But if she got chosen for the show . . .
She knew it was an enormous risk, announcing her identity publicly. Her parents had looked at her like she’d lost her Fibonacci-loving mind when she’d told them about the audition. Her father’s bewildered words had plagued her ever since.You don’t even like getting your school photos taken.
Which was true.
But they couldn’t understand how much she wanted this. No—needed this. It wasn’t about fame or money. It was about finding her people. Not faceless usernames, but real friends.
Kick It Carter was popular and self-assured. Beautiful and confident, thanks to the cartoon avatar her app-developer father and fashionista mother had helped her build. A hero to awkward, math-loving girls everywhere. But there would be no hiding behind her alter ego on set. It would be Carter and the cameras and the Game Master’s puzzles . . . and her team. People who were as obsessed with puzzles and escape rooms as she was. People who admired her for her brain, not her clever online quips. People whogot it.
The idea was as foreign as it was tantalizing. She’d brainstormed more than a hundred potential team names. She had plans to order team T-shirts as soon as she knew their sizes. She would finally be included in one of those group chats that evidently every teen in the world was in except for her.
Once she got on the show, Carter would never have to hide her true self again.
Before class could start, she dared to check her emails. One last time.
Her heart launched into her throat.
Re: Carter Kelly Audition
Dear Miss Kelly,
We are thrilled to extend an invitation for you to be a contestant in season five ofThe Escape Game. . .
Audition Video: Beck Matheson
THE ESCAPE GAME
SEASON FIVE
The boy has a swoop of thick brown hair beneath a cowboy hat,lips so red he might have been sucking on a cherry lollipop, and an angelic smile. He also appears to be standing in a Wild West saloon.
“Howdy. The name’s Beck, and I’d like to welcome you to the Sweetbrier Saloon. Also known as . . . my parents’ gardening shed.” He bats at a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling. Shadows dance across the wood walls. “Last year, I converted this place into my sixth escape room. And yes, the theme isheavilyinspired by the Sweet-brier Treasure. I’m obsessed with that stuff. The moment I heard about this season’s prize—!” He mimes his head exploding. “But I can’t be the only one who feels that way, so what makes me stand out from the crowd? One word: lasers. As in, laser focus.”
He picks up a deck of playing cards and starts to shuffle. “This room took me five weeks to create. I scoured flea markets and craft stores for the props. The stag antlers over there came from an estate sale. The whiskey kegs and liquor bottles are mostly from thrift stores.” He starts doing tricks—fanning the cards in a line down his arm, then flipping them over in a mesmerizing wave. “This old cash register is a kid’s toy, painted to look authentic. Even these cards are handmade.” He fans the cards out and flips them toward the camera, revealing aces and spades, hearts and clubs. “Hint: there’s a clue hidden in the face cards, but you’ll have to play the game to find out what it is.”
He slings himself onto a barstool. “I’ve had a lot of hobbies. Coding. Mechanics. Pinball competitions. Alpacas . . . Long story. But escape rooms have been my passion for years. Playing themandcreating them. It’s one thing to solve puzzles, it’s another to mastermind them yourself. Now, I’m not saying I’m gunning for the Game Master’s job, but I like to think that I’ll be able to hold my own in this competition. So, Louis Augustus Russell?” He hops off the stool and pulls a pistol from a holster at his side, aiming it at the camera. “I challenge you to a duel!”
The gunclicks anticlimactically. Beck grins. “It’s also possible that I have way too much time on my hands. So . . . call me? Though I also accept communications via telegraph and pony express.”
He laughs at his own joke, and the video ends.
Producer notes:
Inside knowledge of escape rooms, good for media interviews
Did he say alpacas??
Obsession with Sweetbrier—he’ll be motivated
Loving the doe-eyed look, the optimism. We’re going to eat this kid alive.
02
Beck
There was an ongoing debate in the world of forensic science overhow much information could be gleaned from the patterns in blood spatter. But in the case of the medieval-torture-chamber-themed escape room Beck had recently started creating in his parents’ garage, the blood spatter was going to be aliteralmessage. If the “prisoners” were paying attention, they would see that the splotches of crimson blood on the concrete floor matched the alphabet code that would be written beneath the wall shackles.
Designing escape rooms was the rare hobby that held Beck’s attention because it was actually a hundred hobbies mixed into one. Here, he was an engineer, an archaeologist, a scholar, a mathematician, an artist, an electrician, a cryptographer, a historian, and a storyteller all in one.
