I'm Game

by Nancy Krulik

  “Okay,” Louie said. “How about . . . What was the name of the first pizza parlor in North America?”

  “Lombardi’s,” Mr. Carew answered. “In New York City. It opened in 1905.”

  “Wow, you are good!” Louie exclaimed.

  “I told you,” Mr. Carew agreed. “I’m going to win. I can feel it.”

  Chapter 6

  When Katie arrived at school on Wednesday morning, it looked as though the entire fourth grade were being attacked by skinny black snakes. Everyone was wearing black rubber bracelets.

  Jeremy was wearing nine of them. So were George and Kevin.

  Kadeem was wearing eight bracelets, just like Mandy and Becky.

  Suzanne’s striped ones really stood out, though.

  “Wow, your bracelets are cool,” Jessica Haynes told Suzanne. “How many do you have?”

  Suzanne frowned. “Six,” she said slowly. Then her face brightened suddenly. “But mine are extra-special. I made them myself. Katie has one, too. I made it for her.”

  Katie held up her wrist. Once again, Suzanne had them all beat. And once again she was bragging about it.

  Suzanne wasn’t the only one bragging these days.

  That evening, Katie and her dad sat outside on the front porch. Katie had the trivia book on her lap.

  “What is the national bird of the United States?” she asked her father.

  “That’s easy! The bald eagle,” Mr. Carew replied. “Although some people once wanted our national bird to be a turkey!”

  Katie giggled. That was a funny thought.

  “But I’m no turkey,” her dad said. “I’m a trivia genius.”

  Katie frowned slightly. She didn’t like when anyone bragged—not even her dad.

  “Hey there,” Katie’s next-door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Derkman, greeted them.

  Katie sat up tall as the Derkmans walked across the lawn toward her house. When Mrs. Derkman had been Katie’s third-grade teacher, she’d always told the kids to sit up straight. Mrs. Derkman wasn’t Katie’s teacher anymore. But Katie still sat up straight when she saw her.

  “So, are you getting ready for the big show on Friday?” Mr. Derkman asked Katie’s dad.

  “I’m testing him,” Katie said proudly. “He’s doing great!”

  “I’m a cinch to win,” Mr. Carew boasted. “Haven’t missed one yet.”

  “Are you going to practice the stunts?” Mrs. Derkman asked.

  “Nah. That won’t be necessary,” Katie’s dad assured her.

  Katie hoped her dad was right. He didn’t even know how to roller-skate, never mind ride a unicycle.

  “Try me,” her father said.

  Mrs. Derkman thought for a moment. “Here’s one I learned when we took a trip to Australia,” she said. “What is the largest species of kangaroo?”

  “The red kangaroo,” Mr. Carew said confidently.

  Mrs. Derkman looked impressed. “Correct,” she said.

  “I’ve got one,” Mr. Derkman said. “Who do mosquitoes bite more—kids or adults?”

  Katie thought she knew the answer to that one. After all, she got bitten by mosquitoes all the time.

  “Adults,” her dad answered.

  “Right,” Mr. Derkman told him.

  Katie would have been wrong. But her dad wasn’t. He’d done it again!

  “I’m telling you, I can’t lose,” Mr. Carew boasted.

  “Daddy!” Katie exclaimed, embarrassed.

  “I hope you’re right,” Mr. Derkman told him. “The whole neighborhood will be cheering you on. Everyone’s going to be watching you on Friday night.”

  “Doesn’t that make you nervous, Daddy?” she asked. “There are going to be millions of people all over the country listening to everything you say. Millions and millions of them. And they’re going to be looking right at you when you try to give an answer. I’d be a wreck if I had to do that.”

  “Um, no, I won’t be . . . well . . .” Mr. Carew told her. “I mean . . . I hadn’t really thought about it that way before. I’ll just focus on the questions.”

  Katie frowned. Suddenly her dad sounded kind of nervous.

  “That’s exactly right. Just keep studying,” Mrs. Derkman assured Katie’s dad. “Don’t worry about anything else. You know this stuff.”

