“Huh? Oh, nothing.” He paused. His scarf was gone, and Sofia hadn’t said a thing about his birthmark—maybe he could actually survive without . . . no. He had an extra one at home, and deep down, Tick knew it would be around his neck when he returned to school.

“Tick,” Sofia said, staring up at him, “did your brain freeze?”

“No, no . . . it’s just . . . never mind.” He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it—the winner gets to visit the house of the loser next summer. But, uh, you have to pay for it either way because you’re rich.”

“Wow, what a deal.”

“I’ll be back in a sec with the stuff.”

A couple of minutes later, pencils in hand, the race began.

~

Just as he’d done with the first clue, Tick jotted down the phrases from the sixth clue that seemed to go together logically. Once he’d done that, he assigned letters to them to indicate the order they should be calculated. It seemed easy now that he’d gone through the process before.

The biggest problem was determining which midnight the clue referred to—the one that began the day of May sixth or the one at the end of it? Then he realized whatever time he ended up with probably wouldn’t be midnight, so it really didn’t matter.

He nervously glanced over at Sofia, who was doing a lot more thinking than writing, tapping her pencil against her forehead, staring at the clue.

I’m way ahead of her, he thought, then continued his scribbles.

A couple of minutes later, the page in his journal looked like this:

Beginning Time: Midnight.

A. six-hour mark before midnight = 6:00 p.m.

B. quarter hour following A = 6:15 p.m.

C. seventeen minutes past B = 6:32 p.m.

D. C plus 166 minutes = 9:18 p.m.

E. D minus 7 quarter hours = 7:33 p.m.

F. E plus a minute times 7 = 7:40 p.m.

G. F rounded to nearest half-hour = 7:30 p.m.

H. –G plus three half-hours = 9:00 p.m. on May 6

“Bingo!” he yelled, turning to say his time out loud. His words died somewhere in his throat when he saw Sofia looking at him with a smirk, holding up her paper with the answer scrawled across it:

9:00 p.m.

“Dang,” Tick muttered. “But you didn’t even take notes or anything!”

“I’ve got brains—I don’t need notes.”

Tick folded his arms. “I take it back—you’re not a woman. You’re a girl. And I hate spaghetti.”

“I believe Americans call this a . . . sore loser, right?”

“Something like that.”

Sofia put her hands behind her head and looked up at the ceiling, letting out a big sigh, relishing her win. “I can’t wait to visit your little house in Washington. Will your mother make me a hot dog?”

Tick snapped up the sixth clue from the table and stood up. “If you’re lucky. And what makes you think our house is little, rich girl?”