by Jody Feldman
I keep eating and sipping, and the orange energy clicks my brain into gear. 4, 9, ___, 25, 36 is obvious now.
Two times two is four, three times three is nine, four times four is sixteen, which I write in the space before the five-squared and the six-squared.
So, one more to go and I’m done. Or am I?
There has to be something else here, or I won’t know where to take the circle and get the further instructions they promised in the rules.
I stare at Mrs. Pinchon’s back. Maybe I give the circle to her. Okay, Mrs. Pinchon. I’ll solve that last problem, give you a circle, and everyone’ll break-dance. “Heh-heh.”
“Mr. Raines?”
“Sorry. I got a funny picture in my mind, and my voice burst.”
“I could use something funny about now. Why don’t you share?”
That I’m picturing you on the floor, twirling on your back with your shoes getting caught in your skirt? “It’s not that funny.”
“You mean I wouldn’t think it funny.”
“I’ll just go back to my math now.”
“Suit yourself.”
51, 32, ___, 14, 25, 16, 17, 18
This problem is different than the others. It has seven numbers and one fill-in-the-blank. The others have four numbers and those three-dot whatchacallits. What do they mean?
“Mrs. Pinchon?” I wait for her to look up. “What do you call those three dots that sometimes come at the end of a sentence?”
“Ellipsis?”
“That’s it. May I please borrow your dictionary again?”
“Keep it on the table through Friday,” she says, then heads to the door. “Be right back.”
I should break-dance, but I find ellipsis, which is a symbol for “and so on.” Okay. So in the easy problems, numbers come before and after what’s shown, but the numbers in the impossible problem are the only ones allowed. What do they have in common?
Nothing. I go back to my slide position and hold the paper way above my face. Am I going bonkers? Is too much blood rushing to my eyes? I see letters shining through.
I turn the sheet over. Either someone’s dyslexic or in kindergarten because, on the flip side, I see two backward Rs and one backward L. A number sign, too. I turn the paper back, hold it toward the light, and the number sign shines through, over the first answer blank. The letters appear under the other three answer spaces. R L R.
I’m so close to figuring this out, my brain starts to tingle.
51, 32, ___, 14, 25, 16, 17, 18. I know what I’m missing. All the numbers are here except nine and zero. Is that a clue? Is the mystery number 90? No. Too random. The other sequences have patterns.
Ooh. So does this one. Five-ONE. Three-TWO. Something-THREE maybe? One-FOUR. Two-FIVE. One-SIX. One-SEVEN. One-EIGHT.
All right! But what’s the pattern to the first digit of each number? Five, three, something, one, two, one, one, one. No pattern.
Maybe the answer will fly into my brain if I write what I have so far.
Where have I seen something like this? Something set up with the R L R. What do the letters stand for?
R. Raines. Roar. Ransom. Ruler. River. Ripper. Rip. Rip. Rip. Wanna rip the paper. That’d get me somewhere. Yeah, right. Right. Right? Right-left-right. I look at the original puzzle again. Why didn’t I notice those before? Dashes. I add them in.
I know this! A locker combination! Locker 207. 32 right. Something left. 16 right.
Hoo-hah! If the middle number is something-THREE, and if it’s a school lock, it can only be three, thirteen, twenty-three, or thirty-three. I can spin that lock open in a flash.
That tingle spreads up and down my legs. I need to run, run to locker 207, and see if my Further Instructions are there.
First, though, I need to escape this dungeon. Legally.
CHAPTER 9
Mrs. Pinchon is now banging on the computer keys like she needs to pulverize them, not the ideal time to ask if I can search for locker 207. But if I tell her an almost-truth…
I wait for a pause in her keyboard attack. “Excuse me. Mrs. Pinchon?”
She turns enough so I see one of her question mark eyebrows go up.
“May I go-to-a-locker?” I sort of slur together. “And maybe to the bathroom?”
The brow raises higher, toward the clock on the wall. She nods.
My guess is I have five minutes before she sends her search dogs. I count ten steps from her office then race to the sixth-grade hall, where the locker numbers are lower. 419, 374, 313, 245. Then the hall turns toward the gym and cafeteria. Go.
