Free Kepler’s Dream by Juliet Bell

time.
    â€œWell, that’s a good sign.” He chuckled. He always found his own jokes pretty funny.
    â€œDad—” I blurted. I couldn’t hold back anymore. “There’s nothing to
do
around here. The only game she has is Boggle. I mean, there’s no Internet, there’s no TV—”
    â€œInternet?” He chuckled again. “No. Violet Von Stern is
not
wired. (Expletive deleted), Ella, you’re lucky you’ve got a signal on your cell phone.” Him and his expletives. I wondered what the GM had to say about
those
. “Listen, Belle, I understand what you’re saying. Absolute. That house—I mean, I haven’t been there for a long while, but it’s not set up for kids. I know that much. It’s an unweeded garden and all that.” He paused. “Has she shown you the
Librerery
yet?” He pronounced the word with a silly snobbish accent that did sound a bit like Grandmother.
    â€œNope.”
    â€œWell, I’ll tell you. It’s kind of amazing. My mother has a thing about books.”
    â€œI noticed.”
    â€œYeah, well, the
Librerery
has some pretty remarkable specimens, and though that may not sound very exciting—”
    â€œIt doesn’t.”
    â€œOK, but I’m just saying there are some things in there worth paying attention to. You won’t see them anywhere else, that’s for sure. Tell her to show you Kepler’s
Dream
—she has the Morrisedition, Belle, and there are only a dozen copies in the whole
world
.” That didn’t make any sense. What sort of book only has twelve copies? “That book—well, I’ve had mixed feelings about it over the years, to put it mildly, but you should still see it.”
    â€œSounds great. I can hardly wait.” I hoped the sarcasm made it through the phone line. “So … when are you coming to visit, Dad? You said you would.”
    â€œYeah—right. Uh—there’s a chance I might be able to stop through Albujerk on a layover, on my way to Colorado. It’s complicated. You know, Ella, as I think I explained to you, Mother and I don’t get along too well. That is—”
    I let a thick silence fill up the phone.
    â€œWell, anyway. I’ll—I’ll try to figure that out, Belle. OK?”
    OK, Dad, but you better mean it this time. You can’t flake out on me this summer, you know? Not
this
summer.
I wondered if there was anyone around who could explain that to him. Where was the (expletive deleted) dad manual when you really needed it?
    That night, maybe even the GM was tired of mushy broccoli, so after a game of Boggle—it really was what passed for entertainment at the GGCF—she took me out to dinner at a French place called Chez Albertine. There was something about going to a French restaurant when I knew there had to be great Mexican food all around that felt kind of like going to Paris and ordering tacos, but whatever. At least we were
out
.
    My grandmother ordered snails from the menu, “One of my favorite dishes!” I had to just pretend not to see them or I would get seriously grossed out. So over my steak and fries, for adistraction, I asked about her
Librerery
. I copied Dad’s goofy pronunciation, but she didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œThe Library?” Her face came into focus. “Would that interest you, Ella?”
    â€œSure.” I mean, not as much as going
online,
or watching a
movie,
or talking to one of my actual
friends,
but … compared with feeding peacocks all day, yeah.
Yesssss.
    â€œI have to open the place up soon in any case, as two boys are coming to help me begin cataloging the collection. High schoolers.” She didn’t sound thrilled about this. “They come—ahem!—recommended, but I find it impossible to tell them apart or remember their names, so I think of them as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
    She said this as though it were