The Story Collector Read online

  “Stillman grabbed a wreath and handed it to me. ‘Congratulations, sir,’ he said. And with that, the three illustrious men were on their way.

  “Meanwhile, there I was: still teetering atop my tall perch, a wreath in one hand, scratching my head with the other, all while still gripping that silly lightbulb. Can you picture it? That when the very idea of your name sank into my head, the lightbulb was in a quite symbolic spot.”

  Viviani giggled, imagining the bulb illuminating above her papa’s head—click!

  “And then a baby’s wail wafted from below.” Here, Papa craned his ear as if toward this very apartment, and Viviani imagined a baby’s cries filling the cavernous library. Her cries.

  “‘A powerful set of lungs needs a powerful set of names,’ I said, to which Mr. Green grunted. I leapt off the ladder and flew down the stairs.

  “‘Cornelia!’ I bounded into the apartment, leaving a trail of flower petals in my wake. Mama was snuggled in bed, nursing our young daughter.”

  Here, Mama fluffed Viviani’s pillow, and Viviani snuggled into her own bed.

  “‘My dear Cornelia. We have a name.’” Papa knelt by the bed, flourishing an imaginary wreath.

  “‘We do?’” Mama chimed in with her part. Papa’s face lit up—very little pleased him as much as when his family indulged his stories.

  “‘We do!’ I shouted. Then I lifted you up and declared, ‘I present to you: Viviani Joffre Fedeler!’”

  Here, Papa scooped Viviani up and hoisted her in the air, grunting with the effort. Viviani squirmed and laughed.

  “And you did what any hungry, cold baby would do: you let out a blood-curdling yalp.”

  Viviani glanced at her mother, to see if she could yalp now. Her mother raised her I believe you know the answer to that, young lady eyebrow, so Viviani simply pretended to yalp with a small squeak.

  Papa gently lowered Viviani into bed and tucked the blankets over her.

  “That powerful cry of yours echoed and absorbed into the thousands of books lining the shelves. And in return, those books awakened, unfurling their words, their worlds, slowly, quietly, until stories became as much a part of you as your red hair, your green eyes.”

  Mama hugged Viviani to her side and kissed the top of her head. Viviani’s heart swelled.

  “Do you think you can sleep now?” Papa asked.

  She nodded. And she meant it.

  Mama and Papa left, clicking off the light behind them. Viviani breathed deeply and curled further into her quilt.

  Hearing her favorite story had calmed her. It had made her braver. Familiar stories do that. They’re as much a part of our identity as the backs of our hands. If we were zebras, our stories would be our stripes. If we were pilots, they would be our compass. If we were adventurers, they’d be our North Star. Our stories are what make us unique. The combination of stories in our lives—the unique mix of the stories we choose to read, choose to live—makes each of us just a tiny bit different from everyone else on the planet. Viviani knew that we are our stories.

  At last, Viviani was able to drift into a deep sleep.

  Well, also, Papa had left the bat.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Storytelling Techniques,

  Dewey Decimal 372.64

  SEE ALSO: storytelling, United States; storytelling, juvenile literature

  Three things happened to Viviani before she even left the library the following morning, and as any good storyteller knows, everything happens in threes:

  Number one: Viviani had just woken up and was adding to her wallpaper mural. The walls of her room were covered with yellow-flowered paper that, if stared at long enough, began to take on familiar shapes, like leopards and dragons and an entire family of mice at a picnic. Mama didn’t much care for it when Viviani used an ink pen to add whiskers and spots and fiery breath, so she took care to embellish only the sliver of space between her bed and the wall.

  “Viv!”

  Viviani’s skeleton nearly jumped straight out of her skin. Her pen clattered to the floor. “John Junior! Why would you scare me like that?”

  “’Cause you always fall for it?” Junior laughed and flopped onto her bed. He jerked his head toward the door. “What’d you do?”

  “What do you mean, What did I do?”

  “There was a reason Papa told us that story last night. Edouard says it wasn’t him, so you had to have done something.”

  Viviani bit her lip. “Eva and I played in Papa’s workshop.”

  Junior whistled long and low. “Even I wouldn’t pull that stunt, Red.”

