FEEL FREE TO COMMENT!!!! I need feedback on story, on grammar, on if it even makes sense, etc. Remember, this is an excerpt of a draft, so be kind!
“Are you ready to experience your first real trip inside the school library,” Johnny asked, with a bit of excitement in his voice.
“Oh, yeah,” David responded sarcastically.
“Thrilled.”
David watched all of his friends head home to hang out, and he started to second guess his decision. Johnny noticed this.
“Hey, we won’t be in there too long. Besides,” Johnny smiled, “just remember who you are doing this for.”
David nodded in agreement just as they reached the front of the brick building with the words “LIBRARY” plastered above the front glass doors. The doors were very new and modern looking, but the building was the oldest building on campus, and it looked that way too. The glass doors slid open automatically, just like the ones in a grocery store, and the boys were now inside the library. Johnny headed towards the librarian, a friendly, graying lady with years of librarian experience, who was sitting down and inputting book serial codes into her computer. David followed closely behind, and looked around the library in wonder. Along with the rows of books, there were desks, giant tables for group projects, and a number of old computers along the wall for students to use. The school had a brand new computer lab, and thus David never got to experience the seven years out of date computers that were shoved against the library walls.
“Excuse me, but can you tell us where the thesauruses and the dictionaries are?” Johnny politely asked as he leaned forward on the student side of the library front desk.
The librarian looked up from her computer and smiled.
“Very few people ever ask for that section, Johnny!”
“I know,” he replied. “It's for my friend, David.”
The librarian looked at David for a second and smiled. She had never seen him, nor had he ever seen her. But her warmth put David at ease.
“Ok, Johnny. Go to the very last section, Section L. Past the biographies.”
“Thank you,” Johnny politely responded, as David was still stuck in a mixture of confusion and awe at the fact that he was in the library on a Thursday night. The two of them slowly turned around and looked for section L. Being new to the library, David had no idea where section L was, or, for that matter, where the biographies were. Johnny, on the other hand, knew most of this place by heart. He confidently strutted his way to the thesauruses and dictionaries, followed by David, who was turning his head left and right, as if he was hoping that no one would catch him hanging out at the library at this hour.
“Well, here we are. The thesaurus and dictionary section,” Johnny said, keeping his voice low.
David looked up at the shelves and quietly read aloud the sign at the top:
“Section L. Hmmm.”
David took a peek at all the books, and immediately was confused. He had no idea which book was the book he was supposed to get. To him, they all looked the same. They all had some form of the word English, American, Oxford, Heritage, or Language printed on them. Most of them were black, red or brown, or a combination of the three, but there were a few yellow and green books in there as well
“Dude, this is confusing,” David complained loudly.
“Shhh! Keep your voice down! It’s the library,” Johnny whispered.
“Sorry,” David continued in a whisper, “It’s just that I think this section is way out of my comfort zone. I don't think I can handle this.”
Johnny put his arm around David and had to remind him something once again.
“Hey, just think you aren't learning these words for school. You are learning them for Melanie.”
David closed his eyes for a second. Then opened them, wide, and gained back his confidence.
“You’re right. This is for Melanie.”
And with that, David saw a very old looking paperbound book and just snatched it from the shelves. The book was so old and untouched for such a long time, that when he took it off the shelf, a cloud of dust followed, causing the two boys to cough for about a minute.
“Dude, why’d ya grab that book!” Johnny whispered while wiping the dust from his face. “It's way too old!”
David shrugged, holding the book in both his hands.
“I don't know. It was the biggest one on the shelf. Doesn't big mean it's a good book in the book world?”
Johnny shook his head, still wiping dust from his face and blinking out any dust that may have gone into his eyes.
“Just check what book you just got.”
David looked at the cover.
“The New Dictionary of the 18th Century,” he read aloud.
“The 18th Century!” Johnny tried hard to keep his voice down, but it was just loud enough for a student to shush him from another aisle in the library.
“Sorry!” Johnny whispered towards the shushing boy.
“What’s wrong with the 18th Century book?” David seemed puzzled, completely ignoring the scene between Johnny and the shushing student.
Johnny took a closer look at the book in David’s hands.
“Man, you got probably the oldest book in the entire library. Put that back on the shelf!”
David was about to put it back, but for some reason, had an urge to open it up and see what was inside the old book. So David stopped in his tracks, took a hard look at the cover, and peeled open the aging cover.
FLASH!
A bright white light suddenly beamed out of the opened pages, causing David to drop the book to the ground, and the two boys shielded their eyes with their hands.
As soon as the book crashed onto the carpeted floor of library, the boys heard a loud groan, almost like the sound of an old man falling and, well, groaning.
