He sounds disappointed. Tucker Thomas sounds disappointed that I don’t want to watch Jeopardy! with him tonight. I’m pretty sure he’s been taken over by an alien—a nice alien, who has both a brain and a heart.
I feel more comfortable when he’s making fun of me, calling me Olivia Bean, Hula Hoop Queen with Matt Dresher and making stupid gestures. Then at least I know how to react—nastily!
“Bean?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe I can come over there and we can watch Charlie and Jeopardy! together.”
My heart stops pumping its usual sixty to one hundred times per minute, or at least that’s how it feels. “I, um, can’t have anyone over when Mom’s not home.”
I imagine Tucker shrugging. “Okay. We can get together some other time.”
My eyebrows arch. “Yeah,” I say. “We do live next door to each other. I guess we’ll bump into each other, um …” Shut up, Olivia. Cro-Magnon Man was definitely smarter than you!
“Okay.” Tucker laughs. “Some other time.”
My cheeks get warm. “ ’Kay.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I click off the phone, but hold on to it for a long time.
“Livi?”
“Yeah, Charlie?”
“Why are you smiling?”
I touch my lips. “Am I?”
When I finish drying the last dish, it’s 7:24.
I think about how nice it will be to watch Jeopardy! without Neil shouting answers before I have a chance to think. I can’t believe Tucker wants to watch Jeopardy! with me. Maybe he’s tricking me, and once I went to his house, he’d slam the door in my face or call me names. But it didn’t sound like a trick. How can Tucker make fun of me with Matt Dresher one minute and be nice to me the next?
In the living room, Charlie, wrapped in a towel, sits on a stool with water clinging to his eyelashes. “I washed up, Livi. I’m ready to watch Jeopardy! with you.”
I press my lips together, barely holding back a verbal explosion. I’m watching Jeopardy! by myself tonight! Then I remember how Neil handled Charlie last night. “Listen, little man,” I say, as calmly as I can. “Jeopardy! is my special thing. If you hang out in your room, playing cars or reading trivia while I watch Jeopardy! …”
Charlie leans forward, mouth open, waiting to hear how sweet a deal he’s going to get.
“I will play any game you want when it’s over.” I glance at my watch. Two minutes till showtime. Get out of here, Charlie!
He tilts his head. “Even smash ’em racing cars?”
I check my watch. One minute. “Especially smash ’em racing cars. I love smash ’em racing cars.” I have no idea what it is.
“But—”
“See you in half an hour.” I push Charlie toward the stairs.
“Don’t forget,” he says, and runs upstairs, grabbing the banister with one hand and holding his towel up with the other.
I collapse onto the stool and flip on the TV. Success! When I hear the “Think Music,” my shoulders relax. “This is Jeopardy!,” the announcer, Johnny Gilbert, says. As he introduces today’s contestants, I imagine myself behind one of the podiums, preferably the one farthest to the left—the returning champion’s spot.
Alex Trebek strides onstage, and I think about Tucker’s grandmother having a crush on him. I stop giggling when Alex reveals the categories in his smooth, confident voice. Contestants provide one question after the next, in rapid-fire succession.
A: Weighing around a ton, the eland is the largest species of this animal in the world.
Q: What is antelope?
A: In 1972 Frito-Lay introduced its nacho cheese flavor of these chips.
Q: What are Doritos?
A: The potato didn’t originate in Ireland but in the valleys of this South American mountain chain.
Q: What are the Andes?
A: He had the dynamite idea to launch a new television network known as TNT.
Q: Who is Ted Turner?
Even though I’m by myself and can focus, I miss a lot of them. Either the answers are really tough tonight or the other junk swirling around my mind is short-circuiting my brain. Tucker wants to watch Jeopardy! with me.
During the commercial break after the first round, I give myself a good talking-to. This is Jeopardy!, after all. It’s only one half hour out of the day. I can give it my full concentration. I roll my head from side to side. I feel like a boxer who was trounced during round one but is ready to get back in the ring and stomp some trivia butt. I feel like Joe Louis—the Brown Bomber—except I’m the heavyweight champ of trivia.
