The Gollywhopper Games

by Jody Feldman

The other team stared at Gil’s team, and Gil stared right back until, ghostlike, both sets of doors lumbered open on their own. Gil and his team edged through.

  “Oh. My. Gosh,” said Bianca.

  “Am I hallucinating?” Lavinia asked.

  Gil shook his head. “Only if I am.”

  Palm trees and monstrous flowers rose for stories. Hot-air balloons and skeletons danced from the ceiling. Huge shoes dangled, giant pandas floated around, and gigantic spears of broccoli sprouted from the ground. Puffs of gold confetti rained in random spots, catching the light and casting a brilliance across a small area. A waterfall rushed and rumbled somewhere to his left. And who knew what was beyond that maze of rainbow-colored walls?

  “Green team. Green team.”

  Gil closed his mouth and focused on Carol.

  “The wow factor here is huge. It still is for me after hundreds of times. But now I need you to look up to the spectator area. Wave to everyone.” She waited for them to wave. “Now forget they’re there. See Jason, the main camera guy to your left? Wave to Jason and his camera. Wave, wave. Good. Now forget him, too.

  “But here’s something to remember.” Carol pointed toward a plain door. “Through there lies a short corridor leading directly to the conference room where we met. We took the long way around and allowed you to make a grand entrance. The conference room can be your second-best friend. Use it as a home base if you find King Kong, the racecar, and all the other random props too distracting. Now come this way.”

  They stopped at a long, Plexiglas table with green twinkle lights encased along its edges. In the center, on top of a stack of three boxes, sat a green envelope with a big “#1” on it.

  “Ta-da! Your first puzzle. When you hear the chimes, open the envelope and begin. I’ll be lurking in the shadows if you need me. I’m rooting for you, but by the rules, I’m also your impartial referee and your harshest judge. Do me proud.” Carol put on a set of headphones, spoke a few words into the attached microphone, then gave a thumbs-up to someone in the viewing area.

  An unbroken line of faces peered from the perimeter of the room. It reminded Gil of feeding time at the zoo. He caught a glimpse of his mom and dad. Then, farther down, Old Man Golliwop. And Mr. Titus, touching his nose and his chin.

  Gil stared at Rocky until Rocky noticed.

  Rocky looked up at his dad and ran his own finger across his neck. “Satisfied?” he said to Gil.

  Blong! Blong! Blong!

  Rocky’s hand shot out fastest. He grabbed the envelope and ripped it open.

  Puzzle #1

  Seek A Lively Evil Magician, With Its Terrible

  Cackling Head

  (choose your answer from these three products)

  Lavinia spaced out the boxes: The Black Magic Game, The Salem Witch Game, and My First Magic Act.

  “I wanna win,” said Rocky. “Someone think of something smart to say.”

  Gil and Lavinia were leaning over the table, staring at the clue. “That’s what we’re trying to do,” said Gil. “Anyone care to help?”

  “Or else,” Rocky said, lowering his voice, “we can talk real soft, look like we’re intelligent and pretend to solve it.”

  “Why don’t we actually solve it?” said Gil.

  Bianca and Rocky gathered around. Thorn stood a half step away, looking bored.

  Rocky jabbed Gil in the arm. “Look,” he said, pointing at Thorn. “The baby’s sulking. He misses his ear thing.”

  “Do not,” Thorn said. He moved closer to the group.

  Gil tried to ignore the drama and decipher the puzzle. “Seek a lively evil magician, with its terrible cackling head.” He turned over the puzzle, looking for directions, clues…something.

  “Why’d you do that?” said Rocky. “The back’s as blank as your mind.”

  “Shut up and let him think,” said Bianca.

  Good advice. Gil scanned the warehouse, looking for a grotesque magician with a top hat and magic wand. He saw a tuba, an enormous jar of pickles, but no cackling head. Wait. That wasn’t the way to solve it. The answer had to be within the puzzle. He pointed to the paper. “Does anything look strange here?”

