The Prime-Time Burglars

by David Cole

  When I reached my house, I tried to open the front door, but the doorknob wouldn’t budge. It was locked. I dug through my pockets and emptied my backpack onto the front porch, but there was no key. I slumped to the ground and leaned against the house in frustration. This was the second day in a row I had forgotten my house key. Of course, it had to happen on the day that my mom volunteered at the food bank and my sister had cheerleading practice. I snorted at the thought of a bunch of middle school girls with pompoms dancing around and yelling with absolutely no clue about any of the sports they were cheering on. At least Stephanie actually played a sport. In fact, from what I could see at recess, she was really good—better than most of the boys in the class. It took away from some of her time with the Math Kids, which was a little irritating, but I guess not everyone wants to do math all the time like I do.

  So there I was, stuck on my front porch, waiting to see who would be the first one in my family to get home. In the past, we had hardly ever locked our doors, except maybe when we were going away on vacation or to visit my grandma in the next town for a couple of days. But that was before the burglaries. They had been going on for over two weeks now, and our parents were a little on edge.

  I overheard them talking about it a few nights ago when they thought I was concentrating on my video game.

  I like to play video games, but I’m not obsessed with them like Justin. He plays for hours every day and is an expert at every game he’s ever played. I usually get bored with a game long before I get any good at it. I guess I’d rather be solving a tricky math problem than jumping over things, shooting aliens, or finding hidden coins.

  “Do you think it’s safe here?” my mom asked.

  “I’m sure the police will catch the burglars soon,” my dad replied, but there was a touch of doubt in his voice. I knew he was bothered because the police didn’t seem to be making any progress.

  “I worry about the kids,” my mom said. She and my dad were in the kitchen, and their voices carried into the family room where I sat on the floor with a bag of potato chips next to me and a game controller in my hand. She would reprimand me later for leaving crumbs on the rug, but for now, she had other things on her mind. I crept to the doorway so I could hear better.

  “They’ll be fine,” my dad said, catching me looking at him and throwing a wink my way. “Jordan’s getting lots of practice out there killing zombies so I’m sure he’ll be able to protect us.”

  I grinned at my dad, but I could see that he was worried too.

  It was the same story with my friends. Justin’s parents used to let him stay home by himself, but now they hired a babysitter every time they left the house without him. My sister’s friend Amy stayed with him a couple of times during the week, and Justin hated it.

  “They treat me like I’m eight years old,” he complained one day as we were walking to school.

  To be fair, Justin had been eight years old just a few months earlier, but I wasn’t going to remind him of that. Instead, I said “My sister treats me the same way.”

  Actually, although I complain about her a lot, she doesn’t treat me too badly overall. Mostly she ignores me, which was just fine with me. Justin is an only child, so his parents are very protective of him.

  The only good thing that had come out of this for Justin was that his parents had given him a cell phone so they could check in on him if he wasn’t at home. For his parents, it was peace of mind. For Justin, it meant he could play video games wherever he was.

  On Saturday, I had gone over to Stephanie’s house to work on some of the math homework Mrs. Gouche had assigned. It had poured all morning, so Stephanie’s soccer practice had been cancelled. Justin couldn’t come over because he was stuck running errands with his parents.

  Stephanie and I had made good progress on the homework when we heard her mom and dad coming down the stairs. We weren’t exactly trying to spy on their conversation, but we lowered our voices so we could hear them better. I think our parents get so used to us being loud that when we’re quiet they don’t even realize we’re there.

  “Maybe we should have stayed in California,” Stephanie’s mom said.

  I could only make out part of her dad’s response because of the clinking of dishes as he emptied the dishwasher, but it sounded like he agreed. Then we heard him say, “I could talk to my boss and see about getting transferred back.”

  Stephanie looked shocked. Would they really move back just when she was getting settled in? I wondered. What about her soccer team? What about the Math Kids?

  Her face scrunched up with worry. I’m sure my face was a mirror image of hers. Parents don’t always notice, but when they worry, we do too.

  Chapter 7

  The tension between Justin and Stephanie continued to boil under the surface of our math group like red hot magma in a volcano. I was waiting for the eruption, and on Wednesday morning it finally came.

  Mrs. Gouche had spent the morning English class teaching us about the different parts of speech. I had nouns and verbs figured out, but she lost me when it came to adverbs and adjectives. Stephanie and Justin seemed to pick it up easily, but I looked on in frustration.

  “Okay, Jordan, in this sentence, which word is the adjective?” Mrs. Gouche asked, pointing at the sentence she had written on the board.

  The big dog jumped quickly through the door.

  “Quickly?” I said with absolutely no confidence.

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” she asked with a smile.

  “Telling you?” I asked, drawing laughter from my classmates.

  “Stephanie, can you help Jordan out here?” the teacher asked.

  “The adjective is big,” Stephanie said, before going on to explain. “An adjective describes a noun. Quickly is an adverb, since it describes a verb.”

  “That’s correct,” Mrs. Gouche said. “Does that make sense, Jordan?”

