Flip the Silver Switch

by Jackie Yeager

  “So where do we do that?” I ask. “Is there a place like Meeting Room Twelve for us to meet in?”

  “Not exactly,” she replies. “But there will be.”

  “Where?” asks Mare.

  “Right here!”

  I look around at the forest surrounding us.

  “Here?” says Jillian. “We can’t work here.”

  “Why not?” asks Seraphina. “Is there a problem with it?”

  “Um, yeah,” says Mare. “It’s gross. There’s, like, no place to sit and there are leaves and twigs everywhere.”

  Gregor strolls over with a cartful of stuff. “Then I suggest you solve this problem. Your task is to make your new work space un-gross. You have forty-five minutes to complete it.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask

  “What is all that stuff?” asks Ander.

  “This, young Ander, is a set of old-fashioned garden tools. Long before yards cleaned themselves up, people did the work manually.”

  Jillian coughs. “Manually?”

  “Yes, Jillian, manually.”

  “But why doesn’t this area have a garden cleaning mechanism built in?” asks Jax.

  “We requested the yard cleaning feature be turned off.”

  “Why?” asks Mare. “This area could be the perfect spot to meet in just a few minutes.”

  “That’s true, Mare,” Gregor replies. “But nature has a way of bringing out creativity. This will be your thinking time before we brainstorm. And I would suggest you get busy. Last month for the Piedmont National Finals you had six weeks to solve the task. Solving the Global Task in two weeks will not be for the faint of heart.”

  “You heard him!” I say. “We have forty-five minutes. Let’s go!”

  Ander grabs a long pole with several prongs sticking out of it. Jax grabs a cart with two wheels. They stare at the objects like they’re from another planet. Gregor looks at the boys in disbelief. “Don’t tell me. You don’t know what to do with these?”

  “Nope,” says Ander. “Not really.”

  Gregor shakes his head. “I thought you kids were supposed to be smart.”

  “On second thought,” says Ander. “I know what mine does. You take it and whack it at the branches on the ground—to smash them into small pieces.”

  Gregor shakes his head. “No, not even close. This is a rake. The prongs are used to rake up the leaves. You turn it over this way to gather them up. You can also use it to smooth the dirt. Jax, your cart is actually called a wheelbarrow.”

  Ander shrugs. “Okay, maybe I’m not smart about everything.”

  I take the other rake like Ander’s and the girls grab the buckets. “Okay,” says Ander. “Let’s make a plan. Let’s pick up all the big branches first and put them in Jax’s wheelbarrow and then he can dump them over there. We can put the small sticks in the buckets and toss them over there too. Now, let’s see how fast we can do this.”

  “But wait!” I say. “This is our thinking time so no talking. Just think about ways to solve the task. Got it?”

  Mare rolls her eyes. “Got it.”

  Jillian wipes her hands on her shorts. “Do we have gloves or something?”

  “Sorry, Jillian,” says Gregor. “No gloves.”

  “Wait! I can run back inside to the craft room and make some real quick—for all of us!”

  “Jillian, no!” I say. “We don’t have time for that, and we don’t need them anyway. Let’s just get to work, okay?”

  She frowns and looks at the ground full of branches. “Okay.”

  For the first few minutes, we scurry around picking up the big branches. Jax dumps them someplace in the forest with his wheelbarrow. Then we gather the small twigs, branches, and leaves, place them in the buckets, and dump those too. We don’t say a word, but I’m not sure anyone is thinking about how to solve the task. Every time Mare looks at Ander, she laughs. I’m not sure why. I shush her to make her keep working. Jax makes several trips to the edge of the clearing, and every once in a while, I hear Jillian humming. Ander climbs a nearby tree to get a bird’s-eye view of the area, or so he says. Jax walks back from dumping the wheelbarrow and stops to read the task. I drag a large branch over to the pile and on the way back, I re-read it myself.

