The Gollywhopper Games (2 page)

“H
eads up!”

A large toy airplane circled, landed three people away, and shook Gil from his memories.

He turned to take advantage of the gusting wind, then took a closer look at the yellow card that Shrimpy Guy had given him.

The back side of the card said that even with this card, contestants must keep their places in line until tomorrow morning, when Golly officials would give further directions; that it was unlawful to sell or copy the card; the company was not liable for lost or stolen cards; the card came with no guarantees; and blah, blah, blah—all that small print to protect the company’s backsides. Golly lawyers were good at that.

Gil sat against the tree, slipped his yellow line card halfway under his butt. He needed both hands to dig deep into his duffel for a bottle of water he’d packed yesterday. He took a long swig. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand then wiped his hand on the duffel, right next to its stenciled letters.
GILBERT
.

Gilbert stunk as a first name, didn’t have a cool nickname. Bert was the nerd on
Sesame Street
or the great uncle with hair sprouting out his nose and ears. And Gil? It wasn’t spelled the same, but according to their disintegrating
American Heritage Dictionary
, it sounded the same as, “The respiratory organ of most aquatic animals that breathe underwater to obtain oxygen.” Stenciled like this, though, Gilbert
was the last name of his great-grandfather the military hero.

Gil took another gulp of water and tried to make himself believe that 1,415 kids with guaranteed tickets wouldn’t show up. What about the kids from Hawaii or Alaska or even California or Connecticut? They couldn’t all have parents willing to travel so far to play a game, no matter how exciting that game promised to be. Maybe he still had a good chance. Maybe—

“Duck!”

A ball from a volleyball game came like a shot toward Gil’s head. He jerked and rolled over just in time. And just in time for one of those breezes to catch his yellow card and send it tumbling. He scrambled to his feet. Forget his water. Forget his stuff. His card, his chance to get into the Games, was cartwheeling backward, back toward the people who had worse numbers than he did. Gil couldn’t go to the end of the
line. He just couldn’t. Run! Get the card! Get—

“Whoa!” Gil jumped over a little kid, around another, hit the pavement, and spiraled into a lawn chair. Before he could take stock of his injuries, a small group gathered around, sitting him up, brushing him off.

“Are you all right, kid?” someone asked.

A woman rushed up to him with a first aid kit.

He tried to shake her off, tried to get back up. “My card,” he said. “My card blew away.” He scrambled to his feet and—

“Looking for this?” The voice belonged to a hand that held Gil’s card.

“Yeah. Thank you very, very…”

Oh, no. Not Lonnie. Not one of the twins. Gil hoped they’d both flunked and had to stay behind in sixth grade. Didn’t matter right now. Lonnie stood there, a Golly badge on his chest and a grin on his face. If he and his brother were still identical, they’d turned into twin giraffes over the summer. “How
much is the card worth to you?” he said.

“C’mon, Lonnie. Be decent for a change.”

“Because your dad was decent at Golly? My dad still curses your dad every day because he can’t remember all those passwords he needs to get into his computer stuff. They won’t even let us kids preview computer games unless we go through forty thousand security checks. So for all my trouble, I think this should be worth something. If you want it badly enough.”

The woman with the first aid kit stepped toward them. Her eyes came up only to Lonnie’s chin, but she somehow appeared taller.

“Whose ticket is that?” she said.

“Why do you—”

The woman got right into Lonnie’s face.

“I said—”

“Okay, okay.” Lonnie handed Gil the ticket and walked away.

“Now sit yourself down,” she said to Gil. “Nurse Francine doesn’t want any back talk from you, either.”

Gil wasn’t about to argue with her. He sat. “My mom’s a nurse, too.”

“She’s probably not a school nurse, though.”

Gil laughed and let her tend to his knee through the rip in his jeans. “Thank you,” Gil said. “For everything.”

Francine helped him up. “Now you hold on to that ticket, you hear?”

Gil nodded, tried out his knee. It only stung a little bit. He raced back to his stuff, hoping it was still there. Hoping he still had a place in line.

T
he wind had blown his sleeping bag a little, but all his gear was there. Gil took a deep breath, folded his yellow card, shoved it into the depths of his front pocket. He flopped down, looking toward the stadium, toward the masses in front of him, until a laugh shot out from behind him.

Gil turned and focused on long, white-blonde hair, then shocking pink fingernails.