Bring it on, Alex Trebek!
I lean forward and shout out questions during the Double Jeopardy! round.
A: Polenta is a dish of cooked, ground this.
Q: What is corn?
A: In 1917 the son of an Illinois book printer joined with a New York store and started this company.
Q: What is Barnes & Noble?
A: This character lived just north of Whoville and hated roast beast (for a while).
Q: Who is the Grinch?
A: This organization sells up to eight varieties per year of its cookies, including these favorites: peanut butter sandwich, thin mint and shortbread.
Q: What are the Girl Scouts?
I do better than the contestant on the right, who finishes with a humiliating $800. The guy in the middle doesn’t do well either. He ends with only $4,600. But the returning champion has $28,800 so far. $28,800! And that’s before the Final Jeopardy! round. He can’t lose now, unless he’s a complete idiot, bets all his money and doesn’t know the final question.
I feel like I’m about to win that money. “You go!” I scream, and pump my fist.
“What?” Charlie calls downstairs.
“Not talking to you.” Hush!
“Okay. Come up soon. I’m scared up here by myself.”
“Be up soon,” I yell. “Get our game ready.” And be quiet!
“ ’Kay, Livi!”
I think about that amount of money: $28,800. That’s a fortune for twenty minutes’ work. It’s like earning $86,400 an hour. And the only people who can do that are probably Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg and maybe some oil sheik from Kuwait. And possibly my dad, if he’s having the best winning streak of his life at a high-stakes blackjack or poker table. My stomach gives a little twist at that thought.
“Is it time yet?” Charlie screams from upstairs.
“Not yet!” I shout. “Don’t bother me until the show’s over or I won’t come up.”
“Okay,” he yells. “I won’t bother you, Livi.”
“You’re bothering me now,” I mutter.
The show’s back on, and the contestants are thinking about their wagers. “Don’t waste your time,” I whisper to the two contestants on the right. “You don’t have a chance.”
That’s when the phone rings. “No! Jeopardy! isn’t over yet!” I say in a panicked voice, as though the person calling can hear me. It’s times like these I wish we had a DVR to record shows, like normal people. But Mom says it’s a waste of perfectly good money.
My mind whirls through possibilities. It could be Tucker again. But why would he interrupt the show? He obviously knows I’m watching it. It could be Mom, but she’d know better than to call during Jeopardy!, too, unless it was an emergency. Dad! It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s probably calling to say he’s sorry for being so mean on the phone with me earlier.
I grab the phone and almost say Hi, Dad, but catch myself. “Hello?”
“Oh, hi, Olivia.”
My whole body deflates. “Neil, Jeopardy!’s on.” I glance at the screen. The Final Jeopardy! round is starting.
“Sorry,” he says. “What was I thinking?”
“Don’t know,” I say, staring at the screen and biting my thumbnail. “But it’s definitely still on.”
“Okay. I was just calling to see how you did on your geography test.” A pause. �
�I guess I’ll talk to you later.”
I turn away from the TV screen, the phone pressed to my ear. Neil remembered my geography test. “Well, actually, not so great,” I say. “I missed the fifth ocean and a couple other things.”
“Ouch,” Neil says, and sounds like he means it. “Don’t worry, Olivia. You’ll get ’em next time. Now go enjoy the end of your show.”
Even after I hear the click … and the dial tone … I hold the phone to my ear. Neil remembered my geography test.
When I turn back to the TV, the show’s over. I missed the Final Jeopardy! round. I can see by the defending champion’s score that he won. Duh! He ends with $36,000, so he must have wagered $7,200 and answered correctly. I could have done that. Alex Trebek and the other players shake his hand. If that guy keeps winning, he’ll be invited to the Tournament of Champions, where he can win megabucks.
I missed it—the best part of the show. Because of Neil.
“O-LI-VI-A!” Charlie yells. “You said …”
“Coming!” I snap.
I turn off the TV, and the phone rings. Again.
