By: BlueHairCommitteeThe phone blasted as I was walking to the couch. It was a sunny day in Brooklyn, and I had just gotten home from school. I flipped on the television just in time to see more news about the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion that had happened last week. My dad answered the phone. I decided that there was nothing on TV to watch, so I turned off the TV and read a new book from my favorite author, Stephen King. The book was titled It and supposedly it was the best book he had written in a while. All of a sudden, my dad sniffled, “Lucy.”
I answered, “What’s wrong?”
He said, “It’s your mom. We need to go”
I wondered what had happened. Thoughts started to run through my head like a sports car. We jumped in the car quickly and before I could even attach me seat belt, we were off. I had a hard time breathing the whole ride there: thinking, wondering what the problem could possibly be. When we pulled up to the hospital, my heart sank and I could feel its incessant beating in my chest. The doctor looked calm as he told us how my mother had been in a car accident driving past Central Park. She would be paralyzed from the legs down unless we could somehow come up with $500,000 to pay for the bills. It was devastating. We were allowed to see mom for 15 minutes, not enough for me. She was sleeping in a hospital gown. She looked so helpless. I couldn’t help but let a single tear roll down my face, and then another, and then a few more. My father and I were at the hospital all night. When morning finally came, I found
myself sleeping on a couch that felt like a winter sidewalk.We left the hospital later that morning and got home around noon; I knew by the chiming of the old grandfather clock put up by the hallway. I walked to my room, still in shock from the hospital visit. I decided to turn on the radio. It had an advertisement for a local game show,
“Double Dare 5,000.”
I quietly said to myself, “Hmm… I wonder where people can sign up.” Again thoughts raced through my head. It was signing up in the local mall. “Cool!” I whispered. The details would be given out to people who signed up. I jumped at this opportunity and apparently so did my father because he happily drove me to the mall. As we were walking inside, the smell of corndogs, stale pizza, and spilled Coca- Cola told me that we were by the food court. I rarely went here. I don’t go shopping a lot unless I had to. I usually used my free time reading Stephen King or C.S. Lewis.
The sign up table was right over there. I ran faster than I ever had in my life to make it over there so I wouldn’t be caught with all the spots taken. While I was running, I didn’t notice the man with the rack of clothes walking in front of me… Fwack! A goose egg jumped out of my forehead almost immediately. I groaned as I sat up. The pain didn’t make a difference. I was going to get into that contest.
The age range was 12 to 40 years old. I signed my name on the sheet. It was official. The contest was on Friday, today being a Thursday. The $1,000,000 in prize money was more than enough to pay for my mother’s operation and get her a brand new car. There were 100 slots to sign up and lucky me, I got number 99. My confidence went down some when I walked into “The Game Arena” and saw all the people. Unfortunately there were more adults than kids. Gulp. I swallowed hard. The first day was fairly easy. There were no games but you did get to meet your teammates. I flipped open my rule book while I was in my room and looked at it until it felt like I had to hose my eyes to get moisture in them. I memorized the rule book from the title page to the ending glossary. There were four teams: Blue, Red, Yellow, and Green. The tournament bracket looked something like this. Red vs. Blue first and then Green vs. Yellow. The winners played each other and the losers played each other. Then the winner of the loser’s game and the winner of the winner’s game played each other also. The final test for the winning team was an individual game to determine who got the million dollars... The games were simple; a coin was flipped to decide who the home team and away team were. The home team dared first.
There were multiple scenarios and you could dare the other team using specific props given to you by the judges. Your team had to complete the dare within five minutes or the daring team received the 500 dare points. If you double dared them, which made the dare harder, you got 1000 points. The team that had the most points at the end of the game won.
I wanted to win that contest so badly. I was on the Blue Team with a nice man named Adam, two other girls, and one other guy. The first game started tomorrow. I couldn’t sleep the whole night. I was twisting and turning terribly. The next morning, I crawled out of bed around 2:00 o’clock in the morning, 3 hours before the first competition. I had to get ready quick, but judging how tired I was, getting ready would take a while. I figured coffee was the answer to that. I was ready 20 minutes later.
At the first competition, we started off with a good lead, 2000 to500. After the midway commercial break, because this was on television, the score was only 3000- 2500. It was too close for comfort. We double dared them without thinking about it. For props they got an umbrella, three oversized blocks, and a paper mache head. Our dare was to make a tower that had the rubber chicken placed on top. Unfortunately, they completed the challenge. Our turn. They were up 3500 to 3000. One more dare and we would have to go into overtime, a double dare and we go to the Semifinals. They made a risky move and called a double dare. They asked us to run the trials, which is an obstacle course, in less than 3 minutes. We were halfway through the course and the timer showed a minute and 15 seconds. We really hustled. I had the last leg of the course. The leg consisted of a ton of ice cream, a spoon to dig, and a flag. You had to dig through the ice cream to find the flag. It was harder than I thought. I had five seconds left when I saw a corner of orange. With three seconds left, I stuck it into the slot to ring the bell and signify that our team had emerged victorious. I returned to my room exhausted after that exhilarating round. I jumped into bed around 10 o’ clock.
The next morning the game show manager made us all go down and watch the Green vs. Yellow game. Green won the match in an exciting fashion with a come from behind victory that ended in a game of “Pillow Fight Fu,” which was one of the hardest games in the show. The television crew informed us at the end of the game that the game show had the highest viewing numbers of any game show, topping out at over 5,000,000 viewings last week. It was satisfying to know that so many people wanted to watch us play.
The next day during the semifinals, we crushed the Green team 3000- 1500. We also crushed the Red team again in the finals, 100,000- 50,000. We had set the bar for a new team record, and finally it was time to go to the individual events and compete against our own teammates. It was intense: four teams head butting in a championship game. The score was 500 to 500 to 1500 to 1000. I was in the lead. Adam came back with 500 unanswered points to tie the game at 1500 points. I fought back and got a 1000-point double dare.
It was over.
I had won the million dollars. My mom got out of surgery and was able to go back to the excitement of her normal life. I got to meet Stephen King and get the first copy of his next great book, Misery. The other $500,000 went to the new car we got for my mother.
The End!
