Friend or Foe
Page 6
“We can’t touch the wheel once the rope is in place.” Zane positioned it so the wheel was pointing straight into the open field, then he clamped his fourth. “You guys know what you’re doing?”
“If it works like we think,” said Elijah, “Braden will walk in front of you to keep you from going too fast, Zane. He’ll watch for lines. I’ll crawl behind and call out letters.”
“Great strategy,” Zane said.
“I can crawl pretty fast,” said Elijah, “but I’ll say ‘whoa’ if you need to slow down.”
“Let’s do this!” said Zane.
Zane and Cherise started the wheel forward. It wobbled at first, but if they held the rope as taut and as close to the rod as possible, it stayed fairly steady. As the wheel moved, flaps on the inside-top of the wheel opened to reveal letters. There must have been fifty of those flaps. No wonder they needed a Line Watcher.
Braden moved into position in front of Zane. “A red line is coming up,” he said. “And now!”
“U,” said Elijah.
“Another, right . . . now!”
“R.”
“Right . . . now!”
“S.”
“Right . . . now!”
“C.” Elijah sounded a little winded.
“We going too fast?” asked Zane.
“Keep going. U. R. S. C. Remember those, Braden.”
He hoped Braden remembered. Zane didn’t.
“And . . . now!” said Braden.
“O.”
“Now!”
“R.”
It was hard enough to keep the wheel on course.
“Now!”
“E.”
Cherise, though, was holding up her end.
“Now!”
“F.”
“Now!”
“O.”
“Now!”
“U.”
“Now!”
“R.”
“Now!”
“S,” puffed Elijah. “And whoa!”
“Too fast?” said Cherise.
“No,” Elijah said. “We’re back at the beginning. We’re starting to repeat.” He rolled over from his knees to a sitting position, then pulled the smashed packet from the back of his own jeans. Elijah took out a pen. “Your letters were U, R, S, C, right, Braden?”
“Right.”
“Then O, R, E, F, O,” Elijah said, writing all this down.
“That’s what I remember,” said Cherise.
“Then U, R, S again,” said Elijah.
Zane had chosen his team well.
Braden was sitting next to Elijah, looking at the letters. Zane and Cherise were leaning over them.
From Zane’s perspective, the letters didn’t seem to spell a real word. U-R-S-C-O-R-E-F-O-U-R-S. “Did we get it wrong? Do we need to do it over?”
Of course they didn’t. They needed to—
“No,” said Elijah. “The word doesn’t start with U.”
“Yeah,” Zane said. “I just realized that.”
“Scorefour?” said Cherise.
“That’s what it looks like,” said Braden, “once you delete the repeat letters.”
“No,” said Elijah. “It’s—”
“Not so loud,” said Zane.
Elijah pointed to the F. “Start here.”
“You guys are great, but hurry,” Zane said. “Stand and put your arms in the air. And just so we’re all on the same page”—he lowered his voice—“the answer is ‘fourscore,’ right?”
The Golly guy rushed to them and scanned their bracelets again.
“Right,” said Elijah. “Like Lincoln’s ‘fourscore and seven years ago,’ where he’s talking about—”
Before Elijah could say anything else, Zane turned to run off.
Chapter 11
Zane stopped. He didn’t want to give away his strategy, but these had been perfect teammates. “We can’t work together for the two-person challenge, so if you’re smart, grab a good partner now.”
Then he bolted up four rows of bleachers to a girl who seemed focused on a puzzle and, at the same time, aware of her surroundings. “Have you done your two-person yet?”
“I haven’t finished the solo pack. Randy Wright said—”
“The instructions say any order. Work with me or not?”
“Sure, but we need to go in there.” She pointed behind her.
“In where?”
Instead of answering, she climbed the bleachers. Zane didn’t know where she was going, but she was going there fast. She headed through the tunnel and into the concession area, where they came face-to-face with a sign. PAIRS CHALLENGE. Arrows pointed left.
“I’m Zane, by the way,” he said, jogging with the arrows, the challenge area in sight.
“Grace,” she said, her eyes smiling and her black ponytail bobbing like crazy.
“So, Grace,” Zane said, “what else do you know about this pairs challenge?”
“That I’m suddenly stupid for not realizing I could have already—” She gasped.
“What?”
