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  “He’s losing!” cried Beth.

  “Wait,” I said.

  They hit the door at almost the same moment, but Eddie was clearly second.

  But the door proved to be a problem for little Haley. As a cat, she didn’t have much weight. The door didn’t open immediately. Instead, she nosed under it, like a cat coming in through a heavy dog door into the kitchen.

  Eddie lowered his horns and burst right through.

  A chime sounded and the old mechanical scoreboard on the far wall clicked. The blue numbers were our score. Danny’s team score showed in red. The score board clicked up a big numeral 2 in blue and a big numeral 1 in red. We were winning already, but it was far from over.

  “We’re ahead!” squealed Beth in my ear.

  I had to smile.

  The black curtains dropped and revealed the next stage of the course. The crowd moved quickly, almost trotting, to see what the next obstacle was. My teeth clenched in dismay when I saw it, and before I could even shout advice to Eddie, it was all over.

  The next obstacle was a four foot deep pool of water with a single tire swing hanging over it. The pool was only about fifteen feet across, but Eddie was a flying white furred mountain ram when he charged through. There was no way to stop, so he didn’t even try. He did his best, I’ll give him that. He took a mighty leap. The leap looked good, and I thought for a second he might even make it. But he sailed right into the tire swing and crashed down, all four legs pumping in the air for a moment. There was a tremendous splash and shouts of wild laughter from the far side of the room.

  “Huzzah!” shouted the other team, mocking us.

  Danny and Thomas stood on the opposite side of the room, appearing confident. When they saw me looking at them, they stuck out their thumbs and pointed them toward the ground. They laughed. Their teammates slapped their backs and cheered them.

  Haley crawled out on the ledge above the pool and looked down unhappily. As a cat, I’m sure she didn’t want to fall in there. She took her time, but then leapt to the tire swing. It was touch and go for a second, but she managed to sink her claws in the rubber tire and hang on. Then she timed the next leap and landed on the final ledge.

  But her landing was a bad one. Wood splintered as she slipped. She hung onto the ledge with her claws and scrabbled at platform. Ahead of her, she could see it, was a dark tunnel that led on to the next unknown obstacle. If she could keep going, with her competition out of the race, she could score double points for each obstacle she finished. And she could take her time doing it.

  “She’s got to fall,” said Beth. “She’s just got to.”

  And she did. It was my team’s turn to hoot and laugh as Haley slipped with a “ Yeow! ” and fell into the pool.

  “That means were ahead, doesn’t it?” asked Beth shouting in my ear to be heard over our team’s wild cheering.

  “I think so,” I said. “Depends on the ref.”

  A whistle blew, one long, loud blast. We fell silent. Urdo strutted out between the two courses. She put her hands on her hips. “The obstacle ended with a tunnel, no barrier. The obstacle was therefore crossed. Two points for red.”

  Danny’s people went positively ape. Some of my people booed. I shushed them. The board clicked again. Blue 2, Red 3. We were losing, but not by much.

  “That’s not fair,” hissed Beth in my ear. I waved her away.

  “This isn’t over yet,” I said.

  I tried to think. Who should I run next?

  The horn blew again. It was time for race two.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Long Jumps

  “These obstacles seem pretty difficult,” said Beth. “Who is going to be able to make it through a whole series of them?”

  “You’re right about that,” said Jake coming up and poking his head between the two of us. “Usually, they start off with something easy, like a six-foot wall you have to climb, or a pipe you have to wriggle through.”

  “Why would they make it harder than it normally is?” asked Beth.

  “Maybe Vater is already here, watching us, and Urdo is trying to impress him!” said Jake.

  I elbowed him and he oofed. “Hey!”

  “You’re up next,” I told him.

  “Me?”

  “Grow a tongue in that big mouth of yours,” I said, “and put on some frog legs too. Jumping high never hurts.”

  “Toad legs,” grumbled Jake.

  “Get going! We only have two minutes left.”

