The New Champion (11 page)

Clio was already finished, then Dacey, then Jig. Estella kept reading, though. If she was that slow on everything, she could be a problem.

Dacey looked annoyed. She sighed once and again.

Finally Estella signed. Cameron waited for Dacey to ask what had taken so long, but thankfully she didn't. There was already enough friction bristling in the air.

Dacey did lean forward from the head of the table and point to Cameron. “So we know you're Cameron with the camera. And Clio, like Cleopatra, has long dark hair. Everyone remembers Jig Jiggerson from last year. I'm Dacey Dahlgren, but don't let this southern accent and strawberry blond hair make you think of me as all lacy. I can be tough. And you?” She pointed toward Estella. “I'm sorry, but I don't think we truly met.”

“I'm the one you sighed at while I was trying to understand exactly what I was signing. You just don't sign things without reading them. You could get into trouble.”

“Thank you, but what's your name?”

“Estella Serio.”

“I'm sorry,” said Dacey. “Can you say your first name again?”

“Eh-stay-uh,” Estella enunciated.

“Eh-stay-uh?”

“Exactly.”

“I'm sorry again,” said Dacey. “I'm just havin' a hard time visualizing that. Can you spell it for me?”

“What is this?” said Estella. “National Spelling Bee? E-S-T-E-L-L-A.”

Jig laughed. “She's a magician. She made the
L
's disappear.”

“Why do you people do that with your language?” said Dacey. “Why don't you pronounce all the letters the right way?

“You mean, like in English with ‘comb' and ‘laughter'?” Estella said.

Dacey laughed. “But then there's that other thing. Why in the middle of talking normal do you do that thing with your
R
's? Ser-r-rio.”

“Because that's my name.”

“Dear me,” said Dacey, “I didn't mean to be rude. It's just my nerves all actin' up. You should see me backstage at my pageants. Woo-boy!”

Jig sat back and chuckled. “So you're a beauty queen, Dacey. Figures.”

“Was a beauty queen,” said Dacey. “As in past tense. As in movin' on. As in shakin' free of that dumb Laura Ramirez, who the judges love so much. More than money, I think. Not that we tried to bribe them, but they liked her more than something everyone should like.”

“Like you?” Estella asked.

“Exactly. And not just that, but there's more to life than worryin' about your makeup every single second.”

Cameron stifled a smile. He'd never seen so much makeup on one face in his life.

Estella shook her head. “You're not too smart, are you?”

“I was smart enough to pay attention to the stadium study guide, and it got me here, didn't it?”

“You mean Gil's stuff?” said Jig.

“Whatever. I mean, I decided it's time to promote my brains more than my pageant wave.” She raised her hand and swiveled it side to side in the most fake greeting Cameron had ever seen.

“Why do you need to promote anything?” asked Estella.

“The more people notice the positives in you, the more opportunity you have for success. Isn't that just a fact of the world?”

Estella shook her head. “Not my world.”

“What's your world then?”

“No, lacy Dacey. I don't know you well enough.”

“Oh,
pshaw
,” said Dacey. “You can get a little more personal.”

Estella's eyes narrowed, but Clio cleared her throat. “I'd like to hear more, Estella.”

“You seem nice, Clio,” Estella said. “So, fine. In my world we don't have time to brag. My parents work three jobs, hoping they can put me and my little brother and sister through college. So I cook a lot and babysit and supervise homework.”

“You gonna supervise us?” asked Jig.

Estella shook her head. “This is like a vacation for me.”

“You mean like lazin' back and sippin' umbrella drinks?” said Dacey.

Estella laughed. “Sure. Why not?”

“Fabulous.” Dacey shifted her whole body away from Estella and fully focused on Cameron.

Uh-oh.

“So you're Cameron. Did I know your last name?”

“Schein.”

“Like ‘rise and shine'?” Dacey lit up with her smile.

Cameron couldn't help but smile back. “Spelled differently, but yeah.”

“Mine, too!” said Clio. “My last name sounds like a real word, too.”

“What word?” said Jig.