“That wheel thing. I should’ve done that first. I have to find three people!”
He couldn’t let her bolt on him now. Before he could convince her to stay, Grace grabbed three people coming back into the stadium from the pairs and told them where to wait for her.
“Promise you won’t move. I’ll be fast.” They agreed. If only she were managing their football team instead of Thing 1 and Thing 2.
He and Grace raced to the pairs line.
A Golly guide came up. “Welcome! Two sections share five pairs stations, so with six pairs already waiting, it’ll be a few minutes. Feel free to use this time well, but from here on out, no talking in line and no sharing of papers.”
Zane sat, reached into his packet, and pulled out an envelope marked “Solo Pack.” In it, four note cards were paper clipped together. The top one said:
Solo Challenge #1
* * * * * * * * * * *
The banners that descended over the field aren’t there for show. Collectively, these banners contain all the letters of the alphabet. There are, however, three consonants that appear only once. Find those three consonants, then combine them with an E and an O to spell a common-word answer. All the banners you need are within your section.
He couldn’t do that now. He flipped to the next card.
Solo Challenge #2
* * * * * * * * * * *
If you spent $2.20 buying a notebook and a pencil, and if the notebook cost two dollars more than the pencil, how much did the pencil cost?
Easy! The pencil cost twenty cents.
Zane started flipping to the next card, but stopped. They wouldn’t ask a question he could’ve answered in first grade. He butt-scooted up the line—two pairs had just gone in—and looked again at Solo Challenge #2.
If the pencil cost twenty cents, the notebook cost two dollars, but the notebook needed to cost two dollars more. His answer had it costing only $1.80 more. If it cost $2.05, the pencil would need to be 5 cents, meaning he’d spent only $2.10. Five cents more . . .
Yes! The pencil was 10 cents and the notebook was $2.10. Together, $2.20.
He started an answer sheet on the back of the Solo #2 card:
4-person-fourscore
2-person-
solo 1-
solo 2-10 cents
solo 3-
solo 4-
Zane and Grace moved up in line. Next card!
Solo Challenge #3
* * * * * * * * * * *
1970s Golly Game: Hello, Good___
1980s Golly Game: Plop, Plop, ___clops
1960s Golly Game: Phony Phone ___
Games from ancient history? Zane should have studied the Golly list of toys and games, but there’d been hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. And it had seemed like a waste of time. At least it did then. He couldn’t quit now. He looked at the first one. Hello, Good______.
Logic would tell him it’s Hello, Good-bye. He wrot
e -bye in the space.
They scooted up one more pair, and he glanced behind them. The line had grown past where they had started. And not everyone was working on puzzles. Had they finished already? He needed to get busy.
Second game. Plop, Plop, ___clops. He had no clue.
Next. Phony Phone ___ . Were his parents even alive in the 1960s? He should probably know. Now, though, it would be better to know the game. Phony Phone Phone? Phony Phone Number? Phony Phone Call? Phony Cell Phone? They probably didn’t have cell phones then, and the blank came after “phone,” anyway.
He tapped Grace, who was working on her own puzzles, and they scooted forward again. If he could solve this before they went in, he’d have only two left. Zane stared at the card and— Oh!
Was that a clue? That space between “Phone” and its blank? “Good” didn’t have a space; “clops” either. Maybe those answers were each part of one word, but the phone answer was a separate word.
And “clops” wasn’t capitalized. What single word ended in “clops”? Cyclops! Was that it? Wait. “Bye” and “cy” rhymed. Was there a rhyming word that went with “phone”? Phony Phone Cry? Phony Phone Pie? Phony Phone Sky? He cruised through the alphabet: “by,” “bly,” “bry,” “chi” . . . And this was ridiculous. This was not the answer.
Maybe the three blanks were supposed to merge, like “tuxedo” in the Mall Round. If the first was “bye” and the second was “cy” and the third was “phone” or “number” or—
He’d had it all along. “Bye,” “cy,” “call.” “Bye-cy-call.” Bicycle! Yes? No? If only there was a way to check his answers.
He and Grace scooted up one more spot, but before he could turn to his next card, the Golly people were ready for them.
“Hi, there.” The woman scanned their bracelets. “Grace and Zane?”
“Right.”
