“Of course not,” Mr. Garvey said airily. “Don’t be silly. They haven’t won yet. If they do, then we’ll discuss how to make use of this interesting new information.” Mr. Garvey smiled for maybe the first time all day. He looked as satisfied as a cat with a new toy. He continued, “Until then, we have a puzzle to solve ourselves, don’t we? We should get back to that.” He shook the list of words for emphasis.
Yes, true. They still needed to solve the sixth puzzle. Winston tried to distance himself from thoughts of Brendan Root. It wasn’t easy. It was too incredible, the idea of Brendan tracking him down and calling him. And it was even more incredible to imagine Brendan passing that information on to that crazy and dangerous man who had fought with Jake.
Why had Winston said yes to the mysterious caller’s questions? Why did Winston tell a total stranger—and one trying to disguise his voice!—that he planned to be at the puzzle contest? He should have just hung up and then Winston’s name wouldn’t have been on that list and then maybe they would have won this whole thing by now.
“Winston!” said Mr. Garvey. Winston looked up at his teacher, who shook the list of words yet again.
Right. The puzzle. They still had work to do. Reluctantly, Winston stood up and looked again at the five answer words.
QUASAR
THRESH
ICARUS
ACQUIT
UNSURE
“Let’s hear some suggestions,” Mr. Garvey said.
Mal said slowly, “Maybe these words are all clues.”
“To what?”
“To the sixth word.”
Winston looked at the word list. “You’re saying that
quasar, thresh,
and
Icarus
are all clues to the same answer? What answer could that be?”
“I don’t know,” Mal said. “Some word I’ve never heard of, would be my guess. Is there a mythological farmer who lives in outer space?”
No, there wasn’t, of course. That was a dead end, so they all tried to think of new ideas. The four of them paced, and stared at the words, waiting and hoping for something to jump out at them. “There are two Q’s,” Jake said after a while.
“So?” said Mr. Garvey.
“There are two H’s,” Jake continued. “There are two C’s. There are two I’s. . . . Isn’t that strange? There’s two of just about everything.”
“There are four U’s,” Mal said. “There are four A’s.”
Jake counted and saw Mal was right. “That’s still an even number,” he said.
“But what does it mean?” Mal asked.
Jake didn’t know. He shook his head and went back to staring at the words.
Silence fell on the group once again. Winston looked back over to Brendan Root, still pacing over there on the other side of the green. His team had a pretty big jump on the sixth puzzle, but so far they hadn’t gotten anywhere. That momentary spark of hope Winston had felt was dying out. How could they catch up when Brendan and his team had been thinking about this for so much longer?
Jake was poking at the mini computer again. “Five teams have solved everything but the final puzzle. It’s anybody’s ball game.”
There was shouting to their right. They looked over to see the Lincoln kids on the next bench down, maybe twenty yards away. They were jumping around and slapping each other happily.
Mal said, “Make that
six
teams have solved everything but the final puzzle.”
Mr. Garvey stood up as if to make a pronouncement. He was pretending to ignore the team from Lincoln, but Winston could see he was fueled with a new urgency. “These are all six-letter words,” he declared.
“Do you think the final answer is going to be six letters, too?” Winston asked.
“I think that’s likely,” the math teacher said.
“There’s the library,” Mal said. “Let’s go get a dictionary. We’ll plug every six-letter word into the computer, one at a time.”
“Brilliant, Mal,” said Jake. “We’ll have the right answer in fifty or a hundred years.”
“Better than never,” Mal said. “The first word is probably . . . AAAAAA!” He pronounced this by emitting a weird and strangled yell.
Jake and Winston laughed. “I don’t think that’s a word,” Jake said.
“Sure it is,” Mal said. “Along with YAAARGH and BLAAAGH and all those comic-book screams.”
Mr. Garvey was suddenly standing over Mal, glaring down at him. “If you can’t take this seriously,” he said, “then go wait in the car.”
Mal shrank as if Mr. Garvey was about to stomp on him. “I’m taking this seriously!” he squeaked.
“You’re making jokes,” said Mr. Garvey. “Not even funny jokes. If you don’t have something useful to add, then keep your mouth shut.”
