The New Champion

by Jody Feldman

  He positioned them inside a moonlit hall, and with the first few notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” their doors opened.

  Spanning the far wall of the vast and darkened room were shelves crammed with boxes and boxes and boxes. It might not have been the entire Golly catalog, but there were enough toys and games to stock a whole toy store.

  On a near table, next to a square object with a trigger handle, was the challenge card:

  The day’s been long, but you’ve been strong.

  No need to tease, the rules are these:

  1. You will be presented with a number of riddles.

  2. The answer to each riddle is an object very closely associated with one or more of the Golly products before you.

  3. When you figure out an answer, find an associated product.

  4. Scan its UPC code with the scan gun provided.

  5. For each correct scan, a puzzle piece will light up.

  6. If you scan incorrectly, it will take two correct scans to light up your next piece.

  7. The answer to some riddles will be associated with more than one product. You may scan up to two products for each answer, thus lighting up to two pieces per riddle.

  8. When you can identify the puzzle picture, find the one associated product, grab it off the shelf, open it, and you will know what to do next.

  “I hope I’ll know,” Cameron said to whoever was listening. But first, he needed riddles. No drawers in the table. Nothing else in the room, the ginormous room with the gigantic shelves and all those toys on all those shelves with all those colorful tabs sticking out. What were they?

  Bookmark-sized riddles! Cameron gathered six of them. He read one. Then another. Then another. He shook his head. Why had he thought this would be quick or easy? He took the tabs back to the table and reread the blue one.

  When you’re down, you want to go up,

  When you’re up, you want to come down.

  Here’s one more clue: It’s mixed up in delis,

  No matter your city or town.

  (Two puzzle pieces available.)

  Up and down again. But why delis? Cameron started craving corned beef. Later.

  So what goes up and down? An elevator? Yes, but he had to think toys. A sled. When you’re at the bottom of the hill, you need to go up to ride down again. Same with the zip line. But where did the delis come in? Not just any delis, mixed-up ones.

  No. “It’s mixed up in delis.” What did they mix up there? Batches of potato salad and coleslaw? People’s orders; make sandwiches with the wrong meat? He needed to stop picturing plates of food. Why delis? Why not fast-food places or diners? Cameron had nothing.

  He moved toward the Golly product wall for inspiration. The toys and games were stacked and packed solid. It almost made him dizzy. He drifted to the shelves of oversize items. Each seemed to have its own space, so it wasn’t as overwhelming. They ran the gamut, from Aim Right Archery to Up ’n’ Down Swing Set.

  Up ’n’ Down? Was that it? Cameron looked at the box.

  “Includes swings, slide, gliding horse.” Wait. Back up. The slide! Delis! Mixed up, the letters in “slide” spelled “delis”!

  He grabbed the scanner from the table and pointed it at the UPC code. The scanner’s display lit up: “Up ’n’ Down Swing Set? If yes, scan again.” He did. The scan gun went dark. But a little light came from above. One of the ceiling tiles now had pinpoints of color.

  He needed to collect his second puzzle piece available from that riddle. What else? A slide in a computer presentation? Golly didn’t make those. Slide. Slide! In science! Microscope!

  Cameron went to the S’s. Science the Golly Way! He scanned it twice. Another ceiling section lit with bits of color. No telling what the big picture was yet, but he knew what to do.

  Next riddle. A green one.

  I come all dressed in black and white.

  My pedals pump a tad.

  Just touch the keys and you will please

  Unless your playing’s sad.

  (One puzzle piece available.)

  Key? Pedals? Black and white? His dad watched an old TV show where they called police cars “black-and-whites.” And cars have keys. And pedals that don’t move much. At least they don’t appear to. Timothy’s parents let him back the car out of the driveway, but Cameron’s didn’t. If he won, he’d take himself to the go-cart track. He’d been sick last month for Sameer’s birthday party there.