“Good. You haven’t worked together yet. You’re in Pairs Booth Four. Good luck!” She pointed toward the floor. A series of arrows blinked a path for them around a maze of curtains. When they got to Pairs Booth #4, the arrows divided, directing each of them to different sides of a partition that shielded them from each other.
On Zane’s side was a computer monitor that instructed him to put on a pair of headphones, then touch the screen.
“You there?” he said into the headset’s microphone.
“That’s a yes,” she said, exactly the same way Jerome of the JZs would. “Do you see the welcome screen?”
“Yep.”
WELCOME TO AMAZING MAZE MANIA, GOLLY’S NEWEST VIDEO GAME!
WHO WILL GIVE DIRECTIONS AND WHO WILL FOLLOW THEM?
GIVE DIRECTIONS (CONTESTANT NUMBER):
FOLLOW DIRECTIONS (CONTESTANT NUMBER):
“Two questions,” said Zane. “How are you at video games? And how are you at giving directions?”
“Fair at video games, good at directions.”
“Then we have it,” said Zane.
Zane typed his number next to “Follow Directions.” The screen showed Grace doing the same next to “Give Directions.” How had he managed to pick someone so focused so fast? It must have been her eyes. It was always the eyes.
Zane’s screen flashed with a bunch of words. “You have instructions, too?”
“That’s another yes.” Just like Jerome again. No doubt she’d fit right in with the JZs and company. “Let me know when you’re finished reading.”
“You, too.”
WELCOME TO AMAZING MAZE MANIA!
YOU WILL EACH HAVE A DIFFERENT VIEW OF YOUR MAZE. (THERE ARE MANY MAZES IN THE VIDEO GAME, BUT TODAY, YOU’LL RANDOMLY RECEIVE THE FOREST MAZE, THE GLACIER MAZE, THE CORNFIELD MAZE, OR THE ELECTRONICS STORE MAZE.)
TO THE CONTESTANT WHO WILL GIVE DIRECTIONS: YOU WILL SEE A VIEW FROM ABOVE, ONE THAT MORE CLEARLY SHOWS HOW TO NAVIGATE FROM THE ENTRY OF THE MAZE TO THE EXIT. IT IS YOUR JOB TO GUIDE YOUR PARTNER THROUGH THE MAZE.
TO THE CONTESTANT WHO WILL FOLLOW DIRECTIONS: YOU WILL SEE THE MAZE AS IF YOU WERE IN IT YOURSELF. IT IS YOUR JOB TO USE THE ARROW KEYS TO SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATE THROUGH THE MAZE BY FOLLOWING YOUR PARTNER’S INSTRUCTIONS. AS YOU GO THROUGH THE MAZE, IT WILL REVEAL A SERIES OF LETTERS THAT WILL SPELL THE ANSWER TO THIS CHALLENGE. IF AT THE END OF THE MAZE YOU HAVE NOT COLLECTED LETTERS THAT, IN ORDER, SPELL A COMMON WORD, HIT RESET AND TRY AGAIN. GOOD LUCK!
TO THE CONTESTANT WHO WILL GIVE DIRECTIONS: COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR PARTNER MAY CONSIST ONLY OF INSTRUCTIONS (TURN LEFT, TURN RIGHT, NEXT PATH, OR ANYTHING TO HELP YOUR PARTNER NAVIGATE). ANY OTHER TYPE OF COMMUNICATION WILL CAUSE YOU BOTH TO INCUR PENALTY SECONDS.
TO THE CONTESTANT WHO WILL FOLLOW DIRECTIONS: COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR PARTNER MAY CONSIST ONLY OF “PLEASE REPEAT” OR “SAY THAT AGAIN” OR OTHER PHRASES THAT INDICATE YOU DID NOT HEAR THE INSTRUCTIONS. YOU MAY ALSO ANNOUNCE THE LETTERS REVEALED TO YOU.
TO BOTH CONTESTANTS: WHEN YOU ARE BOTH SATISFIED YOU HAVE DISCOVERED THE COMMON-WORD ANSWER, HIT FINISH. MAKE SURE, HOWEVER, YOU ARE SATISFIED. YOUR MONITORS WILL SHUT DOWN, AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO RETURN TO THE PAIRS AREA. PLEASE REMOVE YOUR EARPHONES AND EXIT THE AREA. IF YOU CANNOT COME TO A CONSENSUS, HIT DISPUTE, AND A GOLLY ATTENDANT WILL ASSIST YOU.
