The Mystery of the Carnival Prize Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Something strange is happening at the Dime Toss.

  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 the middle circle. Both times I was here, a dime suddenly stopped inside it.”

  The Cam Jansen Adventure Series

  #1 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds

  #2 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the U.F.O.

  #3 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Dinosaur Bones

  #4 CamJansen and the Mystery of the Television Dog

  #5 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Gold Coins

  #6 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball

  #7 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Circus Clown

  #8 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Monster Movie

  #9 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Carnival Prize

  #10 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Monkey House

  #11 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Corn Popper

  #12 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of Flight 54

  #13 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Haunted House

  #14 Cam Jansen and the Chocolate Fudge Mystery

  #15 Cam Jansen and the Triceratops Pops Mystery

  #16 Cam Jansen and the Ghostly Mystery

  #17 Cam Jansen and the Scary Snake Mystery

  #18 Cam Jansen and the Catnapping Mystery

  #19 Cam Jansen and the Barking Treasure Mystery

  #20 Cam Jansen and the Birthday Mystery

  #21 Cam Jansen and the School Play Mystery

  #22 Cam Jansen and the First Day of School Mystery

  #23 Cam Jansen and the Tennis Trophy Mystery

  #24 Cam Jansen and the Snowy Day Mystery

  DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE YOUNG CAM JANSEN

  SERIES FOR YOUNGER READERS!

  To Eddie,

  My best little boy

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, Inc., 1984

  Published by Puffin Books, 1992

  Reissued 1999

  This edition published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Text copyright © David A. Adler, 1984

  Illustrations copyright © Susanna Natti, 1984

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE 1992 PUFFIN BOOKS EDITION

  UNDER CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 91-67506

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07597-5

  RL: 2.6

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Chapter One

  Honk! Honk!

  The street was being repaired. Cars were lined up in both directions waiting to pass.

  Cam Jansen squeezed the handbrakes of her bicycle. The bike stopped, and Cam got off. She waited for her friend Eric Shelton and Eric’s twin sisters, Donna and Diane.

  Honk!

  “Why are people honking?” Eric asked as he got off his bicycle. “They know they have to wait.”

  Cam, Eric, Donna, and Diane walked with their bicycles past mounds of dirt and rocks and a large truck mixing cement. They walked past the long line of waiting cars.

  “Hey,” a woman called from her car. “Does one of you children want to trade your bicycle for my car?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cam answered. “But we’re too young to drive.”

  As the children continued to walk, Diane asked Eric, “Does she really want to trade? We could give the car to Mom.”

  “She was just joking. If she was riding a bicycle like we are, she wouldn’t be stuck in this traffic jam.”

  Cam and Eric were going to school to help with the fifth-grade carnival. It was spring vacation, and their grade was raising money to buy books for the school library. Donna and Diane were going to play the carnival games.

  Cam, Eric, and the twins waited at the corner for the traffic light to turn green.

  “I want to play the Ring Toss,” Diane said.

  “Well, I’m only playing games that have big furry stuffed animals as prizes,” Donna said. “I plan to win one.”

  Cam said, “Click,” and closed her eyes. Cam always says “Click” when she wants to remember something. “It’s the sound a camera makes,” Cam often explains. “And my mind is a mental camera.”

  Cam has what adults call a “photographic memory.” They mean that Cam can remember every detail in an entire scene. It’s as if she had a photograph of everything she has seen stored in her brain.

  “There are fourteen games at the carnival,” Cam said with her eyes still closed. “The only ones with stuffed animals as prizes are the Button Jar Guess, the Dime Toss, and the Baseball Throw.”

  Cam’s real name is Jennifer. When she was a baby, people called her “Red” because she has red hair. But when they found out about her amazing memory and heard her say “Click,” they began calling her “The Camera.” Soon “The Camera” was shortened to “Cam.”

  Eric pulled on Cam’s sleeve and said, “Let’s go. The light has changed.”

  Cam opened her eyes. She walked with her bicycle across the street. Then the four children got on their bicycles and rode to school. They were stopped at the gate.

  “You can’t go in yet,” the teacher standing by the gate told Cam. “The carnival hasn’t opened yet.”

  “We’re working in the carnival,” Cam told the teacher. “My name is Jennifer Jansen. This is Eric Shelton, and these are Eric’s sisters, Donna and Diane.”

  The teacher was about to check his list when he saw a tall boy with curly blond hair at the gate.

  “Stop,” the teacher told the boy. “You can’t go in yet.”

  “I’m not going in. I’m leaving,” the boy said as he walked past.

