“I know, I know.” Nina shook her head.

Vi turned to Marianne.

She looked like she was about to say something but decided against it.

Then Nina spoke. “Can you believe that awful Lucas? He was making fun of us! Honestly, it was, like, freaking me out!”

“Yeah, well, he was here for the purpose of mocking us,” Dan said. “And beating us was just icing on the cake.”

“Did you see the comments he wrote? I can’t handle this,” Nina nearly cried. “It’s not worth it!” Nina dug into a fingernail. “Marianne, you shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

Marianne, thinking of Nina’s shaking during scrimmage, rummaged inside her backpack.

“Here.” Marianne handed Nina a fidget toy. She had a couple in her backpack. “Take this. My mom thought they’d help me. They’re kind of fun.”

“Thanks,” Nina said, taking the toy and immediately popping the three bubbles on it over and over. “But am I right? That was super mean what he did, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, not my favorite person,” Dan added, more depressed than Marianne had ever seen him. “I really thought my memory palace would help me.” He shook his head. “It just disintegrated in the face of Lucas Vader.”

“What’s a memory palace?” Marianne asked.

And Dan, still sullen, told her it was “a method for memorization that involves imagining a very specific location and visualizing placing data in said location, usually using some sort of wordplay or association.”

“Whoa,” Marianne said.

These kids were so smart, how could they have lost so badly against a group with no experience in Quiz Quest at all?

“Trivia culture is a whole world, man,” Dan went on. “There are so many strategies. I could teach you some.”

“That’s what we need,” Vi said, pounding a fist on her desk and standing up. “We need more teaching, more practice.”

“Not that my strategies worked…” Dan added, picking up his pencil and twirling it through each finger on his right hand. “I have failed. Again,” he added.

“Ugh, this Greenfield Prep thing. Will you get over Greenfield?” Nina snapped. “What? Is this school so bad?”

“It’s not great!” Dan snapped back.

“Guys, maybe you just—” Marianne almost said “need to have more fun,” like Lucas, Jalilah, Ava, and Kylie did, but Mr. Garcia came back in the room.

“I made an error today,” Mr. Garcia said. Instead of sitting at the teacher’s desk, he pulled up a seat next to all of them. She couldn’t believe it. Somehow it made him look much smaller.

“I should’ve planned that … better,” he admitted, adjusting his tie at the top. But that was all he said. He looked like he didn’t know what else to add, how to fix it. “Ms. Blume,” he said.

Oh no. “What?” she answered.

“Are you alright?”

She forced a grin. “Totally!”

He nodded. His eyes stopped for a moment on Nina’s Pop-it, but then he returned to the matter at hand. “We need to find cohesion.” He interlaced his fingers and clenched them together. “As a team.”