The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen (13 page)

Mr. Garvey stopped running, too. A thoughtful expression crossed his face, then he nodded. “Go ahead. Make it fast. We’ll meet you right by that little shack up front where you buy the tickets.”

The rest of his team continued to the park entrance. Winston veered right toward Brendan Root. He picked up the pace a little—he didn’t want them to find their car just as he was getting close to them.

Brendan saw him coming and waved. “Winston!” He was happy to see his supposed rival. Delighted, in fact. His two other teammates and their teacher all looked up. None of them looked as happy about Winston’s visit as Brendan.

“Hey, Brendan,” Winston said, smiling. It was hard not to be caught up in Brendan’s enthusiasm. He was like a puzzle-loving puppy dog. “How’s the game going for you?”

“Great! This puzzle was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Um, well, we’re just getting here.”

“Really?” Brendan looked shocked.

“Yeah, we’ve had a couple of problems.”

Brendan’s teacher said, “Where is your team, young man?” The two other kids on the team were gazing at him suspiciously. Winston guessed that Brendan’s teammates were brothers. They had the same coal-black hair and thick eyebrows.

“Don’t tell him anything, Brendan,” said Brother One.

“Yeah, keep your mouth shut,” said Brother Two.

Brendan’s eyes went wide and innocent. “I won’t, I won’t. I thought he would have solved it already. Mr. Lester . . . this is Winston Breen!” This was said with the sweeping arm gesture of a circus ringmaster introducing the evening’s top act. Winston felt himself blush.

The teacher, Mr. Lester, smiled and nodded. “Ah. Winston Breen. Brendan’s told us a lot about you. How is your team doing?”

“We’ve solved two puzzles so far,” Winston said, and saw how Brendan’s teammates smiled at each other. Well, sure. They were a full puzzle ahead. “Listen,” Winston continued. “A few teams think that somebody might be cheating.”

“Cheating!” Mr. Lester looked amazed.

“Yeah. Have you had any unexplained problems? A couple of teams have gotten flat tires.”

The members of Brendan’s team all looked at each other, shrugging. Mr. Lester said, “No, I’d say we’ve had pretty smooth sailing. People do get flat tires now and again. I ran over some broken glass myself a couple of months ago, had to wait two hours for a tow truck. It didn’t mean anybody was out to get me. I’d say it’s a pretty big jump to say there’s a cheater afoot.”

“There’s more,” Winston said, and told them about how the signs in the planetarium had grown legs and walked away.

Mr. Lester looked a little more thoughtful. “Suspicious, I grant you. We’ll keep our eyes open, I promise. But now we really need to find our car in this mess of a parking lot so we can move on to the next puzzle. If you’ll excuse us. . . .” He smiled politely but made a shooing gesture. “We’ll see you later on, back at the potato chip company.” He and his boys walked slowly off, looking for their missing car.

Brendan lagged behind the others. He turned back to Winston and said, “Do you really think someone gave you a flat tire on purpose?”

Winston nodded. “Yeah.”

“That stinks.” Brendan really did look quietly devastated. “I wanted this thing to be you and me, going head to head. You know?”

“Well, maybe we’ll catch up.”

“I”—Brendan stopped. He glanced behind him. Mr. Lester and the two brothers didn’t know that Brendan wasn’t with them. He stepped closer to Winston and said in a low but excited voice, “I could tell you the answer to this puzzle. Then we’d be all tied up again.”

Winston was alarmed. “No, don’t! You’ll get in trouble. We both will.”

“If you didn’t get that flat tire, I know we’d be neck and neck, racing toward the finish line. Two puzzle lovers! Who will come out on top?” Brendan’s arms were swinging wide again.

“I . . . we can’t do that. Maybe we’ll catch up anyway.”

Brendan paused, as if he might just blurt out the answer, consequences or no. But then he crumpled and said, “Yeah, okay.” His eyes immediately glittered again. “I can give you a
hint. . . .
”

“Brendan, let’s go!” Mr. Lester yelled, as if sensing that Brendan was about to give aid to the enemy.

“No hints,” Winston said firmly. “I think they found the car. And I better get back to my team.”

Brendan nodded. “All right.” It was almost funny how morose Brendan looked, even though his team was probably winning. He slunk back over to his teacher.

Winston dashed off to rejoin his team. Mr. Garvey had allowed him to go, of course, but would probably still snap at him for taking so long.

Brendan was going to tell him the answer to this puzzle! Incredible. And incredibly stupid. If he’d allowed Brendan to spill the beans, it would have been a disaster. What would he have said to his team? “Guess what! Brendan and I cheated, so we’re all set. We can move on to the next puzzle.” His friends would have been shocked beyond belief.

And how would Mr. Garvey react? The math teacher had shown he was willing to bend the rules here and there. But even he would consider this to be way over the line . . . right? Winston had to admit that he wasn’t sure. Either Mr. Garvey would slap Winston on the back to congratulate him, or he would yell at him until he had a seizure. Winston didn’t know which possibility he found more unsettling.

All in all, Winston had to admit he’d felt a small grain of temptation to let Brendan open his mouth. It’d be nice to spring from the back of the pack into first place. Winston was enjoying the puzzles so far, but he had no confidence they could possibly win this.

 

“
There
you are,” Mr. Garvey said as Winston approached. “I didn’t know you were planning to have a picnic lunch with those guys. We watched two teams walk by while we were standing here!”

“Going in or going out?”