  Katie smiled at Mrs. Derkman. When she wasn’t being a very strict third-grade teacher, she could be kind of nice.

  Mr. Carew nodded. But he didn’t seem nearly as excited as before. He was obviously thinking about how many people would be watching him. Katie never should have brought it up. She felt awful. She had to do something to make sure her father could get his confidence back.

  But what?

  Chapter 7

  Katie’s dad spent the whole night walking around the house memorizing facts. He was starting to make Katie and her mom a little crazy.

  When Katie woke up in the morning and went downstairs for breakfast, she found her dad sitting at the kitchen table with his trivia book and a giant mug of coffee. His eyes were all red, and he hadn’t shaven yet.

  “Hawaii is made up of twenty islands,” he mumbled. “Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone. China has the most people in the world.”

  He sounded like a zombie.

  Things were pretty crazy at school, too. Everyone was arguing about whose rubber bracelets were the best. The boys all had plain black ones. The girls were all copying Suzanne and wearing black bracelets with colored ribbons wrapped around them.

  Suzanne had created a rainbow on her arms. Bracelets with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet ribbons ran up and down both of her arms.

  Katie was still wearing the one bracelet Suzanne had made for her. She had been so busy helping her father study for Tick, Tock, Clock she hadn’t had time to buy any more.

  “I think it’s a lucky bracelet for me,” Katie told Suzanne that afternoon as the girls stood together in the cafeteria lunch line. “I got a 98 on my math quiz today. And yesterday, when I was practicing on my clarinet, I played Yankee Doodle all the way through without hitting one wrong note.”

  Suzanne smiled. “Glad I could help.”

  “You must be having lots of good luck with all those bracelets you are wearing,” Katie told her friend.

  “Not exactly,” Suzanne admitted. “It’s been kind of the opposite, actually. The spelling worksheet I handed in this morning was a mess. Every time I started to write something down, the rubber part of the bracelets would tear the paper.”

  Katie nodded. Suzanne wasn’t the only one having problems with her bracelets. All morning long the little black bands of rubber had been causing trouble for people.

  During math, Mr. Guthrie scolded Kadeem for playing with his bracelets instead of paying attention.

  In physical education, George dropped the ball because having so many bracelets made it hard for him to move his wrist.

  The worst was at lunch . . .

  “Ouch!” Becky Stern shouted from the lunch line. She turned around and stared at a rubber bracelet on the floor and then at a group of boys behind her.

  “Which one of you hit me with that bracelet?” she demanded.

  “Not me,” George assured her.

  “It wasn’t me,” Kevin added.

  “Me neither,” Kadeem said.

  “Well, it was one of you,” Becky insisted. “And I’m going to get you back,” she said. She took off one of her pink and black bracelets and shot it at George.

  George shot a bracelet back at Becky. She ducked. The bracelet hit Mandy in the arm instead.

  “Ow!” Mandy shouted. Then she pulled a bracelet from her arm and shot it at George. It hit Kevin instead.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get it!” Kevin declared, pulling off a bracelet and shooting it in Mandy’s direction.

  Instead of hitting Mandy, he got Miriam Chan in the back of the head. She dropped her tray in surprise.

  “Oh no!” Miriam cried out as pasta, tomato sauce, and orange juice sp
lashed all over the floor.

  “What is going on here?” Mr. Kane, the principal, demanded, running over to the lunch line.

  Mr. Kane didn’t see the pool of slippery tomato sauce. Whoosh! He flew up in the air and then landed on the floor with a thud.

  “That’s it!” Mr. Kane shouted. He pulled himself up and wiped tomato sauce and pudding from the seat of his pants. “From now on, there will be no rubber bracelets worn in school!”

  Suzanne frowned. “I worked so hard making all of these,” she whispered to Katie. “What am I supposed to do with them now?”

  Katie shook her head. She had no idea.

  But Katie knew exactly what to do with hers. She was sure her bracelet was a lucky one! She would do what George had suggested to her earlier in the week. She would give her bracelet to her father. He could wear it for luck when he was on TV.

