Free The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka Page B

fourth floor, he saw a sign: LAW LIBRARY . Perfect, he thought. As Phillip entered the library, he could smell musty, aging books. The bookcases went from floor to ceiling, with a stepladder at the end of each row. The tables were heavy oak with matching chairs that made clunky sounds when moved. No one was sleeping here. Men and women were busy searching shelves.
    A young lawyer with a yellow notepad strode down an aisle and examined a row of books. She grabbed a volume and retreated to a table. Phillip inspected the hole she left. Each one of the books around it was precisely the same size, shape, and color. Only the small numbers on the books differed:Atlantic 2nd. 487, Atlantic 2nd. 488, Atlantic 2nd. 489. Phillip thought maybe the books were about oceans. He slid one off the shelf and looked through it. The words appeared to be English, but they didn’t make any sense. “Discovery rule tolls statute of limitations,” he read. Phillip slipped the book back into its hole.
    Wandering into the next aisle, he found more sets of matching volumes. He passed through row after row, occasionally pulling a volume and examining it. The print in each book was so tiny and the pages so numerous that Phillip believed he could empty his entire brain and not fill even one volume.
    At the far end, the bookcases were lower, covering only three-fourths of the wall. A small, bright green book sitting on the highest shelf caught his eye, but he was too short to reach it. Phillip stepped onto the first shelf. He was almost there. He stepped onto the second shelf.
    Suddenly, he felt the bookcase begin to wobble. As Phillip jumped off, the bookcase gave way. It crashed down, spewing books onto him.
    “
Ahhhhhhh!
” he screamed.
    Phillip expected to feel the hefty, wooden bookcase flatten him like a cardboard clown run over by a steamroller. But the bookcase did not hit him. Its top was wedged against one of the tall units standing firmly behind him.
    Rescuers dug him out, then chewed him out for being there. Once the law librarian, Mr. Chang, determined that Phillip was not injured and that the boy was Veola’s troublemaking nephew, he issued a proclamation.
    “Young man,” Mr. Chang said to Phillip, “you are not leaving here until you have picked up these books and properly reshelved them.”
    A couple of strong men in suits lifted the bookcase and righted it, mumbling about faulty shelving and product liability lawsuits. Phillip picked up the books, methodically—one at a time—and put them back on the shelves.
    After a while, he found the green book that had caught his attention. Its title was
Fighting Back in Court
. Phillip opened the book. On the first page, a lawyer wrote about how the book would teach people their legal rights and how to file their own lawsuits.
    Phillip knew what a lawsuit was. Even though he wasn’t allowed to watch television, he did go to the movies sometimes. Bartholomew the Giant had once taken him to see a movie about a lawsuit. Plus, once the circus hired a lawyer for the purchase of an exotic animal, although it turned out the lawyer didn’t know the difference between a double-humped camel and a dromedary.
    “So that was Matilda’s kid.”
    “Yep. Spilled the whole load of books.” The voices came from the next aisle over. They were hushed but loud enough for Phillip to make out the words.
    “Like mother, like son.”
    “Whatever happened to Matilda?”
    “Who knows, and, after what she did, who cares?”
    Phillip dropped the green book and tiptoed to the end of his aisle. He peeked around the corner to see who was talking, but they were gone. Why were they making such strange remarks about his mom?
    Phillip returned to the green book and kept reading. He learned that purposely hitting someone with an object is called “an assault and battery.” If you commit an assault and battery—if you hit someone—and you hurt them or damagetheir property, you should be held responsible. According to