Suddenly, the light was gone. The boys stopped shielding their eyes, looked down at the floor and saw the book wide open. And sitting on the ground next to the book, sat a very old looking balding man. He had thin wire framed glasses, like the kind Ben Franklin wore in all those pictures in U.S. History class. He wore knicker pants that ended at his knees, those long stockings and 18th century looking shoes with a silver buckle on them, as well as a dusty old coat and a collared shirt with the collar up to his neck, again, just like the ones you see in all the Ben Franklin pictures.
“Ben Franklin?” David asked with wonder in his voice.
Johnny looked at David, half impressed that he made the connection between this old guy's fashion and Ben Franklin, and half in shock at what he was seeing.
“Shhh,” the same kid a few aisles down ferociously hissed in order to get what he thought were just loud kids in Section L to be quiet.
“Oh, dear no,” quietly replied the old man, who realized he was in some sort of library, and was stretching his arms and legs out as he sat next to the book.
The man adjusted his glasses to look up at the boys, and then suddenly smiled, exposing old and yellow stained teeth.
“My name is Herbert Coleridge. And you boys are my saviors!”
The boys looked at each other.
“Saviors?” David quietly blurted out.
“Oh indeed,” Mr. Coleridge began, as he attempted to stand up. Seeing the struggle, David and Johnny both grabbed the old man's arms and pulled him up to his feet. Mr. Coleridge smiled once again.
“Thank you, kind sirs,” he continued in a deep, raspy, but kind, voice. He almost sounded British, but not quite.
“You see, I have been banished inside this book for many years by an angry editor of the first dictionaries. He did not like that I had been enamored with his daughter. I proposed to her, and before our wedding, he and a practitioner of the evil arts put a spell on me, banishing me to this dictionary.”
Johnny and David looked down at the New Dictionary of the 18th Century, which was still open on the ground. The boys were too shocked to really say anything in response to Mr. Coleridge’s story. There were a few seconds of silence, when Johnny decided to speak up.
“Oh, well that's horrible. So-,” Johnny was trying to keep the conversation going in order to make things a bit less awkward.
“How long have you been in this book?”
“Oh, for many years, I suppose,” Mr. Coleridge responded, as his eyes scanned the aisles of books in the library.
He had never thought there would be a place with so many books made up of all sorts of colors and binding material. Still, being in the dictionary and thesaurus section, he reached out in front of him and grabbed one of the newer dictionaries. He slowly flipped through the pages, taking a look at many of the words that were very unfamiliar to him. The boys just stared at him, observing the man’s every action.
“Oh, how things have changed!” he exclaimed. “So many new and wonderful words!”
“Shhhhhhhhh!” came the hiss of the annoyed student, once again.
Mr. Coleridge realized he was being too loud, and decided to just go from book to book along the shelves of the aisle. David and Johnny were standing there still staring at Mr. Coleridge as he thumbed through the different reference books in Section L. After about ten minutes, David's impatience got the better of him.
“Uh, Mr. Coleridge?”
“Yes?” the kind old Ben Franklin looking Mr. Coleridge responded, while thumbing through a slang dictionary from the late 1990s.
“We kind of have to get a book and leave,” David began.
Mr. Coleridge suddenly dropped the 1990's slang dictionary to the ground, making a loud thud. The boys looked around to see if the noise caught anyones attention, especially the kid who had been shushing them for the last thirty minutes, who, surprisingly, had not been able to see the bright flash from Section L.
Nothing. That was a close one, they thought, as they looked at each other. they knew they had to speak as low as possible. They were really pressing their luck.
“You cannot leave!” Mr. Coleridge pleaded in a panicky whisper.
David and Johnny were taken aback by the ancient man’s sudden change in tone.
“Why not?” David asked, completely befuddled by Mr. Coleridge’s attitude shift.
“Well, according to the spell, once the person who opened the book closes the book and walks away, I return back to my prison in these pages.”
Mr. Coleridge pointed with anger and fear at the pages of the book that were still open on the ground in the aisle.
“That sucks,” David replied.
Mr. Coleridge looked at David confused.
“Sucks?”
“He meant to say, this is not good,” Johnny interjected, immediately understanding that Mr. Coleridge would probably not understand most of the slang of the day, even if he did flip through that late 90’s slang book.
“Oh, ok,” Mr. Coleridge continued. “Well, as I was saying, if you leave, I return to the pages of the book. There is only one way of being released from the spell for good.”
“And what is that, Mr. Coleridge,” Johnny asked.
“The only way is to use the words in the book that has me trapped in a poem or song for one sole purpose, and that purpose only.”
Mr. Coleridge looked up with glassy blue eyes and smiled, as he thought about the reason why he had been banished in the first place.
“And that purpose, is love.”
Hearing these words, David smiled and tapped his elbow against Johnny's arm, and whispered.
“That’s perfect! That's exactly what we are trying to do!”
“Oh well, that's a holy coincidence!” replied a joyous Mr. Coleridge.
