Friend or Foe

by Jody Feldman

  Reckless

  Vertical

  Younger

  Mister

  Flawed

  Late

  Common

  Dangerous

  The Games DVDs had made the puzzles look easy. One person had a flicker of an idea, then another person built on it, and through the magic of TV, they solved it. But here? The magic needed to flow through them.

  Zane brought up their choices in one swoop: Chompers, WordsWorth, and Silly Stacks. “Somehow these words are supposed to tell us which game to open.”

  “That’s how it worked in the past,” said Ryder. “But if we don’t figure it out in five minutes, we need to open whichever makes most sense.”

  “How do we know which makes most sense without solving it?” said Leore.

  “Easy,” Josh said. “We’ll do eeny, meeny, miney, mo; catch the right stunt by its toe.”

  What part of not wasting time did they not understand? “Let’s just solve it,” said Zane.

  Leore was looking at that word list without blinking.

  Zane stood next to her. “I bet you’ve already ruled out that the first letters or last letters don’t spell anything.”

  “Also,” she said. “I don’t see any common definitions, languages of origin—”

  “Have you been watching the National Spelling Bee, too?” said Josh.

  “I’ve participated in the National Spelling Bee, but I never got to Washington, DC. Almost, though. ‘Effulgent’ kept me.”

  “What does that mean?” Ryder said.

  “Time police,” said Josh. “Blow the whistle on yourself.”

  Good. “So, Josh. What’s weird about the list?”

  “Outside of the fact that the words don’t have anything in common?” He shook his head. “But we’re playing this in Foe mode, right? That could mean the other team has the same type of word list, but their words are simpler.”

  “Simpler than ‘late’?” Leore asked.

  “He means,” said Ryder, “simpler than the longer ones.”

  “You don’t know what the longer ones mean?” asked Leore.

  “I know them,” said Ryder. “Like, ‘reckless’ is out of control, not being careful. And ‘vertical’ is up and down and not sideways. And ‘younger’ is more young.”

  “More young?” said Josh. “That’s good. Young means young.”

  “Because I need to explain ‘young’ to you? It’s the opposite of older, by the way.”

  Zane whistled a halt.

  “Maybe he should be the whistle cop,” said Josh.

  “We need to focus,” Zane said. “So we were at ‘younger.’ Why do you think they gave us that instead of ‘young’? Does the –E-R change anything?”

  “Not that I see,” said Leore.

  “Maybe it’s a Foe thing,” Zane said. “A longer word looks harder. Keep going with the rest of the words, Ryder.”

  “Okay, so there’s ‘mister’ as opposed to ‘miss’ or ‘misses.’”

  “Or it can be a mister,” Leore said, “a device you use to, say, spray plants with water.”

  “Or run under when it’s a hundred degrees at Six Flags.” Now Zane was wasting time. “After ‘mister’ there’s ‘flawed’ as in not perfect.”

  “And ‘late,’” said Josh, “as in not early. And do you hear ourselves? Not, not, not. We keep repeating ‘not.’”

  This time Leore really smiled. “They can all be opposites.” She grabbed a pen from the table and started writing words in a neat column to the right of the original list.

  Reckless Safe/Careful

  Vertical Horizontal

  Younger Older

  Mister Miss/Mrs./Ms.

  Flawed Perfect

  Late Early

  Common Unusual

  Dangerous Safe

  “You guys are geniuses!” Zane said. He grabbed the Chompers box.

  “What do you mean?” said Leore.

  “Look at the initial letters on your list of opposites.”

  “S-H-O-M-P-E-U-S?”

  “Use ‘careful’ instead of ‘safe,’” said Zane. “And what’s an R synonym for ‘unusual’?”

  “‘Rare,’” she said.

  “Exactly. Use ‘careful’ and ‘rare,’ and it spells ‘Chompers,’ which I’m opening, okay?” He didn’t wait for a response before he pried off the lid.

  Inside was a card.

  Stunt #1

  * * * * * * * * * * *

  We chomp our Chompers day and night;

  Eat everything within our sight.

  A goat, a boat, a puck, a truck;

  We eat until the food gets stuck.