Mal slowly crawled backward a few feet, like a wounded crab, to get away from the teacher.
Mr. Garvey wasn’t done. He had anger and frustration to spare. “You too, Jake,” he said. “If you don’t want to solve this last puzzle, then take Mal back to the car.”
Jake was nonplussed. “What’d I say? I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not solving the puzzle!” Mr. Garvey said. “You’re laughing with your friends and picking at the grass!”
“I’m thinking,” Jake yelled back, though he tossed aside the blades of grass in his hands. “We’re all thinking. I had an idea. It just didn’t work. What do you want from me?”
The math teacher was now pacing. He was angry beyond reason, his frustration boiling over after a long and hectic day. “This is what I meant, Winston. We could have had this last answer! We might have won by now! We might have beaten everybody!”
“If what?” Winston said, and then realized the answer as the question left his mouth.
Mr. Garvey seemed to realize he was on the verge of going too far—indeed, may have already crossed that line. He didn’t answer Winston’s question but sat down on the bench, shaking his head.
Mal repeated, “If what?” He looked at Winston.
“Nothing,” Winston said, looking away.
Jake smelled blood. “No. What is he talking about?”
Winston looked at his friend. He hated this, but what was he supposed to do? Winston said reluctantly, “Mr. Garvey didn’t want you or Mal to be on the team. He wanted to replace you with kids from his math class.”
They all looked at Mr. Garvey, who absorbed their stares and finally tossed his arms in the air. “I wanted the best possible team,” he said. “Is that so wrong? I wanted kids that I knew would take this seriously.”
“We’re taking this seriously,” Mal said.
“Not seriously enough,” Mr. Garvey said.
Winston felt his stomach twist and untwist. He said in a small voice, “Mal and Jake have both solved puzzles today. They got the prison puzzle before I did.” Mr. Garvey said nothing. “They’re both good at puzzles,” Winston persisted.
“Fine,” said Mr. Garvey. He looked stiffly down at Mal and Jake. “I apologize for implying otherwise.”
Jake said to Winston, “How did you talk him into keeping us?”
Winston was a little embarrassed. He twisted a fistful of grass for a moment and then admitted, “I said I wouldn’t do it without you guys.”
Mal and Jake gaped at each other with real surprise. Then Jake fell backward, laughing at the sky.
“Aren’t you the bestest buddy!” Mal said.
“Quit it,” Winston said. It was one thing to stand up for your friends. It was another thing to be caught doing it. He didn’t want to feel like the hero of a bad television show.
They were all quiet for a minute or two. Mr. Garvey seemed to understand that he had forfeited the right to yell at them . . . at least for a while. Mal and Jake didn’t want to rag on Winston any further. And Winston was rolling the five words around in his mind, looking for the sixth.
It looked like every park bench had been taken over by a team. Winston could still see kids running around, talking to the people in the brightly colored shirts. Did those kids know what they were doing yet? Had they figured out the secret behind this puzzle, or were they just collecting riddles at random and waiting for a brilliant idea to strike?
Directly across the town green, Winston saw Bethany and her friends sitting together. If none of them were out chasing down riddles, that meant they had the answer to this puzzle and were looking for the sixth and final word, just like them.
Winston watched his math teacher’s head swivel back and forth, watching Brendan Root’s team on the one hand and the Lincoln team on the other. Someone was going to get that final word soon. Winston shared Mr. Garvey’s sense of helplessness, that it probably wasn’t going to be them. None of them had any ideas.
“Maybe the answer is QUAINT,” Mr. Garvey suddenly said.
“What?” Jake said.
“Quaint,” he repeated.
Mal squinted and said, “I thought you didn’t want to try random words.”
Mr. Garvey flushed and stood up from the bench. “Look at the answers,” he said. “They begin with the letters Q, T, I, A, and U. If you add the letter N and scramble them all up, you get the word QUAINT. Who has the computer?”
Jake said, “I do.”
“Give it to me.”
Jake stood up. “That’s not the answer. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mr. Garvey held out his hand. “Jake, give me the computer.”
“If I’d suggested that answer,” Jake said, “you’d make fun of me for being a dumb baseball player. Or football player. Or whatever it is I play.”
