by Jody Feldman
Zane wasn’t that hungry, anyway. Part of him wanted to stomp out the frustration, part of him wanted to flop on the couch and take a nap, but all of him, he suddenly realized, was happy that they weren’t shipping him straight to the airport.
They came out of the elevator, and Zane lagged behind. He needed a few seconds to mourn his loss before he got to lunch.
Elijah had other plans. He stopped and waited for Zane. “So, what is it?”
“What’s what?”
“Your eyes. Your mood. I know you wanted to win—we all want to win—but you had some higher stakes in this, didn’t you?”
How could someone so awkward know so much about people?
“I like the glory.” And that’s where Zane wanted to leave it. “But you, buddy,” he said to change the focus, “have a chance to claim it. Are you ready for the next round?”
“I don’t have any expectations, really,” said Elijah.
“Why not? You’ll kill it.”
“Maybe the mental stuff, but there’s more to this than brainpower. Look at me. I’m four foot five inches. I weigh seventy pounds.”
Zane couldn’t help but laugh. “I weigh more than two of you?”
“Yeah, and you’re more than a foot taller, and you have a bigger bone structure, which is beside the point. I’m concerned I may not be fast enough or strong enough or spatially smart enough to see this through till the end.”
“I don’t know what the spatially thing means, and don’t explain it because here’s what’s important: Golly will not give you anything that’s physically impossible.”
“But—”
“I know. You’re thinking even if it’s possible, it might take you forever.”
“Exactly.”
“And that, Elijah, is where you’re wrong.” Zane laughed. “How many times has anyone told you you’re wrong?”
“Like, none.”
“I’m telling you now. You’re wrong,” said Zane.
Elijah started to protest.
“Hear me out. If you came into a room with a monster equation covering the whiteboard, how would you feel?”
“Ready to take it on.”
“That’s how you need to go into this next round.”
“If only it could be math.”
“No matter what it is, treat it like a math problem. Attack it logically. If you don’t have all the physical tools you need, look around. These people give you everything. I mean, what did you do with Chompers? How did you reach the top set?”
“Top set of what?”
“Of the Chompers. Flossing the giant teeth to get the objects for the word chain.”
“We didn’t floss giant teeth. We poked objects out of a foam wall with pool cues.”
“Right. But we did have to floss between giant teeth, and none of us could possibly reach the top ones. Behind the teeth were huge bookends we used for stairs.”
“Really?”
Zane nodded. “They’ll give you the tools. Just think outside the box. You may only weigh seventy pounds, but your brain is probably ten percent of that.”
“Actually, no, but I’m assuming we’re not being technical here.”
Zane gave him a little push and laughed, and they went into the dining room, where all the parents rushed them.
“You were a star!” Zane’s dad said.
Zane nodded, but couldn’t smile. “It never entered my mind that we wouldn’t win.”
“It never does. That’s why you’re such a competitor.” His dad put his arm around him and led him deeper into the room. “I have never seen you as focused and on task and as such a leader as I did today.”
“I really wanted it,” Zane said.
“I know.”
“You probably don’t.” Zane shook his head. “I wanted more than three thousand dollars.”
His dad laughed. “Don’t we all.”
“But we really need the money.”
“Why?” asked his dad. “We have a house and food and two cars that work most of the time. We scrape together enough to put you both in sports. We’re fine with what we have.”
“If we had more, Mom wouldn’t be yelling at you, and you wouldn’t be yelling at Mom about bills and new shoes and everything.”
“Seriously, Zane?” They walked toward a table at the back of the room, but Zane veered away to another one, away from the highlight reel. His dad motioned for him to take a seat. “If it were about money, your mom would never have married me. She knew I was washed-up in the NFL and I’d be just another boring, middle-class guy.”
“But you’re always fighting about money.”
“And you thought your winning could stop our little arguments?”
Zane felt the blood rush to his face. “Little?”
“We’re loud about everything,” said his dad. “And we’re fine, we love each other. You know that.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“I am so sorry, Zane. And I can reassure you there is no divorce in our future, not even close. If we had more money, we’d still disagree about other things. It’s what we do. We both need to be right.” His dad leaned back. “Sometimes we laugh about it, how you and Zoe wouldn’t be as competitive if you didn’t come from us.”
“You laugh? I don’t remember the last time you laughed.”
“I laugh all the time.”
“But you and Mom don’t laugh together.”
His dad blew out a deep breath. “I promise everything’s fine.”
It was good that Zane had finally said something, but his stomach was still churning.
His dad tried to catch Zane’s eye. “Is this really about your mom and me?”
“I thought it was.”
“Then what?”
Zane shrugged, but he knew. “It hurts to say.”
“Which is why you need to.”
“I know.” Zane rubbed his finger back and forth on the table’s edge. “Two seasons ago. Remember when our team got knocked out of the playoffs?”
His dad nodded.
“I recovered fast. There was next season, always a next season. Then I got the first concussion, and the one after, and I was pretty depressed.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“Then the Games got me out of it.” Zane took a deep breath. “But suddenly there is no next season. No Games, no football, nothing. Now what?”
