“I’m also pretty good at music,” Simon mumbled.
“Shut up!” snarled Jack. He jabbed the blue button on his controller. The giant plastic head lurched forward.
Startled, Simon and Soraiya jumped back.
The floor panel they landed on flopped open.
They fell down another hole.
Soraiya had been right.
For every ladder, there had to be another chute.
They flew through the swirly tube down to the atrium.
Compressed air shot up again, buffeting their descent, slowing them down.
They made another soft landing, this time in the Apples to Apples barrel.
“We need to be back up on the second floor!” said Soraiya, standing up in the squeaky-ball apple pit. She had to shout to be heard over the massive fan still blowing compressed air up the empty tube.
“Hang on,” said Simon. “I think I know a shortcut.”
“What?”
“We can ride one of these apples like it’s a Ping-Pong ball in a T-shirt cannon!”
Simon shoved apples around until he found what he was looking for. It was the perfect size and shape to fit in and then plug up the chute. He yanked it out of the pile by its rubbery stem.
“Grab that handle up there and climb back into the chute,” Simon coached Soraiya.
“I’m in,” said Soraiya.
“Scoot over,” said Simon. “I’m climbing in, too. And I’m bringing my Ping-Pong ball with me.”
“What?”
“Sorry. It’s how I built an elevator for my Ferris wheel in the library maker space.”
Fighting the blast from the fan, Simon grabbed a handle grip, climbed up into the tube, and dragged the round red ball in behind him. He yanked on the stem hard and squeezed the apple into the tube.
When he and it were securely inside, the compressed air did its job and shot everything stuffed into the chute upward. Simon and Soraiya rode the apple ball just like they were riding Simon’s Ping-Pong elevator.
Thirty seconds later, they popped out of the trapdoor on the second floor and made a soft, bouncy landing.
“What the—?” said Jack, jumping back.
“We’re here to finish our game!” said Simon.
“Who cares? I already finished mine. The face I was looking for was Philip. The dude with the Abe Lincoln beard. You’re back just in time to hear my riddle. My last riddle. Then I’m going to win the game and take over Mr. Lemoncello’s whole empire.”
“Actually,” said Soraiya, “this is just the first of several titanium tickets to be—”
“Whatever!” screamed Jack. “The first titanium ticket is going to be mine! Give me my riddle, Philip!”
The face from the Guess Who? game cleared its throat. “Ahem. Two fathers and two sons sat down to eat eggs for breakfast. They ate exactly three eggs. Each person ate only one egg. How?”
Simon recognized the riddle.
It was the same one that Ms. Pulliam had posted on the board in her classroom.
“One of the fathers is also a grandfather,” blurted Jack. “His son is the father of the other son.”
“Congratulations, JACK,” said a soothing voice purring out of the ceiling speakers. “You have successfully completed all eight games. Good luck with the rest of your quest. I hope you make it to the finals.”
Jack stared at his tablet screen and waited for the blanks to fill in.
“I gave you that answer!” shouted Simon. “I wrote it on a sticky note in Ms. Pulliam’s classroom. You stole my answer.”
“Says who?”
“Me!”
“Whatever,” said Jack. “It doesn’t matter now. All my letters are filled in….”
He looked puzzled.
“Gobs of giggly fun?” he mumbled. “What the heck does that mean?”
Then a light bulb went off over his head.
“Of course! That little kids’ board game on the first floor, Giggle Wiggle, the giant caterpillar.”
Jack took off running, leaving Pimple Pete standing there, grinning his goofy grin.
“Now we need to finish our game!” Soraiya said to the ceiling.
“Right you are!” said the game show announcer voice. “Resetting the board. Putting fifty seconds back on the clock.”
The twenty-four TVs flickered on and off, leaving only the five female characters.
“Okay,” said Soraiya. “Is our character black?”
“Yes.”
Four of the female faces disappeared.
Only one face remained.
