by Kim Long
Ron reentered the room. “I couldn’t find anything,” he said. “But I ran into someone who said he’d let Mr. Yang know we needed him.” Ron walked by, nudging Lexi with his toe. “Get up, Magill. Think of it this way: at least you didn’t send us to Antarctica.”
Lexi got to her feet and dusted off her pants. “Ha ha. I know. It’s just that you guys were counting on me to do the science stuff.”
Ron and Mal stood still. “It’s okay,” Mal said after what seemed like an eternity, though Lexi guessed was probably only a few seconds. “You’re not the first person to send us to the wrong place.”
“Hey!” Ron said. “At least I didn’t drop my Tel-Med in the toilet!”
“Well, I didn’t, either,” Mal said with a laugh. She tipped her head toward to Lexi. “See, we all made mistakes.”
Lexi lowered her eyes to the ground. While she appreciated the kind words, she still felt crummy. They’d been so close to being in first place! To catch up so much… Lexi paused. Team RAM had been the second team to leave Manchester. Even though a few others had been right behind them, it wasn’t like there had been twenty other teams ready to travel to the Hopper Bridge. Team RAM could very well still make the top fifteen. They hadn’t been in Tibet that long.
“Okay,” she said. “Good pep talk. You’re right.”
“Exactly,” Mal said. “All we need is our new tickets, and we’re back in it.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple,” Mr. Yang said from the doorway. Team RAM turned, and Mr. Yang entered the room and poured another cup of tea. “You do get a second chance to calculate the correct coordinates, and after that you can teleport to the bridge, but…”
“But what?” Ron asked with an edge to his voice Lexi hadn’t heard before.
Mr. Yang pointed to the cots. “That’s why these beds are set up. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but when you came to Tibet, you crossed quite a few time zones. While it was near seven p.m. in England, it’s almost two a.m. here. Your Tel-Meds deactivated as soon as you landed. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to wait until morning to leave.”
Ron’s eyes widened. He grabbed Lexi’s backpack. “You said you had a chart of the time zones, right?”
Lexi reached for it, but Ron was quicker. He set the Time-Zone Cheat Sheet on the table.
LEXI MAGILL’S TIME-ZONE CHEAT SHEET
HOME: MIDNIGHT
EAST COAST: 1:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 6:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 7:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 1:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 2:00 P.M.
HOME: 1:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 2:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 7:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 8:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 2:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 3:00 P.M.
HOME: 2:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 3:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 8:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 9:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 3:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 4:00 P.M.
HOME: 3:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 4:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 9:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 10:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 4:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 5:00 P.M.
HOME: 4:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 5:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 10:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 11:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 5:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 6:00 P.M.
HOME: 5:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 6:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 11:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 12:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 6:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 7:00 P.M.
HOME: 6:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 7:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 12:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 1:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 7:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 8:00 P.M.
HOME: 7:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 8:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 1:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 2:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 8:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 9:00 P.M.
HOME: 8:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 9:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 2:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 3:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 9:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 10:00 P.M.
HOME: 9:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 10:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 3:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 4:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 10:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 11:00 P.M.
HOME: 10:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 11:00 A.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 4:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 5:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 11:00 P.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: MIDNIGHT
HOME: 11:00 A.M.
EAST COAST: 12:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 5:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 6:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: MIDNIGHT
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 1:00 P.M.
HOME: 12:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 1:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 6:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 7:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 1:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 2:00 P.M.
HOME: 1:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 2:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 7:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 8:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 2:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 3:00 P.M.
HOME: 2:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 3:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 8:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 9:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 3:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 4:00 P.M.
HOME: 3:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 4:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 9:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 10:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 4:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 5:00 P.M.
HOME: 4:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 5:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 10:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 11:00 P.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 5:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 6:00 P.M.
HOME: 5:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 6:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 11:00 P.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: MIDNIGHT
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 6:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 7:00 P.M.
HOME: 6:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 7:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: MIDNIGHT
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 1:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 7:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 8:00 P.M.
HOME: 7:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 8:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 1:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 2:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 8:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 9:00 P.M.
HOME: 8:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 9:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 2:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 3:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 9:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 10:00 P.M.
; HOME: 9:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 10:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 3:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 4:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 10:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 11:00 P.M.
HOME: 10:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: 11:00 P.M.
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 4:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 5:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: 11:00 A.M.
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: MIDNIGHT
HOME: 11:00 P.M.
