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“We can’t let them get away with it. What are we going to do?” Jake asked again.

Nobody knew the answer to that. After some silence, Mr. Garvey undid his seat belt and opened his door. “Well, whatever’s going to happen, we better get inside for it. Come on.”

More cars had pulled into the parking lot by now, and there was a slow, ragged parade back into the offices of Simon’s Snacks. Everybody looked pretty much like Winston felt—hot, tired, fed up. They found themselves walking side by side with the team from Lincoln Junior High, and even though the competition was over, Winston still felt a few glares being sent in their direction from Mr. Garvey’s Mathlete rivals. Winston glanced at Mal, and they both shook their heads. Who knew competitive math was such a blood sport?

His stomach rumbled. Didn’t Dmitri Simon say something about having a barbecue? Yes, Winston thought he did. Good—all Winston had eaten today were those cereal bars, a small bag of potato chips, and a few sips of water.

They filed through the lobby and back toward the conference room. The teams had blown out of there hours earlier like a stampede of bulls, but on the return trip, they were a much more subdued group—exhausted, muscles sore from all the walking and running, voices hoarse from yelling. It had been a great day, and even when you figured in the cheater and his own single-minded math teacher, Winston had to admit he’d had a fun time. Thank goodness his friends had been here.

All the teams automatically sat in the seats they had occupied this morning, as if doing otherwise would have violated some unwritten law. At each place was a small booklet. “WANT MORE PUZZLES?” it said. Winston flipped through it. It looked, indeed, like a bunch more puzzles by Dmitri Simon. Excellent. Winston put it in his back pocket for later.

Everyone could tell who had won—the West Meadow team was the only one wearing broad smiles. They accepted some congratulations from the team sitting next to them, and Carl Lester pumped the other teacher’s hand like he’d just been elected mayor.

With everyone back in their original seats, it was clear that some teams had not returned. The Demilla Academy was gone, as Mr. Garvey had said—they had taken their fancy clothes back home. The New Easton team was also gone. The girl on their team had been locked into the bathroom. That must have thrown a little scare into them, even before the cheater and his memo pad had been revealed. And the Kennedy team, their computer lost or stolen, had not come back to see how things turned out.

The missing teams stood out like gaps in a smile, and Winston felt a pang of shame that it was his teacher who had talked two of them into dropping out.

Dmitri Simon and his associates came in through the stage door, and there was a small round of applause—less wild and raucous than at the start of the event. Winston looked around and saw that some teams weren’t clapping at all. Mr. Regal, the coach of the Brookville Brains, had his arms crossed and a scowl on his face, and a few other people around the room wore similar expressions.

Simon seemed pleased, though, as he took his place behind the podium. “Welcome back, everybody! Well, almost everybody. You all look hot and tired, but I hope you had a good time. And I hope you’re hungry, because we have about a thousand pounds of food in the picnic area behind the factory.”

There were some cheers in response to this. Jake said to Mr. Garvey, “I don’t think you’re going to get a chance to speak to him before he awards the winner.”

Mr. Garvey rubbed his forehead. “I’m thinking, I’m thinking,” he said.

“We seem to have lost a couple of teams,” said Simon, looking around the room. “That’s too bad. More food for the rest of us, I guess!” He patted his protruding belly with a grin.

Mr. Regal, arms still crossed tightly, yelled out, “What are you going to do about the cheater who was running around? Huh?”

Dmitri Simon looked startled. He wasn’t even sure who had yelled that, or why. “The cheater? What do you mean?”

And then suddenly everybody