“Exactly, now if Daisy—”

“Delilah,” I correct again, laughing.

“If whoever has the second jar of strawberry jam but it’s filled with only half as much jam as the boysenberry, you tell me how we would figure that out.”

I think about it for a minute. “I’m not sure how to explain it, but I think I can draw it.”

He nods and says, “That’s fine; draw it instead.”

I compare the two jars and shade in half the amount in the second jar as I did in the first jar. “Is that it?” I ask.

“It is. Now we just have to turn that picture into a number for your answer.”

I divide up the second jar the same way we divided the first one, and as I look at the amount of strawberry I shaded in, I draw four more lines in between the others and count them silently from the bottom up: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. “One . . . eighth?”

“There, you got it, Sass!” Gramps shouts, and claps his hands together. “Go ahead and write that answer down. See, every problem has a solution; you just have to figure out how to figure it out.”

It isn’t so hard after all, at least not the way Gramps explains it, anyway. He holds his hand up for a high five, and I feel just a little bit proud of myself. I will have to remember to tell Mr. Patel about this—I think it will make him happy for me.

Now if only I could draw my way through the other problem: getting Dewey free.

Chapter 11

LAVA

JUDE: OPERATION EXPLOSION . . .

JUDE: Success!

I have six unread messages waiting for me. Jude attached three pictures of the volcano—before, during, and after the explosion—along with a video of the entire thing. I can tell her dad must be the one holding the phone that’s recording the video because it isn’t centered and keeps shaking. But I can still manage to see everything if I tilt my head.

Jude’s mountain is made of papier-mâché, and she’s painted it to look like a real mountain, with browns and green for grass toward the bottom, and white on the top for snow. There are even fake trees and a blue-painted river moat surrounding the base of the mountain. I can hear her muffled voice explaining as she pours water and drops of dish soap and red and orange food coloring into the top of the volcano, next adding spoonfuls of baking soda. Finally, she pauses and says that once she pours in the last ingredient (vinegar), it is going to set off a chemical reaction. She says something about carbon dioxide gas, but you can’t hear because that’s when the eruption begins, and it is bigger and foamier and bubblier than her practice volcanoes ever were.