Stealing the Game Page 16

  “Me neither. Although in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies the guy’s dad was a part of that ghost ship. Remember that scene where he just peeled away from the hull? Yuck.”

  I didn’t say anything to that.

  Theo changed topics. “Dude, you gotta let me in on this garage thing. I’ve got a reputation to uphold as a detective, you know. Does it have something to do with Officer Crane questioning you?”

  “Text me the info as soon as you can, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  “I’m on the case,” Theo said, and took off. He was so tall that it looked like his head was a balloon floating above the rest of the students on their way to the cafeteria.

  I hurried down the hall toward my locker. It was lunch and I wanted to use this time to talk to everyone about playing the Undertakers after school.

  Just as I’d shoved my backpack into the locker, I felt a tug on my shirt. When I turned around, Brooke was standing there. She handed me a folded piece of paper. I looked at it. An address.

  “Come to my house at six. We’ll watch Mr. Laubaugh’s stupid French movie.”

  I was too surprised to say anything.

  “This whole Strong, Silent Cowboy doesn’t really work for me, you know.”

  “It doesn’t work for me either,” I said.

  She laughed. “See? You’re funny when you want to be.”

  I tried to think of something funny to say. Couldn’t. Not so funny after all.

  “What did the cops want? Did you continue your shoplifting spree after you left yesterday?” Her voice was joking, but her eyes looked concerned.

  I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Just wanted to know about my brother.”

  “Is he in trouble?”

  “Nope.”

  She stared at me like she was X-raying my skull, probing my brain for the truth.

  “Why were you so quiet in class?” I asked her, to break her stare.

  “Quiet? Did you not notice my brilliant lecture on green oranges?”

  “Yes, brilliant. But you weren’t your usual Cruella self. Not one sarcastic snort.”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe it was hanging out with you yesterday. Some of that quietude rubbed off.”

  This time I laughed. “You can be funny when you want to.”

  “So, you coming over?” she asked.

  “I’ll have to ask my parents.”

  “You’ll figure a way.” She started to walk away. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  “What?” I called after her.

  She didn’t turn around. “You’ll see tonight. If your parents let you.”

  She snorted sarcastically.

  BLINDFOLD BASKETBALL

  “YOU boys wearing blindfolds don’t move until I call your name,” Coach Mandrake said.

  Yeah, you heard right. Blindfolds!

  “When I do call your name, slowly walk straight forward. And I mean walk, don’t run. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  I was one of the kids wearing a blindfold. One of the guys he didn’t want getting hurt. That was my sentiment, too.

  “Coach, have you been watching Bruce Lee movies again?” Juvy asked. I couldn’t see him, but he was standing somewhere to the left of me.

  “Yeah,” Sami said. “You’re getting all Zen kung-fu-y on us.”

  A few boys chuckled.

  Coach scoffed. “This is a little drill I designed to help you guys pass the ball better. Last couple games there were a lot of bad passes that caused unforced turnovers. Weston, no more behind-the-back passes. Most of them go out-of-bounds anyway.”

  “But I look so cool as they do, Coach,” Weston joked.

  I could tell by the silence that Coach was giving Weston the Frozen Stare. Those on the receiving end usually just stood perfectly still, afraid to move. Even jokester Weston knew better than to wisecrack during the Frozen Stare.

  Coach continued: “Sami, use a bounce pass on the pick-and-roll unless you have a clear opening for a bullet pass. Thomas, don’t just toss the ball in the general vicinity of the player, pass it right to his chest. That way he can drive or shoot. If he has to chase it or bend down for it, the defense has time to get into position. Got it?”

  “Got it,” we all said.

  “GOT IT?” Coach shouted.

  “GOT IT!” we shouted back.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. When I call your name, one of you boys in the blindfolded line will walk forward, dribbling the ball. On either side of you, scattered around the court, will be your teammates. One of them will shout ‘Ball!’ and you will immediately pass the ball to them. Got it?”