  And then we scream and shout and pout;

  No more to eat till it’s all out.

  We have no hands! We’re at a loss!

  We need you, please! Come help us floss!

  “We’re coming, giant teeth!” Ryder started running, but Zane caught him by the elbow.

  “Where are you going?”

  “In search of teeth.”

  “We need a strategy.” Zane pointed to his left. “Head to that corner and yell your name if you find them.” He let go, and Ryder sped away. “I’m heading way back, left. Josh, back, right Leore, front, right. Work your way to the middle. If you find the teeth, yell loud.”

  “Loudly,” Leore said.

  “Right,” said Zane. What was with these people and grammar? Didn’t matter. He sped off.

  The famous mountain from last year remained in the middle of the vast space that rose to a glass ceiling many stories up. He raced by a hippo, a fire hydrant, a barn, three fireplaces, a giant hot fudge sundae, a tower of pizzas, a chair-sized pincushion, a rack with hundreds of hats, hovering spacecrafts, and a wall of mattresses, maybe, where Team Gold was doing some stunt with pool cues.

  Zane picked up the pace. Giant teeth, giant teeth. He’d assumed they were giant. This was Foe mode, but they wouldn’t be so cruel as to hide normal-sized teeth in a place like this.

  He passed a group of purple things: robot, minivan, tent in midair, unicorn in a bubble bath. Then came the orange things: a barrel of basketballs, person-sized pad of sticky notes, steamroller—

  “It’s Ryder!” The voice came from behind Zane. “I’m under the fire truck in the ceiling.”

  There! Zane raced over and pulled up, right behind Leore, at the Chompers—eight teeth on top, eight on the bottom, all about the size of refrigerator doors. Between some of them were traces of color, probably whatever was stuck.

  Zane took the big silver card from Ryder. Let the flossing begin! That’s all it said.

  Go time! Zane grabbed both coils of rope sitting on the floor in front of the Chompers and tossed one to Josh, who had just gotten there. “You and Leore floss the bottom. We’ll take the top, Ryder, but we need to find ladders first. When we bring them back, Josh and Leore’ll give us their dental hygiene tips.”

  “Good one,” Josh said.

  Ladders. What was with Golly hiding ladders? Nothing here, nothing—

  “Here!” Ryder called.

  Zane went around a pine tree, where Ryder was already pulling on one of a pair of stair-step bookends.

  “Take yours around front,” Ryder said. “Opposite side of her.” He pointed to Leore, who was pulling the rope through the base of the left molar, then letting it disappear back through the teeth like a tug-of-war.

  “Any advice, Leore?” Zane said, pushing the stairs to the front.

  “Just start near the gums. That’s the only way to feed the rope to the other side.”

  With the rope looped over his shoulder, Zane climbed the stairs and fed one end between the first two teeth.

  “Got it!” called Ryder.

  “Tug like your life depended on it.”

  Ryder’s tug nearly slammed Zane into the teeth. He tugged back, and within seconds they had a smooth sawing motion. “Perfect,” Zane said. “Work it down.”

  “Finally got something,” Leore said. “A
boxcar.”

  “Like from a train?” Ryder called.

  “Yes, and it says, ‘Instruction one of two. All aboard, but order them right.’”

  “Keep going!” Ryder tugged even harder.

  Three more backs and forths, and something smashed into Zane’s stomach. He let go of the rope, and it zipped back through the teeth. “You okay?” Zane called.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Something hit me. Some sort of stuffed-animal fly. Eyes bugging out and everything. Move your stairs to the next tooth.”

  Ryder was ahead of him. By the time Zane positioned his stairs, Ryder had already fed the rope through the next gap.

  Except for a little grunting, they all stayed quiet except to announce what else they’d flossed from the Chompers: miniature wheelchair, cupcake, cotton candy, flashlight, flyswatter, enormous safety pin, and another boxcar on Ryder’s side that said Instruction 2 of 2: Then keep the train within your sight. All the objects were made of some expanding foam that compressed between the teeth, but puffed up once they came out.

