by Jody Feldman
Gil tried to remember it all, pausing to let his dad scribble notes on a paper towel.
“What are you going to do with those?” Gil asked.
“I don’t know,” said his dad. “Maybe nothing, but definitely nothing to ruin the Games for you. I promise.” Then he smiled. “You really told him that? How he should’ve written the rules differently if he didn’t want you to play?”
Gil nodded.
His dad laughed, grabbed him up, and hugged him hard. “Bert wanted to rattle you so you’d lose. You need to know that. He’s not running the show today. There’s a board of administrators from an independent judging agency plus officials from the federal government overseeing the Games. Bert can threaten you all he wants, but he can’t disqualify you. So, like I said this morning, throw away the garbage, and go have fun.”
CHAPTER 17
Throw away the garbage? During each of the five challenges, Gil had stayed away from the past. He knew he could get into that zone again, especially if the next task involved pummeling anything with a sledgehammer. Picturing Bert Golliwop’s face underneath. It would—
“Ready, Gil?” Carol’s words brought him back. “Go wait by the door. I’ll be right there.”
Carol herded the others over one by one until all five were there. “You’re in luck,” she said, leading them from the dining room. “You get the pleasure of my company till the bitter end.”
They continued down several halls and several flights of stairs until they reached their original conference room.
Carol spoke into her headset. “We’re here.” She paused, then tapped on the mouthpiece. “Hello?” She took it off. “They can’t hear me. Sit tight. I need to switch this out.”
The second she slipped out the door, Thorn grabbed Gil’s shoulder. “I need my earpiece.”
“I don’t have it,” Gil said. “Never did. You put it into your shirt pocket.”
Thorn patted his pocket and shook his head.
“Then it probably fell out,” said Gil, walking away.
Thorn jerked Gil’s belt loop.
Gil wasn’t in the mood. “I told you,” he said. “I don’t have it.”
“I need it,” said Thorn. “I know I climbed that tree, and maybe I can succeed by myself, but you don’t understand. I can’t mess up. They expect me to land on top.”
“Sorry,” Gil said. “I never had it, but you can check my pockets.”
Thorn shook his head and sank into a chair.
“Sorry,” Gil said again. And he really did feel sorry for whatever pressure Thorn was feeling, but he couldn’t keep himself from smiling. This would be a fair fight now. Thorn couldn’t cheat. Rocky couldn’t, either, not with all the cameras. Why weren’t there cameras in the bathroom to catch what Bert Golliwop had said to him?
Maybe Bert didn’t have control over the Games, but what if he ran to the judges with some horrible lie? What if they yanked Gil off the team? What if—
“Okay, we’re ready,” said Carol, hustling back, not looking in the least like she was going to eject Gil from the Games.
“Before we go,” she said, “I need to emphasize one thing. Remember how you had to come together as a team?” She looked at each one of them. “Well, forget that. You are not a team anymore. It’s like you were in the Olympics in a five-person relay, if they had such a thing. And now you’re competing for individual medals. The only person you can rely on is yourself.”
Rocky grinned. Too big.
Fine. Let the cameras catch him cheating.
“In a minute,” Carol continued, “you’ll go back into the area you used for the team competition, but don’t expect it to look the same. Instead, you’ll see five doors. Each leads to a small room. Each room is an exact duplicate of the others. You will not have any camerapeople inside to distract you, but cameras are hidden in the walls and suspended from the ceilings.”
Carol looked at the large green watch on her wrist. “Here’s the drill. As soon as I stop talking, you’ll go in and find the door marked with your name. Stand in front of it, hands to your sides. When you hear the chimes, go into your room, and get to work. The first four of you to complete the task will continue to the next round. I would ask if you had questions, but I’m not allowed to answer them. I can tell you only five more things.
“One, there will be bathroom breaks between rounds. Two, you may leave your room. You have access to every hallway in the entire building. The closed-door offices are off-limits, as are the darkened work areas. Three, the adults who brought you here will be in a viewing area much like before, watching you live and on the TV monitors. Four, I will give you no hints or clues. Unless you’re dead, I cannot talk to you until you’ve completed your task. And five, your task will become apparent once you get inside.
