Over in fiction now, Ian stood on tiptoes to pull a large green book from a high shelf. A mystery: the blue sticker-man with his magnifying glass peered from the spine. Ian sat on the floor and started in on the first page as if it indeed contained all the mysteries of the world, as if everything in the universe could be solved by page 132. His glasses caught the fluorescent light, two yellow disks over the pages. He didn’t move until the other children began gathering and Loraine bent down beside him and said, “Everyone’s waiting for you.” We weren’t—Tony didn’t even have his coat off yet—but Ian scooted on his rear all the way across the floor to join us, without ever looking up from the book.
We had five listeners that day, all regulars.
“All right,” I said, hoping Loraine would make her exit now, “where did we leave off?”
“Miss Trunchbull yelled because they didn’t know their math,” said Melissa.
“And she yelled at Miss Honey.”
“And they were learning their threes.”
Ian sighed loudly and held up his hand.
“Yes?”
“That was all two weeks ago. BUT, when last we left our heroine, she was learning of Miss Trunchbull’s history as a hammer thrower, and also we were learning of the many torture devices she kept in her office.”
“Thank you, Ian.”
He grinned at me. Loraine rolled her eyes—whether at me or Ian, I wasn’t sure—and tottered back to the stairs. I almost always had to cut Ian off, but he didn’t mind. Short of burning down the library there was nothing I could do that would push him away. I was keeping *Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing* behind the desk to sneak to him whenever he came without his babysitter. Almost every afternoon for the past week he had run downstairs and stuck his head over my desk, panting.
Back then, before that long winter, Ian reminded me most of a helium balloon. Not just his voice, but the way he’d look straight up when he talked and bounce around on his toes as if he were struggling not to take off.
(*Did he have a predecessor? asks Humbert.*
*No. No, he didn’t. I’d never met anyone like him in my life.*)
Whenever he couldn’t find a book he liked, he’d come lean on the desk. “What should I read?”
*“How to Stop Whining,”* I’d say, or *“An Introduction to the Computer Catalogue,”* but he knew I was kidding. He knew it was my favorite question in the world. Then I’d pick something for him—*D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths* one time, *The Wheel on the School* another. He usually liked what I picked, and the *D’Aulaires* launched him on a mythology spree that lasted a good two months.