  “Why does anything have to look strange?” said Rocky. “Well, except for your—Never mind. The puzzle says we’re looking for a magician. So that could be The Black Magic Game or My First Magic Act. But it’s evil, so that means the first one. But witches can have terrible, cackling heads so it could be The Salem Witch Game.”

  “In other words,” said Bianca, “you have no idea.”

  Gil shook his head and looked at the clock. They had less than two minutes to figure this out before Rocky would rip open one of those games on his own. Gil felt it.

  “Excuse me,” said Lavinia, “but I may have the start of an idea.”

  Maybe Gil had one teammate with a brain.

  “The sentence is grammatically incorrect,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Gil, “I noticed there’s no period.”

  “The sentence also lacks commas.”

  “There’s a comma,” said Rocky. “See? ‘Seek a lively evil magician—comma—with its terrible cackling head.’”

  “But that comma is misplaced. There should be two. One between ‘lively’ and ‘evil’ and one between ‘terrible’ and ‘cackling.’ Strings of adjectives take commas.”

  “Maybe,” said Gil, “we’re supposed to pause where the comma is.”

  “Perhaps,” Lavinia said, “but it’s something else, too.”

  “And that would be…” said Rocky.

  “The word its. A magician is a person, a he or a she. Why would they use ‘its’ instead of ‘his’ or ‘her’?”

  “You may have something,” said Gil.

  “Ooh,” said Bianca. “I might have something else.”

  “Fleas?” said Rocky.

  Bianca shot him a poisonous look. “So I might not be the smartest here—I almost flunked math—but I wrote this history paper about Janice Dickinson, the first super-model. Don’t you love history? Anyway, I would have gotten an A, but I capitalized all the letters in the title after my teacher reminded me not to capitalize words like and and with. And the five stinkin’ points she took away brought my paper down to an eighty-nine and—”

  “Bianca! You’re a genius,” said Gil. “You, too, Lavinia. Look. There is a reason for ‘its.’ Look at the capitalized letters, just the capitalized letters.”

  As Gil read them, the others chimed in. “S-A-LE-M-W-I-T-C-H.”

  Before they reached the “C-H,” Rocky had wrestled open the lid of The Salem Witch Game and pulled a card from the green envelope marked STUNT #1.

  Stunt #1

  SEE THE YELLOW STRIPE

  ON THE FLOOR?

  FOLLOW IT TO THE PIÑATAS.

  MORE INSTRUCTIONS

  AWAIT YOU THERE.

  Rocky raced off. Right as the other four caught up with him, he yanked down an envelope with such force that it shot a wooden pole the size of a large broom handle right toward them. It fell just short and rattled across the floor.

  “Rocky!” yelled Bianca. “You could have killed us.”

  “What? What’d I do?”

  Gil rolled his eyes. “Just read it, Rocky.”

  Rocky held up the message and read it aloud.

  Stunt #1

  Look above you in the air.

  See five piñatas hanging there?

  Four contain a gooey brew.

  One contains a clue for you.

  With all ten hands upon this pole,

  strike until you make a hole.

  If goo comes out, don’t lose all hope—

  the next may hold your envelope.

  Swaying from near-invisible wires were five piñatas: a black cat, a witch hat, a witch head, a broom, and a cauldron.

  “Let’s smash the witch in the middle,” said Rocky. “Where’s the pole?”

  “It’s what you almost killed us with,” Bianca said.

  “Here,”
said Lavinia, who had sneaked away to fetch it.

  Rocky grabbed the pole from her hands and reared back to take a swing himself.

  “Wait!” Lavinia’s scream seemed to startle even herself. “The rule says all ten hands.”

  “Then get some hands over here,” said Rocky.

  “I’m at the top,” said Thorn, taking the pole away. “Dewitt-Formeys always land on top. It’s our family code.”

  “So tell me,” Rocky said. “Is your family code on the family crest on the family flag on the family mansion? What a dweeb!”

  “Cut it out, Rocky,” said Gil. “Grab the pole.”

  Rocky latched on underneath Thorn’s hands. Then came Lavinia’s, Gil’s and Bianca’s.

  With Rocky’s power controlling the pole, they reared it back and took a swing. It missed the target, but lifted Thorn off the floor, spilling him away from the group.