  Still grumbling, Jake bounded toward the changing tent. Already, I could see his legs were bandy and far less than straight. I smiled quietly.

  “And Jake!” I said and he entered the tent and pulled the flaps after him. He poked his head back out to look at me questioningly.

  “We’re all depending on you!” I told him.

  It was Beth’s turn to elbow me. I looked at her in surprise. She shot me a frown and turned a smile to Jake. “You can do it! It’s just like stealing ice cream!” she shouted. Jake’s frown changed into a grin and he vanished back into the tent.

  “Don’t pressure your team, encourage them!” Beth said.

  I looked at her and nodded. “You’re right.”

  We barely had time to get into position before the hunting horn blew again. It was time for the next race.

  Jake burst out of the changing tent and hopped straight up to the line. He waited there at the bottom of the balance beam. He had changed completely into a toad this time. He wasn’t a small animal either, I figured he weighed in at least one hundred pounds of toad. He wasn’t pink, and still half-human, this time he was all toad. He had brownish and grayish skin on top, with a pale white underbelly underneath. A few of the girls wrinkled their noses. But Jake took no notice. He looked prideful, if such a thing can be imagined a toad’s face. I smiled to see his expression. A few complements from Beth had done him a lot of good.

  My whole team craned their necks to see who was going to be up against him. Out of the tent walked Thomas, in dog form, head and tail held arrogantly high. He too, had gone for a full change. He was a malamute, with a fluffy curled tail, a wolf’s pointed ears and spooky, pale blue eyes. He looked over at Jake and curled back black dog lips to reveal a set of white fangs.

  No one laughed immediately at Jake this time. There was just a bit of twittering from the other side. When a third horn sounded however, and Jake began hopping up the balance beam with big, laborious, humping hops, that’s when the laughter really got going. Determinedly, staring straight ahead, Jake ignored it all. He didn’t have an easy time of it. Toads are not really built to climb a narrow surface. I’d never seen a toad walking along the top edge of my back fence. I’ve seen cats and birds up there, but never a toad. This is for good reason. They are not well-built for balance.

  But then again, neither are dogs. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a dog balancing up on the edge of my back fence, either. Thomas had difficulty getting a grip with his paws on the balance beam, which was varnished and smooth. I recalled watching my dog Benny try to climb a ladder. Dogs attempting a steep climb always looked funny. They just aren’t built for the task. The two slowly worked their way up their respective beams. Jake tottered, struggling not to fall off to one side or the other, while Thomas scrabbled and strained scratching desperately with his hind claws. Watching a huge toad and a dog struggling and slipping on narrow sticks of wood was too much for the crowd. Both teams laughed openly at the spectacle. Even I had to smile, despite my worries. If I hadn’t been a worried team captain, I probably would have screamed with laughter myself.

  They both finally made it to the top. Thomas was slightly ahead. He nosed open the door at the top first.

  “Two points red team,” shouted Urdo.

  I sighed quietly to myself. Perhaps I had made a mistake. But I did not let these thoughts show on my face. I did not give the slightest hint of my concern. I felt the eyes of my own team on me, and I worked hard to look confident and determined. I let mysel
f frown, but that was all. I didn’t want to let them lose hope just because I did. To keep everybody else doing their best, I pretended it was all part my plan.

  The next obstacle, of course, was the tire swing. I had to figure that this one was probably going to be a bit easier for Jake than it would be for Thomas. How was a dog supposed to handle a tire swing? He did what he could, making an especially a big long leap across the room. Jake took a similar leap. Being a toad, he lashed out with his tongue to grab the rope that the tire hung down upon. His powerful hind legs uncoiled, firing him into the air and at the same moment that huge pink tongue shot out and wrapped itself around the rope. The crowd gasped as he slung himself around the tire swing and managed to land with some smoothness on the ledge on the far side.

  There was scattered applause from our team. Beth and I clapped the hardest.