EAST COAST: MIDNIGHT
ENGLAND, SPAIN, PORTUGAL: 5:00 A.M.
FRANCE, ITALY, GERMANY, POLAND, SWEDEN: 6:00 A.M.
INDIA/TIBET/THAILAND: MIDNIGHT
FAR EAST/AUSTRALIA: 1:00 A.M.
Ron slid his finger over the various times. “Okay, so it’s almost two a.m. here.” He slid his finger down the India/Tibet/Thailand column to 7:00 a.m. and then to his left until he was under the East Coast column. “So according to the chart, if we leave here at seven a.m. tomorrow morning, we’ll arrive at the Hopper Bridge in Charleston at seven p.m. Sunday night?”
Lexi nodded. “Looks right to me.”
“It’s really not that bad,” Mr. Yang interjected, sipping his tea. “You can hang out here, take a nap if you wish, and then at seven a.m. teleport to the Hopper Bridge. You’ll spend the night in the South Carolina rest area. All teams are being held there, and then the race will start tomorrow morning with the top fifteen teams.”
Team RAM stared at Mr. Yang, who frowned upon seeing their less than enthused response.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you. There’s a kitchen through the door to your right, and a sitting room beyond it. Eat, rest, and be ready to teleport at seven a.m. sharp. I’m sure other teams will make the same mistake, but you’ll be first to travel since you’re here first. Good night.”
As soon as Mr. Yang left, Lexi turned to her teammates, who quickly looked down, avoiding her eyes. Their reactions told Lexi all she needed to know: Ron and Mal were perfectly aware that her mistake had cost them the tournament.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Five hours,” Ron muttered. “We can’t leave for five hours.” He walked to the other side of the room as Mal and Lexi sat on their cots.
Lexi let him pace, too sick to her stomach to respond. Forgetting the negative sign was such a stupid thing to do, and so unlike her. She never made careless mistakes. She fell back onto the cot. Equally ridiculous was that her mistake had landed them in a time-zone trap. So many teams in previous tournaments were eliminated due to time-zone mishaps. It was why she created the Time-Zone Cheat Sheet and reset her watch every time they teleported somewhere new. She had taken so many precautions to avoid this type of thing from happening.
She shifted to a seated position. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “You have every right to be mad. I should have been more careful. It probably was all the time-zone changes and running around all day. I’m not thinking straight.”
“No,” Ron said, halting. “That’s not the problem.”
“Huh?”
“You should have let us double-check the coordinates.”
“What?”
“If you had let Mal check the coordinates, none of this would have happened. We would have found your mistake.”
“Ron’s right,” Mal said. “We told you we wanted to double-check, and you went ahead and turned in the sheet, anyway. We could have totally fixed it, and everything would have been fine.”
Lexi looked from Mal to Ron, confused how they could possibly think that checking would have been the right thing to do. “But you saw the line of teams. We didn’t have time.”
“Says you,” Ron yelled. “But we’re a team, remember? I gave up my swag, and Mal hasn’t taken a single photo since we left the maze. We’ve been 100 percent focused, trying to prove we’re smart enough to win on our own, but no—super-science-girl, you overruled us and did what you wanted to, anyway.”
Mal crossed her arms. “Exactly. You even said at the beginning of the race that it never hurts to double-check. You made me prove to you and Ron that the Neuschwanstein Castle was the right one. But when it came to double-checking your answer, you totally blew us off.”
Lexi shook her head. Her teammates were totally missing the point. “But Haley was right there! You heard the official—we would have had to go to the end of the line. She would have passed us. You really wanted to let her back in the lead after she lied?”
“Yes!” Ron and Mal shouted at the same time.
Lexi flinched. “But—”
“No,” Ron said. “No but. That’s what we’re trying to say. We’re supposed to be doing this together. You have to listen to us. This isn’t your team.”
“And now we’re stuck,” Mal said.
Ron threw his hands in the air. “Completely stuck—which makes what you did a thousand times worse than anything Mal and I ever did.”
Lexi tightened her jaw. Her mistake was the worst of them all, but that’s not what was eating her insides. The truth was that she had dismissed their suggestion to double-check the answer because she thought there was no way she’d make a mistake on a science problem. She also had made the unilateral decision to hand in the worksheet, even though they both had asked her to wait. She had completely ignored them, even after they’d made it clear in the maze that they were going to go all out to win the tournament. She’d finally gotten them to care about the tournament, and then she went ahead and ruined it.
