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him. “Should we continue with the Sweet Magnolia Food Truck Race? Or should we end it right here? The producers made their decision. Now they want to hear from you.”
    There was only a moment before food truck drivers began yelling out their answers.
    Alex acknowledged a few of them after admitting that he couldn’t hear everyone at the same time. “Daryl Barbee from Grinch’s Ganache: what do you think we should do?”
    Daryl stood beside his wife, Sarah. He was a very short man with a large cowboy hat that seemed to swallow his head. “I think we should honor Reggie by continuing the race.”
    There was a loud round of applause following his words.
    Maybe I was uncharitable, but I was thinking—
He’s got cupcakes ready to go
.
    Alex held up his hand, and everyone got quiet again. He called on Bobbie Shields from Shut Up and Eat, a food truck that served loose meat sandwiches and the biggest pickles I’d ever seen.
    Bobbie was a large woman who liked wearing colorful Hawaiian dresses and dozens of bracelets. She shouted out her answer. “We should go on! Reggie wouldn’t want us to stop.”
    The applause was deafening on the street around me.
    I felt like I knew Reggie well enough to guess that he wouldn’t really care if the race went on or not. I’d pegged him as more the
if I’m not in it, it doesn’t matter
category. But I was probably being negative again.
    â€œAll right.” Alex smiled fabulously at all of us. “It’s time for the vote. Everyone who wants to continue, raise your hands.”
    It wasn’t even close. The only two food trucks that
didn’t
want to continue were Chooey’s Sooey, an Asian food vendor, and Stick It Here, the pot sticker and kebab food truck.
    Everyone else cheered when they saw their victory.
    I admit that I voted to continue. Maybe if Reggie and I had actually been friends, it would’ve been different. Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. If that made me a bad person, so be it.
    I was curious, too, as I looked at Alex’s dazzling smile. What was going on in
his
head? Did he feel like a bad person for arguing with Reggie before he’d died? And what had they been arguing about?
    Maybe Reggie didn’t like the interview Alex had done with him.
    The producers had moved the challenge to noon. That gave everyone time to prepare—even teams like ours who’d given away all their food. Miguel raced for his car. He’d already located a supermarket where he’d shopped last night. I was sending a list of what we needed to the email on his phone.
    Ollie, Delia, and I ran back to the food truck. Everyone around us was moving fast. Most had given away their food, as we had. That probably meant shopping and cooking for all of them. Anyone not out of their food truck at noon, and selling their primary food with sweet potatoes in it, would be disqualified.
    â€œI guess I was right staying behind.” Uncle Saul laughed and enjoyed his moment of foresight. He’d peeled and cut the rest of the sweet potatoes we hadn’t used. “Let’s get going.”
    I had never planned to have more than two or three people working inside the Biscuit Bowl at one time. It wasn’t really big enough for more than
one
person. Four people trying to bake, deep-fry, fill, and finish one hundred biscuits was almost too much.
    We managed somehow.
    Miguel got back with the supplies. We’d had enough sweet potatoes to get some cooked and mashed to add to the biscuits while he was gone. If I’d been at the diner, it would have been too early to get started. Because the camping oven was slower and smaller, it took right up until noon to get everything ready again.
    We’d decided to send Delia out to sell the biscuit bowls on the street. Lunch traffic had begun, with plenty of people on foot making their way to benches and restaurants where they would eat and spend time away