“The answer is Anne,” said Soraiya, shaking her head. “The only black woman in the whole game.”
“You are correct!” screamed the game show announcer.
“Soraiya?” said the cartoon of Anne.
“Um, yes, Anne?”
“You’ll be happy to know that because of the comments, complaints, and concerns from children just like you, future editions of Guess Who? were redesigned to feature a more racially diverse cast of characters.”
“Excellent.”
“Back to business,” said Anne. “Here is your riddle: When things go wrong, what can you always count on?”
Soraiya looked to Simon. “Do you know the answer?”
Simon didn’t.
But then he did!
“Your fingers!” shouted Simon. “When things go wrong, you can always count on your fingers.”
Bells rang. Trumpets blared. The lPad DINGed and one last bubble word zipped across its screen.
The voice in the ceiling started purring again. “Congratulations, SORAIYA and MARIO, correction, SIMON. You have correctly completed all eight games. Good luck with the rest of your quest. I hope you BOTH make it to the finals.”
The C and the G took their places and completed the seventy-six-letter phrase:
“You were right all along,” Soraiya told Simon. “You knew exactly what the phrase would say. I slowed us down. We should’ve just gone with it.”
“We’re in this together, Soraiya. We’re a team. We went with the scientific method. It was the, you know, the scientific thing to do.”
Soraiya smiled. “Thanks, Simon. You’re a good friend.”
“You are, too.”
“Wait a second,” said Soraiya, snapping her fingers. “Jack could be right. The titanium ticket might be hidden with Giggle Wiggle. It’s a cute towering caterpillar with tons of hands and feet. Maybe the ticket is in one of its hands!”
“Then why are these sixteen lemon letters glowing?” asked Simon.
He and Soraiya focused on the screen.
G-E-C-E-C-D-E-D-C-D-G-D-C-E-G-G. The letters were all blazing yellow. Then they started blinking.
“It could be a word scramble,” said Simon. “Or a code…”
“What words can we make with these sixteen letters?”
Kyle Keeley stepped into the room.
“Yep,” he said, not sounding sick at all. “This is as far as Akimi and I got, too.”
“You’re not sick?” said Simon.
“Not anymore,” said Kyle. “I mean, I was sick to my stomach when I saw how Jack McClintock sabotaged you in that outdoor board game. But we can talk about that later. You two need to get to work. It’s seven-fifty-seven!”
“We only have three minutes!” said Soraiya. “What words can we make with these sixteen letters?”
“Um, egged, edged,” said Simon, even though his mind wasn’t really in the word-generating game.
There was something about the letters that seemed familiar. Something, strangely, that reminded him of his attic and all its recycled and reimagined toys and games.
“Cede, deed, egg,” said Soraiya. “Egg! That’s it, Simon! Dad told me about a game Mr. Lemonc
ello created like twenty years ago. It’s called the Eggstraordinary Egg Head. There are a dozen plastic eggs in a carton. You fill some with whipped cream. You shuffle them up in the carton, spin the dial, and take turns plucking up an egg and cracking it against your forehead.”
Simon nodded. He was still thinking.
Soraiya was frantically tapping the lPad. “There’s an antique Egg Head game in the Mr. Lemoncello’s Classics section up on the third floor.”
“But we’re on the first floor.”
“I know! That’s why we need to hurry, Simon. We’re running out of time.”
The clock in the atrium started bonging out its hourly melody.
Bing-bong-bing-bong.
Bing-bong-bing-bong.
Soraiya threw up her arms in frustration. “Now we are officially out of time. The clock’s about to strike eight.”
“Of course!” said Simon.
“Huh?”
The clock chimed the next two lines of its on-the-hour tune.
Bing-bong-bing-bong.
Bing-bong-bing-bong.
“It’s a four-note, four-line musical phrase.”
He started running.
Out of the Guess Who? exhibit.
Down the nearest staircase.
Soraiya was right behind him.