Locker 1 to my left, 184 to my right. Where are 185 to 244? Only sixty lockers. Has to be in a small hall. Small hall. Library hall. I round the corner, full speed. Skid to locker 207. Lift up the lock. Spin—
Thum-runkle!
Trash can. Eyes! Mr. McKenzie.
“Travis Raines!” He and his broom are standing just outside the library door. “You’re supposed to be in Mrs. P’s office.”
“I—I…” I-yi-yi. “Mrs. Pinchon. Yeah. Mrs. Pinchon let me out for a break.”
“But not for breaking and entering, punishable under law, by both school and police. Should you be opening other people’s lockers?” he says. “You’re locker isn’t here.”
“This is a special case. Mrs. Pinchon knows….” I look straight at him. “How’d you know my locker’s not here?”
“All the ones in this hall are empty.”
Now what? I glance at my paper. “Oh,” I say. “Five oh seven, not two oh seven. See ya.” I round the corner, duck into the boys’ room, pee, flush, and wash. I have to know what’s in that locker today. If I’m a few minutes over, I can tell Mrs. Pinchon I had bathroom problems and—
Problem! I forgot to bring a circle! I need to find one here. Why can’t toilet paper come in circles? Or paper towels? I pull one from the dispenser, fold it in half and try to tear a perfect curve on the non-folded side. I open it up. Too bad The Legend didn’t ask for a giant amoeba.
I need a circle. I could draw another one but no pen. And a water circle would dry before anyone finds it. A circle. A circle.
I am having bathroom problems, Mrs. Pinchon. The problem is there are no circles in the bathroom, not even the toilet seats. I reach into my pockets. Nothing. But I have a button on my shirt. Kids like me lose buttons all the time, Mom.
I start to yank one loose, but it feels like I’ll rip a hole. I take my shirt off and bite the threads. I have a circle! Now I need to get to the locker without any eyes around.
In case Mr. McKenzie’s still near, I fling open the bathroom door, thud some decoy steps in the wrong direction, then I turn and tiptoe the way I need to go. I crawl beneath the window to the library door, then crouch-walk to the locker.
I twirl the wheel a couple revolutions to clear the lock. Then I stop at 32, reverse and go to what? Three? Doubtful. All the numbers in the puzzle are two digits. Okay, 13. Stop. Right again to 16. Tug. Nothing. Next. Clear the lock. 32. 23. 16. Tug. Bingo!
The only thing in the locker is a blue envelope with my name and FOR YOUR EYES ONLY on the front. I replace it with the button then lift my shirt in back and wedge the large envelope part way into my pants. I close the locker, dash around the corner, then fast-walk back to Mrs. Pinchon’s office and pause outside her door.
When I go in, I don’t want to look like I’m hiding a secret. I try on a couple expressions, but they all feel weird. Instead I slip in like I’m trying not to bother an adult.
Mrs. Pinchon barely looks up, not even when I fidget to stop the envelope from clawing at my back. Not even when I ungrip my hold on the original puzzle sheet and smooth out the paper as much as I can. I write 23 in the last blank. But why is it twenty-three?
“You know why I don’t like puzzles?” I mean to say to myself.
Mrs. Pinchon stops bashing her keyboard. “Why?”
“If you can’t solve one, it creeps around your head like a slug until you find the answer.”
; She smiles. “Something I can help you with?”
I shake my head. “I need to figure this out myself.”
“You’ll have to do your figuring at home,” she says. “I know it’s ten minutes early, but I’m ready to leave.”
Hoo-hah!
Even though Curry, my golden retriever, is the only one home when I get there, I lock my bedroom door before I free the envelope from my pants.
I unwind the string from the circles and spill out a weird, double-stacked coin. One side’s the size of a double-thick nickel and is engraved with a square. The other’s the size of a triple-thick dime and has a triangle. I keep it in my hand and pull out a piece of paper.
Every Seventh
I put a stack of crackers atop a passerby. The woman cried, “Thank you, pal! Nice hat!”
After you’ve solved this puzzle, place a representative of the item into locker 207 by Monday morning. In addition, please keep the enclosed coin (and ones to follow) in a safe, accessible place. Remember, this is all secret. We’re depending on you.