  “Oh,” the teacher said. Then he looked at his list and told Cam, Eric, and the twins that they could go in.

  “That boy was probably helping,” Eric said as they walked through the gate. “He was carrying a large roll of tape.”

  Cam, Eric, and the twins locked their bicycles in the rack near the schoolyard gate. Then Cam and Eric looked for their teacher, Ms. Benson.

  “There she is,” Cam said. “The rest of the class is already there. The meeting ha
s already started.”

  “Remember, the children are coming here to have a good time,” Ms. Benson said as Cam and Eric sat on the ground. “Now, those of you with booths, go and check that everything is in order.”

  Many of the children got up and walked to their booths. “You’re my assistants,” Ms. Benson told Cam, Eric, and the other children still sitting. “I want you to walk around and see that everything is in order. There may be lost children. Some booths might need change. And I want all of you to keep your eyes on the bicycles. Last year, one was stolen.”

  Ms. Benson looked at her watch. She clapped her hands and said, “It’s ten o’clock. Let’s open the gates. It’s time for the carnival to begin.”

  Chapter Two

  “Let’s check the bicycle rack,” Cam said to Eric.

  “No. I have to find Donna and Diane. My mother told me to look out for them.”

  The schoolyard was already crowded. There were groups of children waiting in lines at the Button Jar Guess and at the Water Gun Shoot.

  “Try your luck here. Win a great prize!” the girl at the Boat Race called out.

  “Test your knowledge,” the girl at the Trivia booth said.

  “Great prizes here. Easy to win!” the boy at the Beanbag Toss shouted.

  Eric stood on one of the schoolyard benches. He looked at the children standing near the many booths. Then he looked down at Cam and told her, “I don’t see them.”

  “Maybe they’re with the bicycles.”

  Cam and Eric walked to the bicycle racks. There was a long line of bicycles, all locked up. They found Donna’s and Diane’s bicycles. But the two girls weren’t there.

  “Look,” Cam said and pointed to a red-and-blue bicycle. “This one isn’t locked. That’s probably what happened last year. Someone didn’t lock his bicycle and it was stolen.”

  “I have to find Donna and Diane.”

  “I’ll help you look,” Cam told Eric. “I just want to take a picture of this bicycle. I want to remember what it looks like in case it’s missing later.”

  Cam looked straight at the bicycle. She said, “Click,” and blinked her eyes. Then she told Eric, “I have a picture of the bicycle stored in my brain. Now we can look for the twins.”

  Cam and Eric walked past a few girls at the Water Gun Shoot. They were shooting water guns and trying to put out the flame on a candle a few feet away. A boy at the Boat Race was blowing through a straw at a toy sailboat. He was trying to send it across a large tub of water.

  “I see my sisters,” Eric said. “They’re at the refreshment stand.”

  Donna and Diane were waiting in line behind an older girl. The girl had long brown hair, and braces on her teeth.

  “I’ll take a cup of cola,” the girl said.

  The boy behind the counter pointed to a sign above him and said, “We have orange juice, apple juice, and milk.”

  “Yuck,” the girl said. “Health food. All right, give me some of those whole-wheat pretzels and orange juice.”

  The boy gave her a bag of pretzels and a cup of juice. The girl paid him and began to walk away. Then she stopped and said, “Let me see the coins I paid you.”

  The boy held out his hand.

  “I need this one,” she said, and took one coin back. “It’s my lucky dime.” She gave the boy another dime and walked away.

  “I’ll have some orange juice,” Donna said.

  “And I’ll have apple juice,” Diane told the boy.

  Cam and Eric waited while the two girls drank the juice. Then Eric said, “I thought you planned to win a stuffed animal. Why aren’t you at one of the game booths?”

  “I don’t know which one to try,” Donna said.

  Bong! Bong!

  The boy at the Dime Toss booth was hitting the bottom of a large metal pot with a wooden spoon. “We have a winner! We have a winner!” he shouted.

  “Look,” Eric said. “It’s the girl who just bought pretzels and juice. I guess she really did have a lucky dime.”

  “And look at that stuffed animal she won, a teddy bear,” Donna said. “Just what I want.”

  “Why don’t we try the Dime Toss?” Diane asked.

  “It’s almost impossible to win,” Eric told his sister. “That’s what Freddy, the boy running the booth, told us. That’s why he’s giving away such good prizes.”

  “Look,” Cam said. She pointed to the schoolyard gate. Cam said, “Click,” and closed her eyes. She said, “Click,” again.

  “What are you pointing at?” Eric asked.

