The Missing Baseball by Mike Lupica

Author:Mike Lupica
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

“But you may have noticed that I have the ball,” Zach said, shifting the ball from one hand to the other.

Zoe laughed. “For now.”

Against most other players, it was Zach’s brain that gave him the edge. But that wasn’t the case with his sister. Sometimes it really did feel like she was thinking right along with him. Like she had this way of getting inside his brain anytime she wanted to.

But for once, he was one step ahead of her. Zach had a good idea what Zoe thought he was going to do—the crossover move, which was the first their dad had taught them. It was one of Zach’s favorite moves. With a crossover, you quickly switched the ball from one hand to the other while dribbling. It was a way of faking out your opponent. Zach had used the move plenty of times to drive right past Zoe in games like this one. She had done the same against him.

Tonight, though, he was going to use a double crossover, a move he’d been working on when Zoe wasn’t around. He planned to go from his right hand to his left and then back to his right.

And that’s exactly what he did. As soon as he dribbled the ball with his left hand, Zoe, who was expecting a normal crossover, jumped to her right to cut him off. Just as Zach had planned. When she did, Zach went back to his right hand. It gave him the opening he needed to drive past her for the layup that made the final score 7–6.

As soon as the ball came bouncing down onto the driveway, Zoe’s right hand shot up. Zach took a step toward her and put up his hand to mirror hers. It looked as if they were about to give each other a high five. And they were. But first, they spun completely around, bumped elbows and hips, and then came the leaping high five. Their mom said it was like a combination of a secret handshake and a touchdown dance in football. They always did it no matter who won the game.

“You out-thought me!” Zoe exclaimed.

“Wow!” Zach said. “That’s even better than winning the game.”

He tossed his sister the ball, and she went to put it back in the small equipment shed next to the garage. Inside the shed, there were basketballs and soccer balls, baseballs and bats, and floats for the pool in their backyard. There was even room for their tennis rackets. Their mom liked to call it the Walker family sporting goods store.

Zoe put the basketball in the bin with the other balls and closed the door to the shed.

But as she turned the key sticking out of the lock, one she’d never paid much attention to before, she noticed it looked a lot like the one she’d found outside their classroom window.

“Does this look familiar?” she said to Zach, showing him the key.

“It doesn’t just look familiar,” Zach said. “It looks like it might be another clue.

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