Depending on me? A twelve-year-old kid who gets into trouble? If it’s so important, someone should ask the president. Or the Secret Service. Or even Matti, who’s a lot more trustworthy than I am. She knew about my tenth birthday present for a month and wouldn’t tell me even when I squeezed her knee in the way that makes her claw at my eyeballs.
But someone’s trusting me, and if it’s The Legend, I’m all over it.
I put the coin in my underwear drawer on top of the mystery math sheet with the sequence that’s still driving me nuts. I flop onto my bed and look at the paper with the new puzzle, if you can call it that. It’s just a headline and some weird sentences.
“Okay,” I say to Curry. “I’ll pretend it’s a puzzle, but it’s so not a puzzle. Read it, Curry.”
Great. Now I’m asking a dog to read. But whoever claimed this is a puzzle is also nuts. Who would mistake some crackers for a hat? And what’s with the headline? Did the person put a stack of crackers on the head of every seventh person who passed him? I’m surprised no one slugged him in the nose.
“Wouldn’t you slug him in the nose?” I ask Curry.
She looks up and wags her tail.
“No, you’d shake the crackers off your head and eat them.”
I shake my own head. At least the first puzzle was something I recognized. Teachers always throw math sequences at us. Maybe The Legend did that to get me all confident because they knew this puzzle was gonna smack all the confidence out of me.
I should pretend it’s like math, that there’s some logic to it. The only logic, though, is in the directions, which tell me to put a representative of the solution into the locker. But what’s a representative? Like in the House of Representatives?
I picture rushing off to Washington, DC, grabbing a member of Congress, and shoving him into locker 207. Which is physically possible. Maybe not the kidnapping, but the shoving.
Last year I took a dare and ate my lunch in my locked locker for two days in a row. Principal Wilkins told me I could’ve suffocated in there, but I don’t know how a kid can suffocate when the vents are big enough to wiggle his fingers through. I’m not stupid. I figured if no one let me out, someone would hear me yell and see my fingers.
But they’re not looking for a guy shoved into a locker. “What are they looking for, Curry?”
It’d be so easy to forget this puzzle and go kick around the soccer ball. I grab a Nerf ball from under my bed and glance it off my closet door. Again. And again.
And a few minutes later I’m outside, kicking a regulation soccer ball against the garage door. Can I really figure out this puzzle? Kick. Kick. Kick. And if I can’t? Kick. Kick. Kick. Or what if this isn’t The Legend and the oaf’s punking me? Kick. Kick. Kick. No. I never gave him my combination, and he wouldn’t know the one to locker 207 unless he had 207 in sixth grade. Kick. Kick. Kick. Or shoved the envelope through the vents. But would it fit? Kick. Kick. Kick. Wait. He’s an oaf, and oafs like him don’t write puzzles. They steal them. If I look on the internet and the puzzle’s not there, then he couldn’t have sent it.
I kick my soccer ball inside, head upstairs, and great. Of all times to be banned from the computer. If I look for just one minute, my parents won’t know. Unless they have it rigged with Travis traps.
Forget it. I pick up the puzzle again.
Every Seventh
It’s underlined, so it has to be a title, right? But titles have stuff in common with the words below. This one doesn’t. Maybe it’s a clue. Every seventh what? Every seventh word?
Every Seventh
I put a stack of crackers atop a passerby. The woman cried, “Thanks, pal! Nice hat!”
Do I count the words in the title? That would give me of and cried. Without the title, atop and pal. A pal is a thing, but I won’t exactly find lots of volunteers to get stuffed into Locker 207. Unless the representative part means I’m supposed to get a mini pal. Like a doll or something. Great. Now I have to go to the toy store and risk someone seeing me buy a Barbie.
But wait. I’d need to use atop, too. If I push the words together…
Ofcried? Atoppal? They aren’t in the dictionary. Neither are the letter combos I’d make if I started with the first words instead of the seventh.
Every seventh. Every seventh. Not words. Letters maybe?
I start with the title, then write down every seventh letter. E-P-C-C-O-E-W-I-K-C. Nothing. What if I ditch the title?
Maybe start with the seventh letter after the headline?
