The Lacrosse Mix-Up
Page 3
He didn’t say what the “issue” was, but Zach could feel his heart start to beat more rapidly. Because C-12 was their classroom.
Zach ran the rest of the way down the hall and out to the field. He ran as hard as if practice had already started. It couldn’t be just a coincidence that Mr. Parker was talking about an “issue” in their classroom right as they were trying to solve one about Mateo’s damaged lacrosse stick.
Zach was nearly out of breath when he got to the field. But Zoe could see the excitement on his face. She figured Zach had news for her. Maybe another clue.
“I knew it!” she said. “You found something!”
“Well, I found something out,” Zach said, and told her about what he’d overheard from Mr. Parker’s office.
“Did you ask what he meant?” Zoe said.
“I didn’t want him to think I was sneaking around and listening to his private conversations,” Zach said. “Even though I kind of was.”
“So,” Zoe said, “is this another mystery, or is it part of ours?”
Before either of the Walker twins could answer that question, Ms. Moriarty told them it was time to stretch for practice. She was big on stretching before any kind of sports activity. Taking the time to stretch, she said, was the best way to protect your body from muscle pulls and other injuries.
As the twins ran out to the middle of the field to join their teammates, Zach said to Zoe, “I forgot to tell you something else.” Then he lowered his voice. “There were crumbs on the floor inside the closet.”
“Hmm. That could be anything,” she said, stretching her hamstring. “Maybe it was left over from snack time.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Zach agreed. Though he wasn’t quite sure.
“Okay, everyone!” Ms. Moriarty called. “Come and grab your sticks.”
Zach and Zoe had brought their sticks from home, so they played catch while the others ran to the equipment bag.
Practice was only just beginning, but Zach and Zoe felt as if they’d already accomplished a lot. In one afternoon, they had two new clues, and two good ones:
Mr. Parker’s call.
And the crumbs.
“You really think the crumbs have something to do with it?” Zoe asked.
“I do,” said Zach. Then he smiled. “Twin clues today.”
“Like us!” she said.
SEVEN
They could tell how much fun Ms. Moriarty was having teaching lacrosse, especially to third-graders who’d never played before. It was as if she was experiencing everything she loved about the sport all over again.
So today they worked more on passing, spreading the field, and making the right decisions with the ball. She made sure to give everyone a chance to shoot on the goal. The defenders and midfielders moved up, and the attackers moved back. Ms. Moriarty told them she wanted everybody to see the game from every possible angle.
“On my college team,” she said, “each one of us could have played every position on the field.”
“Middletown North is going to think we have more players than they do,” Zach said.
“They might get dizzy trying to keep track of us,” said Zoe.
“Then before they know it, the ball will be behind their goalie,” Oliver said.
About ten minutes before practice was scheduled to end, Ms. Moriarty blew her whistle. “Let’s finish up the day with a four-on-four scrimmage,” she yelled across the field.
“But we’ve only got seven players,” Kari said. Jimmy was out sick today.
Ms. Moriarty winked at Kari. “But when your coach gets her stick,” she said, “we’ll have eight.”
While Ms. Moriarty walked over to the old army bag to grab her adult-sized stick, Zoe returned to her favorite subject: Mateo’s damaged one.
“If Mr. Parker was talking about room C-12,” Zoe said, “then it’s possible he’s also trying to solve a mystery inside our classroom.”
“We just have to find out if it’s the same as our mystery,” Zach said.
“Or,” Zoe said, onto something, “Mr. Parker could be part of our mystery. What if he’s the one who left the closet door open that day?”
“Of course!” said Zach. “But what about the crumbs? Do you think they’re still a clue in the mystery of Mateo’s stick?”
“You know what I really think?” Zoe said. “I think we have all the pieces to the puzzle right in front of us. All we have to do is figure out how to put them together.”
“They’re moving pieces if you ask me,” Zach said.
Then, from a few feet away, they heard Ms. Moriarty say, “I cannot believe this.”
She came walking over to midfield, where all her players were gathered. In her hand, she held up the same stick she’d played with since college.
Zach’s eyes grew wide. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he put the sticks inside the bag that afternoon, he’d missed something big. Perhaps their biggest clue yet. The same thing that had started them on this mystery in the first place.
Ms. Moriarty’s stick had an enormous hole right through the pocket.
EIGHT
Zach and Zoe asked Ms. Moriarty if they could take a closer look at her stick, especially the area around the pocket.
As soon as they did, they knew they weren’t dealing with scratching sounds now.
They were looking at scratch marks.