  “I don’t got it, Coach,” Roger said. He was standing in front of me, also blindfolded. We were the only two in the blindfolded line. “I’m just supposed to guess where the player is?”

  “Not guess. Listen. When you hear his voice, imagine where on the court he’s standing, and fire a chest pass to him. GOT IT?”

  “So, like Marco Polo, but with a ball,” Sami said.

  Coach’s sigh was as loud as a steam locomotive. “Yes, Sami. Like Marco Polo. GOT IT?”

  “GOT IT!” we responded.

  “Roger, go!” Coach said.

  I could hear Roger slowly dribbling as he walked forward. Suddenly from the left, Juvy hollered, “Ball!”

  Roger hesitated.

  “Pass the ball!” Coach said.

  The next things I heard were a ball bouncing away and everyone laughing.

  “Better get your hearing checked,” Juvy said. “That missed me by about five feet.”

  “Not bad for your first time, Roger,” Coach said. “Let’s see how the rest of you do before you start making fun of anyone.”

  My pass went two feet to the right of Three and a foot over his head.

  Everyone messed up pretty badly their first time blindfolded, but after an hour, we were all getting the ball on target or very close.

  “Hey, Coach,” Weston said, “if you want to really make this interesting, we need to add a danger factor, like fire or razor blades.”

  We ended the practice with a scrimmage, and by then everyone was passing the ball with amazing speed and accuracy.

  When practice was over, we were all pretty excited about our new skill. It got me thinking about how good it felt to pass the ball and trust that my teammate would be there to catch it. That’s what I’d been doing my whole life with Jax, trusting that he’d be there, while he trusted that I would be there. Blind faith.

  When we got into the locker room Roger buzzkilled the excitement when he said, “Man, I don’t know about going up against those Undertaker dudes today.”

  “You told me at lunch that you would, Roger,” I said, trying not to sound desperate. “Everyone else is playing.”

  “You can get someone else. Maybe Theo.”

  “I’ll play,” Juvy volunteered.

  “I appreciate that, Juvy,” I said, “but it’s got to be the same team.”

  Roger shrugged. “The same team that got shoved around by those bigger, older kids? The ones who gave you a shiner and a busted nose?”

  “Payback time!” Juvy piped in. He wasn’t helping.

  “It’s good practice for high school,” Tom said. “We’re going to face a lot of bigger kids then. They’re bringing them over from Africa and China. Seven-foot giants that will make it hard for us to get on a college team.”

  “I don’t care,” Roger said. “I’m never going to make a college team anyway.” It was the first time he’d ever said that, even though it was probably true. His body was built more for football than basketball, except he loved basketball and only tolerated football.

  “Probably none of us will play for a college team,” I said. “But who cares? We’re playing now and we love it now.”

  That was my Big Inspirational Locker Room Speech. No one looked inspired.

  “We can beat them, Roger,” I said. “We almost beat them yesterday.”

  “U
ntil they broke your nose, dude.”

  “It wasn’t broken. It was just…bloody.” That sounded lame, even to me.

  Roger didn’t say anything. He just took his school clothes from his locker and started stuffing them into his backpack. That meant he wasn’t changing, which meant he was going to the park to play with us.

  “So,” he said, slinging his backpack over one shoulder as we walked out, “what’s up with the cops interrogating you today? I heard you’d murdered someone and ate their cat.”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  REMATCH OF VENGEANCE!

  “I’VE got a plan,” I said.

  Rain, Gee, Roger, and Tom looked skeptical.

  “Seriously,” I said.

  Their expressions didn’t change.

  Before practice today I’d stopped in the coach’s office for advice. “Coach, how do you beat a team that’s bigger and stronger than you?”

  “Are their skills just as good?” he’d asked.

  I’d nodded.

  “Easy answer. You don’t beat them.”