  It was getting harder and harder to focus. He needed to push through. Black and white. Okay. Pedals. Fine. But touching keys? Just touching a car key wouldn’t start the car; you have to actually turn it. And you don’t exactly think of cars as pleasing. Black and white with keys and a pedal and something you played.

  Was it this easy? Piano? Maybe so. This riddle scored only one puzzle piece. Maybe the two-piecers were harder.

  He ran to the P section. No piano. But Golly made one. What did they call it? Baby Grand by Golly! Over to the B’s.

  He scanned the box twice. Looked up. Another piece, more pinpricks of light, but unconnected to the others. It looked familiar but not enough to risk a guess.

  Next. He picked up another blue riddle, but it was the same as the first blue. The second green was a repeat, too. He tried orange.

  Head, sweat, or waist, you may find at my left hand.

  And at my right hand, you may find leader, width, or stand.

  (Two puzzle pieces available.)

  Where should he start here? With the repeated word: “hand.” A person has hands. A clock has hands. Animals have paws. Except gorillas and chimps? Were theirs called hands and feet? Even they don’t have heads near any hands. Waists, either. You could have sweaty hands, but unless you’re some muscle-bound freak, you can’t exactly hold a leader, like a president, in one hand.

  It didn’t say anything about holding. Head, sweat, or waist might be at the left hand; leader, width, or stand, at the right. Did all of them need to be there at the same time? If they did, it would say “and” instead of “or.” So sometimes he’d find one of the things—

  Things? Not necessarily. What if they were talking about words? Words on the left hand that came before some other word. Words on the right that came after.

  Worth a try. First, “head.” Head what? Head case? If they made him think much more, he’d turn into a real head case. Head what? Headlines? Headquarters? Headphones? No, no, and no. Head. Head. Headache. This was giving him a headache. Forget “head.”

  “Sweat”? He wasn’t going there, not the way his own head was sweating. And “waist”? He could only think of the other waist: waste can, wasteland, waste away.

  He switched to the words on the right: “leader, width, or stand.” Something leader. Something leader. Fearless leader? World leader? World! At least a good word. But it would be worldwide, not world width.

  Cameron started to shake his head, but his neck was stiff. His whole body felt encased in cement. Should he switch riddles? Not yet. He’d already invested this much time. He sat on the desk, closed his eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths. He needed to slow down. One word: “stand.” Headstand? No. “Head” was on the list already. Handstand? They wouldn’t give the answer in the clue. But his brain kept repeating it. Handstand. Handstand. Hand width. Hand leader. Head hand. Sweat hand. Yeah, sweaty hands.

  He felt like something was there. Something was just off. Waist hand. Hand leader. Hand leader. He closed his eyes and listened to his mind saying that again. Hand leader. Hand leader. And then came his trumpet. And then Mr. Wichter, the band teacher. Bandleader! Bandwidth! Bandstand! Waistband, sweatband, headband!

  He was in business! Two puzzle pieces. He ran straight to the One-Man-Band Show, a favorite when he was little. He scanned it twice but didn’t take time to see the new puzzle piece. He ran to the B’s, to the classic Golly game Band of Thieves. He scanned it. Scanned it again. Now he looked up.

  Four of the pieces were connected. Four brightly colored pieces with . . .


  Fireworks! He’d read about Golly’s game called The Fireworks Factory, but he’d never seen it. If he’d never seen it, why did the picture up there look so familiar? Where had—

  Cameron felt like he was going to throw up. He’d seen it before, that exact picture. Today. The TV control center. All those monitors. Blank except for three with fireworks. No wonder he ID’d the puzzle picture so fast: He’d seen it before!

  He ran to the shelf. Pulled out The Fireworks Factory. All he had to do was open it, the instructions said. Open it and he’d know what to do.

  Only he didn’t know what to do. He could open it and win. No one would know he’d seen the picture on those screens. It wasn’t his fault someone had left the door open. It wasn’t his fault.

  Happenings like this, so random and unpredictable, were part of the game, part of any game, right? If an umpire missed seeing a tag in baseball, the runner was still safe. If a piece of debris knocked out an Indy car, the other cars went on. If Cameron had been a golf ball expert, he wouldn’t have disqualified himself from that question about dimples. No one would have expected him to.

