Fred joins other brilliant young people, and participates in Jane's Odyssey of the Mind event for part of the spring. There he meets one of his heroes, who is one of Jane's prized pupils, the brilliant but slightly bizarre "Mathemagician" Damon Wells, a whiz at math who wears a black cape wherever he goes. After Fred unintentionally upstages Damon at one of the competitions at Odyssey of the Mind, Damon is upset with Fred. Damon however warms up to Fred when out horseback riding on Jane's ranch, and is Fred's first insight to a world outside academia. Damon tells him, "it's not the size of a man's IQ that matters; it's how he uses it". Jane attempts to become more nurturing, but is unable to relate to Fred as anything other than a case study.