TJ and the Quiz Kids Read online

  I took the jug and headed around a corner. Then I stopped. Wow. I knew the house was big, but I didn’t know it was gigantic.

  The living room looked like something from a movie—a movie about rich people—with a high, high ceiling and white carpet that went on forever. To one side was a room that looked like an art gallery: paintings, small sculptures, expensive-looking books. In the middle of it was a sleek black grand piano with the top raised on a slant, like the wing of a bird. In the main room were oversize sofas and chairs and a sunken area with a gigantic stone fireplace. The far wall was all windows. There was a view of the town and the valley and the mountains far beyond. Everything was super-clean and super-shiny. Even in my socks I felt like tiptoeing. I’d got as far as the huge dining room when all of a sudden I heard barking. Lots of barking.

  Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof.

  Oh no—a dog! I raced back through the house. I could hear Seymour shouting from somewhere outside. “T-Rex, come back!”

  I reached the front door just as a gray blur came shooting into the house and flying up the stairs.

  “Look out!” cried Dad.

  A second furry body, much larger than T-Rex, came hurtling by me, barking like crazy. Paint and wallpaper flew everywhere. I took the stairs two at a time after T-Rex; the dog was hot on his heels. Up the stairs, around the corner.

  SSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

  High in a window alcove sat T-Rex, safely out of reach of the dog that was pawing the wall and barking. T-Rex was puffed up to about four times his regular size, and the noise he made was pure wild. He wasn’t hiding from the dog, however. He was leaning over the edge and taking swipes at the dog’s nose with his claws. I couldn’t believe it. T-Rex was tough!

  “If that cat hurts my dog you’ll be very, very sorry.”

  I turned. A girl dressed in a school uniform was standing behind me. She was about my own age, with blond hair and blazing blue eyes.

  “I mean it. Get him away from Froo Froo!”

  A dog the size of an elephant was named Froo Froo? I was supposed to save a dog with gigantic teeth from one little cat? Then I remembered the mess downstairs. I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. I reached toward T-Rex.

  SSSSSSSS.

  T-Rex was in full defense mode. I turned back to the girl.

  “He’ll scratch me to pieces!” I said to her. “I’ll be hamburger!”

  The girl’s eyes still blazed.

  “Call off your dog,” I said. “I’ll get the cat calmed down and get him out of here.”

  The girl looked at the dog and me and the cat. She wasn’t happy, but she turned her attention to the dog.

  “Froo Froo, stop it. Sit. Sit.”

  Froo Froo didn’t sit, but he switched from barking frantically to yelping and turning in circles. The girl grabbed him by the collar and heaved him to one side.

  “Come,” said the girl. “Come. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

  The dog went with her down the hall. It even wagged its tail. Of course it couldn’t resist a longing look over its shoulder toward T-Rex. The girl couldn’t resist a last look either.

  “You’d better get him out before Mom gets home,” she called. “She’ll have a fit if there’s cat hair all over.”

  I waited until I heard a door shut firmly down the hall; then I went to the railing and looked over to see how much damage had been done. Seymour was standing just inside the front door.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Barnes. I’m really sorry.”

  “Did both cats escape?” asked Dad.

  “Alaska’s still in the truck,” said Seymour. “I closed the door.”

  “Good,” said Dad.

  “But I couldn’t hold T-Rex,” said Seymour. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Seymour. We didn’t know a dog was going to turn up,” said Dad. He looked up and saw me at the railing. “How are things up there, TJ?”

  “We’re okay,” I said. “He just needs a minute to calm down.”

  Seymour came charging up the stairs. Mr. G. followed him with a rag, wiping up kitty tracks the color of malted milk.

  “Look how far he jumped,” said Mr. G., pointing. “Paw prints here…and then way up here. Never saw a cat move so fast in my life.”

  Mr. G.’s shoulders began to quiver. And then to shake. I could tell he didn’t want to laugh right out loud—when you’re working in someone’s house and things go wrong, you try to just keep it low-key and get everything back to normal as soon as you can—but the effort of keeping it inside brought tears to his eyes. He wiped them away with the cuff of his shirt.

