Mr lemoncellos all star.., p.10
Mr. Lemoncello's All-Star Breakout Game, page 10
“So what’s the answer, bro?” asked Miguel.
“What’s ‘everybody’s favorite football food’?” said Andrew.
Kyle thought. “It has to be a word with double letters in it.”
“It also has to be a food,” said Akimi.
“Beets!” shouted Sierra.
“Um, nobody really eats those when they watch football,” said Akimi.
“How about seeds?” said Miguel. “You know, pumpkin seeds.”
“Or Peeps! Those marshmallow thingies,” said Akimi.
Kyle snapped his fingers. “Pizza! ‘P-I-double-Z-A’!”
He rotated the five letter wheels on the green lock to P-I-Z-Z-A. The lock slid open.
“Here comes the confetti!” said Sierra.
“Oh, yeah!” thundered the video game voice. “Second lock? Open! Three more? Breakout!”
“Woo-hoo,” cheered Akimi. “Way to go, team!”
“Phones up, everybody!” shouted Kyle, eager to keep the game rolling. “We still have blue, yellow, and purple locks to go!”
As Kyle and his team roamed the maze between rooms, they had their phones up and their augmented-reality apps running.
“I see a purple door!” said Akimi. “No. Wait. It moved.”
“How about yellow or blue?” said Kyle.
“Here’s a yellow window!” said Miguel, tapping the wall. “Nope, it’s gone.”
“My blue mirror just disappeared, too,” said Sierra.
“What’s going on?” whined Andrew. “Why are we, all of a sudden, playing Whack-A-Mole?”
Kyle gestured toward a video screen mounted in a nook where two walls met.
“Commercial break,” he said.
The game was no longer on the live feed. Instead, there was a promo for Hey, Hey, Haley, which apparently had all new episodes starting next week.
“Oh, good. They used the best clip!”
Haley and the rest of the Kidzapalooza All-Stars joined the Lemon Heads in the hallway.
“That’s going to be hysterical, Hales,” said Kai, the goofy comic, watching the promo. “Excellent physical shtick!”
“Thanks, Kai.”
“Was that a real vat of mayonnaise you just fell into?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t do slapstick or gross-out humor on my show,” said Gabrielle. “It’s too immature.”
“Maybe that’s why your ratings are slipping like they stepped on a banana peel,” sniped Jaylen.
“Excuse me?”
Jaylen threw up his hands. “I’m just saying.”
“You guys?” said Peyton, gesturing toward Kyle and his teammates. “Civilian alert. I know we’re off-air, but you don’t want your dirty underpants showing up on some Ohio kid’s Twitter feed.”
“My underpants aren’t dirty, Peyton!” fumed Gabrielle.
“Uh, hey,” said Kyle, waving at the celebs. They were clustered at one end of the hall, Kyle and his friends at the other. “Guess we’re having a slight delay.”
“Commercials!” said Andrew. “Don’t you just hate them?”
“Not really, dude,” said Jaylen. “They pay our salaries.”
“So, you guys have finished two rooms?” said Kyle.
“To the max!” growled Peyton.
“How about you guys?” Haley asked Kyle.
“Two.”
“Guess we’re all tied up.”
Suddenly, a wall panel flipped open.
Out came Charles and his two remaining teammates, Morgan Peden and Hannah Chung.
The tight corridor was extremely crowded.
“We just finished our second room!” Charles crowed. “We’re tied with you losers!”
“Dude?” said Jaylen. “If we’re tied, then nobody’s a loser. Read a dictionary.”
“Oh, I will. Right after I defeat, trounce, and thrash you, Mr. Swell, if that really is your name.”
“Nah. It’s more of a stage name. Has pizzazz!” Then Jaylen made another dab move.
“Love your show,” said Morgan.
“I love yours,” Hannah said to Peyton.
“Thanks,” said Peyton, switching into super-suave mode. “Have we met?”
“Peyton?” said Gabrielle. “Hello? I’m standing right here.”
