The Prizewinners of Piedmont Place

by Bill Doyle

  “I have a fun way of making teams,” Leslie announced. “Whoever wants my family to win the Wish Shoppe Great Grab Contest, come on over to my side.”

  The other kids looked at each other, confused, and still headed for Cal.

  “Let me put it another way,” Leslie said. “Whoever’s parents work for my father in some shape or form, I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”

  Leslie often made hints that her dad could fire anyone. Most of the kids shrugged, grabbed a ball from the canister, and walked over to Leslie’s side. Only James stayed put next to Cal. The two were going to get slaughtered. Buried under an avalanche of yellow balls.

  “Poor Cal,” Leslie said with a fake smile. “It’s not personal. People just have to know their place in life, that’s all. There are the winners and there are the losers.” She cocked her arm with the ball and waited for everyone else to do the same. “Are you ready, Cal?” Leslie asked.

  “Hold on,” Cal said. He needed to stall for time. “My shoe’s untied.”

  “Make it fast,” Leslie said.

  While he crouched with his head down, pretending to tie his shoe, Cal spoke quickly to the class. “Look, I know you all think you’ve made a decision. But I want you to look at that ball in your hands. If you had to really choose in a split second, where would you throw it?” He took a breath. “Listen to your heart, not your fear.”

  When Cal stood back up, all the balls were still aimed directly at him. And Leslie was grinning at him. “Sounds good, Cal,” she said. “When will you learn? My family and I always get what we want. Here we go!”

  At that moment, the gym door slammed open and the noise startled everyone. Ms. Graves and Imo were back. The sound of the door was like a starter cannon, and the kids threw the balls without thinking. Phlit! Phlit! Balls whizzed through the air, finding their target.

  “Holy Aristotle,” Cal said under his breath. The kids had listened to their hearts—and Cal—after all.

  Leslie was covered in the static balls from her sparkly sneakers to her braids. She looked like the cartoon character called Princess Fuzzy in cotton ball ads on TV. Except Leslie was bright yellow.

  Cal knew the power of nicknames. He had seen Leslie use them to put other kids down or just for fun. He knew that if he opened his mouth and said, “Hey, Princess Fuzzy!” the nickname would stick to her for months, or even years.

  But he didn’t say it. Instead, he tossed his ball aside and walked over to pull the foam balls off Leslie. Ms. Graves and Imo hurried over, too. But Leslie wanted none of it. Red-faced, she pushed them away and rushed toward the locker room in a huff.

  “My family always gets what we want!” she yelled over her shoulder, her words muffled by the yellow ball stuck on her collar. “Alison, come with me. Now!”

  Alison shrugged and followed her. Watching them go, Ms. Graves looked confused. “All right, everyone,” she said to the rest of the class. “Give me fifty…” Ms. Graves paused. “What’s a gym thing? Right. Fifty jumping jacks, please.”

  As they bounced up and down, James shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that, Cal.”

  Cal knew James was right. He shouldn’t have let Leslie get to him. Cal blamed the excitement of the Great Grab Contest for pushing him a little too far. He shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal. “She can’t get her dad to fire everyone in Hawkins.”

  “Maybe not everyone,” James agreed. “But how about just one person?”

  “Hi, Cal?” said Sarah, the babysitter, when Cal walked around to his backyard after school. “Someone left a message for your parents? On the answering machine? Mr. Wylot, I think?”

  Uh-oh, Cal thought. Had Leslie already told her dad about gym class? Was Mr. T.’s job at the Wylots’ factory in trouble?

  Sarah was upside down, her legs hooked around the highest bar on the swing set. The college student’s curly hair was so long, it dragged back and forth in the grass. Bug and Butler were sitting nearby on the ground, staring at her, both their heads tilted slightly to the left.

  On days when Mrs. T. was busy taking sports stars around Hawkins to give their speeches, she hired Sarah to watch Bug. Everything Sarah said sounded like a question. Maybe that was why she could get Bug to chill out, although no one else could. He and Butler could stare at her for days. And when they weren’t staring, they were trying to impress her with their “world-famous” B&B Scooter Madness Stunt.

