Friend or Foe

by Jody Feldman

  He needed to untangle his string from a massive fence web. He climbed over a low, string-filled barrier and ducked underneath another one on poles. It was like he was an action-movie spy who had to dodge the red lasers of alarm systems.

  He should have been bumping into all sorts of bodies doing the same thing, but some genius had found a way to have them work in different spaces. Over a low ledge, under a higher one. Around and around, and don’t trip, don’t trip. Don’t trip like that kid over there just did, who fell backwards, her head caught by a nest of string that miraculously didn’t cause the whole rest of the String Web to cave in around her.

  Aha! That’s why. The string was masking hundreds of clear rods, zigzagging around the room, keeping every strand where it was supposed to be.

  Not that it mattered how it worked; it mattered that Zane get through this fast enough to try again and again if he didn’t get a ticket the first time.

  He crawled under a crisscrossing of rods, slid his spool through three different fence walls. Dodging, ducking, climbing—which would make a great football drill. If he were playing. He was playing this now, though.

  Over, under, around, his spool half an inch thick with string. And now a long straightaway. Maybe it was the end! Maybe he’d find—

  Another tangle of string. But just a short one. He looped his spool through the gap in the fence, fetched it on the other side, wound it back toward him as he neared the escalators, then the movie theater, toward that large wall of Golly toys and games. He wound faster and faster and faster and nearly bumped into a man who stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Whoa, Nelly!” The man took the spool from him. “Let’s fetch you your prize.” He tugged at the string, which dislodged a box from the shelf. Ironic. It was the GollyFarmyard video game, the one his cousin had. He hoped the cow in the picture was smiling for a reason.

  The man brought him the box. “Not exactly what you’d pick for yourself, but hey! You got something. Open it!”

  Why did they make the plastic wrapper so tough to open? Zane looked at the man.

  “Sorry, son. I’m not allowed to help.”

  Zane scratched at the plastic with the little bits of fingernails he had. He wanted to run to Belle Nails and borrow scissors, but instead he sank the point of his canine tooth into the side. It bent, it bent some more, then pop! He opened the case. No ticket to Orchard Heights; just a note: Thank You for Playing!

  “Sorry,” said the man. He scanned Zane’s wrist. “But you’re a Five.” He hit a button on his scanner, and it printed out a label, which he slapped onto GollyFarmyard. “I’ll keep it safe for you at this table. Meanwhile, here”—the man reached into a pouch and handed Zane an envelope—“take a look, then hand it back.”

  Two clues this time. Don’t choose red. No winners on the top shelf.

  He rushed back to the spool station. Not blue, not red, not purple, not pink. The green, yellow, and orange were calling to him, but what about the brown ones? Would they hide a ticket behind a less-popular color? “I’ll take a brown one on the fourth shelf, all the way on the right.”

  “First or second one in?” the woman said.

  “First,” said Zane. “Always.”

  He started winding his spool the moment she handed it to him. This time would be easier. He knew what he was doing. He climbed through the first string tunnel, winding and winding as fast as he could, but his legs strode longer and faster than his hands could move. He rolled up the slack, pushed around a half wall, sent the spool three times around a post to unwind the string, then jogged through a straightaway that took him to the other side of the room. His string, though, dragged behind. He paused to wind it up.

  There were more kids than there had been before. Why were they showing up just now? These puzzles weren’t any harder than the school ones. Maybe the pressure got to them, or maybe he was smarter than he thought. Whatever the reason, more chances for him.

  The string took him around three half walls, then to the staircase where it wound around the banister. Zane went up five steps to a landing, unwinding the string, then back down and unwound it more.

  The string wasn’t done with him until he made it past a tall wall with softball-sized holes in random Swiss cheese fashion. Then straight to the prize wall, which was looking emptier, but with the number of kids out there, he had no clue if he’d get a third chance. Ticket or no ticket? Odds were, no ticket. But anything was possible. That comeback victory against Greenway had seemed impossible, and yet Zane’s team had outscored them twenty-eight to nothing in the fourth quarter to win by four.