  “TJ, are there any more cat tracks higher up?” asked Dad.

  The hallway and the nook where TRex had taken refuge were miraculously free of Malted Milk marks. Whew.

  “All clear!” I called.

  “Boy, look how puffy he is,” said Seymour.

  “He was twice that size before,” I told him. “I think I can get him down now.”

  I reached for T-Rex. This time he didn’t try to attack me. Mind you, he was still armed and dangerous. It was kind of like carrying a stiff-legged porcupine down the stairs. Mr. G.’s shoulders started to shake again.

  “I’ll finish up here,” he said. “You’d better get the fur balls back home.”

  Dad waved us toward the door.

  “All clear,” said Seymour, making sure some other danger wasn’t lurking outside. I didn’t want to get this far only to be torn apart by T-Rex’s claws and have him escape again.

  “Can he ride in the front?” I asked.

  “In the back,” said Dad firmly. “It’s safer for all of us.”

  Seymour made sure Alaska didn’t slip out while Dad opened the back of the van just high enough for T-Rex to go shooting safely inside. We climbed into the cab, and Dad headed the van down the drive.

  Just in time too. A long, low car—steel gray with blacked-out windows—passed us halfway down the lane. The dark windows gave it a definite air of foreboding. Seymour shifted in his seat so he could watch in the passenger side mirror as the car pulled up in front of the house.

  “Mafia,” said Seymour.

  In the back of the van, the howling began once more.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Ask me what kind of silk is stronger than steel,” said Seymour.

  “Spider silk,” answered Rashid.

  “Ask me what entire continent doesn’t even belong to anyone,” said Seymour.

  “Antarctica,” said Maria.

  “Ask me which has the largest number of neck bones—mice, humans or giraffes,” said Seymour.

  “They all have the same number,” said Amanda.

  “Rats,” said Seymour. “I’m going to have to come up with better questions.”

  It was Wednesday after school. Seymour and I had gone to our first Quiz Kids meeting in the science room. Maria was frowning hard at Seymour.

  “The idea isn’t to come up with questions,” she said. “The idea is to come up with answers.”

  “Same thing,” said Seymour.

  “It’s not the same at all,” said Maria. “We aren’t going to be able to choose our questions.”

  “But they were exactly the kind of oddball questions that get asked sometimes,” said Amanda, trying to smooth things over. “Seymour knew the answers. So did we. That’s good for the entire team.”

  Which was true, but Seymour had been wanting to arrive in a blaze of glory, an idea that had just been flushed down the toilet. Maria, meanwhile, was setting a stack of papers on the table.

  “We need to focus,” said Maria, picking up the top sheet. “Here’s the schedule. Amanda, you did Greek myths this week, right?”

  “Zeus and the gang on Mt. Olympus,” said Amanda.

  “Rashid, you did capital cities?”

  “Beijing to Oslo,” said Rashid. “And a few places in between.”

  “And I did…”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Seymour. “What schedule?”


  “Our Quiz Kids training schedule,” said Maria. “Mr. Phelps laid it out for us. This is week eight and…”

  “But this is the first meeting,” said Seymour.

  Maria looked at him as if he were crazy.

  “Quiz Kids is only three weeks away. We wouldn’t have a chance if we only started now,” she said. “We’ve been working really hard for two months already.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Seymour. “TJ and I just started.”

  Maria turned abruptly to Amanda.

  “You explain it to him,” she said. “I’ll go get the bells.”

  “Maria really wants to win,” said Rashid as Maria headed out the door. “I mean she really, really wants to win.”

  “Why did Mr. Phelps wait until now to put Seymour and me on the team?” I asked.

  “The fourth person was Winston, but he moved last week,” said Amanda.

  “Maria and Mr. Phelps had a big fight about who should replace him,” said Rashid. “You weren’t her first choice. Or her second. Or…”

  “We get the picture,” I said.