  Viviani rubbed her tired eyes. “I know. That stupid ghost story kept me up half the night until Papa came in and told me it wasn’t true.”

  John Jr. bolted upright, eyes wide. “Oh, that story is true.”

  Viviani’s heart fluttered. “No, it’s not. Papa said he told us that story to keep us out of the workshop.”

  John Jr. shook his head. “Maybe he did, but it’s still true. I’ve heard the librarians talk about the library ghost. Miss O’Conner says her stuff moves around all the time, and once her glasses even fogged over in the middle of the library. Even Dr. Anderson says lights turn on and off unexplainably. It’s true.”

  Viviani gulped. Dr. Anderson? No way. He was the library director, for heaven’s sake! “I don’t believe you.”

  John Jr. shrugged and rolled off her bed. “You don’t have to believe me. You just have to believe what you see. Or don’t see. WOOOOooooooOOOO!”

  John Jr. backed out of her room, making ghost noises and waving his fingers about until Viviani threw her pillow at him.

  Number two: at breakfast, Mama placed a hard-boiled egg on each plate.

  “John Junior, Edouard.” The radio in the corner kicked out a spicy jazz tune, and the host talked about the perfect fall weather.

  “Viviani.”

  Viv sat up in her chair, because that Viviani had a sit-up-straight tone to it. “If this is about that stray cat, Mama, you need to ask John Junior about it.”

  John Jr.’s lips pulled into a flat line.

  “This isn’t about a—what? There’s not a cat in this library, is there? Junior?”

  “No, ma’am. Of course not.”

  Mama sighed and sank into her chair. “Never mind. I’ll deal with that later. Viviani, what in the world were you doing in that workshop?”

  Viviani gulped. “Inventing things?”

  Mama shook her head in the way that only mamas can to make you feel so, so sorry.

  “Viviani, we’ve discussed this. Anywhere but the workshop. There are too many dangerous things in that part of the basement, and I don’t want to see you or Eva hurt.” Viv’s mother tucked a strand of hair behind Viviani’s ear, and it felt directly connected to her heart.

  “We’ve asked you not to go into that room many times,” her mother continued. “So for the next two weeks, come right back here after school for chores.”

  Viviani’s throat swelled. Two weeks of extra chores! And right before the upcoming winter break from school—how positively awful!

  “Red, we trust you. You’re a peach of a kid. But you didn’t just stretch a truth here, my love. You chose to ignore a rule. That’s dangerous.” Her mother kissed her forehead.

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I got carried away.” Viviani’s eyes stung.

  “Yes,” her mother said with a smile. “My Viviani gets carried away so often, she’s likely to wind up on the far side of the moon.”

  Number three: Viviani was just about to push through the rotating front door on her way to school when a grunt from behind made her jump.

  “Hey. Kid.”

  She turned, and there she stood, face-to-face with Mr. Green!

  Did he lick his lips? No, she imagined that. Most certainly. But for a moment, Viviani thought what a good story it would make if he did try to gobble her up.

  He pressed something into Viviani’s hand. “You forgot this the other day.” Before she could reply, h
e slid away, his shoes as silent as blades on ice.

  Viviani unclenched her fist. It was a folded sheet of paper. She smoothed it open.

  It was the sign Viv made earlier. The INVENTORS’ CLUB sign.

  Viviani’s heart leapt into her throat. He saw that she’d called him a cannibal. She turned the sign over in her hand.

  It all made sense. He’d ratted her out. He’d gotten angry about the sign, and he’d shown it to Mama and Papa. He’d told them she had been playing in the workshop. Tattletale!

  Viviani’s cheeks burned. She crammed the sign into her jacket pocket. It was one thing to have your brothers rat on you, but Mr. Green? What business was it of his? Just because they shared the same building didn’t mean she had to like him. Not one bit.

  * * *

  So you see, Dear Friend, these three things combined to make Viviani’s stomach feel like a fizzy, gurgling Coca-Cola poured straight from a soda fountain.

  She felt green and sick. When Merit Mubarak said “Hello, Viviani!” for the first time ever walking into school that morning, Viviani simply nodded and kept walking.