Winston and Mal shared a panicked glance. Mr. Garvey advanced on Jake, his eyes glaring. “I’m not going to argue with you, Jake. Just give me the computer!” He grabbed it away from Jake’s loose hands.
Maybe Mr. Garvey had expected Jake to argue further. Maybe he expected to have to wrestle Jake for possession of the computer, like two little kids fighting over a toy. But Jake didn’t resist one iota when Mr. Garvey snatched the computer away.
Mr. Garvey used too much force. It was like lifting something that you think will be very heavy . . . but is instead surprisingly light. Mr. Garvey snatched the computer from Jake’s hands only to throw it backward over his own head. For a frozen moment, they all watched it fly through the air. Winston’s heart stopped as if it had predicted what was going to happen next.
The mini computer hit the back of the park bench. There was a sharp cracking sound. The computer then dropped to the seat of the bench, teetered there for a moment, and fell to the grass.
Mr. Garvey made an inarticulate cry and ran to pick it up. He inspected it for damage and then pressed the power button. There was no
teedly-teedly-tee.
He pressed the button again. Nothing. Mr. Garvey shook the computer lightly, and Winston could hear a slight rattling sound. Something in there had become disconnected. The computer was dead.
It felt like an hour or two had passed with Mr. Garvey standing there cradling the dead computer in both hands like a beloved pet and the three boys stunned and not daring to move an inch for fear of somehow making things worse. Although how things could get worse than
this,
Winston could not imagine.
But it wasn’t an hour. Only a few seconds passed before Winston heard muffled laughter. Winston looked over to see the team from Lincoln Junior High sitting on the next bench down. They had seen what had happened. Even their teacher, Rod Denham, had his hand over his mouth to hide his amusement. His eyes were shiny with pleasure.
Mr. Garvey saw that, too. His face was painted with fury and humiliation. He said to Jake in a low voice, “What did you do? You’ve ruined us.”
Jake looked terrified, but he nonetheless said, “If you hadn’t grabbed it out of my hand, it wouldn’t be broken!”
“If you had given it to me when I asked for it, I wouldn’t have had to take it from you! Now what do you want to do? Hmm?” The math teacher looked at all of them. “What should we do now? Even if we solve the puzzle, we have no way to submit our solution. It’s like you boys don’t
want
to win.”
“I want to win,” said Mal. “But I wasn’t planning on having a heart attack if we didn’t. It’s not the end of the world to lose.”
Mr. Garvey waved a finger at him. “That’s the attitude you’ve been giving me all day. Acting like a kid on a picnic.” He repeated Mal’s words as if he’d never heard such a concept uttered before. “It’s not the end of the world to lose!”
“Well, it’s not!”
“If that’s what you think, Mal, then you’re
going
to lose. To win, you have to care. You have to focus on it. You have to be driven.”
“So if Brendan Root wins,” Jake said, “I guess you’ll be the first to congratulate him? He was so driven that he actually cheated.”
Mr. Garvey rolled his eyes. “I’m not in favor of cheating, Jake. I never said I was.”
But Jake persisted. The fear was already out of his voice. “Did you tell those other teams about the memo pad to warn them or because you wanted them to get scared and quit?”
The math teacher gave a little laugh. He looked around as if trying to find somebody to share his disbelief. “What, this again?” he said.
“I’m just asking,” said Jake.
“We’re not talking about that,” said Mr. Garvey. “We’re talking about the computer that
you broke.
” He waved it in Jake’s face.
“I didn’t break it! I didn’t grab it out of your hands and fling it into the nearest hard surface!”
Winston said, “Uh, guys.”
Mr. Garvey was red-faced. “Jake, go home,” he said. “We’re close enough to where you live, aren’t we? Just leave. Whatever is going to happen here can happen without you. We don’t need you here.”
Winston had never seen a grown-up this angry.
“You’re kicking him off the team?” Mal said.
Mr. Garvey turned on him. “You want to go, too?”
“Uh, guys,” Winston said again.
“What is it, Winston?” asked the teacher. “You want to leave, too? Fine. What does it matter now? We’re disbanded. Is everybody happy?”