I figure it’s Neil and he forgot to tell me something, but I hope it’s Dad, calling to say he’s sorry.
“Hello?”
“Did you see it?” Tucker is out of breath, like he ran up and down our front steps a dozen times.
“See what?”
He takes a big, wheezy breath. “I ran all the way to your house and—”
“All the way? Tucker, we live next door to each other.”
“Yeah, right.” He heaves a great breath. “But then I remembered … you said no one … could come over … when your folks … um, your mom isn’t—”
“Tucker, get on with it!”
“Did you see Jeopardy!?”
“Of course I saw it, Tucker. I always—”
“Then you saw it!”
I want to go next door, grab Tucker by his stained shirt and shake him. “Saw what?”
“Bean, you’re going to do it, aren’t you?”
“Do what? Tucker, what are you talking about?”
“Olivia!” Charlie screams.
I cover the phone. “Be right there, Charlie. Please!” I hear him hopping, probably pretending to be Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh or a pogo stick or Tigger on a pogo stick.
“Tucker?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you talking about?” I look at the ceiling, knowing I have to get to Charlie soon before he does something stupid, like giving one of my trivia books a bath … in the toilet.
“Kids Week, Bean!” Tucker says. “There’s an online test for you to try out to be on Kids Week!”
I pull the phone away from my ear and move my mouth to form words as my brain processes. “Kids Week?” I ask. “Are you absolutely, positively, without a doubt sure they announced Kids Week during the show?”
“Of course.”
“Oh my gosh! I’ve been waiting for the announcement. It’s my last chance.” My heart feels like it’s going to pound itself right out of my body, but a tiny part of my brain tells me this is a trick. How could I have missed an important announcement like that? Maybe that’s why Tucker has been so nice to me. It would make it all the more nasty when he pulls a trick like this on me now and tells me it’s a big joke.
“Listen, Tucker,” I say, mean and snotty. “If you’re tricking me—”
“Why would I do that?” he asks in a soft, innocent voice.
My brain feels like it’s whirling inside a blender. Why is Tucker being nice to me? Just last week, he and Matt made fun of me the whole way to school. “Sorry,” I say, realizing this isn’t a trick. “I must’ve been on the phone with Neil when they announced it. What did they say, Tucker? Exactly.”
“They’re looking for contestants, ages ten to twelve. You’re twelve, Bean. You’ve got to apply.”
“Twelve. Right,” I say.
“So have your mom go on the site and register you.”
“Mom. Register,” I say.
“Bean, you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.” But in my head, I’m thinking, Kids Week. My last chance ever. I don’t tell Tucker that I took the online test last year and never got a call back, probably because of my geography deficiency. And I definitely don’t tell Tucker I didn’t get a chance to take the test when I was ten because that’s when Dad left, and everything was a big mess back then.
Dad. Something wonderful pops into my mind. I feel like a balloon filling with helium, like I could float up to Charlie’s room without using the stairs. All because of one detail that ping-pongs around my brain at warp speed—faster than the speed of light.
The detail is a geography fact—one I actually know: Jeopardy! is filmed in Culver City, California. Culver City is right next to Los Angeles. And Dad lives in Los Angeles.
I’ve got to get on that show.
I take the steps two at a time to get to the computer in Mom’s room. I’ve got to check this out, read the rules and make sure Tucker’s right. Kids Week online test. I can’t believe it!
My hand is wrapped around the doorknob when Charlie yells, “Olivia, I’ve got everything set up. Come. In. Right. Now. Like. You. Promised.”
I stop. I did promise. And unlike some members of the Bean family, I like to keep my promises. Especially to Charlie.
So even though what I want to do more than anything is go on the Jeopardy! site and find out about Kids Week tryouts, I let go of the doorknob and walk to my little bother’s room.
“You’re here!” Charlie’s eyes go wide, and he wraps his arms around my legs, pressing his cheek into my hip. “I thought you weren’t coming, Livi.” He sniffs. “I thought you were tricking me so I’d let you watch Jeopardy! by yourself.” He kisses my hip. “But you’re here!”
