And what was she so worried about, anyway? He’d pulled off the mission today in five minutes flat. Even though Adam had said it was impossible.
“Look, your teachers have always told me you’re one of the smartest kids they’ve ever taught,” his mom went on. “But that’s not good enough for you, is it? You think you can get away with anything, like you’re invincible. Well, someday it’s going to catch up with you.”
Sam felt a stab of guilt in his chest, but he pushed it away. Someday, maybe. But not today. And nothing his mom could say was going to ruin that. As he riffled through the pile of junk mail and bills, a glistening metallic edge caught his eye. Sam pulled it out—it was a slender silver envelope, and it had his name on it.
“Are you even listening to me, Sam?”
“Yeah—but look at this! It’s for me.”
His mom sighed in exasperation. “Fine. Open it. But we haven’t finished talking.”
Sam flipped the envelope, and as his eyes glanced over the return address his heart nearly jumped out of his chest.
“No way . . . ,” he muttered under his breath.
The envelope was from the American Dream Contest.
“What is it?” asked his mom.
“The American Dream,” said Sam. “A nationwide contest. But I couldn’t have won . . . They must have had, like, thousands of entries.”
It had been about three months back that he’d first seen the contest mentioned on several of the puzzle blogs he followed. Then there were ads in magazines. The web was buzzing, especially since the organizers advertised their competition as one of the most difficult, and multifaceted, ever created. It combined classic puzzling—riddles, logic, and sequential reasoning—with American history, and it had been super hard. Sam spent almost a week on it—instead of doing his homework, of course—and he’d aced it.
Or at least he thought he had. The history stuff—okay, that wasn’t Sam’s strong suit. But he’d still managed to work out every puzzle and send in his entry.
But that was months ago. When he didn’t hear back, Sam figured he must have gotten a date wrong or misspelled “George Washington” or something. And he shrugged it off. You couldn’t win everything.
But now, with the envelope in his hand, Sam’s whole body tingled with possibility. What could be inside? He realized it was probably just a note thanking him for entering the contest, or maybe an “honorable runner-up” certificate, but at least it was a welcome distraction from his mom’s lecture.
“Well,” Sam whispered, “here goes nothing.” He tore open the envelope.
Congratulations, Mr. Solomon. You are a winner.
As Sam read on, his heart started pumping somewhere in the upper reaches of his throat. Then a slim paper rectangle fell out onto the table. An airline ticket. “Mom!” Sam yelled, jumping up from the table. “I won! I won!”
“What? What did you win?” She grabbed the letter out of his hand and studied it. “They’re giving you a trip?” his mom said, dumbfounded. “A cross-country trip?”
“All expenses paid!” Sam whooped. “All summer long!” He leaned over her shoulder to read the words again. “Look at what it says!”
Join me, and the other winners of the American Dream, on this great journey as we follow in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers. See the seven greatest wonders of our country, from sea to shining sea, from purple mountains to amber waves of grain.
Our first stop will be in Nevada, to tour the desert wonders of Death Valley. Where else will the American Dream journey take you? That we will leave for you to discover. In each destination clues have been hidden to reveal the next astonishing stop on the trip of a lifetime.
I look forward to meeting you in Nevada, Mr. Solomon. Your mind and spirit alike will be altered by the adventures that await you!
Yours truly,
Evangeline Temple
The American Dream Contest
“I don’t know, Sam.” His mom picked up the ticket, frowning. “A flight to Las Vegas? All by yourself? And it doesn’t even say what the other stops will be . . .”
“Mom!” Sam begged. “It’s educational! It’s patriotic!” He stared at the skeptical look on his mom’s face. She couldn’t say no.
Could she?
“You’ve gotten into so much trouble this year, Sam.” His mom sat back down at the table, setting the letter and the plane ticket down in front of her. “It’s a lot of responsibility, traveling on your own. What kind of a parent would I be if I let you do this?”
