Free The Cupid Chronicles by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

go online. I mean, maybe libraries are becoming dinosaurs. Maybe it’s just their time to go extinct or some—”
    â€œDinosaurs? Extinct?
Tina, that’s not even funny …”
    But Tina is off in another zone, fixing her makeup with extreme concentration.
    My speech is going to have to be good. Really, really good.
    And so, while my lab partner, Jay Zonderman, is dissecting our frog in biology, poor little slimy green thing, I’m thinking about what to say tonight.
    And while Mr. Kay, our algebra teacher, is explaining how to calculate the hidden assets of unknown integers, I’m jotting down notes for my speech.
    And while Mademoiselle Ferret is delivering a monologue as if it’s opening night in Paris, I’m watching like I’m absolutely mesmerized, but inside I’m imagining how I will deliver my own speech tonight. I’ll start off serious and fill their heads withfacts and then travel south until I’m pulling on heartstrings.
Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.
    The only problem is, I haven’t figured out the heartstrings part and that is the really important part. How do I reach the council members’ hearts? What makes them tick? I don’t even know these horrible people. But I know who does.
    After school I race to the library. Thankfully, it’s open.
    â€œCome on in, Willa,” Mrs. Saperstone says. “Let’s see what we can do.”
    It’s cold in here. Mrs. Saperstone is wearing gloves. She sits at her desk by the window. I plop down in a chair. We look out at the big gray whale.
    I keep my mouth closed. Stella says sometimes I talk so much, people can’t hear themselves think. So I sit back and “zip the lips” as my fourth grade music teacher used to say. Actually, music class would have been a whole lot nicer if Miss Bisket had zipped
her
lips. That woman could rip the fun out of any song. She could just rip out the fun the way they yanked out rotten teeth in Shakespeare’s time.
    Mrs. Saperstone is staring out the window, so quiet and patient. It’s amazing we are kindred spirits. I’m quiet sometimes, yes, but no way am I patient. I wasborn without the patience gene. I got triple worries, zero patience.
    After a few minutes that feel like an hour, Mrs. Saperstone looks at me.
    â€œWe’ve got to make it
personal,”
she says.
    â€œThat’s right,” I say. “We’ve got to tug at their hearts, somehow”
    Mrs. Saperstone nods, then she’s off to her thinking again.
    I get up and walk around. This place brings back so many memories. I stop at the L-M aisle. The Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. Mrs. Saperstone introduced me to them one summer long ago. I read them over and over again. Frog and Toad were best friends. I wanted one of those, a best friend. A frog or a toad, it didn’t matter. But with Stella plucking us up and moving us from town to town so often, I was never in one place long enough to make one. My books were my best friends.
    â€œSign this, will you, Willa?”
    I walk back to the window.
    Mrs. Saperstone looks excited. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she says.
    Mrs. Saperstone hands me a pen and an index card. It says, Bradbury, Ray,
Fahrenheit 451,
andunder that, “Date” and “Borrower’s Name” with rows of blue lines.
    â€œWhat is this?” I ask.
    â€œIt’s the old-fashioned way we used to borrow books in Bramble. You signed your name on the card in the pocket in the back. Signing your name made it personal. Like you were borrowing something special.”
    â€œNice,” I say, not quite sure what this has to do with my speech.
    Mrs. Saperstone nods. “One of the nicest parts was that you could look at the card and see who had read that book before you. When you read the names, you felt a connection to those people. And when you signed your name, you connected your-self to all the people who would read that