“And I lied.” Carol gave her first smile since lunch. “There is a number six. The other team has been sequestered in a lovely viewing area. Once you’ve been eliminated you, too, will stay in lock-down until the entire competition is over.”
“Why can’t we leave?” asked Thorn.
“You didn’t read all your instructions, did you?” Carol looked down at him. “If we shove you out the door one at a time, the whole world will know who’s winning. And you’re sworn to secrecy until the network broadcasts the entire competition tomorrow night. Or you lose money. And there might be a messy lawsuit, and, trust me, you want to stay here.”
Thorn nodded.
Carol led them, the long way, to the massive green doors. They opened. “Let’s go.”
Gil did a double take. The hot-air balloons, the giant bowling pin, the palm trees? Gone. He moved to his starting place.
Blong!
He flung open the door so hard, it ricocheted and almost hit him in the face. He caught it and stepped in.
Dead ahead, on thrones, sat two of the most lifelike mannequins he had ever seen. One man and one woman, dressed in royal robes of satin and fur, scowled at him.
Gil looked around the rest of the room. The walls, painted a deep blue, matched the tile under his feet. Between him and the mannequins, almost disappearing into the blueness and the shadows, stood a table covered in navy velvet. On it were two items: a miniature version of the personalized treasure chest that had greeted him this morning and a white card.
Here is something you don’t often see:
A jigsaw puzzle for royalty.
The king and queen are wearing frowns
For they’ve no jewels upon their crowns.
To brighten up their gloomy faces,
Put the stones into their places.
Put some jewels into some crowns? No sweat. Then Gil unlatched the treasure chest. Inside gleamed a jumble of jewels—different sizes, different colors. He snatched up a handful, took a step toward the crowns, and stopped.
What if he dropped a jewel? Better to bring the crowns here.
He returned the stones to the chest and skidded to the thrones to grab the blue-and-green crown off the head of the king. Gil pulled it up, but it wouldn’t move, it wouldn’t twist. He tried tilting it to the right then to the left. He tugged the crown toward him. It shifted, then caught on something. He slid his fingers between the crown and the head and felt a button. He pushed it, the crown ejected, and he ran it to the table.
Back for the queen’s red-and-white crown. He twisted, he pulled, but hers wouldn’t budge, and there was no ejector button. In fact, he couldn’t get his fingers between the crown and her scalp. They were firmly attached to one another. Maybe her whole head came off.
Gil tugged at her ears and wiggled her earrings. He stuck his fingers up her nose and in her mouth. Then he noticed the two ruby, Frankenstein-type bolts on her diamond necklace. With one hand on each side, he simultaneously unscrewed the bolts. The queen’s head wobbled then came off with half her neck.
Gil ran the head to the velvet table. Where to begin? He eased the treasure chest on its side and swept out all the jewels.
He sat at the
stool behind the table and started separating the stones into color groups. Wait. Why was he sorting by color instead of size? He picked up a round diamond and tried to find its spot in the white area of the queen’s crown. Nope. Only oval holes in hers and round ones in the king’s.
Change gears. Sort each jewel by shape. Or should he just slap each one into a crown as he picked it up? Just sort, Goodson. Just beat one person.
Bianca. Poor Bianca. Could she concentrate right now? Or was this like transporting her to King Tut’s tomb? Her own personal Disneyland.
Didn’t matter. If Gil couldn’t concentrate, he’d be gone. And not from this town. “Stop thinking,” he muttered, “and—”
He dropped a diamond. He had to stop. Concentrate. Sort without getting sloppy. This was taking so long. So long. Finally. Time to start plugging in the stones.
The front of the king’s crown had the largest hole, about the size of a dime. To either side of center were fifteen more holes, each one decreasing in size until they met in the back at a gold crest with the Golly logo. By then, the holes were smaller than a pencil eraser.