“And now,” boomed Mr. Lemoncello’s voice, “back to our game!”
Music swelled. The live-feed monitor showed all thirteen contestants stuck in the same tiny corridor.
“Oh, my,” said Mr. Lemoncello in a voice-over. “It’s a traffic jam, which, by the way, tastes terrible on toast.”
“With eighty minutes left,” said Dr. Zinchenko, “it’s time to light up those windows, doors, and mirrors!”
“There’s a purple door!” blurted Akimi. “And it’s staying still!”
“There’s ours!” shouted Haley. “Catch you later, Kyle!”
“See you when you break out,” said Kyle. “After us!”
“Get out of my way, both of you!” said Charles, elbowing between Kyle and Haley.
“Wait for us!” shouted Morgan and Hannah, trailing after him. Charles and his teammates scrambled to the far end of the hall and climbed through a glistening golden window.
Haley and her crew found the door they were looking for and disappeared.
“Our purple door is down there!” said Akimi, leading the way.
“Another door,” said Andrew. “Looks like we need to enter another weird world.”
“You ever notice that books actually look like doors?” said Miguel. “You open up the cover just like you’d open a door.”
“Come on, you guys,” said Kyle. “We’ve caught up with the Kidzapalooza team. We have a real shot at winning this thing.”
Kyle tucked the locked book box under his arm and led the way into his team’s third Fictionasium room.
“So, what’s our genre this time?” wondered Sierra as the team made their way down an ultraviolet corridor that made their teeth glow.
That was when the purple door magically slid shut and twinkly GLING-GLING music jingled out of the ceiling speakers.
“Uh-oh,” muttered Akimi. “This better not be what I think it is.”
Lights dimmed. Projections turned the walls into a magical land of gently rolling hills made of green gumdrops dusted with sparkling sugar. Multiple rainbows filled the sky, where all the puffy clouds resembled happy, fluffy bunnies. Bluebirds chirped merrily in the branches of the trees. From off on the horizon, a hologram of a pink unicorn with a glistening, wispy mane and sparkly spiral horn pranced to the center of the room. A narwhal rose up from the floor.
“Gag me now,” sighed Akimi.
“Welcome, dear readers,” said the airy-fairy unicorn, dipping into a four-legged curtsy, “to fairy tales!”
“And,” added the narwhal, sounding like it had a head cold, “a special welcome to you, Princess AKIMI.”
Up on the video monitor on the other side of the golden window, Charles saw what he hoped his father saw: a graphic showing that his team was tied for the lead!
Yes! thought Charles. I am a true Chiltington. I will not lose, no matter the cost!
“Welcome to historical fiction, BOOKWORMS,” said the soothing voice in the ceiling.
Charles looked up at the speakers. “Good afternoon, ma’am. Could you kindly jump to the part of your computerized conversation where you tell us how to open this golden lock?”
There was a beat of silence.
And then the voice in the ceiling said, “Welcome to historical fiction, BOOKWORMS.”
“We can’t skip to the ending, Charles,” said Hannah.
“Why not? It’s what I do whenever I read a book.”
Morgan shook her head. “Seventh graders,” she muttered.
“The Kidzapalooza All-Stars already opened their historical fiction lock, so it can’t be that hard,” said Charles, studying the game action on the room’s flat-screen TVs. “Now they’re inside science fiction.”
Charles and his teammates watched as Haley Daley used a ray gun (like something out of an arcade game) to blast a squad of evil aliens that kept popping up on a moonscape. The alien commander was holding the keys to a rocket ship Haley and her team needed for their intergalactic adventure.
Haley blasted him in the belly. He made deflating Pac-Man noises and dropped the rocket ship keys.
“She’s good,” said Hannah.
“And look,” said Morgan. “There go the Lemon Heads. They’re all riding unicorns and narwhals. Except for Miguel Fernandez. He’s flying on a baby dragon.”
“So cool,” said Morgan wistfully. “I sort of wish I were on their team….”
“Yeah,” said Hannah. “Me too.”