  The fake stunt always went the same way. Bug started by scratching Butler behind the ears and grabbing on to a rope tied to his collar. Butler would race ahead, pulling Bug on his scooter toward a seat cushion on the patio. At the last second, just as they were about to crash, they’d make a wide turn and avoid the cushion.

  Bug’s hands would shoot up in the air like he was a champion who had just accomplished a dangerous feat. He’d say some kind of gibberish while Butler let out his trademark bark—“Rabbo!”—with his tail twirling.

  Cal shook his head to clear it. He had much more important things to worry about. “Is my dad home yet?” he asked. “Has he heard the message?”

  “He’s home?” Sarah said. “But he went straight to the kitchen? He asked if I could stay for a few more minutes while he works on his music?”

  Good. Until Cal could figure out what to do, he had to find a way to keep his dad from playing that message. He didn’t know if Mr. Wylot would really fire his dad because Leslie demanded it. But even if Mr. Wylot was just upset, the message could ruin Cal’s hopes of entering the Great Grab Contest. It would be one more reason his parents might give for not making the video.

  Cal could hear Imo working on the other side of the overgrown bush on the patio. And suddenly he knew how to distract his parents so they wouldn’t hear the message, at least for a while.

  “Thanks, Sarah!” Cal said. “Hang in there!”

  Imo had changed into her overalls again. She was eating an apple while working on one of her nutty projects. Imo had built a platform twice as tall as Cal. It had a ramp down the front, and on top sat a long board with six wheels. Whatever the wheeled thing was, it could be just what Cal needed to cause a ruckus.

  “Wow, Imo,” Cal said. “You’ve gone to a whole new level with this…go-kart…sled…best Imo creation ever.”

  Imo rolled her eyes and took another bite from her apple. “It’s a lawn luge. Before I make spaceships, I might as well start on the ground.” She finished turning a bolt on the ramp with her wrench. “And, no, you can’t ride it.”

  Sometimes Cal had to fine-tune his sweet talk. “We don’t do enough as brother and sister,” he said, putting a hand over his heart. “We can ride it together, Imo.”

  “Ugh, weird, Cal,” Imo said. She tapped one of the back wheels with her wrench. “Besides, this wheel isn’t working quite right…and I don’t know why.”

  Then, as Imo tugged her earlobe, Cal could see his sister’s brain start to sizzle. When she set her sights on a problem, she had to solve it.

  “Hold on!” he said before he completely lost her.

  Too late. “Here, take this,” she said, and handed Cal the half-eaten apple. Mumbling formulas about energy and wheels, she wandered off toward her fort in the corner of the backyard. Designed to look like a sheriff’s office from the Old West, the one-room fort had been Cal’s eleventh-birthday present a few months ago. Imo had taken it over and turned it into her workshop, where she dreamed up inventions.

  When Imo was inside the fort, Cal asked softly, “So I can ride the luge after all, Imo? If your answer is yes, don’t say anything.”

  He gave it a second. Nothing. Putting the apple in his jacket pocket, he scrambled up the ramp. From up there on the wobbly platform, Cal could see past their backyard fence into the Rivales’ yard.

  Cal lay on his back on the lawn luge and put his hands to the sides to push off. Crack! One of the back wheels snapped free and tumbled off the platform.

  “Uh, Imo, quick question!” Cal yelled. He was teetering on t
he edge of the ramp. “Would your luge work without one of the wheels?”

  “Sure,” Imo called from her workshop. “But only if you want to spin out of control and crash into the patio!”

  “Wait, what?”

  Before he could stop it, the luge shot down the ramp, dragging to one side, where the wheel should have been. He nearly plunged over the edge, and then slammed onto the patio.

  Umph! The luge spun completely around. Now it was flying across the concrete toward the house.

  Cal zipped on the luge through the open back door and shot into the kitchen. His dad was at the table with his back to Cal, his fingers pounding on the wood surface.

  “Dad!” Cal shouted.

  But it was no good. Mr. T. wore sound-blocking headphones that helped him concentrate. They also made him look like a giant-eared alien as he loudly sang, “Rutherford B. Hayes, why oh why do you hate mayonnaise?”