  He’d been standing at his desk, rummaging through a mess of papers, looking for something. He returned to his rummaging. Conversation over.

  “But underdogs win all the time,” I’d continued. “How many times in the NBA have we seen one of the worst teams beat one of the best? And in tennis, guys ranked in the hundreds are always knocking off top seeds. And some nobody boxer knocks out the champ.”

  “Sure, Chris, it happens. But not often. That’s why it makes news when it does happen.”

  “Okay, but how do you make that happen?”

  Coach Mandrake stopped rummaging, looked at me, and tugged his goatee. “The rule of sports is simple: no matter how good you are, if there’s somebody with the same skills but who’s bigger, the bigger guy will almost always win.”

  “Almost always,” I’d repeated. “How do you make the ‘almost always’ happen?”

  He’d raked his fingers through the goatee like a farmer preparing the soil for planting. “Trickery,” he’d said.

  “Trickery?” Gee said when I told them about my meeting with Coach. “Is that even a word?”

  “Like what?” Rain asked. “Did he offer anything specific?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But I came up with a few ideas that might give us an edge.”

  When I explained them, Roger slapped me on the back. “Dude, I never knew you were so devious.”

  I thought back to yesterday with Brooke. You’re a lot more devious than I would have expected, Chris Richards. And that was before my night of crime.

  I just nodded. If they only knew.

  Fifteen minutes later Rand (a.k.a. Fauxhawk) and the Gold Coasters (a.k.a. Undertakers) arrived. Predictably, Fauxhawk had his hair spiked straight up into a frozen blond wave. He wore a black hoodie with a big A on the chest like Superman’s S. The A was outlined in blue with red in the middle. I could think of at least one R-rated word the A might stand for in his case.

  “Hey, kid!” Fauxhawk barked as he approached the court. “Where the hell’s your retarded brother?”

  I shrugged. What was it about that A on his chest that kept nagging at me?

  He looked around the park, then back to the parking lot. His focus was on Jax showing up with the goods, not on the game. Especially since there was no bet. To him, the game was only a cover for their exchange.

  But we were playing to win. I figured the Undertakers felt the same way.

  “How’s the nose, kid?” Masterson asked with a smirk. “Mommy kiss and make it better?”

  “You going to forfeit again?” Danforth asked. “Why not do it now and save your friends the humiliation?”

  I said nothing, so he shrugged and hurried off with his team to stretch.

  They looked even bigger today.

  Fauxhawk didn’t bother huddling with his team or giving them any coaching advice. He paced on the sidelines, looking around nervously.

  The rest of my team was on the court warming up their shots. I just stood there studying the A on his hoodie, trying to dig through my brain to uncover the voice that was trying to tell me something. Before I could find the voice, my cell phone buzzed. I went over to the grass and pulled it from my hoodie pocket.

  “I got the info you wanted,” Theo said. “It was all public record, so it wasn’t much of a challenge.” He sounded disappointed.

  “How old are the children in each of the victim families?”

  I could hear the rusting of paper as he looked through the documents.

  “Varies,” he said. “They’ve got kids of all ages.”

  “Right; what I meant was, do they all have children under the age of ten?”

  More rustling. “Yes! How’d you know?”

  “I think I figured out how the garage robberies are done. And who’s been doing them.”

  “Tell me!” he said excitedly.

  “Later,” I said. “I need one more thing from you.”

  “Dude, I’m not your sidekick. Need I remind you that I’m a detective, too?”

  “I know, I know. You’re the guy who inspired me to figure it out. Besides, I’m not really a detective. I just stumbled on this whole mess while trying to figure out what was going on with my brother.”

  Theo sighed. “Okay, last favor.”

  I told him what I needed.

  “That’s a lot of phone calls, Chris.”

  “Use your charm,” I said.

  He laughed. “It’ll take me an hour. If I use my charm, it’ll take two hours.”

  “Cancel that order of charm,” I said.