“True, as in ‘true or false,'” said Clio, “but the
U
and the
E
are transposed.”

“What's that mean?” Dacey asked.

“Switched around. Spelled T-R-E-U.”

Dacey looked at Clio like she was going to challenge her with some question, but instead, she turned toward Jig. “I just have to get this out of the way,” she said, “but Jig, that's not your real name, or is it?”

“It's what everyone calls me, so it's about as real as a name gets.”

“No, silly,” said Dacey. “That's not what's on your birth certificate, is it?”

“
Ding, ding, ding!
Give her a prize.” Jig stood and stretched probably close to six feet tall. “If you have those brains you speak of, you'll call me Jig. Just Jig.” He winked at her.

Her smile glowed. “I get you.”

Cameron didn't get it at all. Was he too young to understand? He was twelve. Estella was thirteen. Clio and Dacey were fourteen, and Jig was fifteen. He was, however, old enough to know that Dacey and Jig and Estella were competing with everyone already.

When Bill had said they should get acquainted, Cameron had assumed it would be, “Hi. I'm Cameron, I'm twelve years old, but I'll be thirteen in two months. I'm pretty good at math, so I hope there will be some math coming up. And yeah, that's about it.”

But no. Besides knowing each one's name and age, the only thing Cameron truly learned was to stay away from Dacey. No way he wanted to tangle with her.

B
ill came back in. “Here we go!”

They walked through three halls, down two floors, through a body scanner and found themselves in a tree- and bird-populated atrium with two massive doors looming ahead, one orange, one blue.

“Behind these doors?” Bill said. “Ten times more spectacular than on TV. When you go inside, your jaws will drop and your eyes will bug out. I suggest wiggling your fingers in your line of sight to snap yourself back to reality; then sprint to that first puzzle envelope on the blue-lit table in front of you. Think hard, team. Play smart. I hate to clean houses.”

The Orange Team poured into the atrium.

Bill stared at Carol. Carol stared at Bill. They both put on headsets and lowered their microphones toward their lips.

“Any last words to your troops?” he said.

“We've already had our little talk. Let's do this.”

And with that, the two-story doors swung open on their own.

A voice came from nowhere. “Time starts . . .
now
!”

Two steps in. That was all it took for Cameron to stop dead in his tracks. He'd never exactly seen a snowcapped mountain inside a building. But there it was in the distance. Closer to him, a clock with enormous multicolored gears, a giant pineapple, a speedboat, a golden shaft of light, jack-o'-lanterns, real lanterns, peacocks, cowboy hats, and layered birthday cakes with sparkler candles. And that was at first glance.

Bill was right. Cameron waved his fingers in front of his eyes to snap out of his instant trance. They couldn't waste time. He sped four steps diagonally to the blue-lit table with an envelope marked “Puzzle #1.” No one followed. Time to use his voice. “Um,” he said.

Clio moved her eyes toward him. “Hey!” she said. “Cameron has the envelope.”

They gathered around him.

“Open it already,” said Dacey.

He did and pulled out a card.

 

Puzzle #1

* * * * * * * * * * *

Ja        Nie

Da        Tidak

Jah        Nein

Po        Ne

Sí        No

Yes        Yok

Ja        Nej

(Your choices are underneath the table.)

 

Cameron had already decided that the words said “yes” or “no” in different languages even before Jig pulled up three Golly games: Agree to Disagree, Jupiter Fighter, Greased Piglets.

“Time to work,” said Estella. Then she and Jig and Dacey started talking over one another fast and loud as if speed and volume would win them something.

“Hush, y'all!” Dacey won the battle of the voices. “The yes-no thing is obvious.”

“She's right,” Estella said. “We'll get nowhere like this. We need some order.”

“If you have any ideas outside the obvious,” said Jig, “say them. That's how the Green Team won last year, brainstorming.” Jig smacked the puzzle card onto the table.

