The Mystery of the Carnival Prize (3 page)

“Is this your bicycle?” Cam asked again. This time she spoke louder.

The girl still didn’t answer. She put her bicycle in the rack. Then she turned and saw Cam, Eric, and the twins.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” Cam asked. “When you left the schoolyard I called to you. And I just spoke to you again.”

“Wait a minute. I can’t hear you,” Debby Lane said. She turned off a radio strapped to her waist. Then she took off a tiny set of earphones.

“You shouldn’t wear those when you ride your bicycle,” Donna said.

“If a car honks, you won’t hear it. And you won’t hear police sirens,” Eric told her. “You won’t know to get out of the way.”

“And you should lock your bicycle,” Cam said as she and Eric walked away. “Someone might steal it.”

“We have a winner here. We have another winner!” Freddy called out from the Dime Toss booth.

“Let’s hurry,” Donna said. “Freddy must be wrong. That Dime Toss must be easy. I want to get there before he runs out of prizes.”

A crowd had gathered around the Dime Toss booth. Inside the booth, on the ground, was a large sheet of cardboard with several circles drawn on it. Children were throwing dimes, trying to get them to land in the middle of a circle.

A girl with her hair arranged in long brown braids and wearing sunglasses walked away from the booth. She was holding a large toy poodle.

“She must be the winner,” Diane said.

Cam and Eric watched as the other children threw dimes onto the cardboard. A few dimes touched the edges of a circle. But none landed completely inside a circle. Every few minutes Freddy used a broom and swept the dimes into a box at the edge of the cardboard.

“Why don’t you try?” Donna asked.

“We’re studying the game,” Eric said.

A tall, skinny girl threw a dime onto the cardboard. The dime bounced up and landed on the ground.

A young girl sat on the ground. She dropped a dime onto the cardboard. The dime started to spin in the middle of a circle. Everyone near the booth watched as the dime spun slower and slower. Then it stopped with only half of the dime inside the circle.

“Did you see that?” Eric whispered to Donna. “The girl didn’t win because the dime wasn’t completely in the circle.”

An older boy came to the booth. He sat on the ground and gently tossed a dime. It slid to the circle in the center of the cardboard and stopped.

“He won,” Eric said.

Freddy took a wooden spoon from his pocket and banged it on the bottom of a large pot. “We have another winner,” he called out. Then Freddy asked the boy which stuffed animal he wanted.

“I’ll take that one,” the boy said. He pointed to a large furry brown teddy bear.

Cam looked at the boy. He was tall, with curly blond hair. He was wearing a large brown cowboy hat.

“I think I know what to do now,” Eric said. “I’ll just try to slide the dime into the middle of a circle.”

Eric held a dime. He sat on the ground. Before he tossed his dime onto the cardboard, he turned to Donna and Diane and said, “I’m playing this game for you. If I win, you two can share the prize.”

E
ric gently tossed the coin. It slid past three circles and stopped just at the edge of the cardboard.

“We didn’t win,” Donna said.

Cam reached into her pocket. She took out a dime and said, “Let me try.”

Cam sat on the ground. She carefully tossed the dime up in the air so that it landed flat on the cardboard. It landed near one of the circles.

“I don’t see how anyone can win this game,” Cam said as she got up from the ground. “It’s just about impossible to get a dime right inside a circle.”

“Let’s try something else,” Donna said. “Maybe we can win a prize at another booth.”

“I’ll bet you can win at the Trivia booth,” Eric said to Cam. “When you say your
‘Clicks’
you can remember all kinds of things.”

As Cam, Eric, and the twins were walking toward the Trivia booth, they passed Ms. Benson. Cam and Eric stopped to ask Ms. Benson if she needed their help.

“Please check the bicycles again,” Ms. Benson told them. “Then walk through the schoolyard. See if any of the young children are crying. Make sure there are no problems at any of the booths.”

At the bicycle racks, Cam and Eric pulled at all the locks. They were all closed. Even Debby Lane’s bicycle was locked.