  Zane repositioned his ladder and fed the rope through a tooth gap. It took only six tugs to get a lighthouse.

  “Just two more places to floss down here,” called Josh.

  “Us, too!” Zane put even more effort in his tugs.

  “Now one. We have a jar of apple butter,” said Leore.

  “How do you know it’s apple butter?” Ryder said.

  “I can read labels.”

  A big piece of green came through the next tooth on Zane’s side. “I think the guy ate some rolled-up spinach.” Three more tugs. “Or not. It’s a yellow flower on a green stem.”

  “Last one!” said Ryder.

  “Ours is almost out,” called Josh. “What is it, Leore?”

  “A pinwheel.”

  “And we have something round,” said Ryder.

  It fell out on Zane’s side. “One of those caramel apples on a stick. Now, grab everything and meet behind the teeth.”

  They looked like shoplifters from a randomness store.

  “Where’s the train?” said Leore. “They said there would be a train.”

  “Exactly,” Ryder said. “‘All aboard, but order them right. Then keep the train within your sight.’ I don’t see anything.”

  “Not true,” Josh said. “You see the cupcake you’re holding.”

  “Seriously—”

  “Shh!” Zane held up a hand. “Hear that?”

  Arms still loaded, they moved to the front of the teeth.

  From way back, coming around the mountain, was a train engine made from an oversized Go-Golly-Go Car. In front of it, floorboards were flipping over to reveal more train tracks as the cars needed them.

  The engine stopped in front of them. The open-topped boxcars behind it were numbered one through fourteen.

  Leore held up a boxcar from the Chompers. “I just noticed. This is labeled number six.”

  “And this boxcar is eleven.” Josh dropped it into the number 11 boxcar.

  “So where do the rest of these go?” Ryder dumped his four objects into different boxcars.

  “Whoa!” said Zane. “What are you doing?”

  “Seeing if it’s random.”

  Leore put a hand on her hip. “When has anything ever been random with the Games?”

  “Fine.” Ryder took out the pieces. “Satisfied?”

  No one answered. Instead, they lined up the pieces across the floor. Next to Ryder’s cupcake, flashlight, and wheelchair were cotton candy, flyswatter, lighthouse, flower, pinwheel, apple butter, safety pin, and bug-eyed fly.

  “Any others have numbers?” Ryder asked.

  “Not on mine,” Zane said.

  Leore shook her head. “Mine, either.”

  “Hey, you Golly jokers!” Josh called into the atmosphere. “Isn’t this supposed to be a stunt? What’s with the puzzle?”

  “You didn’t see?” Ryder pointed to the side of the engine. It said Puzzle #2.

  Chapter 27

  From above came a Tarzan yell. Bill swung in on a rope and landed in front of the engine. “For being Foes, you killed the first puzzle and stunt. But hurry! You’re still playing catch-up.” Bill and his rope lifted toward the ceiling and disappeared behind the mountain.

  “We’ll never make it,” Leore said.

  “We’re not giving up.” Zane squatted and moved the fly next to the flyswatter.

  Josh pointed at Zane’s pairing. “That’s just wrong.”

  “No,” said Leore. “It’s very right.”

  Leore? Something positive?

  “It’s like wordplay. Here’s a flashlight, there’s a lighthouse.”

  Zane moved them next to each other. “Get together everything that matches.”

  They matched the caramel apple and apple butter, then strung together the safety pin, pinwheel, and wheelchair. That left the cotton candy, flower and cupcake unmatched.

  “Maybe they’re using different names for these,” said Leore.

  “Like pretty flower instead of yellow flower?” Josh said.

  Did the guy know he wasn’t funny?

  “And instead of cotton candy, sticky stuff that’s impossible to get out of your hair when you’re eight and think it might make an awesome blue wig?”

  That was funnier. But funny needed to wait. Zane stared at the objects and where they’d ultimately go—the train with its engine, five empty cars, the number 6 boxcar in place, four empty cars, the number 11 boxcar—

  “Hey! We need to string together five objects, then a new set of four, then three.” He pointed to the sequence of filled and unfilled boxcars.

  “We already have a three,” said Ryder. “Put ’em in!”

