The Football Fiasco

by Mike Lupica

  “And what did I get from you, Grandpa?” Zoe asked.

  “You got your own blazing speed,” Grandpa Richie replied.

  “And what did they get from me?” Zach and Zoe’s dad asked.

  Grandpa Richie scratched his head, as if trying to come up with something. “Can I get back to you on that one?” They all laughed.

  At the dinner table, Zach and Zoe filled their dad and Grandpa Richie in on what happened to their football.

  “You’ll figure it out,” their dad said finally.

  Zoe met his eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because once the two of you are on a case, you always figure things out eventually,” he said.

  “You’re right about that,” Zoe said. “We never give up.”

  “Never!” Zach echoed.

  “Wait, I’ve got it!” Grandpa Richie said, snapping his finger. “I finally figured out something they got from you, Danny— their determination!”

  “And what did they get from me?” asked Tess.

  Grandpa Richie didn’t hesitate.

  “Their great minds,” he said.

  They all laughed again. It didn’t take a great mind to know how much fun it was being a part of this family.

  FOUR

  Mateo brought his own junior-sized football to school on Tuesday, as promised. But it didn’t matter, because it rained all morning. Outdoor recess was canceled, and so was their game.

  But Zach and Zoe weren’t giving up on solving “the football fiasco,” as they called it. They had a problem on their hands, and they loved solving problems. They got to challenge their brains the way they challenged themselves in sports.

  “Mysteries are like taking tests,” Zoe said to Zach.

  “Just more difficult sometimes,” said Zach.

  “Hey,” said Zoe, “where would the challenge be if it were easy?”

  Before they walked into the cafeteria for lunch, Zach and Zoe asked Ms. Moriarty if they could take another look in the storage room.

  “Wait, don’t tell me,” she said, grinning. “You two are looking for something you might have missed.”

  “How did you know?” Zoe asked.

  “Just had a hunch,” Ms. Moriarty said, winking at Zoe. Then she wished them luck finding any clues.

  Once inside the storage room, Zach and Zoe headed over to the wire bin filled with balls. At the top sat their deflated Junior Touchdown football. Zach picked it up and shook his head sadly. Mr. Parker said there might be a way to patch up the ball and save it without the school having to order a new one, which could take a week or more to arrive. But that wasn’t doing them any good right now.

  Zach and Zoe tipped over the bin and the other balls came tumbling out, along with something else. . . .

  A pair of eyeglasses.

  Zoe picked up the glasses and showed them to Zach. “A clue!”

  “Can you tell if they might belong to a grown-up or somebody our age?” Zach asked.

  “I hate to say it,” Zoe said, “but they look a lot like Lily’s.”

  “And remember, she’s still on our list of suspects,” said Zach. “Lily isn’t shy about how she feels about our old ball.”

  “Do you think she could have put a hole in our football? Maybe her glasses were hanging in her shirt, and they fell out when she bent over to put the ball back in the bin,” Zoe said.

  “Remember the time she broke her glasses playing in our football game?” Zach said. “She said her mom always made her bring a backup pair and keep them in her cubby.”

  They still didn’t want to believe that Lily would put a hole in their football. But to prove she hadn’t, they knew they were going to have to find out if she was missing a pair of eyeglasses.

  “It’s like we added another mystery to our mystery!” Zoe said. “This one is about a missing pair of glasses.”

  Zach laughed. “How many mysteries do we have to solve this week?”

  They had to admit the glasses might not be a clue at all. Or they might be the best clue they had. After lunch, they returned to their classroom and noticed Lily was wearing her glasses. And they did look a lot like the ones they’d found.

  Zoe turned the glasses in to Ms. Moriarty, who asked the class if anybody was missing a pair. Zach and Zoe looked around. They paid close attention to Lily, in case she raised her hand. They also noticed Jimmy in the back row, wearing his glasses. But all of their classmates only shook their heads or said no.

  When class ended for the day, Ms. Moriarty asked Zach and Zoe if they’d had any luck solving the mystery of their deflated football. They told her they thought the glasses would be a clue, but no one in their class was missing a pair.

  “But somebody in the school might be,” Ms. Moriarty said. “I’ll ask around. Think of me as an assistant detective.”

  “We can use all the help we can get!” Zach said.

  Zoe nodded. “We have to figure this out before Thanksgiving break.”

  “Even if we only have one more day,” Zach reminded her.

  Zoe turned to her brother and gave him a high five, just without the jump this time. They hadn’t won anything yet.

  “Plenty of time,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  “She’s not only determined,” her brother said to Ms. Moriarty. “She’s pretty confident.”

  Ms. Moriarty smiled.

  “I’ve sort of picked up on that by now,” she said. “With both of you.”

  FIVE

  The next day was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving.

  As soon as Zach and Zoe got to school, they put up a note about the missing glasses on the bulletin board in the lobby. It said anyone who lost a pair should see Ms. Moriarty to retrieve them. Zach and Zoe weren’t giving up on the glasses being a clue just yet. Partly because they never gave up, but also because they knew it could still lead to something.