Piece of cake. Gil moved the stones around on the velvet work surface, trying to put them in order of decreasing size. Easier said than done. The diamonds stood out most on the velvet background and looked the biggest. The sapphires blended into the deep blue and would have faded away if it weren’t for their glimmer.
Tick, tick, tick. Plug them in. Trial and error. Plug ’em in. Make a mistake. Dig ’em out. As the jewels got smaller, Gil’s judgment got worse. His fingers had never felt so thick and clumsy. Maybe he’d ruled out Bianca too fast.
Jewel number thirty. In. Thirty-one. In. He was out of holes, but he still had a jewel. Where did number thirty-two go? It was one last ruby, not much bigger than a nail head, and it wasn’t a souvenir. Everything had had a purpose. That wouldn’t change now.
There had to be another hole. Gil pulled out the center stone. Underneath that? No. Carefully, so carefully, he turned the crown over. Nothing on the inside. Starting with the smallest stone on the left, he counted the holes and stones, rotating the crown with every number. Thirty, thirty-one, then the Golly logo on the back.
Don’t lose this here. Think, think. Golly logo. Golly logo.
He brought his head eye-level with the Golly logo. The O of the Golly logo. The perfect size for a tiny ruby.
Plink.
On to the queen’s crown. Jewel holes in the white part; none in the red trim.
This wasn’t that hard, but it was intense. Gil stretched his arms, cracked his neck. Go. Faster. He scooted the stool over and yanked the queen’s head toward—
The edge of her neck sent a small pile of oval stones skittering across the floor. He dropped to all fours, spied some of them. He felt around and found two more. “Please, let that be all,” he whispered.
He got back on his stool, his fingers shaking. Gil picked up the queen’s head more carefully this time.
Deep breath. Back to work. Gil stuck in one oval stone. It glided in. So did the next. The next. The next. Too easy.
He brought the crown closer to his eyes. Closer, closer.
Dots.
Most holes had pinpoint specks of blue, red, or green above them. Some didn’t. But the diamonds were clear, and clear wouldn’t show up on white velvet. Okay. All right.
Gil dug out the stones he’d put in at random, then replanted each stone to correspond with its speck of color. All the stones, gone. But he still had a hole left.
He was missing a sapphire, a shiny blue stone on shiny blue tile.
His eyes scanned back and forth, but couldn’t see the stone. He patted the floor around the table, but all he felt was smooth.
His mind flashed to the time his aunt Katherine had dropped the back of her silver earring on their gray kitchen floor. Gil had laughed so hard when she threw herself, belly flat to the ground, and surveyed the surface at eye-level.
He wasn’t laughing now. He was doing the same thing with the same results. He spied the stone inches from the thrones. He grabbed it, pushed it in. Done! Just had to put those crowns back on.
Gil depressed the king’s head button and rocked his crown until it clicked. He set the queen’s head back onto her neck. He quickly twisted the bolts and…
“Yes!”
The faces lit from inside out, and their scowls transformed into smiles.
A click came from behind him. Gil spun around. His door had opened. He peered out. Lavinia was the only other person there.
CHAPTER 18
Gil high-fived Lavinia. High-fived Carol, who took him by the shoulders and spun him halfway around. “There’s a lounge over there with plenty to keep you occupied. I was about to send Lavinia, but they told me to wait. You, Gil, were hot on her heels. Anyway, go and relax, be yourselves. Cameras and microphones are banned in there.”
Gil pointed to the doors. “Do we get to watch them finish, like on TV monitors?”
“Sorry, Charlie. I’m sure you want to, but we decided it might give you an unfair advantage.”
“Why?” said Gil. “We already finished.”
“You could learn their deepest, darkest secrets, their private approaches to puzzle solving, something mysterious and mystic you might be able to use later.”
“Got it,” said Gil.
“Now on with you to the lounge. I’ve got work to do.”
Lavinia and Gil stopped at the threshold of the three-walled room.
“Wow!”
Lavinia nodded. “This is lovely.”