  Had that greeting happened any other day than this one, Merit’s hello would’ve made Viviani’s heart sing. But instead, Viviani sank into a chair, and Eva answered Merit’s cheery hello. Viviani watched the next plot twist unfold, as Eva said something that made Merit toss her head back with laughter, and the two hung their coats next to each other. Viviani thought she could not feel lower.

  She was wrong.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Stamp Collecting,

  Dewey Decimal 769.56

  SEE ALSO: postage stamps, collectors & collecting

  Just as Viviani was turning the knob to head inside her family’s apartment that afternoon, a strong hand clamped her shoulder.

  Viviani spun, fists clenched and raised, fight ready, because even though her brain had pushed aside ghosts and groundings and cannibals, her heart hadn’t. Hearts can do that, you know: hold on to something when the rest of you has forgotten about it. Hearts have longer memories than brains.

  Papa laughed. “Methinks thou dost imagine too much, my love.” He gently lowered her fists. “I hear you have extra chores. Want to help me with the rest of my rounds?”

  Viviani’s eyes flashed from terror to excitement. “Do I!”

  Papa grinned. “Let’s go, then.” He gathered up his toolbox and jerked his head down the hall. “This old girl is counting on us.” He patted the cool marble library wall.

  They started with his regular chores: winding the clocks, which Papa let Viviani do by herself. It was a single crank that somehow—Viviani thought magic was likely involved—wound every clock in the library at once. It took all her muscle to turn the crank, and her arms burned with the strain. But she felt as if she had incredible powers, being able to control time like that, like in the stories of H. G. Wells about incredible time-traveling machines.

  Then they moved to cleaning the pneumatic tubes, a series of clear vacuum tubes that delivered the book requests from the many library desks down into the stacks. A piece of paper should whoosh like lightning through the tubes to the massive stacks below the library, but instead, today, the paper inside would float and flutter on a light wind, like a butterfly.

  “A clog,” Papa declared, and he snaked a long, flexible tube inside until he found the blockage. When they removed it, they saw that an old bird’s nest had been lodged inside. “This looks like the work of John Junior and Carroll,” Papa said, shaking his head but grinning. “That kid’s shenanigans are going to land him either at Harvard or in the pokey.”

  “My money’s on the pokey,” Viviani said.

  Papa winked. “Don’t let your mother hear you placing bets.” He checked his list of things to fix. “Monthly elevator maintenance.”

  Papa pried open the doors on the third-floor elevator, and the empty elevator shaft looked like a subway tunnel direct to the underworld. A waft of old, damp air whooshed out.

  Viviani shivered, covered in gooseflesh. The shaft was deep and dark and full of spiderwebs, and the steel cables supporting the cars looked awfully thin when one considered they lifted and lowered thousands of people each day.

  Papa swung around the doorframe into the open shaft, clinging to a ladder embedded in the wall. Viviani couldn’t help herself; she gasped, seeing her father with nothing but half-inch iron rods sticking out from concrete to support him.

  “Hand me that oilcan, Red.” Papa’s voice boomed out of the elevator shaft, making him sound hollow and ghostly. Viviani gulped. She didn’t want to. She really, really didn’t want to.

  But here’s the important part: despite her heart pounding so loudly that folks on Fifth Avenue could likely hear it, despite feeling positively dizzy when looking down into that gaping, wide hole, she did it.

  Viviani Joffre Fedeler knew that courage is simply fear stuffed with hope.

  “Next on the list.” Papa climbed out of the elevator shaft and tapped his pencil tip against the notepad: “Prep the Stuart Room for the new exhibit.…”

  “New exhibit?” Viv’s eyes lit up. New exhibits meant fancy people in shiny clothes and hats and live music and food and lots of newspaper reporters with popping, smoking flashes. New exhibits were like Hollywood and jazz and flappers swinging their limbs about all in one.

  Mama was already inside the Stuart Room, and she gave Viviani a sideways hug. A gaggle of librarians raised quite a fuss in the wide display area in the rear of the room:

  “Move the table over there, John. No—yes. There. Now roll in that display case, Alice.”