  Now that we can see the dirt that was underneath the mess, Ander and I use the rakes to smooth it out and collect the tiny leaves. Mare motions for Jax to help her move a fallen log. They can’t lift it by themselves, so the rest of us run over to help them. We move it to the cleared-out area, then search around the forest for more, and find three additional logs. Together we drag them over too. We stand there for a few seconds and Ander makes the shape of a square in the dirt. Then he sits down and leans back against one of the logs. He motions me next to him to do the same. That’s when we all get what he’s trying to do with the heavy branches. We form them into a square, large enough for us all to sit inside with our feet extended, and lean back against the logs. The tall trees around us form a canopy overhead.

  We have six minutes left, so we walk up to the tree and re-read the task. Then we find our places in our newly-created clubhouse and sit in silence. I think for a few minutes about how to solve the task, and an idea comes to my mind, but it’s lame so I keep trying. Hopefully my teammates are thinking up something better—or anything at all.

  Seraphina and Gregor reappear. “Wow,” Seraphina says. “This place looks great. And you solved this task with a few minutes to spare.”

  “It’s like our own secret clubhouse,” I say. “No one will even know we’re back here.”

  “Yes, this will certainly work as a meeting room. Well done, team.”

  “We didn’t talk or anything!” Ander exclaims.

  “We did hum a little, but that’s it,” I say. Jillian turns pink, probably thinking no one could hear her.

  “It’s perfect,” says Seraphina. “Except for maybe one thing that will make you more comfortable.” She turns to the metal wall of the tree suite and pushes a button. I feel tingling on my bare legs and then scratching. I bend my knees. “What the heck?” The ground below us is growing grass!

  “I thought you turned off the yard maintenance,” Mare says.

  “We did, all but the grass feature. We had a feeling it might come in handy.”

  I run my hand along the soft green blades. “This is way better!”

  “Are you guys ready to brainstorm now?” she asks.

  “Yes!” I reply. “Very ready.”

  “But I don’t get it,” says Ander. “Why did we go to all this trouble? Why aren’t we just brainstorming in the Inspiration Room?”

  Gregor grins. “You’ll have plenty of chances to use that room. But nothing fuels creativity like the great outdoors.”

  Ander shrugs, and we make room for them in the square. Gregor raises his arm and makes a motion with his fingers. An air screen drops down, a red board appears, and just like that, it feels like we’re back in Meeting Room Twelve at Camp Piedmont.

  “Whoa!” says Ander. “I didn’t know those could work outside.”

  Seraphina smiles. “Anything’s possible, Ander. Remember that.” She pulls the red board closer to her. “Okay, you guys know the drill. Call out as many ideas as you can. The red board will record them, but remember to be respectful of your teammates’ ideas. There are no bad ideas. All ideas are useful and may lead to an even better one. At this point, it doesn’t matter whose idea it is, only that we have as many ideas to work with as we can. Also, remember that Gregor and I cannot help you. This solution must be created entirely by all of you as a team—and no one else. Understand?”

  We nod, and the brainstorming session begins. I try to think of something cool to say, to tell my team all about my brilliant idea, but I don’t actually have one. The red board records an idea from Ander and one from Jillian, but they aren’t v
ery good, and it’s still pretty empty—and Mare, Jax, and I haven’t added any ideas at all.

  “These ideas are okay, but I can’t see how either of them can work. What do you guys think?” asks Jillian.

  Mare leans her head back on the log. “I don’t know.”

  Ander does the same. “I’m hungry.”

  Seraphina looks at her watch. “I thought you might be. It’s lunchtime anyway. Run over to le Cantine. We can meet back here after.”

  We take the path through the forest passing several different teams, but I don’t recognize any of them. We make our way across the clearing, and of course Martina and her team are walking out of the dining hall just as we walk in. She pushes her team aside and says, “Watch out, boys, make way for the famous New York team. They want to eat, so by all means, let them through.”

  “Whatever,” says one of her teammates, and together they keep walking.

  Mare makes a start to run after her, but Ander grabs her arm before she can.