The old man looked down at the book that had been his prison for years. Johnny, seeing what Mr. Coleridge was looking at, bent down to grab the book and handed it to Mr. Coleridge's slightly trembling and frail hands. Mr. Coleridge held the book open, and, with a little bit of anxiety, looked at the pages and started to hurriedly turn them, his fingers whipping page by page.
“Oh my,” he softly exclaimed, with a worried look in his face.
“What's wrong?” David leaned in to get a closer look.
Mr. Coleridge looked at the boys with concern in his fading blue eyes.
“It seems that after all these years, the words in the pages of this book have faded away. There are only a few words left!”
Mr. Coleridge handed the book, which was open to one of the pages in the middle, to David. Soon, David started to turn the pages and realized what Mr. Coleridge had realized:
There were indeed only a few words left, and the words seemed very unfamiliar to David.
David's eyes left the book and immediately shot Johnny a worried stare. Johnny didn't waste any time and grabbed the book from David, thumbed through it and realized too there wasn't really anything left that they could use for the love song.
“Young lads,” Mr. Coleridge interrupted the boy's moment of panic with a bit of calm. The boys slowly locked their eyes back at Mr. Coleridge, hoping he had some solution to this problem.
“You must turn these pages and write down any of the words that are left. Then make a song or poem of love from these words. And when you perform these words, I will finally be free from this wretched spell!”
David grabbed the book back from Johnny and started to flip through the pages again, in case the first time he missed a page or two that actually had words he recognized.
But there was nothing new; just the exact same words as before.
David held up the book and handed it again back to Johnny, becoming more worried by the second.
“Dude, have you heard of these words?”
Johnny grabbed the book and flipped the pages again, just in case David missed a page when he did his second round of flipping.
Once again, there was nothing that the boys had missed the first time around. Mr. Coleridge gave the boys a puzzled look. He was confused at what was going on, but did not want to interrupt the boys in the middle of their odd methods of going through a book of words. Johnny held the book open to one of the pages that did have words, and stared at them for a few moments. Finally, he spoke.
“I have probably studied every SAT prep book from every publisher in the last two years, and I gotta tell ya, I have never heard any of these words ever in my life.”
Johnny paused again and looked at David intently in the eyes.
“Ever.”
David sighed, grabbed the book back, and, keeping it open, knew he had to make a decision.
“Well, I guess we gotta just figure this out.”
Johnny pointed to the front of the library towards some empty chairs at one of the rounded group tables they had passed by when they first walked in.
“Lets just sit at that table in the front of the library and take care of this situation.”
David and Johnny led an equally concerned, yet silent, Mr. Coleridge towards the big round table in the front of the library. As they walked, David kept a finger in the book, keeping it slightly open, making sure the old man did not return to his paper prison. Once they reached the table, the boys sat down across from each other, and, taking a cue from the boys, Mr. Coleridge sat down as well, just to the right of Johnny. The librarian had gone to the book storage room, out of view of the main library for the moment, so she was not aware that there was an 18th century man in the middle of the room. The other kids in the library were too busy with their noses in their own books, computers, or phones to even care.
As they sat down, Johnny reached into his backpack and grabbed a pencil and paper.
“What are you doing?” David asked, as he put the old book down in the middle of the table, keeping it open and using one finger to turn to a page that had a couple words on it.
“What do you think? I am going to write down the words and the definitions from the dictionary on a paper so we don't have to keep flipping back and forth through the pages of this big old book just to find a couple words.”
“A clever idea!” Mr. Coleridge quietly exclaimed in his best library whisper he could muster, considering how excited he was becoming.
David thought so too, but didn't want to give Johnny any more credit and give him a big head.
“Ok, but remember, when I hand you the book you need to keep it open at all times or else Mr. Coleridge goes back in.”
“Don't you think I know that,” Johnny was insulted at such a basic and obvious instruction.
Johnny reached over to the middle of the table and slid the book in front of him. David uselessly slumped back in his chair as Johnny got to work, vigorously flipping through the pages and quickly, but very neatly, writing down the words that had not faded with time:
Jargogle – to confuse
Twattle – to gossip
Gorgonize – to have mesmerizing effect on someone
Snoutfair – a good looking person
Lumming – heavy rain
Callipygian – having a beautifully shaped buttocks
Curmuring – rumbling sound of the bowels
“Ok, that should do it,” Johnny said, with a little bit of irritation in his voice.
Johnny took pride in his ability to know many words and what they meant. But these words were completely foreign to him, even though they were all part of the English language. The brief moment of irritation quickly left when he realized that it was David who was going to have to come up with a song based on these old words. Johnny laughed to himself and looked directly in David’s eyes and gave him a sarcastic look.
“So all you gotta do now is write your song with these seven words and play it at tomorrow's audition for Melanie, free Mr. Coleridge from his old spell, and get this homecoming thing over with.”
“That sound sooooo easy,” David replied with even more sarcasm, returning Johnny’s sarcastic stare with an even more sarcastic look, shifting his eyebrows up and tilting his nose down.
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