08 - The Girl Who Cried Monster Read Free Page A

on me.
    I had this frightening feeling that the shelves would lean in on me, cover me
up, and I’d be buried there in the darkness forever. Buried under a thousand
pounds of dusty, mildewy old books.
    But of course that’s silly.
    It was just a very old house. Very dark and damp. Very creaky. Not as clean
as a library should be. Lots of cobwebs and dust.
    Mr. Mortman did his best, I guess. But he was kind of creepy, too.
    The thing all of us kids hated the most about him was that his hands always
seemed to be wet. He would smile at you with those beady little black eyes of
his lighting up on his plump, bald head. He would reach out and shake your hand.
And his hand was always sopping!
    When he turned the pages of books, he’d leave wet fingerprints on the
corners. His desktop always had small puddles on the top, moist handprints on
the leather desk protector.
    He was short and round. With that shiny, bald head and those tiny black eyes,
he looked a lot like a mole. A wet-pawed mole.
    He spoke in a high, scratchy voice. Nearly always whispered. He wasn’t a bad
guy, really. He seemed to like kids. He wasn’t mean or anything. And he really liked books.
    He was just weird, that’s all. He sat on a tall wooden stool that made him
hover over his enormous desk. He kept a deep aluminum pan on the side of his
desk. Inside the pan were several little turtles, moving around in about an inch
of water. “My timid friends,” I heard him call them once.
    Sometimes he’d pick up one of them and hold it in his pudgy fingers, high in
the air, until it tucked itself into its shell. Then he’d gently set it down, a
pleased smile on his pale, flabby face.
    He sure loved his turtles. I guess they were okay as pets. But they were kind
of smelly. I always tried to sit on the other side of the desk, as far away from
the turtle pan as I could get.
    Well, I skated to the library as fast as I could. I was only a few minutes
late when I skated into the cool shade of the library driveway. The sky was
clouding over. I sat down on the stone steps and pulled off the Rollerblades.
Then I quickly slid into my sneakers and, carrying my Rollerblades, I walked
through the front door.
    Making my way through the stacks—the tall, narrow shelves at the back of
the main reading room—I dropped the skates against the wall. Then I walked
quickly through the aisles to Mr. Mortman’s desk against the back wall.
    He heard my footsteps and immediately glanced up from the pile of books he
was stamping with a big rubber stamp. The ceiling light made his bald head shine
like a lamp. He smiled. “Hi, Lucy,” he said in his squeaky voice. “Be right with
you.”
    I said hi and sat down in the folding chair in front of his desk. I watched
him stamp the books. He was wearing a gray turtleneck sweater, which made him
look a lot like his pet turtles.
    Finally, after glancing at the big, loudly ticking clock on the wall, he
turned to me.
    “And what did you read for Reading Rangers this week, Lucy?” He leaned over
the desk toward me. I could see wet fingerprints on the dark desktop.
    “Uh… Huckleberry Finn.” I pulled the book from my backpack and
dropped it into my lap.
    “Yes, yes. A wonderful book,” Mr. Mortman said, glancing at the paperback in
my lap. “Don’t you agree?”
    “Yes,” I said quickly. “I really enjoyed it. I… couldn’t put it down.”
    That was sort of true. I never picked it up—so how could I put it down?
    “What did you like best about Huckleberry Finn ?” Mr. Mortman asked,
smiling at me expectantly.
    “Uh… the description,” I told him.
     
    I had my Reading Rangers gold star in my T-shirt pocket. And I had a new book
in my backpack— Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.
    Maybe I’ll read Frankenstein out loud to Randy, I thought evilly.
    That would probably make his teeth chatter forever!
    The late afternoon sun was hidden behind spreading rain clouds. I had walked
nearly all the way home when I