Free I'm Game by Nancy Krulik

Chapter 1
    “Hurry up, Daddy, it’s starting!” Katie Carew shouted. She turned on the television set in the living room just as the familiar theme music began to play.
    “Welcome to Tick, Tock, Clock , the game show that pits speed against smarts!” the show’s star, Bob Ritchey, said.
    “Did I miss anything?” Mr. Carew asked as he leaped onto the couch beside Katie.
    “Just the song,” Katie assured him. She knew her dad hated missing even a minute of his favorite TV game show.
    Katie liked Tick, Tock, Clock a lot, too. The questions they asked were usually too hard for her, but she liked watching what happened when the contestants answered incorrectly. They had to do all kinds of weird things in order to stay in the game, like fill a bucket with milk—using only their cupped hands to carry the milk across the stage.
    Or search around with their mouths in a big bowl of goo to find a jellybean.
    Or catch water balloons on a spoon while they rode on a unicycle.
    Or slither through a maze on their bellies like a snake.
    The hardest part was that the contestants had to finish their stunt before the Tick Tock Clock buzzed. If they didn’t, they were out of the game.
    “Name the capital of New York State,” Bob Ritchey asked the contestants.
    “Albany,” Katie’s father replied right away. He smiled confidently. “That was an easy one.”
    Katie smiled proudly at her dad. “You’d win if you were on the show,” she said.
    Mr. Carew grinned. “Probably. When it comes to answering questions, I’m the champ.”
    “Here at home you are,” Katie’s mom teased as she sat down on the couch. “But I’ll bet it’s not that easy when you’re playing against two other people and you have those TV cameras staring at you.”
    Mr. Carew shrugged and listened to Bob Ritchey’s next question.
    “Whose picture is on the one hundred dollar bill?” Bob asked the contestants.
    “Benjamin Franklin,” Katie’s father shouted out.
    The contestant on TV said, “President Kennedy.”
    “Sorry, that’s incorrect,” Bob Ritchey told the woman on TV. “The correct answer is Benjamin Franklin.”
    Mr. Carew nodded. “Told ya,” he said.
    Katie and her parents watched as the contestant spun a big wheel. There were six pictures on the wheel: a snake, a bowl of green goo, a chicken, a unicycle, and a cow with a milk pail.

    “I wonder what stunt she’ll get,” Katie said.
    The wheel went round and round and finally stopped on the picture of a chicken.
    Bob Ritchey grinned. “You know what that means,” he said to the audience as he handed the woman a pair of roller skates, a raincoat, and a rain hat. The rain hat had a glass bowl attached to it.
    Katie giggled as the woman put on the hat. “Boy, she looks funny.”
    Bob Ritchey pointed up. There were three large cardboard chickens swaying overhead from the ceiling.
    “Those are the Tick, Tock, Clock chickens,” Bob explained to the woman. “As soon as I say ‘go,’ they will start laying eggs. You have one minute to skate around and catch five eggs in the bowl on the top of your head.” He paused and smiled at the camera. “On your mark. Get set. Go!”
    Suddenly an egg fell from one chicken and then another. It was hard to tell which chicken would lay the next egg. The woman started skating, trying to catch them in her hat.
    She wasn’t very good at it. She kept missing. Raw eggs splattered on the floor. Egg slime sloshed all over her.
    “No wonder they gave her a raincoat,” Mrs. Carew noted.
    “This is a really hard stunt,” Mr. Carew said.
    Katie turned and smiled at her dad. “It would be so great if you could be on the show. I’m sure you would win lots of prizes.”
    “I know,” Mr. Carew replied sadly. “But Tick, Tock, Clock is filmed in Hollywood. There’s no way I can ever be on it.”
    Katie frowned. That just didn’t seem fair.

Chapter 2
    “Woohoo!” Mr. Carew shouted the next morning. He was reading the newspaper at the