“Come on, you two,” barked Charles. “We’ve caught up with the leaders. There’s no time to waste!”
Charles wished he’d gotten a peek at this room when he was in the control room. Knowing the answers before you took a test always helped move things along.
He took one step forward.
And froze.
Because cannons started booming in the distance. Somewhere, a marching band was playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Charles could smell gunpowder wafting on the humid breeze. Images appeared on the walls, turning the room into the smoldering countryside of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The date “July 3, 1863” floated over the scenery, then disappeared.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” moaned Hannah.
A somber holographic figure in a long frock coat and stovepipe hat strode to the center of the room.
“It’s Abraham Lincoln!” gasped Morgan.
“Welcome, book-loving friends,” said the holographic Lincoln. “You know, my best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read. For all I have learned, I learned from books.”
“Sir?” said Charles. “No disrespect, but we’re kind of in a hurry. Can we skip the folksy platitudes and cut to the chase? What do we need to do in this room?”
The Lincoln hologram blinked and shuddered as if it were fast-forwarding through its programmed preamble.
“Thank you, BOOKWORMS, for volunteering to serve in the Union Army!” said Lincoln, having skipped ahead in his script. “To turn the tide here at Gettysburg, you must find nine items hidden in the woods. A tin coffee cup. My spare stovepipe hat. A belt. A saber. A boot. A rifle. A glove. A tent. And, of course, an envelope with my Gettysburg Address, which I seem to have misplaced, I must humbly confess, at an unknown address.”
Charles shook his head and heaved a sigh. Nine hidden objects? That was too many items for any team to find quickly. Even a group of gamers like Kyle Keeley and his crew, who probably did those hidden picture puzzles in Highlights every time they went to the dentist.
Charles’s meager team of two book nerds needed another hint.
That meant he needed to sneak back to the control room and see if he could find the solution to the historical fiction puzzle the same way he’d found the answer for the Mystery Room.
“Godspeed,” said Lincoln, fading out of view. “And please be sure you find all nine items in the forest before General Lee sends George Pickett and his infantry charging up yonder hill.”
More cannons bombarded the landscape. The room was so realistic, it sprayed clumps of mud and dirt at the players every time the fake ground exploded.
“We’re going to be in the middle of Pickett’s Charge?” said Morgan, wiping dirt specks out of her eyes. “This is why I hate history. It’s noisy. There’s horses. Things blow up.”
Clutching his team’s codex, Charles dashed back to the window they’d just climbed through.
“Where are you going?” asked Hannah.
“I, uh, have to visit the facilities.”
“Again?” said Hannah.
“I drank too much soda pop prior to the game’s commencement. Carry on. Try to find those nine items. I’ll be back in a flash.”
And, he thought, if all goes as planned, I will bring back the solution to Abraham Lincoln’s ridiculous puzzle.
“Yippee!” cried Sierra. “We’re flying again!”
“Isn’t it awesome?” said Kyle.
He and his teammates were soaring through make-believe cotton candy clouds on two flying unicorns, two airborne narwhals, and one baby dragon.
“This is ridiculous!” whined Andrew. “Narwhals can’t fly!”
“Except in this story!” shouted Kyle. “Giddyup, narwhal!”
“Wheeee!” said Sierra, gliding along on her glittering unicorn. Every time it passed gas, the unicorn created a new rainbow.
“Narwhals are sea creatures!” Andrew insisted, holding on to his ride’s opalescent spiral tusk. “Like whales. Whales can’t fly.”
“Just go with the flow, bro,” said Miguel from his saddle on the back of the baby dragon.
The puffy cloud projections on the walls slowed down. The rainbows faded from view.
“We’re coming in for a landing,” said Kyle. He could see a multiturreted castle cresting a green hilltop far off in the distance. It reminded him of the one at Disney World. He knew he should be thinking about the purple lock with its directional knob, but he had to admit, he was totally getting into this story.
The holographic mythical creatures floated down, depositing the five members of the Lemon Heads team in a medieval village straight out of a fairy tale.