“A great parent!” Sam insisted. “The best! The perfect, MVP, gold medal champion!”
His mother sighed. She looked tired, and her hair had frizzed up even more, as if in reaction to her stress. Sam felt that sting of guilt in his chest again. He swallowed and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Look, it says this trip will change me,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what you want, right?”
“Sam.” Her expression softened. “I don’t want you to change. But you’re better than these silly pranks. Much better.”
“When I come back, I will be better,” Sam said. “More responsible. Different! The letter says so!”
His mom reached out and pulled him against her in a quick, firm embrace. “Not too different, I hope.”
“So I can go?”
“I’ll see what your father thinks. He’ll need some convincing. Go on up to your room,” his mom said, and picked up her phone. “I’ll call him at work. No eavesdropping!”
“Okay, I promise!” Sam snatched up the letter and the plane ticket and backed out of the room. “I love you, Mom!”
Upstairs, he threw himself on his bed and looked again at the letter. As the sunlight streaming in from his bedroom window hit it, something strange caught his eye. There was some sort of imprint in the paper itself, and he tipped it farther into the light to see it better. A triangle, with an open eye above it, and a key pointing out of its base. That’s weird, Sam thought. What could it mean?
His eyes drifted back to the last words of the letter. Mind and spirit alike will be altered by the adventures that await you.
Sam clutched the plane ticket, afraid it might disappear if he let it go. He’d meant what he’d said to his mom. No more silly pranks at school.
This time the adventure was for real.
CHAPTER THREE
“Watch out! Coming through!”
Sam barreled through McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, dodging tourists in obnoxious T-shirts, ducking around grumpy business travelers, catching the flashes of slot machines out of the corner of his eye. His backpack banged against his shoulder blades with every step, the straps digging into his muscles.
Maybe he shouldn’t have packed quite so much, but it was too late to worry about that now. He had to make the connecting flight! If he missed his plane, what then? His American Dream would be over before it began.
Sam had put too much effort into getting here to miss the plane. His dad had not been too thrilled with the idea. It had taken all of his mom’s persuasion, plus a fair bit of begging, bargaining, and promising on Sam’s part, to make Mr. Solomon finally say yes.
Sam had solemnly agreed to call often and send postcards from each stop. It was possible that he’d also sworn to mow the lawn and trim the hedges with nail scissors every single day once he got back home. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and his dad was shrewd enough to realize that Sam would agree to anything just to be allowed to go on this trip.
All that was later, though. For now—he had to get to his gate!
“Last call for Flight 76 to Death Valley,” a voice blared through the PA system. “All passengers must proceed to Gate F-4 for final boarding.”
The flight attendant saw him tearing toward the gate just as she was closing the door. He skidded to a sweaty halt.
“You must be Mr. Solomon,” she said.
“That’s me!” Sam panted, flashing his most charming smile. He handed her his boarding pass, and s
he waved him through.
“They’re all waiting by the plane,” she told him.
Sam thanked her and walked through the door, only to be blasted by a wave of heat that could put a nuclear furnace to shame. It had to be at least a hundred degrees outside. A tiny propeller plane was parked on the tarmac, dwarfed by the hulking 747s all around. Sam almost felt sorry for it.
Three people stood in the shadow of the wing. One of them, a tall woman in a navy-blue pantsuit, watched coldly as Sam jogged toward them. She studied him with dark, piercing eyes, her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a tight bun.
“Hey, sorry,” Sam gasped as he reached the group. “I ran . . . all the way . . . boy, is it hot out here or what?” The woman frowned and raised an eyebrow. The person at her side turned his mirrored sunglasses on Sam. At first Sam thought he was some sort of bodyguard, but upon closer inspection he could see that this was just a very tall, very well-built boy in jeans and a black T-shirt, perhaps only a year or so older than Sam himself.
This kid was not just big—he looked serious. The little that Sam could actually see of his dark-skinned face under his sunglasses seemed to suggest that messing with him would be a bad idea.
