Piece of cake. "This should be wicked easy," I told Patty, who stood to my side.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Chip put on his microphone, a Santa hat, and then proceeded to tell us the same thing. The first team to build their ladder and get to the top of the platform next to him would win a prize. He gestured at a gigantic wrapped present that sat under a Christmas tree.
"There are a hundred puzzle pieces for each team," Chip told us, and I mentally filed that information away. "I'll give you a moment to strategize." Chip then pulled out a mirror, checking his hair.
"So I think what we need --," I began.
"No one cares, Luna," Owen said. He turned to the team, who gave him attentive looks. No one was looking in my direction at all. Assholes. I crossed my arms over my chest tightly and leaned in so I could hear what Owen was saying.
"What we need to do," he said, "is have our strongest runners go into the field and grab puzzle pieces and bring them back. The faster we get them, the better, so if you're slow, you need to work on the puzzle."
That would have been exactly what I'd suggested, if he'd have let me finish a thought.
Patty raised her hand. "I'll work on the puzzle. I'm not the greatest at running."
Owen looked over at me. "Clarissa's got long legs, so she can run. Not Luna, though." He looked over at me. "She's short, and the snow is deep, so she should work on the puzzle, too."
I bristled. "I'm not that short, ass**le. The snow isn't five feet deep. I can run."
"We don't want to have to wait on you, Luna," he said in an irritated voice. "Just do this, all right? The other four of us will get puzzle pieces."
"Fine, whatever," I said.
Clarissa giggled. "She said ‘whatevah.’"
I was really going to kill her. Maybe I could choke her with a puzzle piece. Mentally, I imagined stuffing those Christmas stockings into Clarissa's pouty, collagen-injected mouth.
"Is everyone ready?" Chip asked, and all teams turned toward him, the time for strategy over. The host raised his arm in the air. Then, he swung it down in a sharp angle. "GO!"
We sprang into action. I gritted my teeth as I ran through the snow. It wasn't that f**king deep. Owen was just all caught up in his own power. Fucking turd.
It was a good call to have Patty do the puzzle, though. She struggled even through the ankle deep snow, and I ended up helping her keep her balance a few times as we made it to the far side. Then we were there, at the base of the platform, and turned around to wait.
The field was full of people running around, grabbing stockings and hauling puzzle pieces. I looked for red team members as they ran about. Within a moment or two, Owen had so many pieces in his arms that he looked as if he was going to drop one. Instead, he jogged over to where we were and flung the armful at us, then ran off into the snow again. I gritted my teeth to keep my temper as I picked them up. Blowing up at Owen wouldn’t solve anything. I got to work on the puzzle, instead, hauling the pieces out of the stockings so we could see how they would fit together.
Clarissa came up, offered us one puzzle piece as if it was a gift, and then ran back out into the snow.
That, I decided, was Owen's fault. He’d picked her to run, and probably hadn’t anticipated that she’d suck at it. Not that Clarissa would have been any good at puzzles, either. I picked up two pieces. "Come on, Patty. Let's see what we've got here."
There was a pattern on one side of some of the blocks, so we started with trying to lock the patterned pieces together. Eventually, we had a step. Using that step, I pushed it against the wall and began to calculate. "It looks like there will be three more steps after this one," I told Patty. "So I bet there's three more patterns." I looked over and the other teams were listening closely, comparing their blocks to ours. Damn it. I leaned in closer to Patty. "We should sort them into piles and then we can construct each step from there."
Patty nodded, and we set to work making piles of blocks. Sure enough, this one had a candy-cane stripe pattern, this one had holly leaves, and the next one had a geometric snowflake design. We organized pieces as the red team dropped them in, and worked on fitting the steps together as we went.
I noticed the other team watching us closely and nudged our stacks closer together. "We can't make it look like we know what we're doing," I murmured to Patty. "Or they'll catch on." From the looks of things, the other teams still hadn't figured out that there were different patterns.
Patty nodded and shoved the holly leaf pile into the candy cane pile, making sure that the pieces were all in the same bunch, but still separated. The candy cane pieces were on the right side of the pile, and the holly leaf ones on the left. We'd know which stack to pick up from, even though it all looked like a jumble.
Clarissa came up, dropped another piece - her fourth - and collapsed on the completed step. "I'm exhausted. It's hard running through all that snow."
"Me too," said Pat-The-Guy. He took a page out of her book and sat down next to her. "There's hardly anything left, anyhow."
"Are you guys serious?" Patty said. "This isn't all the pieces and you're giving up?"
"Owen and Gary are still out there," Clarissa said, panting. "They'll bring the rest."
But a few moments later, Gary dropped over to the platform and gave a dramatic collapse, even as Patty and I fitted our pieces together, working on another step.