This makes it especially hard to do what I’m about to do. I know Charlie doesn’t deserve this, but I have to because if I wait another minute, I’ll burst. “Look, Charlie, I’m really sorry, but something important came up. Just now. And I can’t play with you, even though I really, really want to.”
He looks up at me, still gripping my legs ferociously, his wide eyes blinking, blinking, blinking.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Stop looking at me like that. “Charlie, it’s super-important.”
“Will you be done in two minutes?”
I wince. “I may not be done before your bedtime, but I can try—”
“O-li-vi-a,” Charlie whines. Then he looks at me, still blinking, until droplets roll down his cheeks. He doesn’t even wipe them off. He just looks at me like he trusts me more than anyone in the world. I realize that he must feel exactly how I felt when Dad didn’t have time to talk to me today. And I feel an ache in my chest the size of a football field—100 yards; 120, if you count the end zones.
Without a word, I plop onto Charlie’s floor, cross-legged. I grab a metal dump truck and a miniature ambulance from the pile near his bed. “Okay,” I say. “How do we play smash ’em?”
Charlie drops onto my lap, turns around and squeezes my neck with his bony arms. “You’re the bestest sister ever, Livi.”
Now, I have to blink, blink, blink to keep tears from falling.
By the time I tuck Charlie into bed and pull the blanket up to his chin the way he likes it, leave his door open five inches (because he’s five) and turn on the hallway light, it’s ten minutes after he’s supposed to be in bed.
It takes about 1.2 seconds for me to get myself in front of Mom’s computer. I never realized how slowly her computer loads. She’ll need to fix that before I take the online test. I tap my foot and keep checking the door because I’m not supposed to be on Mom’s computer without asking her permission. But this is too important to wait.
I scan the Jeopardy! site.
Tucker’s right. They’re looking for contestants for Kids Week. Even though a parent can register a child up until the test, which is November 3, about five weeks from today, I don’t want to wait. Mom needs to
register me now, just to be safe. I don’t want to miss my last chance.
I turn off Mom’s computer and get ready for bed, determined to stay up until she comes home so that I can ask her to register me tonight.
Reading trivia books usually relaxes me, but tonight my mind whirls as I wait in bed to hear the front door open. I think about Dad again, how short he was with me on the phone. I think about Charlie, and how happy he was that I played with him. But mostly, I think about Tucker, how he didn’t want to go to the baseball game with his dad, how he wanted to hang out with me tonight. “Thank you, Tucker Thomas,” I whisper, because I’m so glad he told me about registering for the Kids Week online test.
My stomach is twisted in knots by the time I hear the front door open. I leap onto my vomit-green carpet and have my hand on my doorknob when I hear it. Whistling. Neil’s whistling.
I check the time: 9:35. And Neil’s home, not Mom. I guess that meeting she was talking about is running late. Don’t those municipal people know my future career as a contestant on Jeopardy! is at stake here?
A part of me wants to ask Neil if he can register me, even though he is definitely not my parent. But another part doesn’t want Neil involved with this. With Jeopardy! It’s a special thing between me and Dad, and no one invited Neil to be included.
I plop onto my bed, stare at the blindingly yellow ceiling and hug Phil to my chest. At 10:15, Mom’s still not home. She must be covering the world’s longest municipal meeting.
I turn off my light so that when Neil comes upstairs, he’ll think I’m asleep and won’t come in to check on me or say goodnight. In the darkness, I force my eyelids open. I don’t want to fall asleep before Mom gets home.
Must. Stay. Awake.
My eyelids feel like sheets of granite and keep drooping, even though I tell them to stay open.
I must have fallen asleep, but when I hear the front door open, my eyelids spring up like window shades. It’s 11:47.
I slip out of bed, tiptoe along the vomit-green carpet and open my door a crack.
I hear Neil’s voice. “Welcome home, baby.”
Then an odd sound.
And Neil again. “Marion, what’s the matter? What’s wrong, honey?”
Olivia Bean, Trivia Queen Page 5