  Rashid grinned.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ve got notes from all eight weeks for you. It’s just a review of things we’ve learned in class anyway. It’ll be fun to have two more people on the team.”

  I was beginning to like Rashid, but the file he handed us was huge.

  “We didn’t have an alternate before, so you’ll have to share,” said Amanda.

  Sharing wouldn’t be a problem. I couldn’t read my way through the stack in a year, let alone a few weeks. Seymour was shaking his head.

  “That isn’t why Mr. Phelps put us on the team,” he said. “TJ and I are supposed to do our own research. That’s the whole point.”

  Just then Mr. Phelps himself came briskly through the door.

  “Everyone ready for this week’s quiz?” he asked.

  “I’ve got the bells,” said Maria, hot on his heels.

  They were those silver “ring for service” bells that Mom places on the counter when she’s in the back room at the store. Right away, Seymour hit his a few times. Ding, ding, ding. Everyone looked at him.

  “Just making sure mine works,” he said.

  “All right,” said Mr. Phelps. “Seymour and TJ, you’ve just joined the team, but feel free to ring in if you know the answers.”

  Ding. It was Seymour, just letting Mr. Phelps know he understood.

  “We start with multiple choice. Anyone may buzz in and answer at any time. A frog is: a) a mammal, b) a reptile or c)—”

  Amanda rang in and answered “amphibian” even before Mr. Phelps got to it.

  “She can’t do that!” protested Seymour.

  “Yes, she can,” said Maria. “Fairview did it all the time last year. It’s one of the ways they beat us.”

  After that, Rashid and Maria rang in almost as fast.

  “The imaginary line marking the separation between the northern and southern hemisphere is: a) the Tropic of Cancer, b) the arctic cir—”

  Ding.

  “The equator,” answered Rashid.

  “The process an insect undergoes when changing from larva to adult is called: a) photosynthesis, b) meta—

  Ding.

  “Metamorphosis,” answered Maria.

  “I knew that,” Seymour said a couple of times, but he never hit the bell soon enough.

  “Now we’ll do a rapid round,” said Mr. Phelps. “The capital of China is—”

  Off they went again. Capital cities. Scientific definitions. Seymour and I didn’t even get one of them. Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore.

  Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

  Everyone stopped to look at him.

  “True,” he said.

  “What’s true?” asked Mr. Phelps.

  “Lightning is five times hotter than the surface of the sun,” said Seymour. “True.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” said Maria.

  “But it could be the question,” said Seymour. “If the subject was weather and if it was true or false time.”

  “But it wasn’t,” said Maria. “And it isn’t.”

  “Are you sure you’ve got it right?” asked Amanda. “The sun is really, really hot.”

  “I’m sure,” said Seymour. “That’s what makes it a good question. That’s why they might ask it. It’s tricky. It’s neat. It’s amazing.”

  Maria scowled. Mr. Phelps looked thoughtful. He turned in my direction.

  “TJ,” he said. “Any thoughts?”

  Why was he asking me? Just because I thought Seymour should be on the team didn’t mean I could control him. Besides, I like Seymour the way he is.

  “It’s hard to practice oddball answers if there aren’t any oddball questions,” I said.

  Mr. Phelps nodded.

  “Seymour,” he said, “try to keep it under control.”

  After that, Seymour rang the bell after every third question and provided us with an oddball fact.

  “For every human on earth there are two hundred million insects.”

  “Raindrops are shaped like hamburger buns.”

  Maria began sending him dirty looks.

  “Fish scales make lipstick shine.”

  “Seventy-five percent of the dust in your house is dead skin cells.”

  Maria’s glare became more intense.

  “Grasshoppers have ears on their knees.”

  “Your brain can remember five hundred times the number of facts in a set of encyclopedias.”

  If Maria had had an encyclopedia, I think she would have hit him with it. Luckily, at that point, Seymour ran out of amazing facts. He seemed to think he’d made a good start, however, and sat there happily, his finger on the bell just in case. As for me, I didn’t answer anything or come up with any amazing facts. I just sat there like a lump. And my head was hurting from all the dings.