  Thomas did not fare so well. He leapt halfway to the tire itself. Scrabbling with his hind paws for a grip on the rubber, he swung back and forth a few times before vaulting himself the rest of the way to the final ledge. Dogs do have good jumping muscles in their hind legs, but not as good as toads. He more or less did a belly flop on the ledge. He let out a painful whooshing sound, which made everyone wince, but managed to cling to the ledge.

  But Jake was the first one into the cloth tunnel beyond.

  “Two points blue team.”

  My team all whooped and shuffled quickly to see what the next obstacle would be. The curtain dropped, and at first it looked like there was nothing. It was just a flat circular area. There were no obstacles in sight, just a big expanse black cloth. Of course, I knew right away, and sucked in air over my teeth. Everyone else made similar sounds of concern.

  “What is it?” asked Beth.

  Jake hesitated, knowing just as we did the dangers that lay before him.

  “Holes,” I said, “there are holes out there. You can’t see them, but there are spots in that cloth surface that will cause you to fall right through into a pit.”

  “Ah,” said Beth, nodding.

  Jake hesitated, but Thomas didn’t. We got there about two seconds after Jake, didn’t bother looking for weak spots in the cloth, he simply started running around the left edge of the black circle. It was a good, but gutsy, strategy. Usually, the holes were in the middle to catch someone who simply scrambled across without expecting the trap.

  Jake, seeing he was being left behind took another mighty leap. It looked to me as if he was deciding to simply vault across the entire obstacle as he had done with the tire swing. But this time, he didn’t quite make it all the way to the opposite ledge. His gamble failed just as Thomas’ did. They both found a pit hidden right before the opposite ledge. Neither one of them made it.

  Thomas sailed into his hole, front paws first. For a moment. His tail and hind legs were still visible, he struggled, trying to catch hold of anything he could, but then down he went. A buzzer sounded. It was over. Thomas was out of the race.

  At that moment, Jake was already in the air. He was coming down hard, his eyes bulging.

  “Oh no,” said Beth.

  In a desperate move, Jake shot out his tongue the last second, trying to find something to hold onto on the far side. He, like Thomas before him, shot down into a dark hole. From our point of view, he seemed to vanish into the floor. Briefly, his tongue attached to the steel tubing that held up the next ledge, but he couldn’t pull himself up with his tongue alone. His legs were caught up in the net set up at the bottom of the pit to catch people as they fell. He struggled for a few moments, but finally gave up. A buzzer sounded again.

  There was a pause. Everyone looked to Urdo. She had been standing between the two obstacle courses watching both contestants carefully.

  “Two points blue team,” Urdo said, after only a bare moment’s hesitation.

  My teammates went wild with cheering.

  “Same ruling as with Haley,” I said. “He touched the goal, so he won the points.”

  “At least she’s fair,” said Beth.

  Everyone was clapping me on the back as if I had done something. We were ahead, for the first time. Danny’s team on the other side look positively glum. This was a much better performance than anyone had expected from Jake.

  When Jake got back to us, he had changed most of the way back into his normal self.

  “Jake,” I said, “that was a good run.”

  He grinned at me. His mouth was still huge.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Electricity

  The next three races didn’t go very well for our team. Billy insisted on running as an otter. Otters don’t do too well with tire swings… Juan could turn into a lizard, he looked sort of like an iguana, but he said he is actually a blue-belly lizard. He went with just the tail and the blue scaly belly, but when he got to the room with the holes in the floor, he found a new one. Samantha, went as a chicken, which is not as bad as it sounds. I mean a chicken can’t really fly, but with a lot of flapping and squawking and flying feathers, she was able to cross the tire swing obstacle easily. Unfortunately, even though she did make across the room full of holes, she found there was a heavy door other side. She pecked at it desperately, but could not make it through.

  We were coming down to the last few races, and we were about five points behind. This is not an impossible lead to beat, but my team was starting to look glum.

