Squares and Arrows
- The three children find room 7-B and they also find "a tall man in a weatherbeaten hat, a weatherbeaten jacket, weatherbeaten trousers, and weatherbeaten boots" (3.4). Needless to say, he's a pretty weatherbeaten man. (So then why did we say it? Sorry—couldn't help ourselves.)
- The man, Milligan, tells them it's time for the third test. They have to enter a room separately, one at a time, and complete a task.
- Sticky's nervous. Unfortunately, Sticky's also first.
- The man leaves with Sticky, and then a few minutes later, without a word about how Sticky did, he returns and tells Reynie it's his turn.
- This time we get to see what's in the room. It's a room with a large sign on the opposite wall that reads: "Cross the room without setting foot on a blue or black square" (3.29). When Reynie looks down, he sees a checkered floor "with alternating rectangles of blue, black, and yellow" (3.30). Unfortunately the yellow ones are too far apart to use to cross the room, so Reynie has to figure out another way to do it. He does (and we've given you enough information here for you to figure out how). Sticky and Kate manage to do it as well, using methods different from Reynie's, and all three of them pass.
- They leave the Monk Building behind and Milligan takes them underground, through the sewer system, and then back into the sunlight toward "an old house, with gray stone walls, high arched windows, and a roof with red shingles that glowed like embers in the afternoon sun" (3.64).
- As they make for the house, we get a bit of Kate's backstory. She's an orphan (her mom died when she was a baby and her dad left when she was two), and she's been living with a traveling circus as a performer for the last eight years. As a result, she's more coordinated than your average ten-year-old and quite an acrobat and daredevil as well.
- We also get the feeling that Sticky's hiding something, because when Reynie asks him about his parents, he changes the subject—quicker than quick.
- When they arrive at the house, they are greeted by the girl who lost her pencil and tried to tempt each of them to cheat at some point over the course of the day. Ha ha—it was part of the test. But the testing isn't over.
- This girl, who's actually a young woman named Rhonda, tells them that this last test is difficult for some, then adds, "But you should be able to do it with your eyes closed" (3.100).
- This time Reynie goes first.
- He enters the testing room to find that he's in a maze—a maze in which each successive room looks exactly like the room he just left.
- Turns out there's a trick to it, and that Rhonda gave them a hint.
- Reynie figures it out, and eventually so does Kate.
- Kate and Reynie are ushered into a room so filled with books that there are books inside the piano; there they wait for Sticky.
- Finally Sticky makes it too, and we find out that once again each of the three kids completed the task at hand in totally different ways. Pretty cool. Makes us wonder how we'd do in all these situations. (Provided, of course, that we made it past no-whining-for-doughnuts test.)