  She lets out an angry sigh. “I don’t get what her problem is. What did we ever do to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, “but she really doesn’t like our team.”

  “She thinks we’re famous,” says Jillian.

  “Yeah, she does,” Jax agrees.

  When we get inside le Cantine, it’s almost empty. I guess most of the teams must have eaten already. We load our trays with chicken sandwiches, celery, and some mushy thing with grapes, and I decide I don’t care what Martina thinks. She’s our competition, and I’m not here to be friends with her anyway.

  After we eat, we race back to our clubhouse, where Seraphina and Gregor are waiting for us to continue brainstorming. But all of our ideas seem to be stuck in our brains, and the afternoon session turns out to be just as bad as the morning. After working the whole day, all we have to show for it is a homemade clubhouse. And yeah, that was more fun than I thought it would be, but the calendar pages are flipping, and we need to think up an idea.

  Later that night, we climb into our sleeping eggs, and Andora’s voice rings out through the tree suite speakers. “Good evening boys and girls. We hope you had a productive first day working on your Global Task. But now we encourage you to get your rest. Tomorrow is Swirl and Spark Training Day! Good night and remember . . . Think more. Work hard. Dream big!”

  I drop my head onto the pillow. Great. Another lost day. When are we going to have time to solve this stupid task?

  Early in the morning, we head to the Imagination Centre training facility, where we have practice for the Swirl and Spark Recall task. This is the part of the competition where we’ll solve a task that we’re not given ahead of time. It tests our ability to think quickly and creatively. None of us know what type of task we will get. It could just be a question we need to answer or we could be instructed to do something. We just won’t know until we enter the room.

  It’s good we’re getting practice time on these tasks, but we’re wasting a day we could be working on the big Global task, and we don’t have that much time to begin with. I feel like dragging my team to a secret spot so we can brainstorm again, but instead, I walk into the training facility.

  The facility is like a big gymnasium with stations. Each station is set up with a different five-minute task—like the ones we could be asked to solve on competition day. Seraphina leads us to the first one where there’s a rope hanging from the ceiling. This must be a physical challenge.

  A voice projects from speakers all around us. “At the top of the rope is a bucket of cotton balls. Each team member must grab a handful of cotton. Before time is up, the cotton must be placed in the box next to the door. Press the red button when you have finished. You have five minutes to complete this task and will receive bonus points for speed. You may begin now.”

  Seraphina and Gregor step aside.

  “Okay guys, who should climb first?” asks Ander.

  “Can you climb that high?” asks Jax. “I can’t.”

  “Well, someone needs to try first,” says Mare.

  “I don’t think I can,” says Jillian. “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “Come on, you guys! We only have five minutes,” says Ander.

  I grab the rope. “I’ll go.” I place my hands around the rope and try to shimmy my way up. But then it burns, and my hands start to slip.

  “Don’t look at me,” says Jax.

  “But we all have to climb,” says Ander.

  I look up at the bucket of cotton. “Hold on, no we don’t. The voice didn’t say that. We each have to grab a handful of cotton, but only one of us has to get the cotton.”

  “Oh, yeah,” says Jillian. “Can any of you do it?”

  “These chicken arms?” says Ander. “Um, no.”

  Mare grabs the rope, one hand after the other, to hoist her body up to the top. She tips the bucket over and we catch the cotton balls as they fall to the ground. “Wow, Mare, awesome!”

  We each grab handfuls and place them in the box next to the door. Jillian hits the red button and our time flashes on the box. Three minutes, twenty-four seconds.

  Gregor steps into the center of the station. “Well done, team. Well done.”

  Seraphina beams. “That was good! Let’s try another one.”

  We move to a station filled with small puzzle pieces that have been scattered on a table. The voice calls through the speaker. “This puzzle can be used to tell a story. You have five minutes to use every piece to tell an original story of your making.”

  “What? That’s impossible!” says Ander. “There are hundreds of puzzle pieces here. We don’t know what it’s a picture of.”