  “No, Ryder,” said Leore. “Just because there’re three doesn’t mean the string’s done.”

  “Then let’s get it done,” Ryder said.

  “I’m trying,” she said. “For one thing, unless this has another name, the flyswatter is at the end of one string because nothing else here starts with swatter. So before it, housefly . . .”

  “Housefly?” Zane added the flashlight/lighthouse pair to the front of the housefly and flyswatter. “And unless the flower’s real name is like ‘yellow flash’ to go in front of the flashlight, this string is done.”

  “So let’s pretend for a minute that we have our string of four and our string of three.” Leore moved the safety pin, pinwheel, and wheelchair to the side, then grouped the caramel apple, apple butter, cupcake, cotton candy, and flower.

  “Maybe that’s a caramel cupcake,” said Josh.

  “Right,” said Ryder, “because we need two things that start with caramel.”

  Zane stayed quiet for Leore, who was shifting the objects like a sleight-of-hand artist.

  “There!” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Zane asked.

  “Positive. We call these candy apples where I live. So we have cotton candy, candy apple, apple butter, and this flower has to be a buttercup, then cupcake.”

  “Load the train, Ryder!” said Zane.

  Within seconds, the train blew a warning whistle, then chugged off, floorboards flipping in front of it, floorboards flipping back over behind it.

  “Why can’t it move faster?” said Josh, following it in slow motion.

  “Or tell us where it’s going,” said Ryder. “We could meet it there.”

  But they could only walk alongside it.

  “They’re still on the train!” came Berk’s voice from around the bend. “Woo-woo! Suckers!”

  “This is not good,” Leore said.

  Zane slowed a step until she caught up. “But you were brilliant. And they could mess up or get penalized or trip over a groundhog and roll up the side of the volcano and fall in.”

  “Like that would happen,” she said.

  “It’s not over till it’s over.”

  “How cliché.”

  “But it’s true. Isn’t that how clichés start?”

 
The train took them to the far side of the warehouse, probably much farther than it had taken the other team. It finally stopped past a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round, at a table with a choice of three Golly boxes: Long Train Running, Running Waterfalls, and Watch Your Step.

  “I thought we solved this already,” said Ryder.

  “We cracked the code,” Leore said, “but we still need to open a box.”

  There’d been five objects strung together, then four, then three. “It has to be—” Zane and Leore reached for it at the same time. “Go ahead,” he said.

  “Why that one?” said Josh.

  Leore looked at him. “Running water. Waterfalls. It fits the pattern.”

  “What’s wrong with long train and train running?”

  “Train running isn’t exactly a common phrase,” Leore said.

  “Here!” Ryder had been opening the box through the explanation.

  Stunt #2

  * * * * * * * * * * *

  The well is dry, but water’s near.

  Our buckets aren’t the best, we fear.

  Please use them, though, for your next task.

  Go fill the well! That’s all we ask.

  They raced off. The waterfall flowed from one of the ledges that crisscrossed the warehouse, stories high, then landed who knew where. They were about to find out.

  Zane stopped short of the huge pool at the waterfall’s base, and for half a second, inhaled the mist that hit his face. “Where’s the well?”

  “Over here!” Ryder’s gift: finding anything. He handed out buckets to them all.

  Zane dragged his through the pool, but water nearly poured through the ill-fitting wooden slats. “These buckets aren’t the best? That’s an understatement.” By the time he ran his to the stone well, barely one-quarter of his water was left.

  When he zoomed back past them, the other three were only partway there, wearing . . . what? Zane glanced back. Yellow slickers. There was one more hanging in a free-standing closet next to the waterfall.

  Forget wearing it. Zane dropped his to the ground, then swiped the bucket through the water and wrapped the raincoat around it. The three others returned.

  “The raincoat genius strikes!” said Josh. “Now we don’t need galoshes.”

  Zane must have dumped three times more water into the well this time. He still couldn’t see where it landed, but he did notice a blue laser beam rimming the inside of the well, about four feet from the top. A sensor? A warning not to reach below it? Probably so. Wouldn’t come into play until they had enough water, anyway.