  Mr. T. loved to make up songs. He said it was relaxing, especially after a long day at his accounting job. The family didn’t have a piano, so Mr. T. pretended the kitchen table was a keyboard.

  “Dad, a little help here!” Cal called out.

  Mr. T. just kept crooning about sandwich spread as Cal knocked against a chair and zoomed out of the kitchen. With a jolt, the front wheels hit the living room carpet. The luge stopped dead on the shag…but Cal kept moving.

  Ziipp!

  He shot off the luge and into the room like pizza sliding off a tray. He crashed into the files Mrs. T. kept stacked along the wall. Notebook pages and sticky notes flew up and whirled around him like confetti as he tumbled into the corner.

  Finally, Cal came to a halt on his side, and he stayed there for a second. Was he in one piece? Yes, thanks to the cushion of his mom’s paperwork.

  After a few seconds, Cal saw that his plan had gone horribly wrong—or horribly right. Talk about a distraction! The living room was a disaster. He stumbled to his feet and—

  Wham!

  Cal was tackled from the side by something huge and furry. Papers went flying again as he went down. And then a wet nose was snuffling at his pockets.

  What the heck was Butler doing?

  Oh, right, Cal remembered. The half-eaten apple! This was Imo’s fault!

  He tried to stand up. Butler knocked him over again, this time getting the apple out of his jacket. Reaching for balance, Cal tipped over a side table. The answering machine on the table clattered to the floor with a BEEP!

  His parents, Imo, Bug, and Sarah rushed into the living room. Mrs. T.’s eyes went wide as she took in all the destruction. “What the Gouda is going on?” she asked.

  “The Butler did it!” Cal said. This time, it was true. Well, kind of.

  “Thanks for test-driving the luge for me, Cal,” Imo said, and then she burst out laughing. She held up a screw. She must have removed it from the lawn luge’s wheel while Cal had been talking to her.

  Imo had set him up. Cal should’ve known!

  Butler chomped happily on the apple and rolled over…right onto the answering machine. It beeped again and announced, “Playing first new message.”

  No!

  Instead of distracting all of them so they wouldn’t play the message, Cal had actually gathered an audience.

  “Hello, Talaskas,” a voice said over the machine. It wasn’t Mr. Wylot. It was Mrs. Wylot.

  Cal didn’t know what to do. He was tempted to dance or just start yelling to keep them from listening. But his parents would hear the message sooner or later.

  “I apologize for not sending out our usual high-quality invitations!” Mrs. Wylot was saying in her frantic voice. Every time Cal heard her speak, she sounded as if she were on board a sinking ship. “We’d love to have you over to our estate for a pool party and a big surprise, three Sundays from now at four PM, if you’re free—”

  “Of course they’re free,” they could hear Mr. Wylot say in the background. “What else do they have to do? Just hang up.”

  Click. The line went dead.

  Cal didn’t feel the relief he’d thought he would. This seemed just like something Leslie would plan as revenge for gym class. In fact, all the Talaskas were staring at the machine in confusion. For the moment, the chaos Cal had caused was forgotten.

  “A party?” Mr. T. asked. “The Wylots want to invite us to a party?”

  “What do they mean by surprise?” Imo asked. She glanced around as if the surprise might jump up out of nowhere.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs. T. said. “Maybe they just want to be nice? Don’t you think, Sarah?”

  “Yes?” Sarah replied. As always, she answered with a question. And Cal thought that made a lot of sense, especially because he had his own big question:

  What were the Wylots up to?

  “What’s the big surprise?” James asked. It was the same thing Cal had been asking himself since hearing the message yesterday.

  Cal and James were leaning against the Talaskas’ backyard fence, watching the Rivales next door like they were a reality TV show.

  The Rivales didn’t mind the attention. Not only were they finalists in the Great Grab Contest, they were professional coupon clippers, tae kwon do masters, and champion synchronized swimmers. They were used to people watching them.

  Right now, they were heading into the huge tent they had set up in the backyard. The parents and the triplets moved in exactly the same way. They reminded Cal of the workings of a clock. Maybe a cuckoo clock.

