother will be along any moment. We will give the baby a bottle. And perhaps change her diaper. And that will be quite enough to do for this baby. Don’t you, any of you, dare get attached.”
So they all tried to stare meanly at the baby for a moment or two to break their already-forming attachment. Doris ran out for some diapers and formula and a bottle. When Mr. Fellows caught her escaping out the front door, she told him she was double-parked.
All day the three children’s librarians took turns feeding the baby in the inner office, where except for the baby’s occasional cries no one would ever have guessed they had a baby on board. Jeanne-Marie was put in charge of keeping an eye on the shelf where they’d found the baby in case her owner were to try to sneak in to take the baby back. But as usual, no one went anywhere near those shelves. They housed the old defunct children’s geography books that no one wanted to read and that they hadn’t enough of to fill up the whole shelf.
By the end of the day when the library closed and all chance of someone returning for the baby expired, the four librarians had a new problem. They convened once again in the inner office to discuss it.
“Well, we shall simply have to call the police,” said Lucinda. “There’s no other way.”