“It’ll get better. I promise.”
“How? Because you’re not gonna tell me I can go home and put on pads.”
Right then, his dad looked down into Zane’s eyes. “It often felt there wasn’t much of a future for me right after football, but I’ll make sure there’s something for you.”
Maybe Zane should have thanked him and moved on, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He tried to smile. “But how can I keep from turning into a Daryl?”
“What’s a Daryl?”
“You remember Daryl, my linebacker friend who stopped playing after he broke his leg.”
“Whatever happened to him? I can picture him coming over on crutches . . . What? About a year or two ago, and then . . .”
“Exactly.” Zane shook his head. “He had to miss all those practices. And when he did come back to the locker room, I still remember. We were laughing at some inside joke that he wasn’t in on, and it was like he started fading away in front of us. Maybe we tried to include him—I hope we did—but right now, I couldn’t tell you whether he’s still at my school or he completely dropped off the face of the earth.” Zane puffed out a breath. “I don’t want to fade away. I don’t want to drop off the face of the earth. I like my friends. I don’t want to lose them. I mean, how do you start over? How did you start over?”
“I had your mom. She made it easier.” His dad shook off some memory. “Hey, you can always find Daryl again. He’d understand.” His dad grew a bit of a smile, but Zane knew he was only half joking. “And you can go to all the games.” Even his dad didn’t sound convinced.
Za
ne just gave him a look.
“Okay, yeah. The good stuff happens during workouts and practice and team meetings.”
“And?”
“And you refuse to fetch water and bandages and smirk on the sidelines like those managers. What do you call them?”
“Thing One and Thing Two.”
His dad gave a small laugh. “Maybe it won’t come to that. I have to believe it wasn’t only you shutting out Daryl. He had a say.”
Daryl probably did have a say. He’d said to himself that he didn’t belong anymore. Would that happen to Zane? And then what? There was always that Kelly from the School Round, but her giggling would drive him nuts. What if there were other Elijahs, people he’d never considered before? That could be cool, but would he get tired of them? Would they even want to be around him?
Zane felt his head give a slight shake. It wasn’t that he’d have to trade the JZs and their crowd for another one. He was Zane. He wouldn’t retreat like a Daryl. If he needed to bring new friends into their group, make inside jokes with them, he could. But that wasn’t the total issue. He took a deep breath. No. It was like football, itself, was one of his best friends. And Zane couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning it.
“Just for now, just for today,” said his dad, “focus on the spectacle, get into the competition. Smile, cheer. I know you’ll do that, anyway. I also know you’ll fool a lot of people, make them think you’re still all positive. Your mom and I and everyone who truly knows you, though, will see how much it hurts. And together, we will start working on the rest of it. Okay?”
Zane nodded. It had to be okay.
Chapter 30
Lunch was a lot more than bread and water. It was like an entire deli collided with a burger restaurant, then careened into a bakery.
Elijah was at the end of one table, balancing a sandwich thicker than both his arms put together.
Somehow that kid gave Zane a spark of energy. He laughed. “You gonna eat all that?”
“Probably not, but it’s a work of art. Andy Warhol would’ve loved it.”
Andy who? Zane didn’t bother to ask. His stomach had opened a bit. He started to grab two plates, but one would be enough. He wasn’t in training.
His sandwich—turkey, corned beef, and salami with lettuce, tomato, pickle, and mustard—might not have been as thick as Elijah’s, but balanced by salad, tortilla chips, and cookies, it was his own work of art.
Zane found his dad at Elijah’s table.
“You remember Dr. and Dr. McNair from breakfast this morning, Zane, don’t you?”
“You’re both doctors?” He turned to Elijah. “No wonder you’re so smart.”
“Except for a gene or two, we can’t take any credit,” said Elijah’s mom. “He could pretty much explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity from birth.”
“Mom!”
“He learns fast,” she said. “He learned from you today, Zane.”
Elijah rolled his eyes. “Can we talk about something else?”
“No,” Zane said. “I could use that right now. What’d you learn?”
“I don’t know. What did I learn, Mom?”
“Well, before today,” said Dr. McNair, leaning in, “he wouldn’t have told off a big guy like Berk.”
“You what?” said Zane.
Elijah shook his head. “I got caught in the heat of competition. It was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing,” said Elijah’s dad. “You should have seen him. Berk started preaching his version of logic, reached for the wrong box again, and it was like someone put a superpower cape on Elijah. He shot forward just in time, grabbed the box from Berk’s hands, and told him to shut his trap. This was the way things were going to be.”
Elijah was looking meek and shaking his head, which only caused Zane to laugh out loud. “I didn’t mean to teach you to be an enforcer.”
“It’s what I needed to win.”
If nothing else, lunch brought Zane from ditch-deep to level ground. After two cookies, the sugar spike was about to kick in. Zane picked up his third when Bill came to their table. “Five-minute warning, you two. We’ll meet by the door.”
“I still don’t know why you need us,” Zane said.
“But you’ll want to know.” Bill left with a wink.
Zane put the cookie down.
