“But if you know, you have to buzz before anyone else does,” Nina added, speaking so quickly it would have been easy to miss a word.

After all the paper shuffling and moving of chairs, there came a sudden quiet except for the tapping of Nina’s foot.

“And … go,” Mr. Garcia said. “Name the leg bone between the knee and the hip.”

Buzz.

“Femur,” Vi responded right away. Then she spoke to Marianne, her expression icy. “The first goal of the game is to be the first team to hit the buzzer and answer. There are no penalties for incorrect answers. But if you’re correct, the answers range from five to ten points, depending on difficulty. That was a five-pointer. And it was…” She turned back to Mr. Garcia to check in.

“Correct,” he said.

Vi smiled a smug smile. “It was correct. So then we go to…”

“Extension round,” Mr. Garcia announced.

“If you get one correct, you go into an ‘extension round,’” Vi explained. “It’s more questions on the same topic as the question you just answered correctly. For extension rounds, you can confer with your teammates.”

Three more questions about anatomy.

In all their hours spent together doing math, Marianne had never seen Mr. Garcia this energetic. He spoke as rapidly as an auctioneer. Amazing. Could he love this game more than math? Or was this just what grumpy math teachers looked like when they were having fun?

“This continent makes up twenty percent of Earth’s land surface.”

“Africa?” Nina answered.

“Correct. Extension round.”

More geography.

On the third question, regarding a river in Nepal, Nina answered incorrectly.

Vi’s mouth and fists tightened. Then she reported to Marianne, “If you answer an extension round question incorrectly”—and maybe it was in Marianne’s imagination, but she thought she saw Nina shudder—“the other team gets a shot at the question. So. Your turn.”

Mr. Garcia gave Dan and Marianne a shot, but no dice. Marianne had never heard of the Karnali River.

Next up came literature. Math. Civics. A question about rocks. Nothing so far about Orcinus orcas.

“Out of flyweight, bantamweight, and featherweight, which is the heaviest weight class in boxing?”

Nina’s foot tapping sped up.

A timer beeped. “The answer is featherweight,” Mr. Garcia said.

“Oh, no fair, that’s like a trick question!” Marianne hollered out, speaking for the first time since they started. “Because feathers are light!” she continued, looking to the other kids for backup.

Mr. Garcia moved on.

Only Dan acknowledged her. “We’re not so hot on sports,” he whispered.

“Oh, and, Mr. Garcia?” Vi asked, interrupting the questions. “I forgot. In the event of a tie,” she continued to Marianne, “multiple extension rounds take place until a winner is determined. But ties are rare, so…” She eyed Marianne for a moment and then said to Mr. Garcia, “Okay, let’s continue?”

“Excellent explanation,” he said, tapping his cards on the table again.

Wow, Mr. Garcia loved Vi. She was the exact opposite of Marianne in every way.