The boy at the Button Jar Guess needed paper. “I’m doing great,” he told Cam and Eric. “I already have one hundred and ninety-four guesses.”

Eric got some paper from Ms. Benson. He took it to the boy.

One of the rings at the Ring Toss broke. Cam helped tape it.

Cam, Eric, and the twins went to the Trivia booth last. The girl there said that her only problem was that so few children wanted to come to her booth.

“We can help you with that,” Donna said. “Cam wants to take your test.”

The girl opened up a folder. She was about to ask Cam a question when Freddy banged on the large metal pot again.

“We have another winner,” he called out.

Cam turned. She saw a girl holding a large stuffed animal, a giraffe. The girl was smiling. She had braces on her teeth and was wearing a green hat.

“I don’t understand how people keep winning. That Dime Toss is impossible,” Eric said.

“Your first question,” the girl at the booth said, “is
How fast can an elephant run?
And you don’t have to give me the exact answer, but you have to be close.”

Cam said,
“Click,”
and closed her eyes. “I saw a chart in the Kurt Daub museum,” Cam said. “It listed the speeds of different animals. Now, let’s see. The cheetah was the fastest animal on the list. It runs seventy miles an hour. That’s about one hundred and fifteen kilometers. And the elephant runs twenty-five miles an hour. That’s about forty kilometers.”

“That’s right,” the girl said. “You win a school banner. Do you want to try for another prize?”

“Yes,” Donna said.

“All right,” the girl said, reading from her folder, “in what year did an astronaut first walk on the moon?”

Cam said,
“Click,”
and closed her eyes. “His name is Neil Armstrong,” Cam said, with her eyes still closed. “He first stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969.”

“That’s right,” the girl said. “You win a school T-shirt.”

Bong! Bong!
Freddy banged on the large metal pot again.

“Look,” Eric said to Cam, “there’s another winner at the Dime Toss.”

Cam opened her eyes. She turned to look at the Dime Toss booth. A tall boy was walking away from the booth. He was wearing a blue woolen stocking hat. It covered most of his hair. The boy was carrying a large teddy bear.

“Would you like to try one more question?” the girl at the Trivia booth asked.

“That boy looks familiar,” Cam said, still looking at the Dime Toss.

“She’ll try another question,” Donna told the girl at the Trivia booth.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to,” Diane said.

Cam closed her eyes. She said,
“Click.”
She said,
“Click,”
again.

“If you get this one right,” the girl at the Trivia booth said, “you win a school notebook.”

Cam opened her eyes. “I don’t have time to play any more games,” she told the girl. Then she said to Eric, “We have to go to the Dime Toss booth. There’s something strange going on there.”

C
am and Eric ran to the Dime Toss. The booth was surrounded by children who were taking turns throwing dimes onto the cardboard.

“Hey, Freddy,” Cam called. “I want to talk to you.”

“Not now. I’m busy.”

Cam and Eric watched the children throw their dimes onto the cardboard. Not one even came close to winning. Then a girl wearing a red baseball cap gently tossed a coin onto the cardboard. It slid and then stopped inside the circle in the center of the cardboard.

“I win,” the girl said, and she smiled. She had braces on her teeth. There were only two prizes left. “I’ll take that one,” the girl said. She pointed to a little toy monkey.

Freddy gave the stuffed animal to the girl. She walked off with it. Then Freddy picked up the metal pot. He reached into his pocket and took out the wooden spoon.

“Don’t bang on the pot,” Cam said.

“But why not? I have a winner,” Freddy said.

“There’s something odd about that middle circle. Both times I was here, a dime suddenly stopped inside it. Maybe there’s some jelly or glue on it.”

Freddy took his broom and swept the dimes into the box at the edge of the cardboard. The winning dime didn’t move. Freddy pushed harder on the broom and swept it into the box with the other dimes.

Cam felt the top surface of the cardboard. She told Eric and Freddy that it was smooth.

“You know,” Freddy said, “now that I think about it, it
was
odd. Every winning dime was inside the same middle circle.”