They stood around it, staring. With all those yeses and nos, Agree to Disagree was the most obvious choice, but last year's puzzles had never worked that way. They basically spelled out the answer. Here, seven yeses and seven nos. Two of the games each had two seven-letter words in their names. His turn to talk. “There's—”

“With the yes-no thing,” Jig said, cutting him off, “it's gonna be one of the first two.”

“Yeah,” said Dacey. “I'll just die if I have to rustle up a bunch of greased pigs.”

Cameron hadn't gotten this far to let them railroad him into the wrong answer, but it was useless to talk over these guys. He rattled Agree to Disagree, but it didn't get their attention.

Clio, though, stepped to the other side of the table. “You're looking at this wrong.” She nodded at Jig. “If
you
watched last year, you'll remember each puzzle pretty much spelled out the name of a toy or game. And here we have fourteen yeses and nos altogether. Fourteen letters in the names of the last two games.”

Estella smiled. “So if all the yeses relate to letters in the first word of the correct game and all the nos relate to letters in the second word, then we've got it.”

Thank you, Clio and Estella.

“I've got it, y'all!” said Dacey.

They turned to her like she was the only bottle of water in the Sahara.

“Well, I don't have
it
. I was going to say that maybe the first or last letters of each yes or no spelled something—”

“But they don't,” said Estella, finishing Dacey's sentence.

Dacey shot her a look.

Those two were like oil and water. Or maybe baking soda and vinegar, the stuff fake lava is made of. Cameron couldn't control them, but if they messed up, he'd have an excuse for losing. Or not. He'd blame himself for not stepping in.

Right now, they were off track. It wasn't the words themselves that mattered. One column meant yes; the other, no. “It's not the words.” He whispered to hear himself. “It's the languages. Why did they choose those languages in that order? The names of the languages could spell—”

Clio touched him on the shoulder. “You're right,” she said to Cameron. Then she turned to the others. “You all need to hear this.”

They looked at Clio. She glanced at Cameron, but the rest were still looking at her. She shrugged and started talking. “If you match the words with the languages they come from, maybe the first initials of those languages spell out the right game.”

“Do you speak all these languages?” said Dacey. “I don't speak all these languages.”

“You don't have to,” said Clio. “We can start with the ones we know. Like yes. English is the only language that officially uses ‘yes.' So if the sixth letter in the first word is an
E
for ‘English,'
then—”

“Well, isn't that the perfect example?” said Dacey. “The
E
works for ‘Greased' and ‘Jupiter.'”

Cameron tried to shut out her nastiness and focus on another word. Wasn't
nein
German for “no”? And the third letter in “Piglets” was
G
! But it was also the third in “Fighter.”

“What about
sí
? That's ‘yes' in Spanish, and it's—”

“Well, whoopie, Estella!” said Dacey. “You take Spanish, too.”

Estella shook her head. “
Yo no tomo español, hablo español todos los días. No importa
. Never mind.”

Jig shook his head. “What'd she say?”

Dacey shrugged.

Jig wouldn't let it go. “Estella. What'd you say?”

“Stop wasting time. Focus on the puzzle.”

“That's not what you said.”

“Of course it's not what I said. Do you really care or do you want to win?”

Now both Dacey and Jig were glaring at her. It was worse than having Spencer around.

“I was going to say,” said Estella, “that
si
is also ‘yes' in Italian, but I don't know if the Italian
si
has the same accent. Also that
ja
must mean ‘yes' in two different languages because neither of the first words starts and ends with the same letter. That plus
N-O
means ‘no,' as you should know, Jig, in English, Spanish, Italian, and probably some others.”

“Really?” said Clio. “I didn't know that. What about any of these? Do you know more of these, Estella? Anyone?”

Cameron knew
da—
his friend Max's great-grandfather was from Russia—but if
da
was also “yes” in a
U
language, they couldn't eliminate Jupiter Fighter, and he didn't want Jig or someone to jump the gun and open Greased Piglets, then blame him if he was wrong.

“What's
yok
?” said Jig. “Something you scramble? Something you hook to an ox?”

“Seriously?” said Estella. “Be serious.”

Enough. Cameron dropped to his knees and crawled under the blue-lit table.

