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Winston spied a box of cereal bars and grabbed it. A couple of those and his stomach would stop growling. Plus, there was an unexpected bonus: a puzzle on the back of the box. He had meant to take a couple of bars and put the rest back, but now he cradled the whole box in his arm as he got into the car.

Mal gave him a funny look. “Hungry?” he asked.

Winston showed him the back of the box, and Mal nodded, understanding immediately.

Each of the words in the list can be found in the grid, reading forward, backward, across, down, or diagonally. Every word contains the consecutive letters BAR, but each time those letters appear in a word, we’ve replaced them with a picture of a cereal bar. Can you find all the words?

(Answer, page 241.)

The kids settled into their seats, but before Mr. Garvey could open the driver’s side door, a small SUV came speeding up. It stopped abruptly in the neighboring parking spot, almost hitting Mr. Garvey in the process. The math teacher had to jump onto the hood of his car to avoid getting creamed.

Every door in the SUV opened simultaneously, and the Brookville Brains came boiling out, determined and angry looking, like athletes sprinting onto the field before the big game.

“Watch where you’re going!” Mr. Garvey yelled, arms outspread indignantly.

The Brookville teacher marched over to Mr. Garvey, his face bright red. In his T-shirt and baseball cap, he looked like a coach about to argue with the umpire. “Don’t you tell me to watch anything,” he said angrily. He waved a finger in Mr. Garvey’s face.

Mr. Garvey looked stunned—he’d expected a mild apology, not this explosion.

“For all I know, you’re the one behind all this,” the teacher growled. “I know this wasn’t an accident. Don’t think I’m fooled! We were ahead, so you wanted to take us down!”

Mr. Garvey said, “What are you talking about?”

The Brookville teacher’s fury only increased at this simple question. “I’m talking about the flat tire I just spent half an hour fixing. What else would I be talking about?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

ONE OF THE BROOKVILLE KIDS approached their teacher cautiously. “Mr. Regal, sir, we found the puzzle. We have to go through that maze over there.”

Mr. Regal glanced at his teammate. Red-faced and furious, he looked like the last man in the world you’d find cavorting through a hay-bale maze. “All right. You kids get to it,” he said. “I want to talk to our competition here for a moment.” He laced the word competition with smoky anger. Winston wondered if he really thought Mr. Garvey was somehow responsible for their flat tire. More likely he was just lashing out at the world.

When the Brookville student had run off to join his teammates, Mr. Regal swung his glare around again to Mr. Garvey, who was trying to counter Mr. Regal’s fury with an equal measure of calm.

Mr. Garvey said, “Someone gave us the gift of a flat tire as well.”

Mr. Regal looked disbelieving, and reluctant to be anything other than angry. “Oh, really,” he said. “And yet here you are, well ahead of us.”

“We got ours right out of the gate, as we left the potato chip factory. Step around my car and you can see the spare tire for yourself. Believe me, we’re a lot further behind than I want to be. It was a bottle—a glass bottle someone put under my tire. What about you?”

Mr. Regal slowly nodded his head. “That’s what happened to us, too.”

“As you left the planetarium?”

“No. We stopped at a deli for some snacks and drinks. We weren’t in there more than five minutes. When we came out and backed up the car, there was a popping sound.”

“I don’t suppose you saw any other teams there,” Mr. Garvey said.

“No. There was no one else in the store.”

“Anyone else in the parking lot?”

“Don’t you think I looked after I realized what had happened? There were other cars, but I don’t know who they belonged to. I didn’t see any other teams.”

Mr. Garvey said, “We seem to have a very determined cheater in our midst.”

Mr. Regal flushed again. “I should damn well say so. Obviously we were targeted because we were in the lead. We were