Friend or Foe

by Jody Feldman

  “It’s me,” said Zane. “It’s mental.”

  “Just tell me,” said his dad. “You will, eventually.”

  He would. “What if it gets physical? What if I run and trip?” Zane knocked on the shiny floor. “What if I hit my head down here or against these bricks? Football’s already history.”

  “For now. Just for now.”

  “But I want a brain that works forever.”

  “You heard the doctor. You’re fine. The football hiatus is a precaution, and we’ll reevaluate next year. That’s the good news.”

  “The bad news?”

  His dad pointed to a tree near a coffee store. “You could be standing underneath there, and it could randomly fall over and crush you.”

  “What are the chances of that?”

  “Exactly. What are the chances of you cracking your head in a mall?”

  “They exist.”

  “So do heart attacks and suicide bombers and poison stinging toads, but you don’t walk around worried about them all the time. Unless you do?”

  Zane shook his head.

  “You need to take a deep breath and jump back into your life.”

  Zane looked at him.

  “At least most of it.”

  “Understood,” he said, but could he, really? Would his life be there for him after his friends found out he was off the team? It was no big deal that he’d sat out for summer league. Between camps and family vacations, lots of kids did. But no one who mattered sat out during fall. Would he still matter? Would he still be a JZ? Or would he be a Daryl?

  Daryl had been one of them, a real pal, a real buddy who broke his leg and fell off-grid for the season, then forever.

  Or even worse than a Daryl, would Zane become as annoying as Thing 1 and Thing 2? He waved his hand, as if to swat that image away.

  Three more kids and their parents moved past him. Zane leaned toward his dad. “When we hear two whistle blasts, you need to report to the parents’ area inside Macy’s. Ten minutes later, when the whistle blasts three times, I open this and do whatever it says. See?” He handed his dad the envelope.

  It was closing in on go time. Voices had reached a higher pitch. Two kids jogged in place. Several parents had begun their good-byes; others were already waiting by Macy’s.

  “What time is it?”

  His dad handed him back the envelope. “Two minutes until my whistle.”

  Twelve minutes until Zane’s. Too early to gear up. He straightened his legs to stretch his muscles.

  Seriously? He couldn’t touch his toes without his knees bending. What else couldn’t he do now? How fast had his body turned into the Blob? Maybe he was wasting his life.

  Shree! Shreeee!

  His dad bounded to his feet. He reached out a hand and pulled Zane up, not carefully, not at all. Zane got the point. “I’m good, Dad.”

  “You are. Now go for it.” He patted Zane on the back, walked off, looked back once, and smiled.

  Zane leaned over to try and touch his toes, standing this time. No good. He couldn’t do anything about that now, but he could—

  The old Zane would have studied the mall. He would have gone online and memorized the stores because Golly hadn’t brought them here by accident. In about five minutes they’d have him running all over this place.

  And over there, not too far away, that had to be a mall directory. Did he have time?

  He paced seven steps toward the directory. The last few adults were racing into Macy’s.

  He took seven steps back. Then seven toward it, seven back. There, back; there, back. In a rhythm. Seeing blurs, only blurs. Not concussion blurs, but focusing blurs. Focusing his mind and body to do whatever they needed to do today. The other kids might think he was crazy, but his dad would know. His dad would smile. Anyone who knew him would leave him alone, let him get psyched up. He was ready to perform.

  Shree! Shreee! Shreeeee!

  Go time!

  Chapter 6

  Zane broke the seal on the envelope and dumped out its contents: mall map, pen, five blank envelopes, and a sheet of instructions.

  Welcome to the Gollywhopper Games Mall Challenge!

  The Rules:

  The 5 white envelopes each hold a challenge. Complete these in any order.

  Don’t bother to follow anyone. There are 30 different challenges, which means there are 142,506 possible challenge combinations.

  You must work alone. Do not speak to fellow contestants. You may ask questions of any Golly official stationed around the mall.

  If you are quick enough, you will have the chance to find a winning ticket to Orchard Heights.