Sam tried a smile but got nothing back.
“Mr. Solomon, I presume?” the woman in the pantsuit said, a note in her voice making Sam think she was really hoping he’d say no.
“Uh, yeah, that’s me.”
The woman gave a slow nod, sizing him up. She held out her hand. “I see. I am Evangeline Temple.”
Sam wiped the sweat from his palm on his jeans and shook her hand. It was surprisingly cool, a stark contrast to the blazing heat all around them. “Listen, Ms. Temple, sorry about being late. My plane—”
“Please—call me Evangeline. This is Theodore.” She nodded at the tall kid by her side.
“Theodore!” Sam said cheerfully, reaching for the boy’s hand. “Kind of like the chipmunk, right?” Theodore reached out his own hand and clasped Sam’s tightly. His face didn’t change as he gripped, but Sam’s did. He tried to smile through the pain as he felt the bones in his hand crunch together.
“Call me Theo,” the boy said, not cracking a smile.
Charming, Sam thought, rubbing his sore hand once it was released.
“And finally—Martina Wright.” Evangeline turned to indicate a girl standing about four feet away with her face stuck in a book thick enough to be War and Peace.
She looked about Sam’s age, with black hair chopped off at her chin, the edges so straight you could use them for a ruler. With one finger, she shoved her huge, black-rimmed glasses back up her nose and studied Sam as if he were some sort of rare species of bacteria.
“What’s up, Marty?” Sam moved to shake her hand and scanned her black T-shirt at the same time. It had a picture of the periodic table of elements on it. In small letters, it said, I ONLY WEAR THIS SHIRT PERIODICALLY.
“Did you know the first airport was erected on this land in 1942 and was built by a pilot named George Crockett, who was a descendant of Davy Crockett?” the girl asked.
Is that nerd language for “hello”? Sam wondered. “Uh, no. I didn’t.”
The girl looked at him a bit disdainfully. Sam could practically hear her thinking that this probably wasn’t the only thing he didn’t know. “I prefer Martina, if you don’t mind,” was all she said before she went back to her book.
Great. He’d met three of his fellow travelers, and they included Evangeline the Ice Queen, Sir Theo the Cheerless, and the Geek Squad.
“Time to board, ladies and gentlemen,” a man in a pilot’s uniform called from the door to the plane.
“Wait, where are all the others?” Sam asked Evangeline as they headed up the steps.
“Others?”
“The rest of the winners?”
“There are no others, Mr. Solomon. You three are the only ones.”
Was she kidding?
“I thought there might be more, y’know, adults?” said Sam.
Evangeline raised her eyebrows. “Yes, so did I,” she replied. “We had close to six thousand entries, and they were judged by strict standards, I assure you. But it seems that you children were the only ones whose entries passed muster. Quite a feat, I must say.”
“Right,” said Sam. “Cool.”
One old lady and three kids—that was the American Dream? Sam wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected. More winners, for sure. Plus maybe tour guides, a photographer, and a reporter or two. It was hard to see how this was going to qualify as the trip of a lifetime.
Since he had Evangeline’s attention, Sam took the opportunity to ask her about something that had been bothering him since he first encountered the contest. “So who actually organized the American Dream? You?” he asked. “The ads were a little . . . unclear.”
He was being deliberately polite. In truth, the only correspondence addresses had been an e-mail address and a postal box in Washington, DC, that revealed nothing when typed into a Google search.
But Evangeline had already started heading up the steps to the plane and didn’t answer. Perhaps she was hard of hearing?
“Don’t bother,” Martina muttered next to him. “I’ve already tried asking. I’m surprised you didn’t research this prior to accepting the invitation.”
Sam hitched his backpack up on his shoulders. “I did!” he said defensively. “But I didn’t get very far. Just one dead end after another. What did you find out?”
Martina’s smug look melted away, and she blushed. “Not much more than you, actually. There’s no record of the American Dream Contest registered as a philanthropic organization, or as a company. Whatever it is, it didn’t exist before this contest was debuted a few months ago.”
