Across the room, Cyrus shouted. “Done!” he said. “Is it okay if Charlene practices on my hair, Ms. Early? I was very thorough with my math work.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Ms. Early. “As long as Charlene has done a good job on her math as well?”

“I sure have!” said Charlene, showing Ms. Early her work. And so it was that after a few minutes, Charlene had lengthened and molded Cyrus’s hair into a pony head, complete with flaring nostrils, to match the Pony dance.

“Wow!”

“Looks amazing!”

“Just like a real pony!” said the students in Room 11, craning their necks.

“It does,” said Ms. Early. “Wonderful job, Charlene. Now, everyone get back to your math. It’s almost time to pack up for the buses.”

Smashie’s mouth fell open. She had an idea. One that might break the code wide open. Her idea had not been inspired by Charlene’s beautiful work. No.

It was inspired by math.

Smashie reached the bus before Dontel and saved him a seat. They didn’t even say hello before they took out their Investigation Notebooks.

“Dontel,” Smashie whisper-shouted, “I think I have cracked the code!”

“Spill it, Smash! What’s the new code?”

“That’s just it!” cried Smashie. “It isn’t a new code!”

“What?” said Dontel incredulously. “Smashie, I thought we already determined that AEBE was not a word.”

Smashie shook her head. “Get out your math work,” she demanded.

“We’re done with that! I want to do this!”

“Believe me,” said Smashie. “They go together.” And they both took out the math sheets they had worked on in class.

“Our problem is that we were looking at the digits of each number,” said Smashie. “But we should have been looking at how we can build the numbers in different ways.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at the first code,” said Smashie, “26 99 77. We took each digit separately, but what we should have done was think about what they mean in the number! It’s how many tens and ones can fit in the number, not just the digits!”

Dontel furrowed his brow. “But doesn’t that amount to the same thing?” he asked. “You still wind up with BIG FIG.”

“For that one, you do,” said Smashie. She took out her pencil. “But not for the third Joyce jar!”

“Sure you do,” said Dontel. “If you go by the number of hundreds, tens, and ones, because there are three-digit numbers in there.”

“No,” said Smashie. “That’s just what I mean! We still need to look at the numbers just in terms of how many tens and ones we can use to make it! NOT using the hundreds! Look at the numbers of the code.”

“Now think about what we’ve been doing in math! How many tens can fit in 212?”

“Ohhhh!” breathed Dontel. “I get it! You could see it as 2 hundreds and 1 ten and 2 ones —”

“Or you could see it as 21 tens and 2 ones!”

“Smashie! You’ve got it!”

“I know! Once I remembered how every hundred is 10 tens, I realized all the hundreds numbers could be thought of as being made up of tens, too! Just like Ms. Early has been helping us learn!”

“So the code is really . . .” Dontel scribbled furiously.

“Yes!” said Smashie. “And now we can match it up to the alphabet numbers.” And they did. Horizontally, it spelled

But vertically, it was

“UGLY BEEF!” they cried in unison. They slapped each other’s hands with their hands.

“But what the heck is ugly beef?” said Smashie.

“I don’t know,” said Dontel. “But I’m sure we can figure it out. What could it be? A bad-looking hamburger?”

“Or a misshapen pot roast?”

“And where do we even find gross-looking meat?”

Smashie thought. “Do you think we should go back to the TrueYum and look in the meat department?” she asked. “I don’t think I can get my mom to go shopping again when Grammy just did the shopping yesterday.”

Dontel stared at her. And then he laughed. He laughed so hard Smashie grew quite annoyed.

“I didn’t know the idea of my grammy shopping was so funny,” she said.

Dontel stopped. “No,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I just figured out the UGLY BEEF!”

“What?”

Dontel finally stopped laughing, but his voice was still tinged with merriment. “Smashie,” he said, “the BIG FIG referred to a sign, right?”

“Yep,” said Smashie. “The TrueYum.”

“Well, this one does, too, I think.” And he dissolved in giggles again.

“Where the heck is there a sign of a bad-looking steak in our town?” Smashie demanded.

“You have to stretch the meaning of UGLY BEEF just a little,” said Dontel. “Like, where does beef come from?”

“Cows,” said Smashie. “Oh! Cows!”

“Exactly!” cried Dontel. “The Dairy Delight! That terrible-looking cow on the sign!”

“Oh, but I don’t think that’s quite fair of the code maker,” said Smashie. “That poor cow looks more weird than ugly.”

“I think weird would have been harder to work into the code,” Dontel pointed out. “The way they do the code, both words have to have the same number of letters.”

“Well, I feel bad for that cow,” said Smashie. “The poor thing can’t help how she was painted.”

“Sad or not,” said Dontel firmly, “we have to get over there as soon as we can. Maybe this time we can get there before the code receiver does! We can crack the mystery wide open!” His shoulders sagged. “But how can we get to the Dairy Delight? All these places are too far for us to go to alone!”

“I have an idea,” said Smashie. “Get permission to come over to my house and come as soon as you can.”