The library opens promptly at 9 a.m. daily. On this cloudy and drizzly Saturday morning, twelve-year-old Sarah Beasley walked in the front door, her Indian head penny hidden in the secret compartment of her
favorite backpack. Waving at her stepdad, she pulls open the tall, heavy oak doors and steps into the

library.

"See you in an hour and a half, Squishball. Call me if you need more time." Sarah's new stepdad, Wayne,  loves shouting. She cringed as he belted out his message, as if he were introducing drivers at the Daytona 500 from the press booth while the cars were revving their engines in warmup. Everyone in a six-block radius now knew he was coming back at 10:30. She really liked him, though. He was really trying to be the best dad possible, but her real dad was way more subdued in how he communicated with her. She often thought about how things were before the accident that took her dad two years earlier. That said, when things were really tough, it was Wayne who stepped up with the Storytorium Library idea.

Sarah has been waiting an entire week to read another story about Mungie. She can't wait to find out what that sassy, precocious little boy does in today’s episode.

​

"Happy Saturday morning, Sarah. What can I do for you today?" Sarah doesn't know the librarian’s proper name; she only knows him by sight and has made up a name for him. She calls him Locomotive Bob. He doesn't seem to mind at all.

"Hi, Bob. I've been waiting all week, and I found another penny." She leans in to whisper her secret message, so close that she can even smell his aftershave. It's the one with the little ship on the bottle—a smell she is reminded of because her real father used to smell like that when he leaned in to wake her up on Saturday mornings.

"I remember the rules, Bob. I need to be little-mouse quiet. No one is supposed to know that there's a
room with unwashed stories." Sarah lives in a time where ALL stories are specifically crafted to fit a generic "approved" theme and an approved storyline criteria. This library is not one of the recently built government-controlled and government-designed libraries. This is one of the few that has a history of old-school architecture and, with it, old-school flavor. Everything Bob does officially follows the government guidelines, but unofficially, the old library is home to secret rooms and magic catalogues. As he does every Saturday, from his weathered desk in the lobby, Bob takes the buttery smooth glance around the room. When the seemingly ancient librarian is satisfied no one is watching, Bob casts a little side-eye look at Sarah. "You know the drill, my sweet little monkey. Where's the entry fee?"

She leans into Bob's face as if ready to tell him a secret. She can feel him smile when they both hear the clinking happen as she drops the Indian head penny into the railroad train bank on his desk. Bob reaches under the desk and pushes a concealed button. Somewhere on an upper floor, she hears the familiar click of the release latch for room 9. Her destination is located on the third floor, even though the elevator only travels to the second. Viewed from outside the building, the old-style facade is a reminder of stylish architecture that could actually accommodate a third floor and is one of the few that could be called warm and homey. 

Sarah bounds up the stairs two steps at a time, sprinting to get there before someone finds it open. She pushes on the heavy, soundless door and is instantly greeted by the familiar smells of real life hanging in the air, with no intention of leaving the doorway. Walking to the second section, she nervously looks to the right and left.

Occasionally, another boy or girl can be found sitting on the floor in an aisle all alone, grinning or smiling, sometimes even weeping as their minds are immersed in the pages of the book they're reading. Pretending that she's casually checking for just anything at all, she has only one thought in mind: the book called Mungie. It's a unique book, in fact, a magical one. It only displays one chapter every week. You can't go back and reread an old story in the Mungie book, looking for clues to the new story. Every week's chapter is about an experience of a boy who has no tight buddy friends, no real parental guidance or supervision, and has no idea he's a constant target of an enemy who wants him dead. In his childlike innocence, he doesn't realize the nefarious intent of the one who creates opportunities for disaster, or just how Mungie manages to survive those circumstances.

Sarah gently grabs the book, caresses the red spine, and quietly steals away to her favorite corner—the one she always sits in so no one can read over her shoulder. She excitedly opens this week's chapter.

What a great day. Mungie smiles as he leaves Mike's house with the card he's been looking for for so very long. His glassy eyes are mesmerized by the photo on the front side of the card, and he's as distracted as he's ever been in his life. Mungie anxiously walks out of Mike's front door and heads across the lawn to Leonard's house.

"Tommy Davis' rookie card. Now I have Tommy Davis' rookie card. Yes. Leonard is just gonna be sick that I own the entire 1960s Dodgers baseball card set". Mungie only needed the final two Dodgers outfield baseball cards, and yesterday he traded for Willie Davis.

Walking across the street, he carries his shoebox full of baseball cards, his prized possessions. He has cards from his favorite players, Dodgers players, and almost every other active National League team's players. His favorite is Wally Moon. The home field for the new Dodgers is the Coliseum in LA, and there's a strange layout feature that makes LA fans laugh: a short fence in left field. Really, it's only 200 feet, but it features something crazy—a 30-foot high net. Wally Moon played in left field and had perfected a trick to play balls hit into left field. When another team's player hit the ball into the net, Wally knew just how to grab the bottom of the net and snap it, sending a ripple up to the top and kicking the ball out. Instead of watching the ball slowly roll all the way down the net, the ripple pops the ball away from the net, allowing him a chance to throw the runner out at second base. He was magnificent at the maneuver.

Mungie doesn't pause at all and just jumps off the curb to cross the street on his way to Leonard's house. Not paying attention to anything else around him, he starts picking through all of his cards, thumbing them in his quiet residential neighborhood, sorting them in order as he walks. It was at that moment that the first part of the disaster happened. He stumbled, and his card box went flying into the air, plopping and fluttering to the ground, unceremoniously and quite messily littering the street with his precious treasures. Oblivious to any possibility of danger, Mungie got on his hands and knees, down in the street, and frantically started picking up his cards, even putting them in order back into his shoebox. That's when the second part of the disaster struck.

Eugene Castleberry (nicknamed Castlefats by the younger kids), a local 19 year-old neighboorhood troublemaker, who'd been drinking with some other tough kids, came flying around the corner on the east end of the street, and with that, impaired as he was, didn't spot a little kid in the middle of the street collecting his cards. It was too late when Mungie realized the danger and stood up. The center grill of the Chevy struck Mungie like a perfectly planned and timed impact, only this time, it wasn't just the cards that went flying through the air.

Incredibly, Mungie landed on his feet, and his neighbor said he shouted at the top of his lungs, "I'm invincible!" But as the words came out of his mouth, Castlefats jumped out of the car, realizing what terrible trouble he was in, he started to run away. The car kept moving and hit Mungie again. This time, the blue Chevy wrapped him around the fire hydrant in front of Mike's yard, breaking his pelvis and his right arm. A wobbly and broken Mungie quickly found out that he wasn't quite so invincible​ after all.