  “Oh, my! This area sure is dusty. Are we certain that cleaning crew ever comes in here? What horrible air quality!”

  “The air quality is fine,” Papa said, shoving a table to make room.

  “The dust won’t be a problem,” said one librarian, nodding. “But you know what will be? The sunlight. Don’t you think it’s too much? The skylights are much too bright.”

  “The skylights are fine,” Papa said, hoisting a chair.

  “I’m more worried about the moisture in the air. Does it feel humid in here to you? I think it’s humid. Have we checked the plumbing nearby?”

  “The plumbing is fine.” Papa chuckled, unlocking a side closet.

  He disappeared in a flurry of table moving and lamplight adjusting. Viviani stood on tiptoe and leaned into the librarians’ conversation. Why all the hubbub about the room? “What’s coming? Is it alive?”

  The group of librarians turned as one toward Viviani. “Alive?” Miss O’Conner asked with a grin. She shoved her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

  Viviani shrugged. “Dust. Sunlight. Water. Sounds alive.”

  “Not alive, but certainly lively,” came a voice from behind the group. The librarians all tittered and giggled.

  Viviani spun. The voice came from Dr. Edwin Hatfield Anderson, the library director. Wowza! Dr. Anderson escorted in only the really important folks. Beside him stood a man whose eyes were masked by tiny, glinting spectacles. When the gentlemen entered, they removed their hats. This was a rule that dated all the way back to Dr. John Shaw Billings, the designer of the library and its original director. This area of the library housed one of the famous Gutenberg Bibles, and Dr. Billings and the other library directors since believed it deserved such respect.

  The man beside Dr. Anderson was tall and thin and sharp and pinched. He reminded Viviani of a paper airplane. He carried a large brown briefcase, locked tight.

  Locked-tight briefcase and Dr. Anderson? This chore was turning less chore-like quickly!

  The gentleman, whom Dr. Anderson introduced as Mr. Smyth, snuffled and twitched his nose about, as if tasting the air through his nostrils. He popped his finger in his mouth, then out again, holding his wet pointer finger aloft. His forehead crumpled.

  “It’s the humidity,” one of the librarians whispered, before being elbowed into silence.

  Mr. Smyth crouched then, circling the di
splay case. He knocked on the glass. He rattled the case. He bent in half, jerking his head between the case and the skylights, examining the angle of the sun. He snuffled some more.

  “What’s going on?” Edouard’s whisper in Viviani’s ear made her yelp. All librarian eyes shot their way, and the group issued a collective shhhhhhh! Mama hid a smile behind her hand.

  “New display,” Viviani whispered back.

  “What is it?”

  “Dunno. Dr. Anderson says it’s ‘lively,’ though.”

  Mr. Smyth then bent toward his briefcase and clicked open the shiny brass lock. Viviani noticed how his hands shook diving into the deep case but were steady as stone lions as they lifted out a black velvet-lined tray.

  He placed the tray into the glass case. Viviani and Edouard dove forward.

  “Stamps?” Viviani said. “That’s it? That’s lively?”

  “Ah, dear girl,” said Mr. Smyth as he put another tray in the case. “Not just any stamps. Rare stamps.”

  “There are rare stamps?” Viviani asked. The glare she received in response told her yes, yes, there were.

  “Fact,” Edouard said. “The world’s first postage stamp was known as the Penny Black and came into service on May 6, 1840. Do you have one of those?”

  The gentleman unloaded two more trays. “A Penny Black? I wish I did. And, yes, stamps can be rare indeed. This one, for instance,” he said, pointing at a stamp featuring a Ferris wheel. “This was to commemorate a World’s Fair. Only two hundred ever printed. This is the only one I’ve ever seen.”

  “Wow,” Edouard said, watching the tray slide into the glass case. Miss O’Conner beamed at him. Viviani thought the librarians would make Edouard their mascot if it were up to them.

  Another tray slid into the case. Viviani hung on the glass by her fingertips, trying to get as close as possible to the stamps.

  “Don’t smudge that case, Viviani,” Miss O’Conner warned her. Viv was the opposite of a mascot to the librarians. Viviani thought they saw her more like a lit match, running around the library, all fiery around valuable pieces of paper.