The girl spun around, as if she knew his eyes were boring holes into her willowy shoulders.

He looked down. Picked at a thread on his duffel.

“Hi!” Gil heard her say. “Hello-o? Are you deaf?”

Gil looked up. “Who, me?”

“Yeah, you. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, so I’m usually talking to whoever I’m looking at. Maybe I’ll call you Freckles.”

Gil smiled.

“Or Dimples.”

Gil smiled harder, scrambled to his feet.

“Anyway, hi! I’m Bianca LaBlanc. Do you like it? My name, I mean. My real name is BetsiJo Hammermeister, but have you ever heard of a super-model named BetsiJo Hammermeister? That’s what I want to be: a model and an actress. Wouldn’t it be great if I won?” She threw open her arms, gave a laugh. “They couldn’t resist putting me in all their commercials. Me! BetsiJo Ham—I mean, Bianca LaBlanc. Anyway, do you like it? It means ‘White
the White.’ In two different languages. Italian and French, I think. I thought the name matched my hair. So? What do you think?”

Gil breathed her in, perfume and all. He wanted to ask if she ever took a breath when she talked, if she had always been this beautiful, and if that blond guy next to her was her boyfriend or her brother. Instead, he managed to say, “Yeah, I like your name. It’s catchy.”

“Oh, good. What’s your name? You do have a name, don’t you?”

“Gil.”

“Just Gil? Like those famous people with one name?”

Gil laughed. “Gil Goodson.”

“Hi, Gil Goodson. Double G. That’s what I’ll call you. This is my cousin Curt. He’s twenty-one, way too old to do the Games, but he was at my house the night we found out my mom couldn’t bring me here because of work, and my dad’s off somewhere in New Mexico, and I started crying because I really wanted to be here to get discovered. So I promised Curt I’d pay for gas and give him ten percent of
anything I won. And here we are! Right, Curt?”

Curt gave half a wave like he was used to Bianca grabbing all the attention.

Bianca adjusted her orange bikini top. “So what’s your story?”

His story? Gil almost laughed, but he shrugged instead. “No story. Not really.”

“You have to have a story. Everyone has a story, at least that’s what Oprah said. I’m here to get famous.” She pointed to the ABC camera. “They’ve already talked to me. So has Fox.” She glanced over at the MTV camera. “They’re next. So how old are you, Double G? I’m fifteen.”

Twelve suddenly felt babyish. “I’ll be thirteen soon.” If three months was soon.

She looked him up and down. “Thirteen? That’s all? You’re almost tall as me. Great biceps. I would’ve thought you were closer to my age.”

If the rims of Gil’s ears burned any brighter, they’d glow like a neon sign.

“Anyway,” she said, apparently oblivious to his ears, “we drove four hundred and eight miles just on the highway, and I’m so, so glad we’re finally here.”
Bianca stopped just long enough to breathe. “So, Gil,” she said, “why are you alone?”

“My parents are coming after work,” he said, practically drooling over the thought of the food they’d bring. He’d forgotten to eat breakfast. “Do you know what time it is?”

Bianca held up her wrist. “My watch is somewhere in my suitcase in the car. I didn’t want to get a tan line. But Curt has a watch. Curtie!”

Curt had drifted toward a few guys farther back in line. He motioned Bianca over.

“Hold on. I’ll go find out,” she said.

When it looked like she’d planted herself with Curt near the MTV camera, Gil decided to chance leaving his stuff for just three minutes to get a slice of pizza and a soda. If he died of starvation, he couldn’t play anyway. He reached into his back pocket to pull out his mon—

What? Who robbed—No. The money was in his shorts in the bathtub. He couldn’t run home and leave the line for that long. He’d have to distract himself until his parents came. Which, looking at the sun, was more than four hours away.

He unrolled his sleeping bag, then watched the Goodyear blimp cruise overhead. It reminded him of that one Golly picnic when he was about seven. After dinner they’d had miniblimps circling the park grounds, occasionally dropping toys from their underbellies. All the kids chased them around for hours, until a parade of waiters carried out cakes that seemed to shoot fireworks from the icing.

And that was just a usual Golly picnic, so what would fifty years of celebration be like? How Gil wanted to know! He couldn’t sit still anymore. He got up. Jumped. Jiggled his arms, waggled his head, just in time for Curt and Bianca to come back and see.

She looked at Gil like he was nuts. “Don’t go spastic on me.”