  He said he’d text me the results.

  “Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.” I hung up feeling a little guilty that I couldn’t tell Theo everything I’d figured out. About Jax’s real story. About the garage burglaries. About everything. Not yet. Not until I was certain.

  I tapped in Jax’s number and sent him a text: I know everything.

  I waited. No response.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe everything I thought I’d figured out was the equivalent of a three-point air ball.

  I texted again: Wait until after our game.

  Again, I waited. Again, no response.

  “Dude,” Roger called. “You gonna warm up, or what?”

  “Be right there,” I said.

  I stared at my phone. Come on, Jax. I know you got my texts. I know you know what I meant. Right?

  I was about to text again when Jax finally answered: You have 15 mins.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Masterson said, leading his team onto the court. “I’ve got more important things to do with my life than step on ants all day.”

  A couple of his teammates chuckled.

  We didn’t respond. We weren’t there to trade insults; we were there to beat them. Right now I had to forget about Jax and Fauxhawk and Stanford and Brooke and my parents and the police and what everyone expected from me.

  Right now, I just wanted to win.

  REVENGE BALL

  FOR some reason, as I walked onto the court, I thought, What color is an orange? If you asked an orange, it would probably say, “Who cares?” It’s like asking me what is my passion? I have lots of passions: basketball, comics, Mr. L’s class. Why do I have to put a name to it, call it a color?

  “Shoot for outs?” I challenged Masterson, tossing him the ball.

  He dribbled it a couple times. “Kinda bouncy,” he said.

  It was. We’d deliberately pumped it up before they got here so it was a little overinflated. An inflated ball would bounce farther away from the rim in a missed shot, neutralizing the height advantage the Undertakers had under the basket. While they were crashing the boards for rebounds, missed shots would be bouncing back into our hands.

  He dribbled the ball again, frowning at it.

  “Look, it’s the same ball we played with yesterday,” Rain said. “But if you want your own ball, that’s fine with us. We want you to have e
very advantage you can.”

  Masterson glared at Rain, then snorted. He went to the top of the key and shot for outs. He drained the shot. He looked at Rain. “We don’t need any advantages.”

  “You want ball or basket?” I said.

  They could choose to have the ball first or they could choose which basket they wanted to shoot at. This was also part of my strategy. At this time of day, the sun shone at an angle so that on the near court, the sun would be in your eyes while shooting. But if you chose the far court, the sun would be in your eyes while defending your basket. I knew he would choose not to shoot into the sun, because that’s what almost everyone picked. Most players focused on their shooting, because making baskets is what made them feel good.

  However, because they had the height advantage, we knew they would be shooting most of their shots close to the basket, so the sun wouldn’t be a major factor. But on defense, when we were snapping passes around, they’d be staring into the sun, giving us a fraction of a second to shoot before they got into defensive position.

  “We’ll take basket,” Masterson said.

  I grinned. I really was devious.

  “We’ll take that basket,” he said, pointing to the one we didn’t want him to take.

  Uh-oh.

  I looked at the rest of the team. Roger sighed heavily, as if we’d already lost. Gee shrugged as if he’d expected things to go wrong, as they always did when he had to go up against a bunch of rich Newport Beach kids. Tom showed no emotion. He just wanted to play, win or lose.

  Rain laughed.

  Then she ran around high-fiving us. “Yes!” she said.

  Maybe she’d misunderstood the plan. Maybe she was going a little crazy.

  “Ball,” I said to Masterson. He passed it hard at my chest. I caught it without expression, as if a butterfly had just wandered into my hands, but the force had slightly jammed my index finger. The knuckle ached.

  I stepped out-of-bounds next to the hoop pole to pass the ball in. Gee waited for the pass.

  “Wrong side, loser,” Masterson said, pointing to the other basket.

  “Wait a minute,” Roger said, “you chose this side.”

  “You can’t do that!” Rain snapped. “You already picked!”