Four blue-leather recliners and a plump sofa with blue and white swirls were arranged in the center of the room on plush navy carpeting. Against one wall, shelves bulged with magazines, comic books, joke books, CDs, DVDs, and video games. The second side had enough personal CD players for all of them, plus wall-to-wall TV monitors hooked to DVD players and Golly GameSystems. A banquet table, pushed against the third wall, sagged with snacks.
Gil grabbed a handful of pretzels. “I knew you’d be my toughest competition,” he said.
Lavinia beamed. “I truly believe if our team had been just you and me, we would have finished even faster.”
“Probably, but Bianca with her Moonglo makeup…”
“True,” Lavinia said. “I also suppose Rocky and Thorn had their moments.” She reached to her ponytail. Patted around. “Must have lost my ribbon in there. Do you think they’ll let me go back? Oh, forget it.” She unleashed her hair from its band. “I think I’ve outgrown ribbons.”
“I thought it was just me. But not with the ribbons,” he said. “This place makes you feel like you can conquer the world.”
Lavinia laughed. “I wonder what they pump into the air. If only we could bottle it and carry it with us.” She pointed toward the TVs. “Mind if I see what’s over here? We don’t have much of this in our home. Join me if you want.”
“Go ahead,” said Gil. He didn’t want to watch or play anything right now. Instead he sank into the blue chair that looked out on the contestants’ hallway. He reclined the chair, then tried out one of the buttons on its remote. The seat vibrated. He pushed another and felt fists massage his back. Ahh. He closed his eyes. Someday, somehow, he’d get one of these.
Gil forced an eye open to the sound of footsteps in the hall outside the lounge. Bad time to doze. He shot the chair upright.
Well, hooray for Thorn. He did it himself, without the earpiece.
“Congratulations,” he said as Thorn strode into the room. “I knew you could do it.”
“I did do it, didn’t I?” Thorn lifted his head, almost glowed as he passed Gil’s chair. By the time he put some potato chips and onion dip on a plate and came back toward Gil, that glow had fizzled out.
“You don’t seem too excited,” said Gil.
“I may be on top now,” Thorn said, “but it won’t last, not without help. I realized that when I had to climb the fake palm tree.”
Was he giving up? “What do you mean?�
��
He sat in a chair next to Gil. “When Rocky was teaching me how to climb? And you were telling me not to look down? It was the first time, probably since I learned to ride a bicycle, that someone bothered to teach me something practical. I have people who are practical for me.”
“That doesn’t sound bad.”
Thorn pointed at his dip. “I mean, I wouldn’t know where this comes from. Do you buy it in a container from some store? Do you make it in the kitchen? Does the dip fairy put it in your refrigerator? We have a cook, so I don’t know if I could even turn on the stove just to boil water. That’s not good. So I doubt I’ll win today, but I won’t leave as a loser.”
Gil wanted to ask Thorn what he meant, but a click down the hall pulled him to his feet.
Rocky bounded out, fists raised in victory like he’d finished first.
Carol came from the shadows and pointed him toward the lounge. His victory prance stopped. He loped into the room. “I could’ve beaten all of you,” he said. “I’m saving up for when it really counts.”
Gil looked past him to watch Carol turn the knob to Bianca’s room. He braced himself for the drama. Please. No tears, no sobs, no quivering lips.
Bianca glided out with the completed green-and-blue crown on her head. She looked directly into the camera, posed, then burst into laughter. “I guess this means I didn’t win,” she said to the camera. “But I accomplished my goal. I’m on TV. And I had a great time. Especially with my friend Gil. He’s cool. And Lavinia. She can be cool, too. So root for them. And root for me on becoming a model or an actress. Or maybe even a history teacher. Bye, everyone!” She gave a wave then flounced toward the lounge with Carol three steps ahead.
“Incoming cameras,” said Carol. “They want to shoot thirty seconds of good-byes.”
Bianca fluttered in, then perched on the arm of Gil’s chair. “I really mean it, Gil. I’ll be rooting for you.” She leaned over to give him a hug and plopped into his lap instead. Her crown tipped over, shielding her eyes.