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“Good plan,” Winston said.

“Anyway,” Jake said. “We didn’t get the cheater’s bag, but some stuff spilled out of it.”

Winston said, “You got some of the cheater’s things? Really? What did you get?”

Jake handed the plastic bag to Winston. “Take a look,” he said.

They stopped walking for a moment. Winston opened the bag, and he and Mal peered in.

Winston pulled out a glass bottle. He thought at first the cheater had filled it with beads or rocks. Then he realized what he was looking at: The bottle had been filled to the neck with glass shards from other broken bottles. The world’s most terrible soft drink. This was how the cheater delivered flat tires with such ease.

Mal dug around some more in the bag. He removed a small coil of twine and another string of firecrackers. Most oddly, he took out a set of mousetraps, still shrink-wrapped in their original packaging. “What was this guy going to do with a bunch of mousetraps?” Mal said, dumbstruck.

“There’s more,” Jake said. “Look at the memo pad.”

“Memo pad?” Mal asked. “What was he going to do, give us all paper cuts?”

“Just look,” Jake said.

Something in Jake’s tone made Winston dimly alarmed. He reached into the plastic bag and found a perfectly ordinary memo pad. He flipped through the pages, many of which were crumpled and mussed. He didn’t find anything exciting. “Carburetor from Mack” read one note. One page had strings of meaningless numbers, and there were doodles all over. Winston looked up at Jake questioningly.

“The last couple of pages,” Jake said.

Winston turned to the last page of writing, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. At first all he saw was a bunch of letters and numbers. Then his glance settled on something he couldn’t quite believe. Written in the cheater’s memo pad was his own name: BREEN.

“What . . . ?” he said.

“That’s your name!” Mal said.

“What’s my name doing in here?” Winston said. “This guy knows me?”

Jake shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What are all these letters and numbers?” Mal asked.

“License plates,” said Mr. Garvey. “Your name is written next to my license plate number.”

Mal said, “How does he know your license plate number?”

“I guess he saw it and he wrote it down,” Mr. Garvey said. “He gave us that flat tire, after all.”

There were a couple of other names in the book. Next to one license plate number was the name SEYMOUR. Next to another was SCOTT. Next to a third was DENHAM.

“Who are these other people?” Mal asked.

Jake said, “Denham is Rod Denham—that math teacher Mr. Garvey likes so much.”

“Scott . . . that might be Michael Scott,” said Winston, “the kid from the private school we met in the maze.”

“Who’s Seymour, then? A kid from another team?” Mal said. “Poor guy. Who names their kid Seymour?”

“That’s Bethany’s last name,” Winston said. “Whoever this cheater is, he knows Bethany . . . and he knows me.”

The three friends stared at each other with astonishment.

Mr. Garvey spoke up. “Okay, boys. This is what we’re going to do. You guys meet me at the car. I need to go back to the Ferris wheel for a moment.”

“You do?” Winston said. “Why?”

“Never mind why,” Mr. Garvey said. “Just meet me by the car.”

“I thought we were in a huge rush,” Mal added.

“We are,” said Mr. Garvey, “but there’s something I have to do first. I’ll be along in five minutes.” He took the memo pad out of Winston’s hands and the plastic bag from Jake. As he gave Jake his car keys, he looked down on the three of them and said, “Listen to me. If I get back to the car and even one of you is missing, I am going to do everything in my power to see you all get left back a grade. I’ll break into the school’s computer network if I have to. Maybe move all of you back to kindergarten. Do you understand?” The boys all nodded. “Then go.” Mr. Garvey turned on his heel and headed back into the park.

The boys watched him go. Winston had been sure that Mr. Garvey would want to run like mad back to the car—why did he need