  A good luck charm would guarantee that her dad would do well on the show. Now he would have no reason to be nervous at all!

  Chapter 8

  “The Tick Tock Clock looks so much bigger on TV,” Katie said as she settled into a seat in the TV studio on Friday night.

  “I guess it’s just the camera angles that make everything look big on TV,” Katie’s mom replied.

  Katie looked around. There sure were a lot of cameras. They were placed all around the stage. Katie hoped they didn’t block her view of her dad.

  Katie was too excited to sit still. She turned around and waved to Mr. and Mrs. Fox. They had gotten tickets to the show and were there to cheer Katie’s dad on.

  “Why did Daddy have to go backstage already?” Katie asked her mom. “The show doesn’t start for a while.”

  “They had to put a microphone on him, and do his hair and makeup,” her mom explained.

  “Do you think they’ll make Daddy wear lipstick?” Katie asked her mother.

  Mrs. Carew smiled. “Imagine him with bright red lips,” she joked.

  “Now that would be funny,” Katie said with a giggle.

  It was getting kind of noisy in the studio now. The seats in the audience were filling up. The show was completely sold out. Katie wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t every day that a big show like Tick, Tock, Clock came to Cherrydale!

  The people without tickets would also be watching. Louie had set up a TV right in the middle of his restaurant.

  Cinnamon, the woman who owned the candy store in the Cherrydale Mall, had a TV, too—and she was giving out candy watches to anyone who came by to watch Tick, Tock, Clock with her.

  Mr. and Mrs. Derkman had promised not to miss the show. They were going to watch it with Mr. Brigandi, another of Katie’s neighbors.

  Katie’s friends had all promised to get their homework done really early so they could be allowed to watch TV.

  Katie was very proud. She couldn’t wait for everyone to see how smart her dad was.

  But the waiting was getting harder and harder. Katie looked at the Tick Tock Clock. Only five minutes to go.

  “I wish the show would start already,” Katie told her mother.

  “I know,” Mrs. Carew agreed. “I’m getting so jittery just sitting here. I hope your father is trying to stay calm. Last night he was so nervous he was shouting out facts in his sleep.”

  Katie frowned. Her dad had been a bundle of nerves ever since Katie had reminded him about how many people would be watching him on TV.

  “Cross your fingers, honey, to give Daddy good luck,” Mrs. Carew said.

  Good luck.

  Oh, no! She’d forgotten to give her father his good luck charm. She couldn’t let him go onstage without that! Quickly she leaped up from her seat.

  “Katie, where are you going?” Mrs. Carew asked her.

  “I have to give something to Daddy!” Katie replied as she ran toward the backstage area.

  “You can’t go back there!” Mrs. Carew shouted after her.

  But Katie didn’t listen. She had to reach her daddy in time!

  Chapter 9

  The people backstage were all very busy. They were talking to each other through their headsets as they ran around checking on wires and lights and things. They were all too focused on their work to even notice the redheaded fourth-grade girl who had slipped backstage.

  Katie was glad of that. She didn’t want to get sent back to her seat. Katie just had to find her father!

  “Two minutes till showtime,” she heard one of the women say into her headset. “Let’s get the three contestants onstage.”

  Oh, no! Katie didn’t see her father anywhere. In fact, she didn’t see anyone who looked like a contestant. The only people around were the folks with the headsets and clipboards.

  Quickly Katie hurried down an empty hallway lined with doors. “Daddy!” she called out, knocking on the first door. “Are you in there?”

  Katie waited for a reply. There was no answer.

  “Daddy, it’s me, Katie,” she said, knocking on the second door.

  Again, there was no answer.

  “Sixty seconds till showtime,” she heard the woman shout.

  As Katie looked around frantically, she felt a cool breeze blowing on the back of her neck. She pulled her blazer around her tightly.

  But that didn’t make her any warmer. A wool blazer was no match for this wind. This was the magic wind.

  Uh-oh!

  Within seconds, the magic wind began to blow harder and harder. It circled around Katie like a tornado.

  “Oh, no! Not now, please!” Katie cried out as the magic wind blew wildly around her.