  Ticket or no ticket?

  No ticket.

  Zane bolted back to the spool station. From a distance the prize shelves looked bare. No one was stopping him to give him another clue. Good reason. There were only three spools left: one white, one purple one on the top shelf, and one orange. If there was a ticket left, it wouldn’t be on the top shelf, according to the hint. White or orange?

  Zane sucked in a breath. “Orange.”

  This time it was easy. There was no going through other webs of string. It was just a matter of going around and through walls and fences. It was just a matter of winding and winding. There was no rushing. No fourth chance.

  Zane made his way to the prize wall and tugged off the new Diamond Valley Demons video game before the Golly person could reach it for him. “How many of the tickets are gone?”

  The Golly guy shook his head. “We haven’t kept track.”

  Zane smiled at the guy, looking into his eyes.

  The man looked just over Zane’s head.

  “So there is one left,” Zane said, “and it’s in here.”

  The man whisked him behind the prize wall.

  Chapter 7

  The man shifted his glance back and forth. “I’ve always been a bad liar. Go on. Open it.”

  Zane didn’t know what the ticket would look like or what it would say, but he knew it was in there. He unwrapped the Diamond Valley Demons game, got past the ultrasticky seal, and opened the case. Inside, lying on top of a DVD, was a slip of paper that had an embossed Gollywhopper Games seal and six words:

  We’ll see you in Orchard Heights!

  Zane pumped his fist. He turned, out of habit, to jump onto his teammates. Instead, he hugged the man, who laughed and laughed.

  The man clamped him on the shoulder, then handed him a shiny, gold envelope. “I may be looking at the next superstar.”

  “Absolutely!”

  It wasn’t football, but a win was a win. Still, he couldn’t help wonder why the Gollywhopper Games kept following him. He didn’t want to use his fifteen minutes of fame on the Games and have nothing left for the NFL. Then again, Alex Karras and Jim Brown made it huge in the NFL before they became actors. They’d been famous twice. William Howard Taft was president and chief justice of the Supreme Court. Also . . .

  Who? Zane was out of examples, but he couldn’t know everyone who had been struck by superstar lightning twice.

  He was getting ahead of himself. He may have made it to Orchard Heights, but once he was there, he’d still need to beat 999 other kids, 899 from these mall competitions and 100 more who’d won Orchard Heights tickets online.

  This was the first time in months Zane had felt the slightest bit of hope. When he neared his dad, he kept his eyes down, shrugged his shoulders, and held up the three Golly boxes with one hand. Then he thrust the gold envelope out with the other.

  His dad grabbed him. “I knew you’d do it! You’ve always been smart, smarter than me!”

  Zane didn’t stop to explain about the luck part. Instead, he danced around with his dad, got the last bit of energy out with a dozen fist pumps, then stopped to let it all sink in. “I did it,” Zane whispered like he always did hours after a game he’d killed.

  His dad nodded. He understood the jumping and shouting were over for now. His dad gave him one last bear hug and thumped him on the back. “This is good. No, this is
great. You needed something, you know?”

  He did know. He could focus on the Gollywhopper Games. He could take a break from worrying about his head every minute of every day. And his friends.

  It wasn’t that they’d send him off into some wasteland, but being on the outside would be different. He’d miss the horseplay after practice, the recaps after games. He’d miss deciding where the JZs were going to hang out. Could he just show up at Jamaal’s house or at Jerome’s dad’s restaurant? Would he be in on the jokes? Would he still be a JZ?

  He couldn’t be. Not completely, not as long as he was shut out of football. But for now, at least he had something of his own.