“Right through here,” Dr. Yang said from behind.
Lexi turned. The Doppler Daredevils entered the room.
“Hey, Lexi,” Doppler Chris said. “Tough one, huh?”
Lexi nodded. “Yeah.”
Chris tossed his backpack on an empty cot. “Well, don’t feel too bad. From what I overheard in the lounge, I think the Perfect Plancks will be joining us, too.” Chris flailed his body onto the cot and covered his head with a pillow. As he crunched it over his face, he screamed, “Arrrrgh! Stupid negative sign!”
Despite how Lexi’s stomach was roiling from her fight with Ron and Mal, a laugh escaped her lips. She turned to share it with her teammates.
They were gone.
The rest of the Plancks entered the room. After a short nod in their direction, Lexi walked to the kitchen. Ron and Mal sat at a small table in the far corner, plates of food in front of them. Lexi paused at the door.
“What we need is a McDonald’s,” Ron muttered to Mal.
Mal picked up her chopsticks. “Don’t start that again,” she said, slowly picking at the rice.
Ron attempted to trap rice between his chopsticks, but they slipped out of his fingers.
“Here,” Mal said, showing him her grip. “Hold them like this.”
He tried mimicking Mal’s hold. “I wouldn’t need them if I had a burger and fries.”
Lexi’s stomach lurched. Every ounce of her wanted to be over there with Ron and Mal, eating and joking around. But her feet wouldn’t move. She couldn’t get it out of her mind that they had been totally right about how she had treated them. In trying to beat Haley, she had turned into Haley, letting her obsession with winning destroy true friendship. She couldn’t blame them for not wanting anything to do with her.
Ron blew out a long breath. “I still can’t believe this. I really thought we had a shot once we caught up at that Turing dude.”
Mal chuckled. “I know. Seeing Europe again and getting photos for my exhibit was awesome, but I have to admit the tournament was a lot more fun than I expected. I was really hoping we’d make it to the finals.”
“Finals, schminals. I wanted to win and prove to Ms. Smarty-Pants and her alliance we’re as smart as they are.”
Lexi cringed and turned away. Ron wasn’t wrong. Team RAM was just as smart as Haley’s team. Problem was, no one would believe it unless they crossed the finish line ahead of the other teams.
Fists clenched, she
strode to her cot, grabbed her backpack and Time-Zone Cheat Sheet, and hunkered down in the far corner. Pulling out her Teleport Tableau, Trek Tracker, and all the notes she had made from her review of previous tournaments, she organized a work station. Somehow, some way, she was going to figure out a way to get Team RAM back in the race.
An hour later, Lexi gathered her papers and set off to find her teammates. She found them at the same corner table huddled over Mal’s tablet playing a game.
Lexi cleared her throat. Neither turned her way. “Ahem,” she repeated. “Ron? Mal?”
Two sets of eyes shot dirty looks her way.
Swallowing hard, Lexi pressed onward, clutching her papers to her chest. “Can I talk to you for a second? I had an idea, but before I tell you what it is, I want you to know that I’ll only go along with it if you both want to.”
Ron cocked an eyebrow, and Mal narrowed her eyes.
Lexi tapped the stack of papers. “I’ve been thinking about it, and if we were out of it, why wouldn’t they teleport us home instead of to South Carolina? Mr. Yang specifically said we’d be going to the bridge and spending the night there with the rest of the teams and that the race would begin from there the next morning, right?”
Ron and Mal glanced at each other. Since neither of them told her to get lost, Lexi took another step forward and slid into a chair at a nearby table. She set her papers on her lap and faced her teammates.
“I decided to investigate, and before the tournament, I reviewed a bunch of previous tournaments, newspaper articles about them, and even interviews with some of the teams. I looked at my notes, and, sure enough, whenever teams were eliminated, they were sent straight home. They didn’t teleport to the other locations.”
Mal put her tablet aside. “But we were what, the second team to leave Manchester? They might not know to eliminate us yet.”
Lexi smiled. “Exactly.” She plucked out the Time-Zone Cheat Sheet, scooched her chair closer to Ron and Mal, and set the sheet on her lap so they could see. “Look. We left England around seven p.m. While there, we saw the Comets, Techies, Phenoms, and Sanbornes. Anyone else?”
“I’m not sure,” Ron said, scratching the back of his neck. “Maybe one more?”
“Okay, so that would be five. They still need ten more teams for the top fifteen, and we know the Dopplers and Plancks are here.”