by Jody Feldman
Chapter 12
Zane sat in the first bleacher row he came to and added “century” to his list of answers. He turned to the only challenge he hadn’t looked at yet.
Solo Challenge #4
* * * * * * * * * * *
Math! He’d know when he was right. Time to decode the system.
Zane added the numbers surrounding the first box. Only 14; 12 less than the 26 inside. And the number in the second box was 12! So—
No. If he applied the same method—if he subtracted the 14 surrounding box two from the 12 inside—there’d need to be a –2 inside box three, not 65. But here was the real question: If the numbers around box one and box two each added to 14, why were their inside numbers so different?
It had to be multiplication. There were two 1s around box two. That would automatically make that product less than if he multiplied the numbers around box one.
Hmm—8 times 1 was 8; 4 times 1 was 4. Added together, 12! But would that work with the other boxes?
He multiplied the numbers at the top of box one, then added them to the multiplied numbers on the bottom: 2 times 3 plus 4 times 5—26! And for box three: 8 times 7 plus 9 times 1? Oh yeah!
Now the answer that mattered: 4 times 2? Eight. Plus 6 times 7? Forty-two. Zane added 50 to his master answer list.
Last card.
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. All the banners you need are within your section.
He started copying the banners onto the back of his instruction sheet.
you have what it takes to win!
just go for it!
play fast, play smart, play quick . . . excel!
the gollywhopper games—bigger! braver! bolder!
expect major success!
All those banners, and just five sayings? Maybe so. He could always hunt for more.
Underneath the sayings, he wrote the consonants he’d need to eliminate.
B C D F G H J K L M
N P Q R S T V W X Y Z
Easiest to see were the Ps and Ls in “Gollywhopper.” He Xed through those. And there were two Xs, in “Excel” and “Expect.” He Xed through the X. And he could do this faster if he went through the letters in order.
B. “Bigger! Braver!” He didn’t need “Bolder!” Zane Xed through the B.
C. In “Excel” and in “success.” He Xed through that, too.
D. Either it was one of the three letters he needed or he’d missed seeing a banner. For now, Zane circled it.
When he’d gotten through all the letters, he had four left.
B C D F G H J K L M
N P Q R S T V W X Y Z
He hadn’t seen even one Z. There had to be another banner, but if this was a common word and if the only vowels were E and O, there couldn’t be a Q; otherwise, they’d have given him a U.
He’d look for more banners if necessary, but right now, he’d play with the letters he had: D, N, Z, E, O. And if the word ended with a common suffix, if it ended in –E-D. “Zoned”!
He totally hadn’t zoned out on that one.
Now what? Now he needed to find a Golly guide. There! At the base of the bleachers. He bolted down. “Got it!” he said, as out of breath as if he’d just played the last down of an overtime game. He held out his wristband.
She scanned it, pulled a GollyReader from a gear bag, scanned its label, tapped its screen to life, and handed it to Zane. “This will tell you what to do.”
CONGRATULATIONS! IF YOU’RE HERE, IT MEANS YOU’VE SOLVED SIX PUZZLES! EACH ANSWER WAS EITHER A NUMBER OR A WORD THAT SUGGESTED A NUMBER. ADD THOSE NUMBERS AND ENTER THE SUM. (TOUCH INSIDE THE BOX BELOW TO ACCESS THE KEYBOARD. TYPE YOUR FINAL ANSWER. HIT ENTER.) THAT SUM, BY THE WAY, EQUALS THE NUMBER OF TOYS AND GAMES OUR FOUNDER THADDEUS G. GOLLIWOP DEVELOPED ON HIS OWN. IMPORTANT! TO COMPLETE THE STADIUM CHALLENGE, YOU MUST RETURN THIS DEVICE TO A GOLLY GUIDE.
Zane pulled out his answer sheet and finished filling it in.
4-person-fourscore
2-person-century
solo 1-zoned
solo 2-10 cents
solo 3-bicycle
solo 4-50
Now add them up. Man. If only he’d stayed to hear Elijah’s explanation, he’d probably know all about Abraham Lincoln’s “fourscore and seven years ago.” But he could figure it out.
Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address sometime during the Civil War, the 1860s. And “fourscore and seven years ago” something had happened, something important. Where was Mrs. Connors when he needed her?
Zane took a deep breath. What happened before the Civil War? The War of 1812? Or wait. The American Revolution. And if they signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 . . .
He did the math in his head. The 1861 of the Civil War minus the 1776 of the American Revolution equaled 85. So if Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address just two years later, then “fourscore and seven” should equal 87, which meant . . .
Zane wrote 80 next to “fourscore.” Underneath that, 100 for “century.”
But “zoned”? That wasn’t a number word. Should he have found that last banner?
Maybe not. Maybe he’d unscrambled it wrong. Maybe his -ED suffix should’ve been a DE- prefix instead. “Denoz.” No. “Dezon.” And then it was like the letters magically rearranged themselves in his mind. “Dozen.” He jotted down 12. The rest were easy. He marked 10 for the “cents,” 2 for the “bicycle,” and 50 was already there.