  “Run me now,” said Sarah.

  “It’s not time yet,” I said. “You’re a finisher, Sarah. We need your speed to zip through all the obstacles at the very end and win it for us.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “But people need a win now. I’m fast, I can beat anything they put up against me now, that will get us six quick points. Two for each obstacle.”

  “Yes, but there’s no way you are getting past that last heavy door. If we run you last, we will get eight or ten points, instead of six.”

  “But first, someone has to make it that far, and open that door.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I can do it,” said Beth.

  Sarah and I looked at her doubtfully.

  “Well, even if I can’t, you have to run me at some point anyway.”

  I nodded. Beth smiled and trotted over to the tent, even though she didn’t need to change into anything.

  Sarah and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking, both hoping, that this would not turn out too badly for Beth.

  I thought perhaps that Danny was in a cruel mood, because he ran Andy against Beth, who was probably their best player. He could change into a gibbon, a type of monkey that is particularly good at obstacle courses. Determinedly, the two of them crouched down at the base of the balance beam, waiting for the horn to blow.

  From the very start, Beth was horribly outmatched. Andy zoomed ahead of her, scampering up the balance beam, swinging across the tire swing with smooth grace and hopping over the treacherous holes so fast he made it all look easy. But Beth did not even try to race with him, she focused on simply getting across each of the obstacles. I nodded my head in appreciation as I watched her. She had no intention of winning two points for any of the obstacles, but if she could make it through each of them to at least get one point, she would be doing her part.

  And so she did. She was still on the tire swing, carefully swinging back and forth to get momentum enough to leap to the final ledge, when Andy managed to force open the heavy door more than two full obstacles ahead of her.

  We forgot about Beth for a moment. All of us shuffled down to see the new obstacle. There were gasps from the crowd. The next obstacle was one that we had hardly ever seen. It was called the dominoes. Large wooden blocks standing on end, sort of like pillars formed steppingstones across the room. Each was easily tipped over. If you did tip one over it would hit the next one, until they all went down and you found yourself in a heap on the floor. The trick was to hop from one domino to the next, quickly and lightly, so that you could make it across before they all fell down.

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p; Andy, of course, was a monkey. He had no problem with this. He hopped and leapt lightly from domino to domino, and made it to the other side before the teetering dominoes in his wake could fall and knock the them all down in a chain reaction. There was a tunnel and then, the next curtain fell. I looked back, thinking of Beth. She had made it past the tire swing now and was carefully crossing the treacherous room full of holes feeling in front of her with her toes at each step to find a new trap. I nodded again, appreciating her approach, she was going to get at least one point for the first three rooms. If she could at least open that heavy door and make it to the domino room, Sarah could fly against the next contestant and get two points per room.

  The last obstacle was revealed. There were cries of dismay when we saw it. I had halfway expected a flaming hoop, but this was something else, this was something that I had never seen before. I’ve heard of it, but never seen it. It looked just like a flaming hoop around a tight wire, but instead of flaming, it rippled with blue-white electricity. The hoop spiraled like a giant spring around the tight wire that went through the middle of it. The wire itself was thick and black, like TV cable.

  “A Tesla coil,” said Sarah in hushed awe.

  “That’s not fair!” said Jake.

  “I’ve heard of them,” said Eddie.

  “Don’t they shock you?” asked Jake.

  “Only if you fall off and touch the coil,” I said.

  “Poor Beth,” said Sarah.

  We watched Andy. He seemed as surprised as we were. Every other obstacle he had breezed through. But not this one. He sat there at the entrance without even touching the cable and watched the electricity spiral and twist around as if mesmerized. At this point, Beth managed to make it to the dominoes. Andy glanced back. I could see his team was calling to him. No doubt, Danny was shouting for him to continue.

  Beth stood on her ledge looking at the dominoes. She frowned at them in thought. She still was not in a hurry.

  Andy finally reached out a small hand-like paw and grabbed hold of the cable.