  I nodded, but I still didn’t get it. Luckily, it was time for PE class, so thoughts on the parts of speech faded as I walked out of the classroom.

  We were doing a six-week unit on soccer, so we met Coach Harder on the playground.

  “Okay, same teams as last week,” he yelled.

  I wasn’t really into soccer much, and neither was Justin, so we stood at midfield and talked.

  “Quickly is an adverb, since it describes a verb,” Justin said, mocking Stephanie.

  “I think she was just trying to help.”

  “Well, I think she was trying to show you up,” he said firmly. “She thinks she’s so good at everything.”

  There was a cheer as our team scored. I saw several people giving Stephanie high fives, so I guessed she had been the one to put the ball into the net. She looked in our direction and a slight frown crossed her face.

  Coach Harder blew his whistle and everyone stopped.

  “Do you two want to join the game?” he yelled. We looked around for a moment before we figured out he was talking to us.

  We lined up on our side of the field, but still weren’t paying much attention when Stephanie stole the ball from Susie and passed it to Justin. The ball bounced off his leg and right into the path of Bryce, who barreled toward the goal. Justin and I, who were supposed to be on defense, stood flatfooted.

  “Come on, guys! Get in the game!” she shouted as she rushed back to defend the goal. She wasn’t fast enough though, and Bruce scored, putting his team up by three.

  We half-heartedly joined the play but were glad when the coach gave his whistle three hard blasts to signal that PE was over and it was time to go back to class. Justin and I were walking together when Stephanie appeared in front of us, her hands firmly planted on her hips and a look of exasperation on her face.

  “We could have won that game if you guys had helped a little more,” she scolded.

  “Who died and made you coach?” Justin as
ked.

  “I’m sorry that I like playing a game that doesn’t involve trolls and zombies,” she shot back. She turned her back on us and walked away.

  “Big deal. You can kick a ball with your feet. Try something that requires your brain,” Justin said, stopping Stephanie in her tracks.

  “And your video games require your brain?” Stephanie asked, turning to face Justin.

  “Actually, they do,” he said. “There’s all kinds of math involved in video games, as a matter of fact. Computer programmers design whole worlds using math equations. You wouldn’t understand because all you do is run up and down a field.”

  “You don’t know anything about soccer, Justin,” she said angrily. “There is so much more to it than just running up and down a field and kicking a ball. You want some math? How about geometry? A soccer field has rectangles, circles, and arcs. A soccer ball is made up of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons. Where a goalie positions herself is all about computing angles so she can block the shot. Think of the math involved in two people running down a field and passing a ball. We have to worry about two different running speeds, the position of the defenders, and the distance between us in order to calculate the angle and how hard we need to kick the ball. And I’ll give you one more: there’s something called the Magnus effect. It’s what makes a soccer ball curve when you kick it the right way. Try programming that into your stupid video game!”

  Justin was quiet, and this time, I was pretty sure I could guess what he was thinking. He was thinking about all the math that went into a soccer game and how maybe he had read Stephanie wrong.

  She wasn’t finished though.

  “And I’ll tell you one more thing about soccer, Justin. It’s a lot more than running and kicking a ball. It’s about working together. It’s about teamwork. It’s about having each other’s back when the going gets tough. That’s what soccer is about and that’s why I love it.”

  With that, she turned and stomped into the building, her ponytail bouncing with each step.

  Justin remained silent as he watched her walk away.

  Chapter 8

  Amy came to watch me again last night,” Justin said the next day at school. “Although mostly she just sat on her phone and talked to your sister.” I could tell he wasn’t happy with the situation.

  “I wish they’d catch whoever it is that’s been robbing the houses,” I said. “Joe said that the police were looking at a lot of clues.”

  Joe Ponnath is a year behind us in school, and his dad is a sergeant in the police force. The burglaries were a big topic at school, and Joe was enjoying being in the spotlight. Even the fifth graders were paying attention to him. At recess, there was a crowd gathered around him asking him questions about the robberies. I don’t think he knew much about them really, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else know that.

  “The police are looking for one guy, but my dad thinks it might be an entire gang,” Joe said to the crowd. “He said we need to be careful because they could be armed and dangerous.”

  I wondered if his dad had really said anything about the criminals being armed. I think Joe was just glad to have someone pay attention to him, so he needed to make it seem as if he knew everything about the case.

  “The chief of detectives is even thinking about calling in the FBI,” he said, drawing some oohs and aahs from the crowd, especially the younger kids. The FBI? That was big league!

  “Does your daddy have to go running to the FBI every time he can’t solve a simple crime?” asked Robbie.

  Joe started to defend his dad, but then wisely shut his mouth when he saw Bryce and Bill standing behind Robbie. Joe was a scrappy little kid and didn’t mind fighting with the older kids, but he wasn’t about to take them on when he was outnumbered three to one.

  “I bet my dad could find those lousy robbers in no time,” Robbie bragged. Robbie’s dad is also a police officer, but his job is mostly giving out tickets to people who don’t put money in the parking meter. Still, no one in the crowd dared to ask why Robbie thought his dad would be able to crack the case. When Robbie talks, it’s sometimes good to just listen to him and not interrupt with things like facts.