Eighty plus 100—180. Plus 12—192. And 10 cents was 202. Plus 2 for the bicycles—204. And 50 more. That old guy invented 254 games all on his own? Wow!
Zane rechecked his math. He touched the 2, the 5, and the 4. Enter!
The GollyReader went black. Nothing. C’mon. C’mon! And then it lit with big, colorful exclamation points.
Chapter 13
Zane raced to a Golly guide, who checked him in, collected his GollyReader, and pointed to the cordoned-off rows at the top of the bleachers. “Report to Connie. She’s expecting you.”
“How’d I do?” Zane asked.
“I have no clue,” said the man.
“How many people have you checked in?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything if I told you.”
“Did the exclamation points mean anything?”
“What exclamation points?” The man reached around Zane for another kid’s GollyReader.
At least Zane had beaten her. He climbed the bleachers to the cordoned-off section. “Are you Connie?”
“I am.” She scanned his wristband and let him past the ropes. “And you are Zane.” She pressed a button on her scanner.
“What’s this scan for?”
“We’re nosy,” Connie said. “We like to know who’s where at all times.”
That was as close to a real answer as he’d gotten.
The scanner spit out a receipt. Connie pointed to the large 151 printed above a bar code with a string of numbers and letters. “This means you were the one hundred fifty-first person to check in. You’ll find out soon if that was fast enough. And if you got the correct answer. That’s all I can tell you.”
One hundred fifty-first out of a thousand? If the first 15 percent moved on, he’d be out. By one. If he wasn’t in, he wished they’d send him home now. Maybe let him shower in the team locker room, which would be totally cool, but he needed to stop thinking about football. Better to focus on the Games. This whole morning, for the first time in forever, he hadn’t thought about concussions.
Zane took his 151 receipt and a bottle of water to a seat in the bleachers under the canopy of banners. About ten other people were scattered in his section, including that short, scrawny kid from their four-person challenge, the one who had intensity in his eye
s. That Elijah.
Zane downed most of his water and stared at all those groups still on the field, rolling their wheels, trying not to bump into one another. If the Games kept going until that one incompetent group finished, he’d be there all week. He needed a diversion, something less nerve-racking than waiting for the results.
Zane moved over and sat a few feet away from Elijah. “How long have you been here?”
Elijah didn’t seem to notice Zane’s existence. He sat there, staring forward. Zombie?
Zane smiled and leaned way back, barely able to rest his elbows on the bleacher bench behind him. He noticed a banner he hadn’t seen, the one with second the Q and the one Z. QUIT? ARE YOU CRAZY?
That could be his motto.
“How many individual fiber filaments are in each banner, do you think?” Elijah asked out of the blue. “I know there’re a couple hundred thousand fibers per square inch of a microfiber towel, but this is different material.”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yeah.” Elijah stuck his elbows behind him to sit like Zane, but his elbows missed and his head thwacked the seat.
“You okay?” Zane asked.
“If awkward’s okay.” Elijah wriggled back. If he wanted to match Zane’s position, he’d need to grow another foot. Or not. He scooched his butt back, so it was sitting on the concrete. His calves lopped onto the bench in front and his elbows barely reached the seat in back.
“To answer your question from before,” Elijah said, “I got here about four minutes before you checked in with the Golly guide.”
Zane laughed.
“What’d I say?”
“It’s not what you said.” Zane shook his head. “It’s when you said it.”
Elijah stared at the banners. “As long as I’m being awkward, I’ll wonder out loud if there’s some sort of additive you can combine with unwanted cloth to generate a small yet significant alternative energy source.”
“How do you even think of that?”
“It’s the outside-the-box cliché. Most people trash old banners or old clothes because that’s the norm. I try to ignore how things”—and he made air quotes with his fingers—“are supposed to be and think about what might be possible.”
This kid was the true opposite of Zane’s friends, but in a strange sort of way, it’d be okay to hang out with him. Never at school, though. That would be just weird. Then again, once football season started, everything would turn weird. Zane could find himself on the outside of the JZs’ inside jokes, which might grow so depressing, he’d need to choose to be either a loner or find other people to hang out with. Was there even anyone else worth hanging out with? That Grace, but she didn’t go to his school. Maybe he should’ve kept track of Daryl.
“So let’s say,” said Elijah, “there are about six billion fibers in all these banners.” He turned to Zane. “How many polyesters were killed to make them?”
Polyesters? What?
Elijah’s whole face lit up in a big smile. “You know polyester isn’t a living thing, right?” Then he laughed.
Zane couldn’t help but laugh with him. “Sure.”
“Then again, the banners are probably made of nylon, and I have no clue how many fibers are in a square inch of nylon.”
“And that matters because . . .” Zane didn’t mean to sound snarky but still . . .
“Doesn’t matter. It’s just how my brain is wired.”
“Are you some sort of genius?” Zane asked.
“Yeah.”
“How old are you? What grade are you in?”
“I turned eleven yesterday. In a couple weeks I’ll be a senior in high school. I could handle college now, but my parents want me to slow down and enjoy life.”
“So you’re the one.”
“Which one?” Elijah’s eyes twinkled like he knew all the secrets of the world and he was willing to share with the right people.