Simon and Soraiya tore through the first-floor displays and weaved their way back to the atrium.
“That’s why Haley and Carolyn were dancing to a song called ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge’!” Simon shouted. “That was a clue. That’s how you remember the lines of the treble clef in music. E-C-D-G are musical notes. The glowing letters are an anagram, but for music, not a word! E-C-D-G, G-D-E-C, E-D-C-G, G-D-E-C!”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” said Soraiya.
“The Westminster chimes melody,” said Simon, remembering some of the clocks he’d torn apart. “It’s what you’d hear ringing out of Big Ben in London!”
As the melody finished, the clock started bonging out the hour just as Simon and Soraiya skidded into the atrium.
“Hurry!” said Soraiya. “There are only seven bell bongs left!”
“No,” said Simon, pointing up at the big egg timer. “The game didn’t officially start until Mr. Lemoncello tipped over the timer. There’s still five minutes or so left. And remember what Mr. Lemoncello said? ‘When the clock in the museum’s grand hall strikes the hour, pay very close attention. For that is when the big game truly begins!’ That was another clue!”
“The big game!” said Soraiya, realizing Simon was right. “The one where we compete to win Mr. Lemoncello’s fortune and game-making empire. The championship round of the competition starts when that clock strikes the hour. It starts now.”
Simon and Soraiya were standing directly underneath the clock as it continued to mark the eight o’clock hour. The animated wooden figures danced and swirled and juggled. The little Luigi character tossed back his head and laughed. The moon phase dial lit up as it became a smiling man in the moon.
And directly underneath that moon, something silvery, the size of a credit card, slid out of a hidden slot.
“That’s it!” shouted Soraiya. “That’s the titanium ticket!”
“How do we retrieve it?” Soraiya asked excitedly. “It’s at least fifteen feet off the ground!”
“We need to improvise a solution!” said Simon. He looked around the room.
What could they use?
All the ladders from the Chutes and Ladders games had retreated to their standby positions in the basement. There was nothing for Simon to climb on.
Unless…
He ran over to the nearest towering column created out of stacked game board boxes. He gave it a shove.
It was on wheels. It could be moved.
Next, he pushed on one of the boxes in the column. It moved, too! It jutted out like a foothold in a rock climbing wall.
If he moved enough boxes in the pillar of cardboard and staggered their angles as he climbed, he could build a stepladder out of game box lids.
He shoved the column over to the wall so it was standing directly beside the grandfather clock.
“I’m making my own ladder!” he shouted to Soraiya.
“Be careful!” she shouted back as Simon began to scale the box top ledges as if he were scaling a cliff.
“There are five minutes of sand remaining in the two-hour glass,” announced the always pleasant prerecorded lady in the ceiling speakers.
“Five minutes left?” said Jack, racing into the atrium. He was holding another controller in his hands. “I heard the clock. I thought the game was—”
He froze when he reached the middle of the open room where the light must’ve been just right for him to see the glint of something shiny sticking out of a slot in the face of the towering grandfather clock.
“Is that the titanium ticket?”
“Yes, JACK,” purred the ceiling lady. “That is the titanium ticket.”
Jack’s focus whipped over to where Simon was climbing the column of board game boxes.
“This game isn’t over yet!” shouted Jack. He jabbed a series of buttons on his controller.
A new mechanical creature wiggled its way into the room. A thirty-foot-tall, upright plastic caterpillar with googly eyes, bright-yellow antennae, and a goofy grin shimmied across the atrium floor. All twenty-four of its Mickey Mouse–gloved hands were waggling. They’d make a perfect, if unsteady, ladder!
The wiggling giant rocked and twisted its way across the room.
“Attack!” cried Jack.
Simon realized that Jack wasn’t going to climb up the caterpillar. He was going to use its swinging hands to try to topple Simon’s column of game board boxes. Simon was about to become a plank in a Kooky Kujenga game!
