Nancy watched helplessly as the doorknob twisted.
The sound of a door banging open made her jump. Her body went totally rigid—until she realized the door she’d heard wasn’t the one to Dennis’s room.
“Hello?” George’s voice called out. “Dennis! I need to talk to you.”
Nancy went limp. It must have been the front door of the frat that had been opened.
Go talk to George, Nancy begged silently. She kept her eyes on the bedroom door, hardly daring to breath. Please, don’t come in now!
The knob stopped moving. “What do you want?” came Dennis’s voice. Nancy heard his footsteps move away from the bedroom.
“Phew!” Nancy’s whole body went limp with relief. “Let’s get out of here!” she mouthed to Ned.
“Sorry to bother you, Dennis,” George said, out in the living room. “It’s just that, well, all these fraternities start to look the same after a while. Can you guys tell me which one is Omega?”
Nancy didn’t stick around to listen to the rest. She and Ned climbed outside, shut the window behind them, and waited in the shadows of the frat house until George rejoined them.
The Omega Chi Epsilon frat house was just a few doors down Fraternity Row. When Nancy, George, and Ned got there, they saw C.J. just ahead of them.
“Your ankle’s better?” Ned asked.
C.J. nodded, twirling his cane in the air. “My ankle doesn’t hurt at all, and I don’t need this anymore.”
When they got inside, Grant was waiting for them in the common room—a large room with a fireplace and wood paneling.
“Ready?” he said, holding up a slip of paper. “The clue’s right here.”
Nancy and Ned flopped down on the couch next to Grant, while C.J. and George settled into a couple of battered chairs. Nancy shut her eyes and listened as Grant read the clue aloud.
“‘I am old and fat and wrinkled, yet people sing of my beauty,’” he began.
“‘I live on solid ground, but my head is in the clouds….’”
As he spoke, Nancy tried to form a picture in her mind.
“‘I cannot speak,’” Grant continued, “‘yet I tell the stories of many, many people.
“‘I have rings, but you will find no fingers on me.’”
Nancy opened her eyes as Grant put the clue down on the coffee table in front of the couch. “That’s it,” he said. “Any ideas?”
Leaning forward, Nancy picked up the clue to study it. “Who can tell stories without speaking?” she wondered aloud.
“Maybe it’s a what. Maybe a book?” Ned suggested.
“A notebook could have rings but no fingers,” George said. “And I guess a book could be old and fat and wrinkled….”
Grant frowned. “What about having its head in the clouds? That sounds more like a building.”
His backpack was on the floor next to him. Grant pulled out his map of the Emerson campus. But as Nancy looked at it, she felt as if cotton was clogging her brain.
For forty-five minutes they tried to reason out the clue, but couldn’t get it.
“Maybe we’ll be able to think more clearly after we get some sleep,” Nancy said, but she hated to end the day feeling so unsettled.
Brringgg!
Nancy’s eyes popped open. She fumbled in the darkness to turn off the alarm, then groaned when she saw the glowing numbers on the clock: 4:30.
“Time to get up, already?” she mumbled, and lay quietly in the darkness.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Nancy finally said, turning on the light on her bedside table.
George cracked one eye, then groaned and turned over, pulling the blankets over her head.
“Come on,” Nancy said, laughing. “We only have an hour to get dressed, meet the guys for breakfast, and get to Clues Challenge headquarters before the horn blows at five-thirty.”
She got out of bed and pulled on jeans and a turtleneck. “Now, where’s my toothbrush and soap?”
Nancy grabbed her bag of toiletries from the windowsill, then paused with her hand in midair.
“Whoa,” she murmured, staring at the gnarled branches of a maple tree that rose out of the snow outside the window. “A tree! That’s the answer!”
“Come again?” George rubbed her eyes and swung her feet to the floor.
“A tree can be beautiful even when it’s old and fat and wrinkled,” Nancy said. “It can live on solid ground and still have its head in the clouds. It has rings …”