“That’s not gonna happen,” said Zane.
“What?”
“We are going to agree. No disputes.”
“Not at all,” said Grace. “Ready?”
“I just hit Continue.”
She must have, too, because cornstalks covered every millimeter of Zane’s screen. Even the path’s floor looked like trampled cornstalks. Glaciers would have been cooler, but corn was tasty.
“Forward,” Grace said, “but not too fast. You’ll take the second path on the left.”
Zane inched forward and, almost immediately, a crow flew at him from a path on the right. He reeled back but stayed focused and turned left at the second path. An ear of corn opened and showed him a letter. “First letter, C,” Zane said.
“Got it,” said Grace. “You can go faster if you want, but you’ll be turning right, then left, then right in fast succession.”
Turn when? Zane couldn’t ask, so he pushed the forward arrow more slowly than he wanted and waited for her signal. Forward. Forward. Forward. “Next letter, E.”
“Great,” said Grace. “There’s an opening to the left, but don’t take that. Do take the next one on the right.”
Okay. Good. He moved a little faster, passed the left path, then turned right.
“Now left.”
He did.
“Now right. Then straight.”
He made the turns, then went faster, but an ear of corn opened and closed before he was sure of the letter.
“Either letter M, N, or W.” Zane wanted to explain why he didn’t know for sure, but if she was smart, she’d understand why he’d slowed down.
“Okay. So you’ll take the next fork to the right, then I will lose you for a minute when you pass under some sort of cornstalk ceiling. When you’re under there, you’ll need to take a right. It won’t be a sharp right. You’ll probably just veer. More instructions when you come out.”
He ducked under the cornstalk ceiling and ran into a flock of crows.
“Boo!” A scarecrow popped from the stalks, and the birds flew away.
Zane tried not to laugh. He didn’t want to risk Grace asking him why and triggering a penalty. Just as his voice was about to crack, an ear of corn gave him another letter. “T,” he said.
But now he had choices. There were three openings coming up on the right. He slowed considerably near the first. If he turned there, he’d pick up the letter A, but that path appeared to double back behind him. That wasn’t how she’d described it. The second choice had the letter I, but it looked like a ninety-degree turn. He passed that up, too. The third went off at a forty-five-degree angle. He turned that way. “U,” he said. “The letter U,” he clarified, so she wouldn’t think he was calling out, “Hey, you!”
“Good,” said Grace. “And you’re back out.
You’re on the right track. Take the left fork, then an immediate left, like you’re going backwards.”
He hated not talking, not being able to say “okay” or “got it” or “thank you.” But he could give her the next letter. “R.” And why hadn’t he been writing the letters down? Oh, man. He hoped she was. And he couldn’t even ask. The last three had been T, U, and R. Immediately before that was the one he really didn’t see.
“Turn right.”
He did.
“Now left.”
He was racing through the maze, but he was barely touching the controls.
“Right! Left! Slow down!”
He took his hands off the controls, but it acted like he was still running. Zane pressed the backwards key, and he stopped.
“Okay, next right. Then another immediate right.”
He was walking again. He breathed.
She sighed. “Go straight for a while. Then one last left, and you’re out.”
If he was almost out, she’d done great, but what about him? Had he gotten all the letters when the maze went nuts? Would they need to do it again? He’d picked well with her, but would she curse the day he’d chosen her?
He needed another letter. He couldn’t think of any word that ended in –T-U-R.
“Left turn coming . . . now.”
And yes! “The letter Y,” he said.
“Straight, and you’re out.”
Zane pushed the forward arrow as fast as he could, exited the maze, and watched the screen dissolve to pure white with three choices: “Finish, Reset, or Dispute.” Underneath it said, You may now discuss your answer.
The moment of truth. “You have what I have?” Zane asked, nearly holding his breath that she’d noted those first few letters.
“C-E, then it has to be an N and not the M or W for ‘century.’”
“Great!” Zane said, exhaling maybe too audibly. “Hit Finish!” He did.
She must have, too, because the screen said, Please exit the pairs area.
She gave him a quick hug. “Gotta find my people. Thanks!”
“You were great. Catch you later!”
Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. Zane couldn’t worry about that, though. He had two more puzzles to solve.