  Stephanie isn’t one for taking good advice though, and she decided to speak up. I think part of it was because the bullies had been picking on her ever since she had bet and lost the class pizza party.

  “If he’s anything like you, your dad couldn’t find him if he was wearing a big sign that said robber,” Stephanie said, putting her hands on her hips defiantly.

  The crowd went silent. The younger kids stepped back quickly. The older kids pushed forward. They wanted to see if Robbie would hit a girl. The look on Robbie’s face said that he wouldn’t have a problem doing just that. He stepped toward Stephanie with a sneer.

  “You better take that back,” he said.

  Stephanie stood her ground. “I’m not taking anything back,” she said.

  Robbie took another step forward. He was now standing right in front of her. She still didn’t move.

  “First you lose us our pizza party, and now you’re insulting my dad?” Robbie asked. “That’s a good way to get your face rearranged.”

  “So it’ll look like yours?” she shot back.

  That was it. She had gone too far. Robbie raised his fist and took aim at Stephanie’s face. I was hoping that the end-of-recess bell would ring or that one of the teachers would step in, but it wasn’t either of those that saved Stephanie.

  It was Justin.

  Before Robbie could throw a punch, Justin stepped in between them. The top of his head barely reached halfway up Robbie’s chest, but there he was standing toe to toe with him!

  “First of all,” Justin began, “Stephanie didn’t lose us a pizza party. In case you forgot, she was the one that won the party in the first place. Second, I’m getting really tired of picking up my backpack from the floor every time you knock it off the hook.”

  Robbie was looking at Justin’s forefinger poking him in the chest in amazement. So were the rest of us.

  “And third—” Justin was cut off by the recess bell ringing loudly.

  Robbie gave Justin a good hard push. Justin managed to stay on his feet, but just barely.

  “This isn’t over,” Robbie said as he turned to walk back toward the building. “I’ll see you after school.”

  Stephanie and I stared after Robbie, then turned to Justin.

  “That was amazing,” Stephanie said.

  “That was crazy!” I said. “Have you lost your mind?”

  Justin just stared off into the distance. The second recess bell rang, letting us know we were going to be late getting back to class.

  “We need to solve it,” Justin said.

  “Solve what?” Stephanie asked.

  “The case. We need to solve the case,” Justin replied.

  “The burglaries?” Stephanie asked.

  “Yes. If we can solve the case, we’ll be heroes,” Justin said.

  I let that thought sink in to my head. Justin was right. We would be heroes if we could figure out who was robbing the houses and put an end to it. It would also mean Stephanie wouldn’t move back to California, Justin wouldn’t need a babysitter, and I wouldn’t be locked out of my house again.

  “But how are we going to do it if the police can’t?” I asked.

  “Math,” said Justin confidently.

  We couldn’t get any more out of him because Coach Harder was yelling at us to get back to class.

  On the way, Stephanie asked the question I wanted to ask. “What was the third thing you were going to tell Robbie?”

  Justin grinned. “I don’t have a clue. I was making it up as I went along. I figured that if I talked long enough, the recess bell would ring.”

  “Well, I definitely owe you one,” Stephanie said.

 
“Nope, we’re a team,” Justin replied with a grin. “That means we’ve got each other’s backs.”

  Stephanie smiled.

  I was glad that Justin and Stephanie had patched things up, but I still had a lot to think about that afternoon. How were we going to solve a police case using math? How was I going to get Stephanie back on Mrs. Gouche’s good side? Most importantly, how was I going to get Justin safely past Robbie and his gang after school without getting us all beat up?

  Every time I looked over at Robbie, he was staring at Justin. Whenever Justin looked up, Robbie would slam his fist into the palm of his other hand and point at him. This wasn’t looking good for Justin. I had to think of something and quick.

  Normally, Robbie wasn’t a problem after school since he was stuck in detention. Unfortunately, Robbie had managed to stay out of trouble this week, and none of the teachers had seen him push Justin at the end of recess. To save Justin, I needed to come up with a way to get Robbie in trouble, even if that meant sacrificing myself. Hey, what are friends for?

  While Mrs. Gouche was writing our social studies homework on the board, I wadded up a sheet of paper and threw it at Robbie’s head. It missed, soaring over him and smacking into the side of Bryce’s head. Bryce turned toward the direction of the shot and stared directly at Robbie. Wadding up his own paper, he fired a shot at Robbie, which bounced off his desk and hit Bill. That started a chain reaction, and the next thing I knew, there were balls of paper flying all over the room. Mrs. Gouche turned around and her eyes focused on Robbie crumpling up a large sheet of construction paper he had taken down from the wall.

  And that was it. Justin’s problem was solved, at least for today. Robbie, Bryce, and Bill were headed back to detention, and we would have safe passage home.

  On the way home, we stopped at Stephanie’s for a snack. I wanted to find out how Justin thought we could solve the burglary case.