They sat in silence, Zane finally feeling the summer heat now that his adrenaline levels were coming down. But Elijah kept him entertained. It was like the movements of his fingers and the twitchiness of his head were overflow from the furious whirring in his brain. And the best part, Elijah probably didn’t care if it looked weird. He knew he was weird, and he wore it as well as Zane would have worn the captain’s C on his jersey this coming season.
The captain’s C. Would his team have one less captain or would another guy prove himself worthy? How would someone do that? How had Zane done that? And what if—
He tried to shake the thought he’d been dodging all summer, but it was coming on stronger than ever, like a bullet train he couldn’t derail. Zane started upright from his laid-back position on the bleachers, but resisted the instinct to curl forward in a ball. He could take this. Here it came.
What if—
What if his football ban lasted more than a year? No. That wasn’t the real question. This was: What if he could never play football again?
More than once, the doctor had said Zane “should be all right,” which always brought a rush of relief, but one that fizzled fast. The doctor’s optimism came with no guarantees. Even so, Zane kept holding on to the “should be” like a “will be,” but he couldn’t delude himself anymore. And the thought of never wearing his captain C? That hurt. No, it ached.
He couldn’t imagine going through life as another body in a crowd, another fan in the stands, being ushered from some stadium, today’s stadium even, into oblivion. He needed to be in the heart of the action. He needed to run, tackle, deny, intercept—to use his “mad skills,” Coach had called them.
Were those skills the only reasons Zane had earned his captain’s C? Or was there something more, some instinct, some other qualities? There had to be. And more important, could he find those here and prove there was more game to him than football?
Zane finished his water and turned to Elijah. “I’ll be right back, buddy.” Zane would have explained where he was going, but Elijah seemed to know and notice everything.
Zane waved his empty water bottle as he approached Connie, the Golly person.
She grabbed another for him.
“I’m pretty thirsty,” he said. “Should I take two or won’t we be here that long?”
She looked at her watch. “It appears, number one fifty-one, you’re fishing for information at exactly the right time.” She handed him one bottle and smiled.
“That’s all you can give me?”
“Yep,” she said. “Water and my best wishes for your patience.”
Zane shrugged his shoulders and turned.
“Oh, and one more thing.” She looked at her watch again. “You’ll just need to be patient for five minutes, and four, three . . .” She pointed to the scoreboard.
“You have five minutes. Five minutes to finish,” said Randy Wright’s voice.
The scoreboard clock began a five-minute countdown. The contestants who had already finished, cheered. The ones on the field and the lower bleachers seemed to hunker down and work faster.
Zane headed back up to Elijah. He should have gotten another water for the kid. He held out his unopened bottle. “Need this?”
“Thanks, no.” He held up his own bottle with barely a quarter of the water gone.
“Are you part camel?”
“I hydrated earlier just in case.” Elijah looked away then leaned back over. “But truthfully, I’m more afraid I’ll need to pee, and they won’t let me find a restroom.”
“If they don’t let you find a restroom, you find me. You’ll get your restroom.”
“So you’re the enforcer type? You’re big enough.”
Zane shook his head. “Honestly, I’m not that tough, but I can make things happen.”
“That works, too.”
Time to move the subject off himself. He downed half his water and pointed the bottle at the scoreboard. “Two-minute warning.”
“So you’re a football guy.”
“You like football?”
�
�I like the strategy.”
“Yes!” said Zane. “Strategy! Like when you look into the tackle’s eyes and realize he and the guard are gonna double-team your center, so you freelance to fill that gap, and the running back can’t even make it to the line of scrimmage. Stuff like that you learn, but you also just feel.”
“I don’t know about that, but I was thinking more along the lines of sacrificing a few downs, perhaps throwing a bomb or two in order to stretch the field and allow your team longer gains with higher-percentage plays.”
“You? You know about football?”
Elijah didn’t answer him. Instead he blended in with the growing group chanting, “Ten, nine, eight . . .”
“. . . seven, six, five. . .” Zane joined in.
“Four, three, two, one!”
A horn blew.
“Stop!” said Randy Wright’s voice. “If you are sitting in the stands, please remain where you are. If you are on the field or anywhere outside the stands, please find a seat in your designated section. You have two minutes to get there.”
Two minutes until the referees came in with a ruling.
Chapter 14
Elijah pointed to the field. “At least two hundred kids didn’t finish, or so it appears.”
“But I might be outta here, too,” said Zane.
Elijah took Zane’s ticket and studied it for a few seconds before he gave it back. “Seriously? That many checked in during those four minutes?”
“Why? What number are you?”
“Three.”
“Three?” said Zane. “If it were me, I’d wonder who numbers one and two were.”
“Just number two. Number one got sick all over the place—yech!—and had to leave. Couldn’t handle the pressure.”
“Maybe number two couldn’t handle it either, and I’m looking at number one.”
“I hope not. I’d love finally having someone to catch up with.”
Elijah? Competitive, like Zane? How could two people so different be so similar?
“So wait,” said Zane. “If number one really did leave, and even if everyone else got the right answer, I’m suddenly number one fifty.”