Turning Pages

Chapter Five

FIVE 

Mr. Carlsen had only been in a few times since dropping the bomb on us, and I was going to use his absence to plan a counterattack. I opened my calendar and laid it on the office table. We didn't have much time, and I needed to get organized. I had even limited myself to daydreaming about Rob for fifteen minutes a day-it was a worse addiction than Facebook. Blake and Melanie sat across from me, Blake looking amused, Melanie being her usual supportive self. 

"We need to start brainstorming." I tapped my pen on my spiral notebook, willing the muse of all things money-related to speak to me. "What can we do for a fund-raiser?" 

Blake shook his head. "I don't think a fund-raiser is going to work, Addie. Look around. Can you honestly tell me, deep down, that this place is big enough?" 

I didn't want to look around, but his question was like a magnet, irresistibly drawing my head to the left, then the right. I saw the study carrels, only four when there should have been twenty. There were two couches and four chairs in the adult fiction section, and I wished we could place another four seats there. Shelves were crammed into every possible corner, and still, we had books sitting on sorting carts because there was no room for them. But telling Blake he was right would be like eating snake eggs. 

"What about a bake sale?" I suggested. 

"My mom could make her famous brownies," Melanie said, and I wrote that down. 

Blake let out a sigh that could only be described as gusty. "Okay, let's say you have a great turnout, and you sell, what, a hundred brownies at a buck each? That's one hundred dollars, Addie. What can you buy for one hundred dollars?" 

My mind immediately went to the basketball shoes Benji needed, but we weren't talking about household expenses. We were talking about a library, with huge needs-the utility bill alone was hundreds of dollars every month, made worse by the drafts that came in through the attic and seeped into the building. 

"So brownies won't save the universe," I said at last. "But what about a rummage sale, and a boutique, and an auction . . ."  

My voice trailed off as Blake continued to shake his head. "You could spend the next twelve years of your life organizing the fund-raiser of all fund-raisers, and still not save the library. There's one very key element here that you keep overlooking, and I'm going to spell it out. Again. The people of this town don't want to save the library. If they were behind you, sure, I'd say go for it. But they don't want it." 

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Maybe that's why I'd been blocking out everyone's replies to my informal poll. Or maybe I was blocking out Blake because he was him, and I didn't like him, despite his new attempts at being nice. 

"You're wrong," I said. "They love this library. They come for Story Time and the Fall Festival and the Christmas Story Readalong." I'd made those same arguments to Mr. Carlsen, for all the good it had done me. 

Blake shook his head again. "Those programs will continue in the new library, and more people will come because there will be more room. Picture the Christmas Story Readalong with twice the attendance, Addie. It's not the library building itself that brings them in." 

"Melanie?" I turned to my best friend, hoping she, of all people, would back me up on this. 

She shook her head slowly. I was starting to feel like my head was the only one that remembered how to go up and down. "I'm sorry, but I think he's right. They come because we have books. The building itself-well, it's just here." 

I exhaled. This wasn't going as I'd planned. We were supposed to come up with a way to save my beloved building, and all these two could do was squash my hopes and dreams. "Don't suppose we're on a sacred Indian burial ground, are we?"