  Minutes After

  THE MALL ROUND

  The limo whisked Bert Golliwop and his intern, Danny, from the Orchard Heights Mall, back to Golly Headquarters. By the time they strode into his office, the five faces of his executive team were large as life on the big screen, each one videoconferencing from a different mall location. They were already discussing some minor glitches. Several pull cards went missing in the mall in Little Rock, but they were traced to a kid who thought stealing extras would give her an advantage; it got her kicked out. The String Web had provided expected mishaps, but no notable injuries. There was also an issue with a screaming parent in Seattle and a fight over a certain spool in Sarasota, but in each instance, the problem was cleared within minutes.

  “Good thing my staff implemented all those checks and balances,” said Morrison from Legal.

  “And that they worked,” said Larraine from Finance. “As did the cameras catching a kid conferring with a father who’d never made it to the parent area.”

  “Seriously?” said Bert. He noticed a long, thin mailing box on his desk. “What’s this?”

  “In the end it was not an issue,” Morrison said, “but it put people on notice not to mess with us.”

  Bert pulled out scissors to cut the tape on the box. The package was addressed to him. Then he caught the return address. “Harvey Flummox? What’s he sending me? If there’s poison in here, you’re all witnesses. Get ready to call nine-one-one.”

  In Atlanta, Jenkins from Human Resources whipped out her cell phone. If he’d asked for a bowl of bouillabaisse, she’d probably have a chef in his office before he could blink.

  Bert opened the box. On top was a small white card:

  Heard through the grapevine that this might come in handy.

  —Harvey

  Bert turned around to Danny. “I’ll give that lunkhead credit for one thing: It’s a better back scratcher than yours.”

  Danny laughed, but the others looked confused.

  Except Tawkler from Marketing. “Your hives still acting up?”

  “Not so much anymore,” Bert said, “but my curiosity is. How’d Flummox know about them?”

  “That was my next question,” Tawkler said. “What goes on your office is supposed to stay in your office.”

  “Of course,” said Morrison, “it does. But what went on in the office? Was I there?”

  Had Bert been wrong about Morrison? Was he playing too innocent?

  “Should I know what you’re talking about?” asked Jenkins.

  Was she?

  “Not really.” Bert needed to sound casual. “I had a case of hives the other day, and word must have spread. I suppose this is Flummox’s idea of rubbing it in. Let’s carry on with the agenda.”

  Bert let them carry on. Word of this couldn’t have spread that easily. He hadn’t told his wife about his hives. She would have worried. No reason to alert his kids. He hadn’t mentioned it to his assistant, and he’d only scratched in the privacy of this office. Danny had guessed, but that wasn’t surprising. Danny had seen him with hives at Bert’s daughter’s wedding.

  He tried to convince himself that this was a big bunch of nothing, that one of his five execs simply had loose lips. Bert’s stomach churned, though. This was a huge bunch of something. One of them had a direct pipeline to Flummox and was using it for sabotage.

  When they concluded their business, Bert had Danny stay. He looked into Danny’s eyes for several seconds. Danny kept steady contact.

  “It wasn’t you. I didn’t think you told Flummox about the hives.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Exactly. But someone did,” said Bert. “Someone who was inside this room.”

  Danny’s eyes went wide. “Who?”

  Bert shook his head. “I need you to find out. No, I need you to figure out how to catch the person in cahoots with Flummox. Goodness knows, I haven’t been able to. Make it your top priority. But think, and think fast; the Games are in two weeks. And hold this in the strictest of confidence.”

  Danny headed for the office door but doubled back. “About that. You should know I’m infinitely more creative when I bounce ideas off someone else.”

  Bert nodded. “Who’d you have in mind?”

  “He’s been guiding the younger kids through the toy testing and is extraordinarily on target and creative with his comments and suggestions.”

  “It’s not who I think it is.”

  Danny smiled. “You’re the one who put me in charge of him.”

  Bert stared into his office, not really seeing anything. Could he trust that other kid? The only thing he could trust, 100 percent right now, was these hives would keep driving him crazy.

  “Swear him to secrecy.”

  “I don’t have to,” said Danny. “Gil Goodson might be the most loyal person you know.”

