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“No!” she countered, and Mr. Garvey’s smile quickly disintegrated. Bethany jumped to her feet. “Sure I want to win,” she said, “but I don’t want someone to tell me the answer to the puzzles. I want to figure them out myself.” The other girls on the team nodded in agreement.

“It’s just one puzzle,” Mr. Garvey said. He kept glancing over to Brendan Root’s team. Winston understood his nervousness—it felt like there was a large digital countdown timer somewhere, and it was quickly approaching zero.

“I want to figure it out myself,” Bethany insisted.

“I guess that’s a no, Mr. Garvey,” said Miss Norris, not looking sorry in the least.

“What if I gave you a hint?” Winston said. “Got you on the right track. You guys can still figure it out. Then you’ll submit the answer, and we’ll split the prize.”

The girls and Miss Norris looked at each other. Mal said, “Come on. You’ll get a hint for the final puzzle. And you can take home twenty-five thousand dollars to your school.”

That was the right move. Hearing that large sum of money said out loud melted them all. Soon the girls were nodding at each other, and Bethany said to Winston, “All right. What’s the hint?”

Winston said, “Do you know what a word square is?”

“Yeah . . . ?” Bethany said, waiting for more, but Giselle’s eyes immediately lit up. “Think square!” she shouted.

“Of course!” said Elvie, and soon the three of them and their teacher were writing things on a piece of paper and whispering to each other. There was nothing Winston or his teammates could do but stand there and wait. Mr. Garvey couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands—he combed them through his hair, he put them on his hips, he massaged his wide forehead. He looked like he was trying not to scream at them to solve faster.

The girls looked to be on the brink of success. Giselle said, “Ooh, so this goes here!” and Bethany said, “And that means this has to go here!” and then there was a final, eternal pause as the girls looked at what they had created. Then Elvie said, “That has to be it! We did it!”

They showed what they had written to Winston.

“So the last answer is CRUNCH?” Bethany said.

“Yes!” Mr. Garvey all but exploded. “Type it in! Put it in the computer!”

Miss Norris glared at Mr. Garvey but removed the mini computer from her small purse. It instantly began to teedly-teedly-tee. She gave it a confused look. “I didn’t turn it on yet!” she said.

“Is our computer broken, too?” Giselle said.

Winston had a terrible feeling. He turned toward Brendan Root’s team. They were no longer sitting on their park bench. He glanced all around the town green, but they were nowhere to be found. His stomach began to sink down to the middle of the earth.

Miss Norris hit a button on the computer. The screen plinked on, and even standing ten feet away, Winston could see that something was different. Instead of the usual start-up screen, there was some kind of message, written in big, black letters.

“Uh-oh,” said Miss Norris.

“What does it say?” Jake asked.

She looked up, surprise and dread mixed together on her face. “It says, ‘Please return to Simon’s Snack Foods. The contest is over. We have a winner!’”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS SILENT IN the car. Now that it was over, now that Winston didn’t have any puzzles to think about or look forward to, he was miserably aware of just how hot and sticky and tired he was. His hair was plastered to his head, and his T-shirt was clinging to him as if it had been coated with glue. Mal didn’t look much better—he was slumped over and might have been on the edge of sleep. Jake’s hair had a tendency to curl on humid days—he looked like someone had given him a haircut with an eggbeater. Mr. Garvey looked weariest of all and had giant splotches of sweat under each arm. They all looked gross.

Their depressed expressions weren’t helping. They’d been so close to winning! If the girls had just gotten the answer a little faster . . . or better yet, if they had allowed Mr. Garvey to tell them the answer. Winston understood Bethany’s desire to solve the puzzle herself,