And in that moment, it all came together for the Walker twins. They looked at each other and knew they were reading each other’s minds. Taking a few steps away from their teammates, they whispered quietly. The words spilled out of them fast, one talking, then the other, both nodding the whole time. After a minute, they started laughing. They couldn’t help themselves. This last clue had pulled everything together for them, and they finally had the mystery figured out.
It was as if they could see the puzzle coming together in front of their eyes. Ms. Moriarty’s stick was the final piece.
“I’ll be right back,” Zoe said.
She turned and ran inside the school building, down the hallway toward Ms. Moriarty’s classroom. Once inside, she opened the closet and pulled out Mateo’s old stick. Taking a quick glance at the hole in the netting, she smiled to herself. Then she took off again and joined her teammates outside. A little out of breath, she held out the stick to Zach, who instantly saw what she did. He nodded in agreement and grinned at Zoe.
“Both sticks have the same scratch marks,” Zoe said out loud.
“Only they’re not scratch marks, really,” Zach said.
“You’re right. They almost look like . . . bite marks,” Zoe said, gripping the lacrosse stick more firmly.
“It’s why we know who did it,” Zach said to their teammates.
“More like what did it,” said Zoe.
“Are you going to end the suspense for the rest of us?” Ms. Moriarty said. By now, everyone was crowded around Zach and Zoe, waiting to hear how they’d solved the mystery.
Zach was holding Mateo’s stick. Zoe was holding Ms. Moriarty’s.
“Zach and I think the only way this could have happened is if a small animal chewed through the netting,” Zoe said. “Maybe a mouse.”
“Or something with sharper teeth, like an opossum,” Zach added.
He had always loved looking at pictures of opossums and small creatures in their mom’s books about wildlife. Tess Walker knew the names of as many animals as Zach did baseball and basketball players. Their mom’s interest in nature gave Zach and Zoe a fuller appreciation of the world around them.
“Zach knows a lot about opossums,” Zoe said.
“So I know that if we find one when we get back to class, we need to be careful.”
The rest of the Warriors players were listening closely as Zach continued.
“My mom showed us a video of them o
ne time,” he said. “They can get pretty frisky.”
“But the two frisky Walker twins still haven’t explained how they solved the mystery,” Ms. Moriarty said.
“Wait,” said Zoe. “You mean we get to be the teacher this time?”
“Go for it!” Ms. Moriarty said. “I think we’re all pretty anxious to find out how the hole wound up in Mateo’s stick. And mine.”
All the kids nodded. Ms. Moriarty sat down in the grass and the rest of the players joined her. Zach and Zoe remained standing, like it was show-and-tell.
“Okay,” Zoe said. “The scratching we heard yesterday in class wasn’t the wind or the trees. It had to be our little friend hunting for food or crawling around on the roof.”
“I heard Mr. Parker on the phone in his office talking about an issue in room C-12,” Zach said. “It all makes sense now. The issue has to be that there are little critters on the loose around Middletown Elementary.”
Zoe put her hands on her hips. “Nobody was ruining these sticks,” she said. “But somebody was eating them.”
Ms. Moriarty got up from the grass and walked over to Zach and Zoe. She high-fived them both.
“It sounds to me,” Ms. Moriarty said, “as if there’s still one last piece to the puzzle before we can close out this mystery.”
Zoe nodded. “It’s time to find our hungry little friend.”
“The one who likes to snack on crackers . . . and lacrosse sticks,” Zach said.
Practice might have been over, but the story wasn’t. At least not quite yet. Just like reading a good book, Zach and Zoe couldn’t wait to find out what would happen in the end.
NINE
When they got back to their classroom, Mr. Parker was already there. He had a flashlight in his hand and was shining it into the equipment closet.
“Maybe you should keep the kids away from here, Ms. Moriarty,” he said. “We’ve kind of got a situation going on right now.”
Zoe couldn’t contain herself.
“You’re looking for some kind of small animal, aren’t you, Mr. Parker?” she said.
“As a matter of fact, I am,” he said. “Just don’t know what kind.” Then he frowned at Zoe, a curious look on his face. “But how did you know?”
As quickly as she could, as if summing up a lesson, Ms. Moriarty explained how Zach and Zoe had pieced the story together.
“Even though you didn’t know it until now,” Ms. Moriarty said, “you had the two finest sleuths in Middletown helping you with your ‘situation.’”
“What are sleuths?” Lily asked.
Zach and Zoe eyed each other and grinned. “Detectives!” they shouted, as if using the same brain once more.
“Now we just have to find out what kind of creature we’re looking for,” Mr. Parker said.
“But how are we going to do it?” Zoe asked. “Leaving a snack didn’t help.”
“How do you two know about that?” Mr. Parker asked.