  Chapter 8

  In their district, school gyms opened for voluntary workouts four weeks before fall sports season started. The JZs had talked about storming theirs at nine sharp. Zane conveniently skipped the fact that he would be at the mall at that time and convinced them to run in the morning, instead, when it was cooler. They’d meet up later at the gym at around noon, which was now. It was time to come clean, tell them he was out for the year and let his official exile begin.

  His dad had just dropped him there after the mall, and he was standing outside the workout-room doors taking small bites from the burrito they’d picked up on the way.

  Jamaal came flying out the door and nearly knocked the burrito from his hand.

  “Forget your water bottle again?” Zane asked.

  “Where were you this morning?” Jamaal tore off a hunk of the burrito and shoved it into his mouth. “Had to run without you. Thought, maybe, you did a Daryl.”

  Zane tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach and took a small bite. “Don’t you know it’s bad to eat before a workout?”

  “You’re eating.”

  “It’s a snack. Snacks are allowed.” He didn’t mention this was his third burrito in ten minutes.

  “Good.” Jamaal reached for another piece, but Zane gave him the rest. It was suddenly hard to swallow with the ghost of Daryl filling his gut.

  Jamaal shoved the last bit of burrito into his mouth.

  This was Zane’s opening. He could do it, tell Jamaal he wouldn’t be on the field, but he also wouldn’t desert them like Daryl had.

  “Got something to tell you.”

  Jamaal swallowed. “What?”

  But what if Daryl hadn’t deserted them? What if they’d deserted Daryl? Zane could barely get a breath. “If you keep forgetting your water bottle, we’re gonna buy you one with unicorns and rainbows.”

  Jamaal leaned in for more water, and Zane slipped into the workout room, spied an unoccupied treadmill, and moved toward it as invisibly as possible. Who was he kidding?

  Within seconds, Zack and Jerome and Julio were all over him.

  “It’s a ghost!” said Zack.

  “He’s not a ghost,” Jerome said. “You can’t disappear if you weren’t running with us in the first place. He’s just a slacker.”

  “Who you calling a slacker? Me, missing one morning’s run? Weren’t you the one sitting out June practice with a little broken toe?”

  “That’s a yes,” said Jerome
, “but I’m not slacking now. While my toe was healing, I was doing bicep curls. Look at these.” Jerome flexed his arms.

  “You put me to shame,” said Zane. “While my brain was healing, I turned into the Great Blob of the Midwest.”

  “But two-a-days are in two weeks, man,” said Julio. “You gonna be ready?”

  “About that.” This was his chance. “I’m gonna miss a few of them.”

  “Coach has rules,” said Julio. “Your excuse better be off the charts.”

  “Him?” said Jerome. “Coach’d let Zane play if he showed up like a diva, demanding only blue M&M’s.”

  Zane started to shake his head, but he reached into his pocket instead and pulled out the slip of paper from the Diamond Valley Demons box.

  “What’s this?” asked Zack. “A note from your mommy?”

  Jamaal grabbed it. “Yeah, right. When’d you print this out?”

  Jerome took it away from him. “You are such a liar.”

  Zane set the treadmill into motion, feeling the weeks of inactivity, as they passed around the paper.

  Julio got it last. “Hey, man. I think this is for real. He’s not a dumb jock like the rest of us, you know?”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Jamaal.

  “Think about it,” said Julio. “This is Zane Braycott. Why would he waste valuable time and brainpower—especially when he has so little these days—writing some lame note with an official seal and everything? If I had Football Frenzy, I’d be spending all my time with that.”

  “Unless you also had Diamond Valley Demons,” Zane said.

  Zack did a double take. “When’d you get that?”

  “Won it this morning when I got that.” He snatched the paper back from Jamaal, who had it for the second time. “I swear I’m telling the truth.” And he launched into a play-by-play, starting with that school quiz. When he finished, he looked into each of their wide-eyed, slack-jawed faces.