  Good luck!

  Zane sank to the floor. He slid the instructions back into the large envelope, then pulled out the cards from the five white ones.

  All the challenges started with the same line: Find the store indicated by the puzzle below. Once there, collect the card with your personal number.

  Someone zoomed past in front of him. Then another. Were they speed-reading masterminds?

  It didn’t matter. Maybe he wasn’t a genius, but he was smart, and he had off-the-chart instincts that had helped him earn straight As, even when he didn’t study. His strategy now: solve all five puzzles, then use the map to plot out the fastest route to the stores. First card:

  Imagine you’re playing Golly WordScramble.

  You’ve randomly selected 7 tiles.

  The letters on these tiles

  can spell, among other words:

  “peer,” “free,” “fur” and “mere.”

  Figure out which tiles you have,

  and use all 7 to spell a single word.

  Huh? There were fifteen letters in those four words. Not seven. How was he—

  Oh! To spell “peer,” he’d need four tiles—two Es, one P, and one R. Then he’d need to add only three others—an F tile for “free,” a U for “fur,” and an M for “mere.” Seven total!

  Zane tore one of the blank envelopes into seven odd-shaped pieces, making his own tiles. He lined them up on the floor: E, E, P, R, F, U, M.

  Didn’t lots of words end in E-R? He moved those to the end. Now, just five to rearrange.

  M-U-F-E-P-E-R

  F-U-M-P-E-E-R

  E-M-P-U-F-E-R

  Not even close. Scrap the E-R.

  Now what? He could always look over the list of one hundred fifty-eight stores making this the biggest multiple-choice test ever.

  Zane shuffled the letters, but stopped from dealing them out randomly. He needed logic. Like, what if they’d given him those words in a particular order? He laid out the scraps in the order he’d discovered the letters: P, E, E, R, F, U, M.

  Why hadn’t he done that first? Just one letter out of place.

  The list of stores on his mall map was alphabetized within categories: Accessories, Apparel for Children, Apparel for Men, blah-blah-blah. Health and Beauty? Zane scanned that section, but didn’t see “Perfume.” He looked at each store name. Heaven Scents. That had to mean perfume. Store 778.

  He circled it on the map. Second floor, not too far.

  Zane resisted the urge to run with the crowd, find the store, and grab his card. He already had his strategy. Plus, if he waited, there’d be fewer cards to root through.

  He shoved the perfume puzzle and letter pieces into the large envelope. Next card:

  Get rid of all traces of slime.

  Zane could do that. He crossed out the “SLIME”s and was left with “SAL” on the top line, then “UL,” “TIM,” and “LEO” on the next three. Was there a store with four guys’ names? Was UI even a name? Or did they want him to rearrange twelve letters now? He’d be here all day.

  He looked at the puzzle again. Get rid of all traces of slime, it said above the grid. Not just the “SLIME”s. If he crossed out all the Ss, Ls, Is, Ms, and Es—

  Better! The letters were in order from top to bottom.

  Map time. Vroom Auto! First floor, but at the other end of the mall.
He circled it. Next card:

  __________ in your shirt tail!

  A B ____ D

  ______nut hole. Yum!

  Was it a shirt place? A learning center? And what type of hole was yummy? Only one he could think of, doughnut hole.

  There couldn’t be a single store that dressed, tutored, and fed you. He needed to fill in the blanks, and he could do that without the pen. Tuck, C, Dough. Tuck-C-Dough.

  Zane heard the full word in his head. He scanned the listings for Apparel for Men. Mr. Penguin Tuxedo Shop. Middle of the mall, floor two, close to the auto place. He circled it.

  Card number four. Already? There had to be something harder ahead because it all seemed too easy.

  10,475,832

  3,701,664

  + 13,723

  Zane did the math. Lots of numbers, but it was just addition. He did it once. Did it twice, but now what? There was no Numbers store. He looked at the puzzle card again. Turned it over. There on the back, in the lower right-hand corner, in tiny print, it read A=1, B=2, etc.