  He needed to open that box. This was his time. To know how it felt to be Spencer. To be celebrated, be on top. His best chance, his one chance to win. He would be the new champion of the Gollywhopper Games, and no one could take that away from him. No one would know how he’d won.

  Except he would know. Cameron would know.

  “Bill!” he called at the top of his lungs. “Bill! I have a problem. A big one!”

  Bill rushed in. “You okay? Bleeding? Dying?” He looked at The Fireworks Factory on the table, glanced toward the ceiling.

  “I don’t know what to do,” said Cameron.

  Bill shook his head. “The instructions are clear.”

  “It’s not the instructions. If I open this, I’ll win. I know it.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t want to be a cheater,” Cameron said. “This morning I came out of the bathroom and thought Sharryn might be in an open office down the hall. She wasn’t, but the TV monitors were showing these fireworks.” Cameron pointed to the ceiling. “Which is why I recognized the picture so fast. So I don’t know what to do.”

  Bill put a hand against the headphone on his right ear. Nodded. Looked up.

  “What’d they say? I’m a loser?”

  “Oh, no,” said Bill. “You’re not a loser, Cameron.” He clamped him on the back. “You’re the best. It took guts to do what you just did.” With a hand still on Cameron’s back, Bill guided him back to the lounge. “Clio’s on her way. And once she gets here—”

  The door opened. “She’s here.”

  She rushed over to Cameron. “What’s wrong? They said you had a problem.”

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Then what?”

  “There was a glitch,” said Bill. “Cameron unintentionally saw something that gave him an unfair advantage. So we’ll be giving you an alternate challenge. A do-over.”

  Clio looked at Cameron. “You would have won?”

  “We’ll never know, Clio,” said Bill, “and we won’t start speculating. Right now we need you both to sit and put on your headphones. We’ll pump in two minutes of music to give you a breather, then we’ll start again like nothing happened.”

  Bill turned their chairs away from each other.

  Like nothing happened? Something had happened. He might have won. He could have been a millionaire. If this had been him against Jig or Dacey, maybe he would have pretended nothing happened.

  Cameron pounded his fist once into his chair. He’d been cruising with that puzzle. Who knew if he could solve the next one? He was probably, once again, on his way to becoming Cameron, the runner-up in a two-person contest. At least he was used to that. He couldn’t get used to being a cheater.

  If only he’d stayed by the bathroom. If only he hadn’t looked into that room. If only he’d asked Sharryn about the fireworks on the monitor. If only . . .

  The room started moving. He needed to regroup. He still had a chance, but that chance was against a competitor maybe as strong as Spencer.

  The room stopped. They stepped out.

  “Good luck, Clio.”

  She gave him a hug. “Good luck yourself.”

  They parted. Cameron’s door was on the left; Clio’s, on the right.

  The buzzer sounded. Beyond the door was the puzzle/stunt area, either theirs or the Orange Team’s. Cameron couldn’t tell. He picked up the card on a long table at the entrance.

  This room should look familiar,

  exactly as before.

  You worked the puzzles and the stunts,

  and now you’re back for more.

  The games and toys unused back then?

  They’re waiting here for you.

  Collect your unused choices;

  then we’ll tell you what to do.

  No map? Spencer had once joked that Cameron could get lost going from his bedroom to the kitchen. He breathed in. He breathed out. He’d tried. He’d tried to remember where everything was.

  He couldn’t panic, though. Clio might beat him navigating the area, but they’d need to do something with the toys and games after, wouldn’t they? He could make up time unless he stood here like a Popsicle.

  What were the choices from their last puzzle? The numbered doors. They were close, near the Rainbow Maze, but they now had a sign. YOU WILL NOT NEED THESE DOORS. COLLECT ONLY THE TOYS AND GAMES IN THEIR BOXES.