  Even though the school was letting them out early that afternoon for the holiday, there was still time for recess. Mateo brought his own ball to school again. As soon as the bell rang, they were on their way outside to have a football game.

  It was a really good game. This time Jimmy decided not to play, and went over to the jungle gym instead. But Zach and Zoe were more excited than ever, because the Turkey Bowl was tomorrow, and this was their last practice. Their classmates even let them play on the same team.

  On the last play of the game, Zoe played quarterback. She was excited to have the practice in case she got to play quarterback in the Turkey Bowl.

  “You’ve always got to have your arm ready,” Zach said to his sister.

  “Oh, it’s ready all right,” she said, just before she threw him the long pass that won the game for their team.

  When they got back inside, they realized the game had ended early today. So Zoe asked Ms. Moriarty if she could take one more look around the storage room. She was still convinced that the answers she was looking for were in there somewhere.

  And she had been promising Zach, and promising herself, that she was going to solve the mystery before the end of the school day. Now, with recess over, she was running out of time.

  Ms. Moriarty opened the door to the storage room, and Zoe spotted the deflated ball where she had left it at the top of the pile. She picked it up and studied the place near the laces where Zach had discovered the hole. Zoe put her hand on the laces, smiling, remembering the feeling that she’d gotten when she threw the winning touchdown pass just moments ago.

  Her dad was right. Part of the magic of sports was the memories. Sometimes just holding a football in your hand could make a good memory come flooding back. It was as if the play or the game you were remembering happened all over again.

  Now Zoe stared at the ball, hard, and spoke to it in the empty room.

  “Come on,” she said softly. “How abo
ut a little help here?”

  She was about to toss it back into the bin when she noticed something she hadn’t before:

  A small streak of green ink, just visible underneath the laces, and near the small hole in the ball.

  She wasn’t sure what it meant. But she was convinced it had to mean something. Maybe somebody put the hole in the ball with a green pen.

  Normally she didn’t think it was possible for the tip of a ballpoint pen to put a hole in a football. But when she felt how soft the rubber of their old football was, she believed it was more than possible with this ball. That was why she was sure the green ink was her best clue yet, even better than the pair of glasses she found with Zach.

  She ran out of the storage room as fast as she would run down the field trying to win the Turkey Bowl.

  SIX

  As soon as Zoe found Zach in the hallway, she told him about the green ink on the football.

  Zach grinned.

  “You found a clue without me,” he said, more impressed than disappointed. “And that’s making me green with envy!”

  “Be serious,” she said.

  Zach grinned. “Can’t I be funny and serious at the same time?”

  “What’s not going to be funny,” Zoe said, “is trying to see who uses green ink before it’s time to go home.”

  “But someone in another class could be using green ink, too,” Zach said.

  “I thought of that,” Zoe said. “But to get to the end of the mystery, we have to start somewhere.”

  She turned to walk back into their classroom, but Zach stopped her.

  “What are we going to do if someone is using green ink?” he asked, concerned.

  “I don’t know,” Zoe said. “Sometimes, as much as I want to find out what happened, I’m afraid to find out what happened. Especially if one of our friends put the hole in the ball.”

  “Well,” Zach said, “you know what Mom says. If you keep putting one foot in front of another, you’ll never get ahead of yourself.”

  “Exactly,” Zoe agreed.

  All the kids in class were seated at their desks. Zach and Zoe were in the front row. Mateo and Malik and Lily and Kari were behind them. Jimmy was in the back row next to Brian Koppelman.

  Zoe thought it was almost as if Jimmy got picked last when the desks were assigned.

  Their last assignment before Thanksgiving was to write down the things they were most grateful for this year. Ms. Moriarty handed out note cards and said she wanted everyone to write about what they had in their lives that mattered to them most.

  “Thinking about these things and writing them down will get us all into the spirit of giving thanks,” she said.

  Zoe quickly scribbled down her list. She knew exactly what she was thankful for: her family, her friends, her health, her teachers, and her love of a good mystery.

  Ms. Moriarty gave the class permission to talk among themselves while writing. She even encouraged them to share their ideas if one of them was struggling. Zach’s list was the same as Zoe’s, except he had left out the part about mysteries and put down “sports” instead.

  “Let’s see if we can solve the mystery right now,” Zoe whispered.

  “One written in green ink,” Zach whispered back.

  Ms. Moriarty announced it was almost time to collect the note cards. She wasn’t going to grade them, she said. She wanted all the kids in class to show their parents what they’d written. But she wanted to read them before they left school today. It gave Zoe a great idea: She asked Ms. Moriarty if she could collect all the cards. That way she could see what color pens all of her classmates had used.

  “That would be very helpful, Zoe. Thank you,” said Ms. Moriarty.

  Zoe got up from her seat and began making her way through the rows of desks.

  She noticed Malik and Mateo had both used pens with blue ink. Lily, who loved being colorful, had used purple. Kari used orange.