  Okay! He could translate 14191219 into A-D-A-I-A-B-A-I, or not. Some of the Apparel for Women’s stores had weird names, but none that resembled the capital of Ethiopia.

  Why couldn’t simple be simple? Then again a running play wasn’t just a running play. You had to account for the blocking scheme and the—

  He had to focus. What if 1 and 4 didn’t translate into AD? What if the first number was 14? Then 19, then 12, then 19 again? But N-S-L-S didn’t spell anything. It had to be some combination of single numbers and double numbers. If the first letter was A, the second had to be D, because the next two numbers after the first number were 4 and 1, and there was no forty-first letter of the alphabet. He clicked open the pen and wrote the possibilities for the first four numbers. He’d ruled out N-S and A-D-A-I, so it was either A-D-S or N-A-I.

  Zane liked where N-A-I was going. Next two numbers? 1 then 2, or 12. So it was either N-A-I-A-B or N-A-I-L. And if 1 and 9 were 19, he had N-A-I-L-S. Was there a hardware store on the list?

  Nothing under Home Furnishings. Nothing under Professional Services. Maybe the hardware department in Sears? No. The instructions said to find the store, not the department.

  What was he missing? He scanned the directory again, focusing just on that word. Where are you? Where . . .

  Belle Nails? In Health and Beauty.

  The girls probably got that one fast. The nail salon was down an entrance hall, about a dozen stores from where he was sitting.

  Last card:

  You’ll see me run, but never walk;

  I have a face, but never talk.

  I have a band that doesn’t play.

  My hands are moving night or day.

  Zane had seen riddles like that before. The fastest way to solve them was to focus on the important words. So this thing had a face, a band, and hands, and it ran, which probably meant it was mechanical. And the hands moved night and day, around the clock. Clock. Right? He couldn’t throw out the band, and if it had a band, it was a watch.

  There, on the map: Watch that Time.

  His game plan was obvious. Start at this end of the mall and work his way to the other end. Perfume, nails, tuxedo, watches, then auto.

  He took off and became another kid running through the mall with no one warning him to slow down. Running, feeling the breeze he himself was making. Feeling his heart pump and his muscles stretch and his skin start to break a sweat. If the rest of the Games made him feel even 10 percent of this, he wanted in.

  He ran even faster. Upstairs to Heaven Scents. There, to his left!

  Just inside the door was a large bulletin board that still had about thirty numbered cards tacked to it. Two other kids were looking for theirs. Where was his? Number, what? Wristband: 44-173.

  All the cards started with 44, but weren’t in any particular order. He quick-scanned them, looking for the nice, round, easy-to-see number three. There it was! He pulled off the thumbtack, unskewered the card, and jammed the tack back into the board.

  Zane turned the card over, but it was just a bar code and a number. Nothing else. He started to run out of the store, but a woman stopped him. “We need to scan you,” she said. “Envelope, card, and wrist.”

  Zane got scanned, checked his map, and bolted down some stairs in a side hall. Belle Nails should’ve been close, very close. He looked to his right, to his left, but it wasn’t here. He looked at the map again. Across! Another side hall.

  Inside the fingernail salon, Zane ignored the disgusting chemical smell, grabbed his card, got scanned, then headed for stop three. Tuxedos, upstairs.

  This time, the escalator in the middle of the mall would be quickest. He ran up the moving stairs as fast as the kids in front of him would go.

  At the top, he juked around them and sprinted past eight stores to the tuxedo shop. Found his card; got scanned. But this time the scanner emitted a long beep.

  “Congratulations!” said the scanner guy. “This was your third stop.” He reached into a pouch and pulled out a green envelope. “Open this before you continue.”

  Zane would rather ride his momentum, but he’d also rather not get penalized. He turned himself in the direction of the watch store, started walking, and tore open the envelope.

  The Choice Is Yours

  The Shortcut

  Go directly to the food court.

  No need to solve more puzzles.

  No need to pick up more cards.