“There were some crumbs in the storage closet earlier,” Zach explained. “I didn’t know what they meant at first. But then I realized you were probably trying to lure the animal out with food.”
Mr. Parker glanced at Ms. Moriarty, and she shrugged her shoulders. “Told you we had the finest sleuths in Middletown on the case,” she said.
The twins beamed. Then Zach repeated Zoe’s question. “If the cracker you left didn’t help, then how are we going to get the animal to come out?”
“Please don’t set a trap, Mr. Parker!” Zoe begged.
“Oh, I’d never do that, Zoe Walker,” he said. “Never used one of those contraptions in my life. But I’ve already called Wildlife Control. They’re on their way over. I told them we were going to find out what’s causing all the mischief around here once and for all.”
“But how?” Zach asked.
Mr. Parker cracked a smile and reached into his pocket. In his hand, he held a few more crackers.
“How about we give it one more shot?” he said. “I actually think the crackers worked. I just wasn’t quick enough to catch the little rascal the first few times.”
He shut off his flashlight. Then he gestured to Ms. Moriarty and her lacrosse players to back away from the doorway. He didn’t want anyone scaring the creature away. He gently placed the cracker on the floor of the closet and took a few steps back, whispering to Ms. Moriarty, “If you’ve got a good play in lacrosse and it doesn’t work the first time, what do you do?”
She smiled.
“I keep running it until it does,” she replied.
Zach looked at his sister.
“She means you power through,” he said.
TEN
After a few minutes, Mr. Parker tiptoed back to the doorway. He had his flashlight off, but ready if needed.
He whispered to Ms. Moriarty and the kids that he’d left the crackers near the small hole he’d spotted in the corner.
Zoe peered at Zach, a smile across her face. “We solved the mystery, even without all the clues!” she whispered excitedly.
Zach’s eyebrows went up. “You’re right! I never would have seen that small hole. Or thought anything could get through it.”
Then Mr. Parker told everybody to be as quiet as mice.
Or opossums.
Or whatever it was they were looking for.
They heard just a slight scratching noise now, far quieter than what they’d heard that day during reading time. Mr. Parker flashed a small beam of light on the corner.
As he did, the kids gasped as they saw the nose of an opossum peek out. Then, to everyone’s surprise, it squeezed its whole body through the hole. It was as if Mr. Parker and Ms. Moriarty and the kids weren’t even there.
Oliver’s jaw dropped. The opossum was small, but he never would have believed it could fit through a tiny hole like the one in the closet. The rest of the kids were just as shocked.
They watched as the opossum inched closer to the nearest cracker.
Then something kind of wonderful and amazing happened:
Another opossum, much smaller than the first, scurried through the same hole. It waddled toward the second cracker on the floor.
Then a third one followed, and the three of them polished off their late-afternoon snack.
“Appears to be a mama and her two babies,” Mr. Parker said quietly.
It took the opossums a while to finish the crackers, being as small as they were. Even the mom. By then, two women from Wildlife Control had arrived. They showed up in the classroom carrying a small cage for the family. Quietly, they told Mr. Parker, Ms. Moriarty, and the kids that they planned to take the opossums to the Middletown Zoo.
They easily herded the mom and one of the children into the cage. But the smallest opossum made a break for it, racing across the classroom, past the women from Wildlife Control. It was too quick for even Mr. Parker or Ms. Moriarty to catch.
Just not too quick for the Walker twins.
Zach swiftly grabbed a lacrosse stick out of the equipment bag, one without any holes. He tossed it to Zoe, who was closer to the door. She laid the stick on the ground just as the baby opossum ran right into the pocket.
Zoe then lifted the stick just slightly so the opossum couldn’t escape from the net. She handed it off to one of the Wildlife Control specialists, who carefully reunited the opossum with its family in the cage.
“I might not make a better save all season!” Mateo said.
“And the season’s just beginning,” Kari added.
Then Zach and Zoe went into their victory dance, as the rest of the Warriors cheered them on. It was a team-wide celebration. The mystery of the damaged sticks was solved and everyone was glad the opossums were rescued as a family. Now they were on their way to a new home where they’d be well taken care of.
“Best mystery yet,” Zach said.
&
nbsp; Zoe winked. “At least until the next one.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Lupica (mikelupicabooks.com) is the #1 bestselling author of many popular books for young readers, including Fantasy League, Travel Team, Heat, and Million-Dollar Throw. He has carved out a niche as the sporting world's finest storyteller. Mike lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children. When not writing novels, Mike Lupica writes for New York's Daily News and is a special correspondent for MSNBC. Follow Mike on Twitter @MikeLupica.
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