“Look,” said Jig. “That's him being serious. You groveling?”

“No,” Cameron said. “Looking to see if they taped a translation guide to the underside.”

“Did they?”

“No.”

Jig laughed. “Or
nie
,
tidak
,
nein
—”

“Wait,” said Clio. “Did I hear you say something about
nein
, Cameron?”

“It's German, but the third letter is
G
in both second words.”

“At least we're on the right track. Oh! I have an idea. Look at it backwards.”

“You mean, ‘rethgif retipuj'? ‘Stelgip desaerg'?” Dacey laughed at her pathetic joke.

“No,” Clio said. “If you take the
F
in ‘Fighter,' for example, the top word of column two would need to be in an
F
language. Like
N-O-N
in French. Not
N-I-E
in—” Clio let out a sigh of frustration. “As far as I know,
N-I-E
could be Finnish.”

“We need a translation guide,” said Dacey. “Oh! Y'all! Maybe they have books in our conference room!” She and Jig turned to run, but that was a waste.

“No!” Cameron stopped them in their tracks. “I specifically noticed there weren't.” While he had their attention, he kept going. “But I might know another word.”

“Whatcha been waiting for?” said Dacey.

He tried to ignore her tone. “
Da
is Russian for ‘yes.'”

“Only one of them has an
R
in that position,” said Estella. “Are you sure?”

“I'm sure.”

“Why didn't you tell us in the first place?” said Jig.

“If there's a
U
language, it could be ‘Jupiter Fighter,' too.”

“Does a
U
language exist?” asked Jig. He picked up Greased Piglets. “We tried to reason this out so they can't penalize us. Anyone object?”

“Only if it gets us all greasy,” said Dacey.

While Jig opened the box, Estella leaned over to Cameron, “Good job.”

“Good job,” echoed Clio.

Cameron hoped it was a good job, or they'd be all over him.

Jig pulled out their stunt card.

 

STUNT #1

* * * * * * * * * * *

Our pigs are on unplanned release.

What's worse, they've tracked through pools of grease!

Go find the greasy pigs and then

move all of them from field to pen.

Two rules:

1. You each must place two pigs exactly where we ask.

2. You each must wear our special gloves to carry out this task.

Oink!

 

“Thank heaven they have gloves for us,” said Dacey.

“But where are they?” said Jig. “There were arrows last year.” He turned toward the entrance. “Yoo-hoo! Bill! Where are the pigs?”

Silence.

“Yo, Bill!”

Nothing.

“Then it's a warehouse search!” Jig zoomed toward the rear of the massive room. Why there? Why not to the right or the left or somewhere near the first clue? How could he know where to go?

Still, they followed him like Mary's little lambs. At worst, they were getting a good overview of what they might need later. They passed a beach of sea turtles, tubas, tuba-sized ice skates, giant stuffed aliens, a zebra-headed candy cane, a towering vase sprouting ceiling-high flowers, a wall of boomerangs, a kitchen, an oil derrick, and a rack of Shooter String before they got to the back of the warehouse. But no pigs.

“At least we know where they aren't,” said Dacey.

“And don't you go taking off again.” Estella sounded like a scolding mom.

“Bill didn't say anything about sticking together,” Clio said. “We'll cover more ground if we split up in different directions.”

Estella sectioned off the warehouse, assigning Cameron the front right. It made sense to focus forward and speed to his area, but it wouldn't hurt to mentally map the place. Once he'd cataloged the elephant bath, the neon orange forklift, the sunflower field, the green wall, and the blinking banks of lights, he pretty much gave up memorizing his path. In fact, he'd veered off course. Where was he? Why didn't this place come with a GPS? He stopped and looked toward the ceiling, looked to find a corner to the right. There! Cameron was almost to his area when one of the girls shouted, “Here! Here!”

The “here” came from behind him and to the left.

“Where's here?” yelled Jig.

“Look up. Cow! Moon!” said the voice.

Way in back, a cow was jumping over the moon, turning, and jumping again. Cameron kept his focus upward and raced as quickly as his legs would carry him.