  If you choose to take this shortcut, you should have

  one chance to find a winning ticket to Orchard Heights.

  The Full Game

  Continue with the puzzles.

  Continue collecting cards.

  When you have all 5, go to the food court,

  where you may receive multiple chances

  to find a winning ticket to Orchard Heights . . .

  if you’ve been fast enough.

  Warning: There are a limited number of chances.

  When those run out, this game ends.

  Zane turned a quick three-sixty. A few kids were still running; a couple more, concentrating on puzzles. Were the rest already in the food court? He’d gone fast, but fast enough? With three hundred kids spread over two floors of a large mall, it was impossible to tell. He’d already done the hard work, but go directly to the food court or take his chances?

  There’d been more than ten cards at the tuxedo store. He’d take his chances. Watch store. Scan. Pull. Run. Auto store. Scan. Pull. Run. Two flights down. Food court.

  This didn’t look like any food court Zane had ever seen. There were no tables, no chairs, and no reason, it seemed, for the haphazard placement of pieces of chain-link and picket fencing, each the size of double doors. The fence blockades were interwoven with strands and strands of string, tangling and winding its way everywhere. Among the mess, about two dozen kids were somehow progressing through the webs.

  “That way, son.” A man behind him was pointing toward a long table. “Check-in for the String Web is that way.”

  Zane got in a line behind two other kids. Where was everyone? Come and gone, or not here yet? It only took a minute until a Golly worker scanned his wristband. “We have a Five!”

  A horn sounded. Lights flashed. Several Golly workers cheered.

  “We haven’t had many yet,” said the man.

  “Really?”

  The man tapped the GollyReader in front of him. “One hundred fourteen kids have been through, but you are only the fourth Five-Carder.” He came around the table and led Zane away. “See all that string?”

  “I couldn’t miss it if I wanted to.”

  The man chuckled. “You’ll choose one piece of string at the spool station. Each string leads to a Golly toy or game. Eventually. Nine of those Golly products contain winning tickets that will send you to the Stadium Round in Orchard Heights. The rest of the toys and games contain our thanks for playing. The Threes have qualified to follow only one string. But as a Five, you’ll k
eep going until you win or until we run out of string.”

  Zane nodded but really wanted to know why the man was wasting time and leading him away from the spool stations.

  “For collecting five cards, you also get a hint each time you take a turn through the web.” He handed Zane a tiny envelope. “Open it.”

  Empty? Or not. Three words were written on the inside of the envelope itself. Don’t choose blue.

  “What does that mean?” Zane said.

  “Off to the spool station. You’ll understand.” The man took the envelope from Zane. “Want to make sure only Fives see this. Good luck, Zane!”

  The spool station had taken over the restaurant counters of the food court. Massive amounts of bundled string streamed from above and fell in a semiorganized way to the sides of four different counters.

  Zane stepped up to one, and the woman manning it almost seemed caught between webs. She scanned his wristband. “A Five! Pick a spool, any spool.”

  Each shelving unit back there was stacked five high, two deep, and about ten wide with plastic spools in red, pink, blue, yellow, orange, purple, green, black, brown, and white. His hint now made sense. Zane would have chosen blue, his team’s color. “I’ll take . . .”

  Strategy. He needed strategy. Mostly girls would choose pink or purple, and Golly had to want boys, too. So yellow? Green? No. He’d go with the less obvious. “I’ll take the white one on the second shelf from the bottom; the one there in front, on the left.”

  The woman lifted his spool high, unlatched his string from a hook above, carried it back to the counter, and handed it to him without it catching on any other string. Either she’d nailed the system, or it was a miracle. “I’m going to make this sound simple. Follow your string and keep it wound around your spool. Good luck, and don’t trip!”

  Did she have to say that?

  He wound the first bit of loose string around his spool and followed it to the left, where it got nuts. The string was woven in, around, and through all sorts of random barricades and banisters along with so many other strands. The last person doing this would have it easy, but for now, it’d take more than a few minutes.