T. Then R.
There are lots of “tr” words. But I need a vowel next.
A! Then S. H.
Keep going.
C-A-N.
“Trash can, Curry. I did it! An item!”
I need a locker-sized trash can. How big is a locker?
When my backpack’s loaded, it barely fits in sideways. I cram my backpack with junk from underneath my bed, then I measure it against the bathroom trash cans. I measure it against the bedroom ones. My mom must have this thing for bigger-than-locker trash cans.
Now what? I can’t exactly say, “Excuse me, Mom, but will you take me to the store, stay in the car, don’t look at what I buy, and don’t ask any questions?” That’s gonna fly. And with my enslavement this weekend, I can’t go riding my bike wherever I need.
I have only one choice.
CHAPTER 10
Day two of detention. I wait in the driveway with my backpack full of cans and my bicycle resting against my side. When Mrs. Pinchon pulls up, I walk my bike to her window and try to ignore her question mark eyebrows. “I was wondering if I might be able to ride home. My legs need to pedal.”
She looks at the cloudy-dark sky. “We’ll see.” She helps me load my bike into her pickup, and I breathe for the first time in a minute.
I plan to wait until after school to ask about leaving early. “In case you’re curious,” I say, apparently forgetting to tell my mouth about the plan, “I have an important errand to run.”
“You do, do you?”
“And it’s always safer to ride home before rush hour, so I was sort of wondering…”
“If we could end our arrangement early tonight?”
I smile. “And to make up for it, you can pick me up Monday morning.”
“Hmm.”
Why’d I offer that? I bite the tip of my tongue to remind my mouth to shut up. It’s easier for people to say no if you ask too much.
She ignores my request all morning. After school, still nothing. She does have a bottle of chocolate milk and a poppy seed muffin waiting for me. She must’ve remembered the poppy seeds in the moon cookies. But it’d be nicer if she paroled me from prison forty-five minutes early. Half hour, even.
I eat my muffin and watch the sweep-second hand of the wall clock spin round and round. The minutes fly. Like a hippopotamus.
I have zero to do except wonder about our baseball game. And stare at the clouds, hanging as heavy as
they did this morning. And ignore the rumbling that isn’t my stomach.
Mrs. Pinchon looks at the sky. The flicker of lightning doesn’t escape her either. She stays quiet, but the rain speaks enough. It bashes the window and dashes my chance at getting the trash can today.
Fine. I open my social studies book, and twenty minutes later I finish reading about Mesopotamia. I haul out my math book and work the five problems. Almost four o’clock and everything’s so quiet. Where’d the rain go?
I work on a paragraph for English and my piece of paper gets brighter. I dare to look up. The sun’s sending out some beams. I finish the paragraph. Four twenty-five. I’m done with my homework. Time to unbite my tongue. “Mrs. Pinchon?”
“Travis?”
“I just finished my homework. Every bit. Okay if I take my books to my locker?”
She nods then glances out the window.
Say something, Mrs. Pinchon. Say I can leave.
“Uh, Travis?” she says when I’m almost at the door. “Tell me about this errand of yours.”
This is the worst test a principal can give a kid. If she’s testing whether I can follow blue envelope directions and I tell her anything, I fail. If I refuse to speak, I fail. If I lie, I fail, but I do get to go. And who would it hurt?
I don’t stop to think about that. “Well,” I say, stalling for inspiration that includes a semitruth. “I promised I’d pick up this thing at the store. And if I don’t go today, I might have to break my promise.”
Which is sort of true. When I put the circle in the locker, it was a kind of promise I’d follow the rules.
“And your parents know about this?”
They should, according to Rule #5, but I don’t say that. “My dad doesn’t. He’s in Japan.”
“And your mom?” She pushes the phone toward me.
I hate this. I punch in my home number and talk before the answering machine picks up. “Hi, Mom. It’s me.” I pause like I’m waiting for her to talk. “Remember that errand?” Pause. “Mrs. Pinchon says I can do it. Okay?” Pause. “Thanks, Mom.” Pause. “Yeah, I’ll be careful.” Pause. “Bye.” I hang up as the leave-your-name-at-the-beep message ends.