  Amanda walked partway home with us.

  “Are you sure there are two hundred million insects for every person on earth?” she asked.

  “That’s what the bug books say,” replied Seymour.

  “Amazing,” said Amanda.

  “Exactly,” said Seymour.

  “What amazes me is how hard Maria tries,” I said. “She gets totally upset when she doesn’t have the right answer.”

  “I know,” sighed Amanda. “It’s good, I guess. I mean, it will help us win. Fairview’s a really competitive school. Lots of the parents are bankers and lawyers and…”

  “And people who own chocolate bar factories,” said Seymour.

  At least he didn’t say Mafia. Even I knew my parents weren’t working for the mob.

  “So what? We’ve got kids whose parents are lawyers too,” I said.

  “Fairview has more of them,” said Amanda. “And they put a lot of money into extra programs for the school.”

  “So you’re saying we don’t have a hope of winning?” I asked.

  “I’m just saying that it’s not exactly bad that Maria is trying so hard,” said Amanda. “She goes a little overboard, but we all have to work really hard or we’re going to lose as miserably as last year.”

  “I can see that I need a lot more facts,” said Seymour.

  “And I need to get started on what Mr. Phelps has assigned for next week,” said Amanda.

  They headed off in opposite directions. I should have just drifted along thinking about other things.

  But I didn’t. I hadn’t liked not knowing any of the answers. I hadn’t liked sitting there like a lump.

  I thought about Quiz Kids all the way home.

  CHAPTER 4

  “TJ? Ten minutes and counting.”

  Saturday mornings, Dad and I have breakfast at the kind of fast-food place Mom says isn’t good for us. Even so, I usually sleep until the last possible minute. This time I jumped up as soon as Dad called. I wanted time to check that the cats were safely in the house before we headed out. No more surprises, please.
r />   Alaska was easy to find. She was buried deep in the clothes on my bedroom floor, sound asleep. I was supposed to pick up the clothes, but how could I disturb her beauty rest?

  Finding T-Rex took longer. I looked in his usual spots. He wasn’t on top of the hot-air vents. He wasn’t behind the sofa. He wasn’t lying flat on a chair under the dining room table. Then I spotted the old desk. Dad had brought it in from the truck until Mom could find someone to buy it. I remembered that it had cubbyholes all along the top. Hmmm. I walked around to the front of the desk. Yup— there was T-Rex. He’d crammed himself into the longest of the cubbyholes. He looked totally happy. Squished but happy. Hey—maybe I could turn the desk into a cat condo, a fancy house for cats!

  “Where to?” I asked, licking the ketchup from my fingers about an hour later.

  “First stop is your gran’s,” said Dad. “We’re going to give her a new kitchen floor while she’s trekking through the rain forest. I need to do some measuring before she leaves.”

  My gran doesn’t have enough money to go on many trips, not even if she takes her own chocolate bars, so when she does travel she makes the most of it. When she went to Hawaii she spent her time climbing volcanoes, not sitting on the beach. Mind you, even at home, Gran is pretty interesting. For instance, some older people have doilies and cushions decorating the living room. My gran has cats—four of them.

  An orange cat with a bent tail was spread across the sofa.

  “Hi, Kink,” I said, stroking him from head to tail.

  A fluffy calico cat was draped over the easy chair. She’s the mother of my own two cats.

  “Hi, Cleo,” I said. “The kids are fine.” I was careful not to ruffle her fur because Cleo thinks she’s the most beautiful cat in the world, and she doesn’t like to be mussed up.

  A black cat was peering around the curtains. She’s a scaredy-cat, so Gran gave her a special name to help her gain confidence.

  “Hi, Killer,” I said. I patted her exactly twice. One pat too many and Killer streaks off for quieter places.

  A fourth cat was lying on something colorful that was spread across the dining room table. Maximilian the Emperor is large and white with gleaming blue eyes. He was lying on a map of the world. He covered most of it. I didn’t say hi to him-over half of all white cats with blue eyes are deaf, and Max is one of them—but I did scratch him under the chin.