  “Yeah,” says Mare. “We’ll never have time to put them all together.”

  “Well, we have to try,” says Jillian, searching for matching pieces.

  “Wait, hold on,” says Jax. “The instructions didn’t say we had to put the puzzle together. It just says we have to use it to tell a story.”

  I feel a smile come over my face. “Okay then . . . I’ve got this. Once upon a time there was a little girl in Crimson Catropolis walking through a meadow.”

  Jillian smiles. “On her walk, she picked hundreds of little flowers.”

  “They were such odd shapes,” Mare continues. “They almost looked like puzzle pieces.”

  “They even had cardboard petals,” adds Jax.

  “But the little girl had a problem,” says Ander. “She wanted to bring them home to her mom, but there were too many to carry.”

  “So she took off her hat and placed the flowers inside it,” I say.

  Jillian grins. “Now she had the perfect way to carry the puzzle flowers home to her mom. The end.”

  I reach for the red button on the table and press it. The timer flashes two minutes, fifty-three seconds.

  “Jax, good thinking. That one was close.”

  “How did you even think to do that anyway?” asks Mare.

  “Well, most of the problems here don’t need to be solved in the obvious way. Remember that concrete room, the one with all the items that needed to be covered in paper? Well, this was like that.”

  “Glad to see you figured that out,” Seraphina replies. “Nicely done.”

  “And impressive that the rest of you caught on,” says Gregor. “But last year’s winning team was twenty seconds faster.”

  “Great,” I say.

  “No worries yet,” he replies. “But it will not serve you well to be overconfident. Let’s move on, shall we?”

  After lunch, we return to the training facility, but I wish we had stopped at the first two tasks. When we try to predict if an orange will float and prove our hypothesis, we can’t agree on if it will float or not. We eventually decide it is a trick question so we say it will float, but then we peel the orange and test it in the water . . . and it sinks. We totally s
hould have left the peel on.

  The rest of our tasks are easier, but Gregor says they definitely won’t be this easy come competition day. I just hope that when we walk into that room, we get one that we can figure out—quick.

  THE WATERFALL

  We walk back from breakfast the next morning and Seraphina and Gregor are waiting for us in front of our tree suite, sitting on the steps. “Good morning, my Crimson Kids. Are you ready to get your creative juices flowing and come up with a way to solve this task that only the five of you can?”

  “Yup,” says Ander. “We’re ready.”

  “Okay then. Your job is to hang out in the Inspiration Room and let your brains unwind however they will. The best ideas break free when you’re not trying too hard. So relax and have fun. Meet in the backyard clubhouse in thirty minutes. We’ll check in with you then.”

  Jillian grins. “I know where I’m going for inspiration.”

  “Jillian, the craft area is in the Work Room.”

  “But all that stuff inspires me. Can’t I think in there?”

  Gregor nods. “If you like.”

  “I’m going to the Harmony Room,” says Ander.

  “Me too,” says Jax.

  “Well, I’m going in the nap room,” says Mare.

  Seraphina laughs. “It’s not a nap room, Mare.”

  “Just kidding. I would never sleep when we’re supposed to be thinking.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “I’ll go in there too, to make sure you don’t.”

  We walk up the steps of the tree suite, steadying ourselves across the wobbly bridge, and climb up the rock wall to the door. I wish I could stop at the floating playground, hang out on the flying carpet, and think there for a while. But instead I head upstairs to the quiet area of the Inspiration Room with Mare. I mean, someone has to make sure she doesn’t sleep. I flop onto a pillow facing one side of the waterfall and she heads to the other.

  The waterfall that separates us never stops moving. The water drops, but no matter how far down it falls, a few seconds later, it appears right back on top again, ready to fall again. That’s kind of how I feel about this whole Piedmont Challenge. Just when we solve one task and reach the very top, we take a step off the ledge and fall to the bottom. The only way to get back up to the top is to solve another task.