Inside
THE EXECUTIVE VIEWING AREA
Something must have been hilarious over there. The five members of Bert’s executive team were sitting back, laughing, nearly licking the plates that had held the huge lunch they’d catered in. Even Plago. Maybe he was celebrating the fact that he was still alive. But how could they even smile at a time like this? All Bert could swallow were three cinnamon-raisin pretzels from the bag Danny had given him earlier.
Bert paced back and forth in front of the four monitors in their viewing area. Should he even stay here? Or should he go to the control room instead, where he could watch each camera angle from forty different feeds? Maybe he’d see something that would avert any disaster before it happened.
Then again, he’d had people randomly assigned to each monitor, ready to stop the Games if they saw something. His own eyes couldn’t be in forty places at once. They needed to be here, to watch Tawkler and Morrison and Jenkins and Lorraine. At least he’d ruled out Plago, unless that man was one of the greatest actors in the world.
Bert looked at his watch. These Games couldn’t be over soon enough.
Chapter 31
Carol and Bill had brought them into what might have been someone’s large family room if that room had eight recliners with attached TV monitors.
“Consider this home base for the rest of the Games,” said Bill. “Two bathrooms in the back. A refrigerator with plenty to eat and drink if you’re still in consumption mode. And”—he tapped Hanna’s monitor—“entertainment.”
“But don’t get too comfortable, not even you, Silver Team,” Carol said. “You need to help us for this next—”
Huh? The room was spinning. Another concussion?
Bill and Carol laughed. “You should see your faces,” she said. “Yes, you can pretty much count on this room to move every time you’re in here.”
“It’s our preferred means of transportation to your next stop,” said Bill. “And, by the way, we’re not done with Friend or Foe.”
“That’s right,” Carol said. “Each person on Team Gold will pair up, as Friends, with a member of the Silver Team. Team Silver, here’s what’s in it for you: If your pair comes in first place, you’ll win ten thousand dollars. Five thousand for second place, four thousand for third, and three thousand for fourth.”
It was like someone had switched Zane’s power strip back on.
“Now who plays with whom,” said Bill, “is entirely up to . . . Team Silver.”
Berk zeroed in on Zane with a “you and me” look.
“And we start with the person from the Silver Team who earned the most points in Friend or Foe. So, Zane, who do you want to work with?”
This was a no-brainer. The combination of Elijah’s genius and Zane’s athleticism could produce some sort of supercontestant. Were the rest of them blind to that? They were all basically holding their breaths and staring. Except Leore, who was looking down as usual.
“Before I pick, I’ve gotta give props to the star of our team. We wouldn’t have come as close if it weren’t for Leore.”
She snapped her head up.
“So whoever gets her is truly lucky. That said”—Zane put a big smile on his face and looked toward Berk—“my pick, no question, is my man . . . Elijah.”
Berk gasped.
“Me?” Elijah said. “I always get picked last.”
“Not today.”
Elijah leaned way back with the biggest grin on his face. He kept glancing at Zane while Josh picked Berk—guess he thought that brawn would beat brains—and Ryder chose Becky. Zane understood the logic, wanting her competitive edge, but she wouldn’t balance him. Not unle
ss she could remind him to stop and think. Or he could remind her.
Zane would have picked Hanna if Elijah weren’t available. She had this spark in her eyes, she moved quickly and decisively, and besides, she knew how to win. She was the only two-time first-place finisher—at the stadium and also here, in the first Friend or Foe round.
“You’re stuck with me, Hanna,” said Leore.
“Not stuck at all,” she said. “We’ve got this, okay?”
Leore nodded.
The room stopped moving. Bill peeked out a door that had slid open. “Hanna, Leore, you’re up! Go out and have a seat in the waiting area. When you hear chimes . . .”
On cue a loud set of chimes sounded.
“. . . you’ll receive an envelope and get under way. See you soon.”
They dropped off Ryder and Becky, then Josh and Berk.
“By the way,” Bill said as Zane and Elijah went out, “no chairs for you because—”
The chimes sounded. A rope dropped from far above their tiny room. Zane grabbed the large, attached envelope and handed it to Elijah. “It’s your show, buddy.”
“You’ll help like it’s your show, right?”
“That’s the only way I know.”
Elijah pulled out a card and held it above his eye level.
Zane pushed down on the card. “Make it comfortable for you. You’re gonna figure it out faster than I will.”
Bridge Builders
(Coming soon from Golly’s
new Virtual+Reality series)
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“Easy,” said Elijah.
“Maybe for you.”
“It starts with a period, so it’s just written in reverse order.”
“Do you have refocus, see-all, superpower lenses in your eyes or something?”
“You’re wired for some things. I’m wired for others.”
Zane nodded. “So what’s it say?”
“Top line, from the right: ‘Also, you must face your Foes, or must you? That depends on you.’” Elijah paused for a second. “I need to start at the bottom right. It says, ‘Overview: Build a bridge from here to there. Then return from there to here. Soon the message will be clear. You must: use small-medium-large boards for your footing. Also, you must face your Foes, or must you? That depends on you.’”