  “Forget your family code,” said Rocky. “We need to organize by height.”

  Thorn held on at the bottom. Lavinia grasped just above him, then Gil, Bianca, and Rocky. They swiped at the witch. Again. Again. But their pathetic taps only made her sway more.

  Gil let go. “Some of us are going left and some are going right, and we’re not in sync.”

  “If we have to do this,” said Thorn, “then we need to work it like a crew team so we all swing the same way at the same time.”

  “Crew team?” said Bianca. “What’s a—”

  “It’s like five people rowing the same boat,” said Gil. “When Thorn says, ‘stroke,’ we all swing this way.” Gil nodded his head to his right. “Okay, Thorn. Go!”

  “Stroke,” said Thorn like the effort to speak would kill him.

  They completely missed the witch’s head.

  “Stroke,” he said in a voice that could put a sugar-shocked kid to sleep.

  They managed to tap it like the first few tries.

  “Stroke,” he said with some conviction.

  Direct hit.

  “Stroke! Stroke!” he yelled.

  They were in a rhythm now.

  “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

  “Eew!” A big blob of green goo globbed out and struck Thorn’s shoulder. He let go to wipe it off. “Do you know how expensive this shirt is?”

  “Have Daddy buy you another one,” said Rocky.

  Another blob globbed onto Bianca’s shoe. She let go. “Gross. It’s like—”

  “It’s not phlegm, Bianca. I promise,” said Gil. “You’ll be okay.”

  “C’mon,” said Rocky. “We’re attacking the cat.”

  Bianca and Thorn took their places on the pole again.

  “Stroke!” Thorn commanded.

  A wobbly hit.

  “Stroke! Stroke!”

  Back in rhythm.

  “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

  This time a red blob hit Lavinia on the back, but she held on.

  “The hat,” said Rocky.

  “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

  A hole—nothing coming out.

  “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

  The gleam of green paper.

  “Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!”

  Out fluttered the envelope. Lavinia, quickest to the floor, picked it up.

  Before she could open it, Carol made an appearance. Either she materialized from nowhere, or she’d been somewhere in the shadows the whole time.

  “You guys,” she said. “You did a great job, but if this were the whole ball game, I’d wake up bald tomorrow morning. The other team is ten seconds in front of you. Get moving!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Lavinia crept her index finger under the flap of the envelope.

  “Rip it!” Rocky shouted.

  Lavinia jumped, sending the envelope airborne.

  Gil snatched it before it landed.

  Puzzle #2

  “My coat keeps me the warmest during this

  January freeze,” bragged Tracy.

  If the above sentence equals ZEBRA,

  then what does the following sentence equal?

  The pain in Matthew’s elbow lingered

  through the month of March.

  (Move to table #2,

  directly behind the piñatas.)

  The only things directly behind the piñatas were one cameraperson, a pair of four-foot dice, and an even larger cup and saucer.

  “Who stole table number two?” said Rocky. “Gil?”

  Gil spun around, ready to glare. Instead he shot out his arm, alongside Rocky’s ear. He pointed. “‘Behind,’” Gil said, “depends on where you’re standing. Turn around.”

  Green lights blinked on the other side of the piñatas.

  All five ran to the table and gathered around the three boxes: My First Calendar, I Want to Be a Doctor, and Bowling Buddy.

  “Oh, great,” said Bianca. “I thought I knew this one, but they don’t have a math game on the table. There should be a math game.”

  Gil knew he shouldn’t take time to ask. “Why should there be a math game?”

  “The sentences are supposed to equal something. Isn’t that math?”

  “Yeah,” said Rocky. “I’ve never seen math like this.”

  “Maybe it’s not math,” said Gil, exhaling.

  Rocky exhaled louder. “But they say, ‘equal.’”

  “The sentences,” said Lavinia, “don’t need to equal anything mathematically. Logically speaking, if you assign numerical values to the letters according to their positions in the alphabet, the letters in the sentence will add up to more than the letters in the word ‘zebra.’”

  Rocky snickered. “What’d she say?”