  Perfect. He didn’t need the only one he could find fast. Now where? All he saw were the refrigerator, the sailboat, the blinking bank of lights. He needed to go wide angle. He looked far and up. The ceiling! The cow jumping over the moon. The greased pigs! He ran, focusing on the cow, and bumped into the broccoli, barely missed the car, and scooted around the scuba divers. There they were, still on a blue-lit table. He grabbed LionPaws and DoomTomb.

  But those had led to the second stunt, the one with the mice. So where were . . .

  He ran to the blue door where they’d originally entered. Blue-lit table! Jupiter Fighter and Agree to Disagree.

  Nothing on the boxes told him what to do. Maybe something would magically happen when he collected them all. He still needed four more. He could run faster empty-handed, and he wasn’t that far from the puzzle table. He dropped the boxes there.

  Now where? What was left? The mouse cage and the nose. The nose, the nose . . .

  Oh, yeah! In one of the far corners, but to the right? To the left? His feet veered to the right. Please, please, please . . .

  Yes! The table! Things that Go Bump and Baby Chat-a-Lot.

  Now to the mouse cage! Which was . . .

  Cameron looked up. He saw the snowcapped mountain, the huge lightbulb, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but he had no memory of where JinxTrap was. If he could find the dressers or the giant school supplies, he’d be there. But where was there?

  He did the only thing he could do. He ran. He ran all the way to the front of the room but didn’t find the mouse cage. He moved about six feet over and snaked his way to the back. No trap, no dressers, no supplies.

  He moved over again. To the front. To the back. Nowhere. He stopped five seconds to breathe, he hoped not five seconds too long. Then again, if he passed out, that would take longer than five seconds.

  He sprinted back toward the front. And there it was! The tip of a giant pencil! He circled the school supplies. The table! He snatched up Supreme Dazzlers and RetroWars.

  Now where was the challenge table? Near the front. Which was front? He looked around again. Toward the ceiling. The cow and moon were toward the back. He ran the opposite way. The long table! And now it had words projected on its surface: “Open the only choice that has more vowels than consonants in its name.”

  “Okay.” He breathed. “Good.” Breathed. “Easy.”

  Cameron spread the eight boxes across the table.

  Supreme Dazzlers

  Re
troWars

  Agree to Disagree

  LionPaws

  Baby Chat-a-Lot

  Things that Go Bump

  DoomTomb

  Jupiter Fighters

  Sweat dripped on DoomTomb. He hoped it wasn’t an omen. And he knew it wasn’t the right choice. Which one was, though?

  It had to be Agree to Disagree. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight vowels. Five, seven, eight, nine, ten . . . fifteen letters total. More vowels than consonants.

  Inside the box was a switch. No instructions, but it was obvious. He flipped it.

  The whole back wall of the warehouse went dark, then relit with Agree to Disagree. The words flashed once before all the letters fizzled. Wait. Not all. Two of them came back up in a laserlike zigzag of lights. The A and the T. They each pulsed off, then on with a different musical note.

  He sensed a glow behind him. There were words projected on the large front wall: “Open the choice that has no repeating letters.”

  No-brainer. He opened LionPaws. Flipped the switch. The front wall went dark. LionPaws came up. All those letters fizzled out except the O and N. They also pulsed with musical notes.

  The next clue lit the right wall. “Open the choice that has the most words in its name.”

  Hooray for easy! Things that Go Bump. Switch, flipped. Right wall, dark. Words: “Things that Go Bump.” Fizzle. The N and M stayed with two more musical notes.

  All those letters had to be spelling something. Just one more wall left. “Open the remaining box, whose middle three letters can spell a type of tree.”

  Five left: Supreme Dazzlers, RetroWars, Baby Chat-a-Lot, DoomTomb, and Jupiter Fighters. He didn’t see a tree right away. He needed pencil and paper. He wrote: SUPREME DAZZLERS. Fifteen letters. He crossed off the first six letters and the last six letters and left E D A in the middle. No matter how he mixed those up, no tree. Next.