“What about her?” said Sam, nodding toward Evangeline, who was being followed by Theo into the plane.
“She’s a bit of a mystery too,” said Martina. “The public records I got my hands on told me she’s the only daughter of Victor Temple, a Boston lawyer, and his French wife, Charlotte. She went to school in France in the 1950s, studied in England, then nothing. Dropped off the map completely for forty-odd years, as far as I could tell, until now.” Once Martina was done rattling off these facts from memory, she skewered Sam with a withering look. “Seriously, what have you been doing since you learned you’d won? Packing your sunscreen and playing video games?”
Sam felt the color rising to his cheeks. “This is going to be a long summer,” he said, and trudged up the steps onto the plane.
As small as it looked from the outside, the inside of the plane was worse. There were only four real seats, and they were so cramped together that Sam was practically sitting in the cockpit. There was just a little curtain hanging between him and the pilot and copilot. Evangeline and that kid Theo took the two rearmost seats next to each other, leaving the remaining two for Sam and the Wright girl.
Lucky me, he thought.
Sam flopped into a seat and stared out the window. Was that a patch of duct tape on the wing? Looks like they spared no expense on our travel accommodations, Sam thought bitterly. But then he wiped the negative thoughts from his mind. He was still going on an adventure of a lifetime, and nothing was going to ruin that. I’m going to enjoy this vacation if it kills me!
With a few stops and starts, and what sounded a little like a loud hacking cough, the plane finally got onto the runway and into the air. The towering hotels and sparkling swimming pools of Las Vegas slowly peeled away beneath them, and soon there was desert as far as the eye could see—dusty, dry, and brown.
“This is Captain Hamilton speaking,” the pilot announced over a crackly intercom. “We’ll be landing at Furnace Creek in Death Valley in less than an hour. Until then, relax and enjoy—”
The rest of his words were swallowed by a burst of static.
Whatever. After that sprint through the airport, Sam was more than ready to sit back and relax. He pulled his backpack up from the floor and pawed through it in se
arch of his phone. Time for a game or two.
“I can’t believe you brought all that junk on this trip,” said a voice at his elbow.
“Hey!” Sam snatched the pack away from Martina’s prying eyes. “It’s not junk!”
“Comic books, candy bars—”
“What? Don’t they eat on your planet?”
Martina ignored him and went on. “Flashlight—well, I guess that might come in handy. And a Rubik’s Cube? Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. What did you bring that’s so important?”
Martina pulled up a backpack as large as Sam’s own. She unzipped one compartment and showed it to Sam with a look of pride on her face.
Everything was arranged neatly inside, like a jigsaw puzzle of survival. A first-aid kit. Notebooks, pencils, highlighters, and sticky notes. A United States tour guide. Another guidebook on common plants and animals of the Americas. A flashlight—annoyingly better than Sam’s. Dried fruits and nuts and protein bars and a couple of bottles of water. And was that fishing line? It was. They were headed for Death Valley, and she’d packed fishing line. She’d probably brought an inflatable boat too.
“You know, I’m pretty sure they have stores in Nevada,” Sam said, eyeing the backpack with disbelief. “Did you think we were going to outer Siberia?”
“Well, at least I’m prepared.” Martina zipped her backpack with a flourish. “What, exactly, did you think you were going to do with a Rubik’s Cube? Kill a coyote with boredom?”
Fine. She’d asked; he’d show her.
“Watch and learn.” Sam fished the cube out of his pack. “Mix it up for me.”
Martina looked skeptical, but she took the cube and twisted it to jumble the colors. Then she handed it back to him.
Sam studied it, turning it slowly so he could memorize each side.
“What are you expecting it to do? Beam you up?” Martina asked.
Sam ignored the remark. “Have you got a stopwatch?”
Martina lifted her arm to show Sam an expensive digital watch strapped to her wrist. “Of course.”