  There was only one person in the whole class using a green pen:

  Jimmy Evans, in the back row.

  But Zoe knew not to get ahead of herself. Just because a pen is green on the outside doesn’t mean it writes in green ink.

  Zoe picked up his card, not looking to see what he’d written, only peeking to check if it was written in green ink. Sure enough, it was. It didn’t mean Jimmy had the only green pen in the whole school. But he did have the only one in their class.

  As Zoe came back up the aisle, she made eye contact with her brother and nodded.

  They both knew that just because Jimmy was the only one writing with green ink didn’t mean he had put the hole in the ball. Zoe made sure to continue putting one foot in front of another and not get ahead of herself.

  But sometimes the only way to find the right answer was to ask the right question.

  SEVEN

  Zoe brought the stack of cards up to Ms. Moriarty, who began reading them to herself. She told the class they could talk quietly while she read.

  “What are we going to do?” Zach whispered to his sister.

  Zoe looked over at Jimmy. “We have to at least ask if he knows anything,” she said.

  “But what if we’re wrong?”

  Zoe shrugged. “Then we’ll know to cross Jimmy off our list of suspects and keep looking for clues. We still don’t know who the glasses belong to.”

  “It’s a mystery,” Zach said, and winked at Zoe.

  A few minutes later, the bell sounded. All the kids got up to gather their stuff. Ms. Moriarty stood by the door, handing cards back to each student as they left. Jimmy was one of the last kids in the classroom, putting things away in his cubby. He threw on his jacket and grabbed his backpack. By the time he finished, the only people left in the classroom were Zach, Zoe, Jimmy, and Ms. Moriarty.

  Zach and Zoe walked over to Jimmy.

  “Hi, Jimmy,” Zoe said.

  “Hi,” he said back.

  “You know,” Zach said, “we’re still trying to solve the mystery of how the hole ended up in that old football.”

  Zoe thought Jimmy looked nervous all of a sudden, but wasn’t sure. The way she still wasn’t sure he’d put the hole in the ball. Maybe Jimmy was just a nervous kid.

  “Any luck?” Jimmy asked.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I thought I did have a piece of luck today,” she said. “There was a pen mark on the ball that I hadn’t noticed before.”

  She made sure not to say that it had been green ink. She didn’t want to accuse him of something he hadn’t done. That would be much worse than putting a small hole in a football.

  “But does just finding ink help you find out how the hole got in the ball?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not necessarily,” Zoe said. “But it might.”

  “You know what?” Zach said. “The person who did it might not even know they did it.”

  Suddenly, though, Jimmy was looking everywhere in the room except at Zach and Zoe. He looked even more nervous than he did that day when Zoe had thrown him the ball.

  Now he looked as if he was trying as hard as he could not to look at Zoe, or Zach.

  “It’s green ink, isn’t it?” Jimmy said finally.

  Zoe told him that it was.

  “I never meant to put a hole in the ball,” Jimmy said in a quiet voice, head down.

  “And we don’t even care that you did,” Zoe said. “An old football will never be more important to us than a friend.”

  “I’m your friend?” he said, looking up now.

  “Of course you are,” said Zoe.

  And the best time to be a friend, Zach and Zoe’s parents had always taught them, was when somebody needed one most. They could tell Jimmy Evans needed a couple right now.

  Zach and Zoe could see Ms. Moriarty watching them from her desk. They knew she could probably hear what was happening in
the back of the room. But the Walker twins also knew that although Ms. Moriarty was their teacher, she believed the best way for them to learn was to find the right answers on their own.

  Jimmy said, “I just finally got mad at always being picked last. It’s why I went to the jungle gym today. I didn’t want to get picked last again.”

  Zoe was the one who spoke first, beating Zach to it.

  “And you know what?” she said. “My brother and I should have done something about you being picked last all the time.”

  She wanted to take the pressure off Jimmy and put it on Zach and herself. Zach obviously wanted to do the same thing.

  “We should have been more sensitive about that,” Zach said.

  “You don’t have to say that,” Jimmy said, looking down.

  “Forget about saying something,” Zoe said. “We should have done something.”

  There was still time before they had to get on their buses. Jimmy sat back down at his desk. Zach and Zoe sat down at desks on either side of him.

  “Nobody ever seems to want me on their team,” Jimmy said. “No one ever wants to throw me the ball, because they’re afraid I’ll drop it.”

  “I threw you the ball,” Zoe said.

  Jimmy managed a small smile. “And I dropped it!” he said. “I really like playing football. I’m just not very good at it.”

  “You can get better,” Zoe said. “You just have to practice more.”

  “You guys have each other to practice with,” Jimmy said. “I don’t have anybody right now.”

  “What about your parents?” Zach asked.

  “Oh, my dad would throw a ball around with me if he were here,” Jimmy said. “But he’s in the army, fighting all the way over on the other side of the world. And with him gone, my mom never has any time.”

  Jimmy Evans had never mentioned that his dad was in the army until now. There were lots of things about him Zach and Zoe didn’t know, and wished they’d found out.