“Going out! They solved the puzzle! They found it and solved it, and we’re just standing here. Let’s go.” Mr. Garvey started walking.

“Who was it?” Winston asked Mal and Jake. “Who did you guys see?”

“One of the teams had that kid on it,” Jake said. “What was his name—John? You know, the one who said he was going to kick our butts.”

“Oh, him. I guess he
is
kicking our butts.”

Mal said, “He waved to us as he passed and said, ‘Having fun?’ You know the way he said it—what he really meant was ‘Having fun,
losers
?’ He might as well have said ‘Nyahh, nyahh’ and stuck out his tongue. I don’t know if we’re going to win this, but I sure hope we beat
him.
”

“Who was the other team?” Winston asked.

“The Marin School,” said Mr. Garvey. “One of the private schools. Smart kids, and they probably sent their smartest here today.” He shook his head.

“Hey,” said Mal. “We’re smart.”

“Yeah?” said Mr. Garvey. “Show me. Less talking. More walking.”

They shouldered their way through the dense crowd, looking for anything that might be a puzzle. Winston was feeling particularly small and childlike, trying to make his way through groups of adults with strollers and gangs of high school kids enjoying the first day of summer break. It was uncomfortably crowded.

“Stupid,” said Mr. Garvey. “Stupid to put a puzzle here on a day like this. It’s just not thinking! How are we supposed to find it?”

“Other teams did,” said Jake.

They found a small island of calm near some picnic tables and stopped to regroup.

“All right,” said Mr. Garvey. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Winston said. “This place is huge.”

“Does that computer give any more information?”

Jake said, “I don’t think so, but I’ll look.” He turned on the computer, which promptly gave its opening
teedly-teedly-tee
. He poked at the buttons and said, “No. It just says Adventureland. Once we’re here, we’re on our own.”

“Great.” Mr. Garvey was disgusted.

Jake kept pushing buttons, while saying, “It would be nice if this thing told you who was in the lead.” There was a moment’s pause and then Jake said, “Oh my gosh! It
does!”

“It does what?”

“It tells you who’s winning the contest!”

“What? Let me see!” Winston said.

Jake handed him the computer. The Status button had brought up a simple chart, showing all their school names and which puzzles they had solved.

“There it is, all right,” Winston said. “West Meadow, Kennedy, and the Marin School have all solved this. Everyone else must be here or on the way.”

Mr. Garvey looked over their shoulders. “We know that Lincoln is here already,” he said. “They left the farm a couple of minutes before we did.”

“Lincoln,” said Mal. “Which one is that?”

Jake said, “That’s Mr. Garvey’s archenemy.”

“Cool,” said Mal. “I wish I had an archenemy.”

“He’s not my enemy,” Mr. Garvey insisted. But then he hesitated and added, “I just want to beat his pants off for once. Okay?”

Winston said, “Well, they must still be here, so maybe we can catch up.”

Mr. Garvey took the computer from Winston’s hands and shut it off. “We have to start moving faster. Where’s that puzzle?”

They looked around. They were standing near some food carts, with long lines snaking every which way. To the right were the bumper cars—Winston could see the merry chaos of kids banging into each other. Up ahead was the park’s beautiful, full-size carousel, and beyond that, the Ferris wheel. As a ride, the Ferris wheel was boring: You went up slowly, you came back down slowly. Big deal. Today, however, it caught his eye. “What’s that?” Winston asked, squinting to bring it into focus.

They all turned to see. The wheel was stopped at the moment, so that people could get on or off. From here, they could only see the cars at the top. Usually, the cars were all painted bright yellow—the ride was actually called the Sun Wheel. Now there was a black painting on each car. From here, it looked like someone had painted a giant shoe on the topmost car. A shoe?

“Graffiti?” Jake said.

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Garvey, hope dawning in his voice. “Let’s go see.”

They elbowed and shouldered their way through the crowd. Mal amused himself with an endless harangue of “excuse me, pardon me, coming through, excuse me . . .” until Mr. Garvey told him to keep quiet already.

They arrived at the Sun Wheel. Sure enough, signs had been placed all around, inviting park visitors to try Simon’s new Potato Squares. This was the right place.

Each car of the wheel had been painted with a different, random icon. Was that supposed to be a rhinoceros? And an ice-cream cone? And, yes, that was a shoe painted on one of the cars.

“Whatever I thought we were going to find here, it certainly wasn’t
this,
” Jake said.

“I’m trying to imagine the conversation Dmitri Simon had with the amusement park people,” said Mal. “‘I’d like to paint a bunch of pictures on your Ferris wheel.’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, we can’t let you do that.’ ‘What if I gave you this big pot of money?’ ‘Oh, ho ho, that changes everything.’”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Mr. Garvey said.

“Dunno,” said Jake.

Winston was suddenly aware of being stared at. He looked to his left and saw the team from Lincoln Junior High: Rod Denham and his three frowning kids. For a change, Mr. Denham wasn’t wearing that superior smirk. Mr. Garvey and his rival made eye contact and waved to each other in a shaky display of sportsmanship. Mr. Denham then moved his team a few feet further away.

Mr. Garvey, still staring at them, said, “They were five or ten minutes ahead of us. If they’re still here, they must be stuck. This is our chance to pass them by. Let’s not blow it.”

“Well,” said Jake, “what are we supposed to do? Who has some paper? Let’s write down what these things are.”

Mr. Garvey had a small notebook he’d been using all day. He took out a pen and said, “Okay, toss them out to me. Start at noon.”