He looked down.
Soraiya wasn’t in the atrium!
Where’d she go?
The caterpillar nudged Simon’s tower with a line of swaying cartoon hands.
“There are three minutes of sand remaining in the two-hour glass,” said the ceiling speakers.
Simon took a deep breath. He wasn’t going to let Jack McClintock, or a giant plastic caterpillar, or anybody else, push him around anymore.
He scaled the column, which shook every time the caterpillar’s paws smacked into it. He started climbing the stack two and three boxes at a time.
He looked down again.
Now Jack was climbing up the tall caterpillar’s limbs like that other Jack climbing his beanstalk. To make his climb easier, he’d switched off the caterpillar’s wiggle. Simon’s column of boxes was no longer in danger of being knocked down.
Jack was an excellent athlete. In a flash, he was up to the same level as Simon. They were neck and neck.
“Give it up, Skrindle!” shouted Jack. “Nobody wants you to represent Hudson Hills or the factory in the championship round! They want me!”
“There are two minutes of sand remaining in the two-hour glass,” said the ceiling speakers.
Suddenly, Simon and Jack froze. They heard the heavy thud of mammoth feet.
Had some kind of giant just entered the atrium?
Both climbers looked down.
Soraiya was back, with a controller in her hands. She was using it to guide Red, the colossal robot from the Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots game, over to the base of the grandfather clock.
“Hey!” shouted Jack from his precarious perch. “Those manual controllers are for staff use only!”
Soraiya ignored him and jabbed a complex combination of button bops, the way she’d jabbed them when she played Fourth Knight.
“Turn that caterpillar into a butterfly, Red!” she shouted.
With a mechanical whir, Red led with a strong right hook to one of
the bright-green bellies near the bottom of Jack’s towering caterpillar.
“Nooooo!” Jack screamed as the teetering caterpillar creaked and swayed like a tree felled with one mighty blow from an ax. He held on for dear life.
“Tim-berrrrrrr!” shouted Soraiya.
The caterpillar fell sideways. Luckily for Jack, he was hanging on to a hand that wasn’t on the side that hit the floor first.
With Jack out of the race, Simon only had to beat the egg timer.
“There is one minute of sand remaining in the two-hour glass,” said the ceiling speakers.
Simon quickly scaled his tower’s final footholds, pulled open the glass door covering the grandfather clock’s elaborate face, reached in, and plucked out the titanium ticket from beneath the smiling moon.
When he did, the tiny little Luigi figurine leapt up and did a backflip.
Balloons fell from the ceiling. Indoor fireworks streaked across the atrium’s glass walls. The grandfather clock’s chimes started bonging out a new tune—Elton John’s triumphant anthem “I’m Still Standing.”
“Nooooo!” shouted Jack as he limped out of the room. “Soraiya isn’t a staff member! I demand a rematch!”
From his vantage point near the clock, Simon could see Kyle, Akimi, Andrew, Haley, Carolyn, and Piya over on the second-floor balcony. They were all clapping and cheering for him and Soraiya.
Simon scurried down the column of game board boxes and went over to where Soraiya stood beside Red the robot.
He smiled and said, “Thanks!”
“You did it!” shouted Soraiya.
“No, we did it!” Simon shouted back. (They had to shout to be heard over all the clanging Elton John bells.)
Simon held out his hand, the one clutching the titanium ticket.
Soraiya took it and raised it high.
The postgame celebration moved into the Dedication Room.
There were balloons and bunting and ice sculptures of famous board game figures. Waiters passed around trays loaded down with all sorts of finger foods, like cheeseburger sliders and ladyfinger cookies. There was fizzy fruit punch, lemon pound cake, lemon bars, lemon cupcakes, and lemon ricotta pancakes—not to mention a fifteen-layer cake with sixteen different flavors of frosting (none of which were lemon).
Mr. Lemoncello and the Titanium Ticket Page 16
