The New Champion (21 page)

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!”

B
ill 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

RetroWars

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.

RETROWARS. Nine letters. He circled the three in the middle.
R O W
? Row? A word, but not a tree he knew. Next!

BABYCHATALOT. Twelve letters. No way to have three letters in the middle unless they meant three of the middle letters. Take four off one side and four off the other, and he was left with
C H A
T
. Choose three. Cat tree? No. Hat tree? Was that a real thing? Maybe. Act tree. Tac tree. Too many maybes. He hoped there'd be a more definite answer. Next.

DOOMTOMB.
O M T O
in the middle. Mot? Tom ? Moo? Too? Nope. And choosing three of four letters in the middle wasn't the way Golly operated. One more.