  James raised a hand. “Hello, Rivales!”

  The Rivales didn’t stop, but each of their five heads turned as if they were prairie dogs. With their slicked-back hair and black clothes, it was hard to tell which family member was which. Without smiling, the Rivales silently waved back in perfect unison.

  Cal laughed as if they had just performed an amazing trick. “Holy Aristotle! That’s amazing!” he cheered. But instead of taking a bow or laughing along, the Rivales nodded and disappeared into the tent.

  Cal and James shared a quick look that said, Can you believe it?

  And then Cal got back to James’s question. “I don’t know what the Wylots’ big surprise is.”

  Cal was worried about what Leslie might have planned. But the party was weeks away, and he had more pressing problems.

  “If I’m going to win the Great Grab Contest, I have to get my family to make a video,” Cal said. “Just think how it will be when I win and grab the Wonder World Video Game System!”

  James’s face got serious. “Add more wonder to your world and play inside the game!” he said, sounding just like a TV announcer. James could copy anyone’s voice. Once he’d pretended to be the school secretary on the phone and asked Principal Cahill to go buy a tin of anchovies.

  Wonder World had been invented by King Wonder himself, and it was sold only at Wish Shoppes. It cost as much as a car, but for good reason. It was the only game that turned a player’s real life into a game. Players plugged in the game, and no matter where they were, the game adapted. In other words, players could control the world around them. It was the perfect game for Cal!

  “We could be playing Wonder World in my basement right now!” Cal glanced back at his house. The drooping gutters. The peeling paint. The trees that seemed so exhausted they could barely keep themselves from collapsing onto the roof. He loved his giant, rambling house and how it looked like a ship that had run aground—but he wasn’t sure everyone else did.

  “The video just has to show that my family is the perfect family to shop at Wish Shoppe,” Cal said, “and I’ll win.”

  James always looked away when Cal said the words perfect family. Cal knew what he was thinking. The Talaskas weren’t as rich as the Wylots. And they didn’t move as smoothly as the Rivales. But who cared? Cal knew if people could just see how great his family was, the Talaskas would easily win.

  “I can help you with the video entry,” James said.

  “Thanks, my man,” Cal said, clapping his shoulder. “But I actually thi
nk it’s better if I try it alone. I know my family. They won’t be able to resist my special plan.”

  “Are you going with Strategic Pestering?” James asked.

  “No,” Cal said. “I need something a little fancier.”

  A whole day of “Take me to the fair, please,” repeated over and over, had worked when he was seven years old. But he was much more skilled now. “I’m going with Turbo Adorable,” Cal said.

  A car pulled into the Talaskas’ driveway. It was James’s older sister, and she beeped the horn.

  “Got to go,” James said. “Good luck, Captain.”

  Cal waved to James’s sister as his friend got in the car. She waved back cautiously. Cal knew she was thinking about the time he convinced her to make—and eat—a pint of tuna-fish ice cream.

  Everything was ready for Cal to put his plan into action. He started by propping his old, beat-up camera, which took video, on the patio table. Then he shouted through the screen door into the house, “Mom! Do you have a second?”

  His mom came out of the living room, her pencil still in her hand. “What is it, honey?”

  “If you put all the products at a Wish Shoppe in a line, how many times would it go around the planet?” he asked.

  “Hmm,” Mrs. T. said, tapping the pencil against her leg. “I’d have to figure that out. Why are you asking?”

  “No reason,” Cal said sweetly. “I just know you’re the best at trivia, and I’m trying to think like you.”

  “Um, okay,” Mrs. T. said.

  She stayed for a second, and Cal was glad. He wanted her to see how he was imitating her. Also, he wanted his whole family to think he was struggling to make the video without them. He hoped they would feel bad and decide to take part after all.

  Pushing his hair back the way his mom did, he faced the camera and said, “I want a home gym.”

  “Cal…,” his mom said from inside. Was she already about to crack?

  But then Mrs. T.’s desk phone rang, and she had to go answer it. Cal moved on to the next person on his list.