Novella stood on her very tiptoes to reach the highest wooden shelf in the library corner. She tugged a dusty purple book from the shadows, and a square silver map fluttered down to the floorboards. The shiny ink twisted and shifted to spell: "Find the boy with the yellow scarf."
Novella tiptoed toward the hidden reading nooks and peeked around a towering shelf. A boy wrapped in a bright yellow scarf sat tapping his fingers on a blank sheet of paper. Novella slid the silver map onto his table just as a tiny sketched dragon winked its silver eye at them. The boy grinned, showing off a gap where a tooth used to be, and whispered, "I love dragons!"
The very next week, Novella cracked the purple pages open once more. Whoosh! A bright blue feather zoomed straight up and darted toward the poetry section. Novella ran after the glowing shape until it landed right on the open pages of a girl wearing huge green glasses. The girl blinked slowly behind the thick lenses. "Did your book just sneeze?" she asked.
Flipping to the very last page of the purple book, Novella searched for another hint, but the paper was completely bare. Her shoes squeaked against the quiet floor as she tapped her fingernails on the dry cover. Slowly, elegant silver letters curled across the blank space: "Bring them together." Biting her lip, Novella grabbed a stack of blank index cards from the empty front desk.
Novella rolled three small wooden chairs right into the middle of the brightest, dustiest library sunbeam. "Book club time!" her voice echoed fiercely down the long, quiet aisles. The boy with the yellow scarf and the girl with the green glasses hurried around the tall corner, waving their favorite paperback adventure stories in the air.
Settling into the middle chair, Novella crackled the heavy purple book flat against her knees. The silver words painted inside practically glowed in the afternoon light. They took turns reading the stories aloud, their deep, rumbling laughter mixing into the rustle of turning pages. Novella scooted her chair an inch closer to the others, absolutely ready to start the next chapter.