  “Someone just rode out on a bicycle. It’s the same bicycle we saw before, the one that wasn’t locked.”

  Chapter Three

  “Stop!” Cam yelled as she ran toward the gate. “Get off that bicycle!”

  Eric and the twins followed Cam. They ran past the Baseball Throw and the refreshment stand. As they passed the Water Gun Shoot, one of the children missed the candle and hit Eric’s ear.

  At the gate, Cam waved her arms and yelled, “Stop!” But the girl on the bicycle didn’t even turn around. She kept right on riding.

  “What do we do now?” Eric asked as he wiped the water off his ear.

  “I want to see where she’s going.”

  While Cam and Eric stood by the gate, a few children came into the schoolyard. And a few left. The girl who had just won the Dime Toss was talking to a tall boy with curly blond hair.

  “I can’t see her anymore,” Cam said. “Let’s tell Ms. Benson what happened. She’ll know what to do.”

  Cam, Eric, Donna, and Diane ran to Ms. Benson. They told her about the unlocked bicycle.

  “We yelled to the girl and told her to stop,” Cam said. “But she didn’t. She just kept on riding.”

  “Maybe she didn’t hear you.”

  “She heard us, all right,” Eric told Ms. Benson. “Cam yelled really loud.”

  “Did you see who the girl was?”

  “No. I only saw her from the back. She was wearing a green sweater and she has long black hair.”

  “Can you describe the bicycle?”

  Cam said, “Click,” and closed her eyes. “It was a girl’s bike. It was red with some blue stripes and two baskets in the back.”

  Ms. Benson blew her whistle. She waited until it was quiet. Then she blew the whistle a second time and called out, “If anyone left a red-and-blue bicycle unlocked in the schoolyard, please come and see me.”

  The schoolyard became noisy again. The fifth-graders running the booths called out for children to try their luck. Cam and Eric waited with Ms. Benson. But no one came to tell them that a bicycle was missing.

  “Maybe the bicycle wasn’t stolen,” Ms. Benson said.

  “No, I’m sure it was stolen. That’s why the girl didn’t stop when I called to her,” Cam said.

  “Well, you don’t have to wait here,” Ms. Benson said. “I’ll call you if anyone comes for the bicycle.”

  “Then let’s try the Button Jar Guess,” Donna said. “The prize for the closest guess is a really big stuffed animal. It’s a kangaroo mother with a baby in her pouch.”

  Cam, Eric, and the twins walked to the Button Jar Guess. There was a line of children waiting to guess the number of buttons in the jar. Before Cam got in line, she walked very close to the jar, said, “Click,” and blinked her eyes. Once Cam was in line, she said, “Click,” again and closed her eyes. Then she started counting.

  “One, two, three ...”

  “What’s she doing?” Diane whispered.

  “She’s looking at the picture of the jar she has in her head,” Eric explained. “She’s counting the buttons.”

  “Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine ...”

  “It’s my turn,” Diane said. She gave the boy running the game a nickel. He gave her a card. Diane wrote her guess on the card.

  “Sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four ...”

  Donna and Eric guessed next. Then it was Cam’s turn. Her eyes were still closed.

  “Ninet
y-four, ninety-five, ninety-six ...”

  “Let’s go,” the boy running the booth told Cam. “Your memory won’t help you with this game. Most of the buttons are hidden in the middle of the jar.”

  Cam opened her eyes. “Counting the buttons that I could see will help me to guess.” Cam wrote down a number on the card and gave it to the boy.

  Bong! Bong!

  Freddy, the boy at the Dime Toss, was hitting the bottom of a large pot with a wooden spoon. “We have another winner,” he called out.

  A tall boy with curly blond hair, who was wearing a red baseball cap, was standing near the booth. He was smiling and holding a large furry toy elephant.

  “Let’s try that game,” Donna said.

  “We can try it,” Eric said. “But I don’t , think we’ll win.”

  As Cam, Eric, and the twins walked toward the Dime Toss, a girl on a bicycle rode past. Cam looked at her and said, “Click.” Then she said, “Click,” again and closed her eyes.

  “That’s the bicycle,” Cam said when she opened her eyes. “And that’s the girl who stole it.

  “Come on,” Cam said as she ran after the bicycle. “Let’s catch her.”

  Chapter Four

  Cam, Eric, Donna, and Diane caught up to the girl when she stopped to put her bicycle in the rack.

  “That’s Debby Lane,” Eric whispered. “She wouldn’t steal a bicycle.”

  “Debby, is this your bicycle?” Cam asked. The girl didn’t turn around. And she didn’t answer.

  “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.