“I’m just nervous about getting in,” he said. “I want to know.”

Bianca grabbed his hand. “C’mon, Double G. Curt’ll watch our stuff. Won’t you, Curtie?”

“Sure.”

Bianca pulled Gil behind her. “Let’s see if we can find out how many people with real tickets haven’t registered yet.”

They stopped and watched an NBC person interview a kid.

“Why are we watching this?” asked Gil.

“We’re not,” she said. “We’re waiting for the TV people. See what they know.”

Gil knew one thing. He wasn’t comfortable in media land. Didn’t want to be spotted by the local stations. Didn’t want them to bother him about the past.

Gil darted his attention all around, ready to make a quick getaway if someone should come storming up to him. A glint of steel from a wheelchair blinded him for a second. Gil blinked. Was that who he thought it was? “I’ll be back, Bianca,” he said. “He might know.”

“Who? That old guy?”

“Yeah. Old Man Golliwop. Stay here.”

Bianca, apparently, didn’t listen because she was right behind Gil, weaving around people and chairs and tents until they were walking alongside the wheelchair.

The old man kept cruising, chuckling like he’d just remembered the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
“Well, isn’t this something, Young Goodson?” he said. “Isn’t this something? Hoo-boy! I hope you’re playing in my games. I hope you take that dang loony son of mine for every nickel he’s handing out. You are playing?”

“If I can get in,” said Gil. “Do you know how many people they’re taking from this line?”

“Nobody at my company tells me anything anymore. They think I should shrivel up and go away.” Old Man Golliwop turned to Bianca. “Are you playing, too? Or are you one of those girls from TV?”

“I wish,” said Bianca.

“You should be on TV. Next time you see me, Young Goodson, remind me to tell Bert he needs to hire her. But don’t get your hopes up, young lady. My son won’t listen to me. He didn’t listen to me about your father, Young Goodson. Went on with that foolhardy trial.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gil, sorry he came up to the old man. “We need to—”

Old Man Golliwop aimed his wheelchair at Gil and stopped. “Remember when I practically ran my wheelchair over a dozen people to see what happened at the
end of the trial, Young Goodson? I had a lot to say, and I still remember every word. Ha!”

Gil liked this story, but didn’t need Bianca to hear every word. “I think—”

“Yessiree. Remember, Young Goodson? I told Bert that any fool could see he’d been wasting time and money trying to hang the wrong fellow. And that he had better get his facts straight if he wanted to keep running my company.” Old Man Golliwop shook his head.

“Do you remember what my own son said to me?” He didn’t wait for Gil to answer. “He said, ‘It’s not your company anymore, Dad.’ And I reminded him I started my company with a nickel and an idea, so if I wanted to call it my company, I could dang well call it my company.”

He grabbed Gil’s wrist and looked him in the eye. “Then he wouldn’t give your father his job back.”

Gil shook his head. “My dad said he didn’t want it back, remember?”

“Waste of talent. Waste of talent.”

Gil glanced at Bianca. Hoped she’d been sidetracked by another TV camera. Or at least that the
conversation had confused her. It didn’t look that way, though. “Well, sir,” said Gil, “we need to go.”

“Yes you do. I don’t want anyone to think I’m sharing company secrets with you. But before you leave, you need to promise me something. Promise me I’ll see you at headquarters on Saturday. Promise.”

“I can only try.”

“That’s as good as a promise.” Old Man Golliwop reached up and thumped Gil’s back. “Attaboy!” Then he wheeled off.

“And exactly who was that old guy?” Bianca asked.

“He started all this,” Gil said. “Fifty years ago today.”

“You mean the Games?”

“No, the company. That’s Old Man Golliwop. Thaddeus G. Golliwop, founder of Golly Toy and Game Company.”

“And he actually knows you? Personally?” Her green eyes were open wide. “You do have a story. Spill.”

Gil started walking. “It’s old stuff. Boring.”

“Didn’t sound boring.” Bianca reeled ahead and blocked Gil’s path. “Details. Now.”

“It was nothing,” he lied. “Someone accused my dad of trying to steal money from Golly, but he was found not guilty. And he didn’t do it. That’s all.”

“Then what…” Bianca pointed behind Gil. “Ooh. Game Show Network! Let’s go.”

Gil let her drag him from one camera to the next until he’d had enough. He found his way back to the tree. Plopped onto his sleeping bag. Lay down. Sighed. If only…