All the quaint cottages had flower boxes outside their leaded windows. Their roofs were thatched with straw. There was a church with a steeple, as well as a bustling square filled with stalls where vendors hawked all sorts of medieval merchandise. Kyle immediately started scanning the scenery, looking for clues.
“Good luck, Princess AKIMI,” neighed the unicorns.
All the magical beasts fluttered up and flew away.
“Did yon unicorn call ye a princess?” asked a scruffy peasant woman toting a pitchfork.
“Aye,” said the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker. “We heard it, too!”
“I don’t want to be a princess,” said Akimi. “I don’t like gowns. Or jewels. Or going to balls. Or being rescued by some guy with shiny teeth.”
“Well,” said Kyle, “maybe you can be a new kind of princess.”
“The kind that uses her girl power and sets all the peasants free!” said Sierra.
“Okay,” said Akimi. “That might work.”
“But,” said Andrew, pointing at a screen that showed the players what the TV audience was seeing, “right now, it seems we’re peasants. Look at us. Dressed in tattered rags.”
“Smelling like horse manure,” said Kyle, waving his hand under his nose.
Miguel nodded. “Smell-a-vision. A little goes a long way.”
“Uh-oh,” said Akimi.
A hologram of a handsome young prince with shiny teeth approached on a prancing white steed.
“Welcome to my nightmare….”
“What ho!” the prince cried out, his dazzling blue eyes locked on Akimi. “Who be this lovely lass?”
“She be Akimi,” said Andrew.
“But why, fair princess, are you dressed like a milkmaid?”
Akimi looked at her clothes on the video monitor. “Is that what I am? I thought I was the Swiss Miss lady from the front of the hot cocoa box.”
The prince glided down gracefully from his gilded saddle and doffed his crown at Akimi. “Thou art no milkmaid. Thou art a thief! For, verily, thy beauty hath stolen my heart.”
Akimi turned to Kyle and gave him another “gag me” gesture. “This is why I hate fairy tales. They’re way too mushy.”
“It’s your story,” Kyle whispered back. “Take it where you want to go.”
“How about the toilet? So I can hurl?”
“Can we please figure out how to open the purple lock first?” whined Andrew.
“Okay, okay,” said Akimi. She tried to act like the princesses she’d seen in Disney movies. “What is it you desire, fair prince?”
“Why, your hand in marriage, milady.”
“Plot twist!” shouted Miguel.
Suddenly, four young men carrying a sedan chair on poles raced into the village square. They were animatronic mannequins. So was the royal person they carried on a portable throne: a sour-looking, shrunken old man with a scraggly gray beard and a tilted crown. His crown, made up of dozens of tiny mirrors, was blindingly bright.
“Son Dirk,” the robotic king cried to the holographic prince, “what goes on here?”
“Why, Father, be merry, for I am to marry!”
“Pah! As your king and father, I forbid thee to wed this penniless peasant!”
Kyle nudged Akimi. “Act. Play the part. Three more locks and boom! We break out of the library!”
Akimi rolled her eyes. Took a deep breath.
“Sire, I wish to wed your son. But only in a totally make-believe, not-real sort of way.”
“Please, Father!” beseeched Prince Dirk. “Give us your blessing.”
“No!” cried the king. “I object!”
“But it is all I ever wished for upon a star,” pleaded his son.
“Seriously?” said Akimi. “We only met like two minutes ago….”
“Stay in character, Akimi,” coached Sierra. “Just think, ‘purple lock, purple lock.’ ”
“All right already.” Akimi turned to the king. “What must I do to win your son’s hand?”
“Your kind and gentle words have softened my hard heart,” said the king. “I shall give thee one chance.” He pulled two slips of parchment and a feathered pen out of a velvet pouch. “On one of these, I shall write ‘Marriage.’ On the other, ‘Death.’ Whichever slip of paper thou shalt take from my hand shall seal thy fate!”
“Thank you, Father,” said the prince. “That seems fair.”