  If there was such a thing as a funny nightmare, Gil was in it.

  “If it’s not math,” Bianca said, “what is it?”

  “It’s boring,” said Thorn.

  Bianca stuck her tongue out at him. “If you’d help us figure this out, maybe you wouldn’t be so bored.”

  Rocky slapped her on the back. “Good one, Bianca.”

  Three TV cameras captured that whole scene. Gil wished the cameras could capture the three of them and ship them off to Neptune.

  Gil turned his attention to the puzzle, now in Lavinia’s hand. “Okay,” he said, trying to steer them back. “‘“My coat keeps me the warmest during this January freeze,” bragged Tracy.’ What could possibly lead us to the word ‘zebra’?”

  “I’ve only been able to rule out things,” said Lavinia. “The sentence does not remotely concern a zebra. Zebras don’t live in climates with January freezes.”

  “But last January I went on an African safari, and we saw zebras,” said Thorn.

  “I don’t believe they had you in mind when they designed the puzzle,” Lavinia said.

  Gil smiled. Go, Lavinia.

  They stood in silence, staring at the paper.

  “What you said before, Lavinia? That the sentence isn’t about zebras? This could be a stretch,” Gil said, “but the second sentence mentions March, part of a calendar. So maybe we shouldn’t pick My First Calendar. It also talks about elbow pain, so maybe we shouldn’t pick I Want to Be a Doctor, either.”

  Lavinia rubbed her neck. “You’re implying that because the sentence doesn’t mention bowling, that’s the answer, but I can’t buy that. The first puzzle literally spelled out the solution.”

  “Yeah,” said Gil. “I thought that was a stretch.”

  “No, it’s a joke,” said Rocky. “We’re wasting more than penalty minutes looking at this. Let’s pick bowling. Now!”

  “No,” Gil said. “You heard the rules. If we mess up, we need to start—”

  “Shush,” said Lavinia. “I’m onto something. I was looking for letter patterns….”

  “Get to the point,” said Rocky.

  Lavinia stopped, closed her mouth.

  “Forget him,” said Bianca. “Keep going.”

  “Look at this sentence,” Lavinia continued. “‘“My coat keeps me the warmest during
this January freeze,” bragged Tracy.’ It contains all the letters in the word ‘zebra’.”

  Gil blinked. The letters popped at him, right there—all the letters together. “Look. Between ‘freeze’ and ‘bragged’. Slide the two words together and—”

  “Find the word in the second sentence already,” said Rocky.

  Gil and Bianca read together, “The pain in Matthew’s elbow lingered through—”

  “Bowling,” said Bianca.

  Rocky grabbed the box. “That’s what I was going to open ten hours ago.”

  “Cool!” said Bianca. “‘Elbow’ and ‘lingered’ together. I mean, how did someone think that up? Those Golly people must be really smart. You, too, Lavinia, for figuring it out.”

  “Of course, you were the one to first notice bowling.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?”

  “That’s so sweet,” said Rocky, mimicking their voices and mangling the Bowling Buddy box to get at the envelope. “But now,” he said, his normal tone returning, “stop gabbing like a bunch of old ladies, and come look at this stunt.”

  Stunt #2

  IT’S ONE, TWO…

  FIVE STRIKES, YOU’RE IN.

  JUST FIND THE GIANT,

  WHITE BOWLING PIN.

  They raced toward the rear of the room where a bowling pin, at least ten feet tall, swayed from the ceiling over a regulation bowling lane. Instructions dangled.

  Stunt #2

  LET’S GO BOWLING!

  YOUR GOAL:

  You must knock down all the pins five times.

  AS IN REGULATION BOWLING:

  You must stand behind the red foul line

  when you roll the ball.

  UNLIKE REGULATION BOWLING:

  You may roll as many balls

  as it takes to knock all the pins over.

  AS IN REGULATION BOWLING:

  The pins will reset automatically.

  UNLIKE REGULATION BOWLING:

  Your best bowler can do most of the bowling.

  But each of you must knock down

  at least five pins.

  “I bowl,” said Gil, shoving the rules into his pocket. “Who else bowls?”