  Katie wanted to cry. She didn’t want to switcheroo—especially not now. Not when her daddy was about to be on TV!

  And then, suddenly, it stopped. Just like that. The magic wind was gone.

  And so was Katie. She’d been turned into someone else . . . switcheroo!

  The question was, who?

  Chapter 10

  Slowly, Katie opened her eyes. She looked down at her shoes. Her red shoes were gone. Brown loafers were on her feet now.

  She wasn’t wearing her black and white skirt and blazer, either. Instead she had on a pair of light brown slacks and a pale blue shirt.

  Katie knew that shirt well. She’d helped pick it out . . . for her father!

  Katie gulped nervously. She looked around. She was behind a wooden stand. There was a blue buzzer on the stand by her right hand.

  There was a woman standing on one side of her and a man on the other. They were both behind wooden stands, too.

  “Uh-oh,” Katie murmured.

  “Thanks, Mr. Carew,” one of the women with a headset replied. “Your microphone is working perfectly.”

  Mr. Carew! Yikes! Katie had turned into her father—right before he was supposed to go on TV!

  “Thirty seconds until showtime!” the woman with the headset shouted.

  This was so not good!

  Just then Bob Ritchey walked onto the set. He turned to one of his assistants. “Is my hair on straight?” he asked her.

  “Move it a little to the left, Bob,” she told him.

  Bob Ritchey shifted his toupee slightly.

  Katie couldn’t believe it. “You wear a wig?” she exclaimed. Then she blushed.

  But Bob Ritchey didn’t mind. “Sure do,” he said. “And I always have to fix it before the show goes on the air.” He looked at Katie’s head. “You might want to try one yourself, Dave,” he said, calling Katie by her father’s name. “Your hair is getting a little thin on top there!”

  Everyone in the audience laughed. All except Katie’s mother, that is. She was glancing around nervously. Katie knew she was looking for her. But there was nothing Katie could do. She was stuck here.

  Just then red lights appeared on all of the cameras. That meant the show was starting. Music began to play, and Bob Ritchey moved to the front of the stage.

  “Welcome to Tick, Tock, Clock, the game show that pits speed against smarts!” he said.

  The audience clapped.

  “To
night we’re coming to you from the town of Cherrydale!” Bob Ritchey continued with a big smile.

  Suddenly everyone in the audience began cheering wildly.

  “Woohoo!”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “Cherrydale rocks!”

  “Wow! What a great group you are,” Bob Ritchey told the audience. Then he turned to the three contestants. “Are you all ready to play?”

  Katie gulped. She was definitely not ready to play. Not at all. It was her father who knew all those trivia facts. Those were things grown-ups knew. But Katie wasn’t a grown-up. She was just a nine-year-old girl.

  A nine-year-old girl who was about to make a fool of herself on national TV!

  Chapter 11

  “Okay, let’s meet our three contestants,” Bob Ritchey continued. He walked over to the woman on Katie’s left. “Tell us a little bit about yourself and your family,” he said.

  “My name is Elaine Blackwell,” the woman answered. “I’m single. I’m a doctor at Cherrydale Hospital, and in my spare time I like to skydive.”

  “Wow, you must be very brave,” Bob Ritchey said, sounding very impressed.

  “Nothing scares me,” Elaine assured him.

  “Not even the Tick Tock Clock?” Bob asked her.

  Elaine shook her head confidently.

  Bob walked over and stood in front of Katie. “Dave Carew,” he said. “Tell us about yourself.”

  Katie took a deep breath. “Well, um, I live in Cherrydale with my mom . . .” Katie gulped. She was supposed to be her dad! “I mean with my wife, Wendy, and my daughter, Katie.”

  “And where do you work?” Bob Ritchey asked her.

  “In an office,” Katie told him.

  “What kind of office?” Bob Ritchey wondered.

  “I’m not sure,” Katie replied nervously. She could feel her cheeks getting red.

  “You’re not sure what you do for a living?” Bob Ritchey asked, surprised.

  The audience began to laugh. Katie blushed harder.