Lucky Cap

by Patrick Jennings

  “Ow!” I said, though it didn’t really hurt. Why do girls get to hit guys whenever they want?

  “I’m not going anywhere with you, Mr. Grabby,” she said. “In fact, if you don’t leave me alone this instant, you will find yourself in a lot of trouble.”

  Trouble? I didn’t want that. I took a step back.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I whined. “I mean, you liked me, like, yesterday!”

  The girls all thought this was very funny.

  “So why were you in the boys’ locker room during the pep rally, Misa?” I asked in a loud, clear voice.

  The girls stopped giggling and gaped at me. Misa’s face turned red, which was as good as a confession to me.

  “Coach Keller saw you,” I announced.

  “Coach Keller?” she asked, her voice breaking slightly.

  The girls started whispering.

  “He saw a cheerleader by my locker,” I said.

  Misa peeked around at her friends as if she didn’t know how to answer this, what to say in front of them, whether or not they believed me. Then she laughed.

  “But how would I even know which locker was yours?” she asked.

  Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that.

  “Coach Keller must have made a mistake,” she said. “Maybe he saw a cheerleader, but it wasn’t me. I’ve never been in a boys’ locker room in my life. And hope I never will!”

  The girls answered, “Yeah!”

  “Well…,” I said slowly. “I suppose Coach didn’t say it was you exactly. I just figured it was you because… well… because you… you know… liked me.”

  “I knew you didn’t know what you were talking about!” Misa laughed. “Let’s go, girls!”

  They all spun around and marched off, honking like geese.

  That had not gone well.

  I still believed Misa had been the cheerleader in the locker room, though. How was I going to prove it?

  Process of elimination, maybe. I would talk to the other cheerleaders and see if they acted guilty, find out if they had alibis.

  Misa, Cassie, Lance, Kai, and Iris were in my next class—social studies. Cassie wasn’t there yet. I sat by Iris.

  “Hello, juvenile delinquent,” she said.

  “How’d you hear about it?”

  “It’s all over school. You broke into your best friend’s duffel bag. You got busted. Now he has your spot on the team, and the class president had to go to jail.”

  “Shut up,” I said. She was talking pretty loud.

  Cassie came through the door and took a seat in the front row, like always. I didn’t have time to talk to her before the bell rang. I’d have to wait till after class.

  I worried during class instead of paying attention to the teacher. My parents didn’t know about the duffel incident, or the detention, or Coach’s “consequences.” This was a lot bigger trouble than I’d ever gotten into before. I didn’t know how they were going to take it. I also didn’t know if any of it went on my permanent record, if it would hurt my chances of working for Kap someday. I sure hoped not.

  Lance turned to sneer at me quite a few times. He didn’t bother hiding his hatred anymore. He let it breathe. It was like he thought I deserved it. Why? Because I peeked into Chase’s bag. Big deal. Chase stole my cap.

  Or did he? Maybe he’d put his goon Lance up to the job. Lance would have jumped at the chance to hurt me. He went to the game on the fan bus. Maybe he had the cap with him, which was how Chase got so lucky during the game. Maybe Lance kept it in his school locker. I thought maybe I should check and see…

  No. I couldn’t break into anyone else’s stuff. Too risky. But boy, did I want a peek in that slimy creep’s locker…

  Kai sat a couple seats over from Lance. He stared at me till I looked over at him. His name was on my suspect list, too, but I realized right then he couldn’t possibly have taken the cap. Kai was incapable of doing anything dangerous or illegal. He was so terrified of getting into trouble that some nights he couldn’t sleep because he was so worried he’d accidentally committed a crime that day.

  Besides, he could never have done something so low to me. Me and him went way back. Maybe things weren’t like they used to be, and maybe he was sore about that, but we still had a bond. We actually did the blood-brother, pinprick thing when we were little. Kai would never hurt me the way the scum-sucking scumbag who stole my cap did. No way. Not my blood brother.

  I was so sure he couldn’t have stolen it, in fact, that I began to wonder if I should make him my top suspect. Isn’t it always the least likely person in crime stories who ends up being the culprit?

  Trying to think like a criminal was tricky.

  I almost missed the way things were before the cap. Life was simpler then. Less drama. Less excitement. Less fun. But less girls. Less trouble. Less worries. I wondered if it wouldn’t be too long before I’d be living that life again. I wondered if Kai would ever forgive me for being such a stuck-up jerk and be my best friend again. Of course he would. What other choice would he have?

  Class finally ended, and I caught up with Cassie in the hall. She stepped away from me when I said hi, like she was scared of me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she lied.

  Something was definitely up. Was she feeling guilty? Or was I just too eager to talk to her? I’d never just walked up to her and said hi before. I barely even talked to her during class officer meetings. No one did. She just sat there and took minutes. For a cheerleader, she was pretty shy. I really couldn’t imagine her ever going into a boy’s locker room. Still…

  “Did you go into the boys’ locker room before the pep rally yesterday?” I asked. I wanted to put it out there fast and see how she reacted.

  She scrunched up her nose like she smelled something stinky, and said, “WHAT? The boys’ locker room? Why?”

  I was wasting my time. She wasn’t the thief.

  “Why would you even think of something like that?” she asked. “Are you crazy or something?”

  People were turning to look. I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t need any more gossip and rumors.

  “Never mind, sorry,” I said, and slipped away into the crowd.

  Mackenzie was in my fifth-period science class. She never ever gave a straight answer. I didn’t expect to learn a thing from her. But I had to try.

  I found her outside the lab.

  “Mackenzie?” I called.

  She turned. “Enzo?”

  “Can I talk to you?

  “I don’t know. Can you?”

  “No, seriously…”

  “I didn’t take it.”

  “What?”

  “Your precious cap. Nor did I visit the boys’ locker room.”

  Word travels at the speed of light at Stan.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  I couldn’t think of anything.

  “Didn’t think so,” she said.

  “No, wait. I do have one question.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “Did you see one of the other cheerleaders go into the locker room?”

  “Yes,” she said. Then she walked away.

  “Wait!” I called after her. “Which one?”

  She stopped. “You said you had one question. And I answered it.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Where would you like it? Arm? Leg? Skull?” She grinned, pleased with her wit.

  “Please, Mackenzie? Who was it?” I was begging. It was embarrassing.

  “Lovely chatting with you,” she said, and pranced away to the lab.

  I considered following her, badgering her, but I doubted she’d crack. If, in fact, she had even seen a cheerleader go in there. You could never be sure with her. She loved twisting words around till your head was spinning.

  Could she have been the one who went in? I doubted it. For one thing, why would she? For another, she’d never be caught dead in a boys’ locker room. She didn’t like boys
about as much as I didn’t like girls.

  Then again, she was friends with Kyla, my bitter former campaign manager. Could she have used her locker room access and gone in and stolen my cap to help Kyla wreak her revenge on me for rejecting her?

  I filed that away in my very messy brain. (Sometimes I wished I had a secretary or a janitor up there to clean and organize.) Then I went back to my list.

  The only cheerleader left to interrogate was Analisa. She’d be in the gym after school. Maybe I could talk to her after our practices.

  Analisa had acted horrified when I told her I thought someone had stolen my cap, but maybe that was just what she had done: acted. Like I said, she loved that cap more than anyone—except me, of course.

  But she couldn’t have stolen it. She was too nice to me.

  Then again, wouldn’t that be exactly what she would want me to think? Maybe she didn’t like me at all. Maybe all she really liked about me was my cap.

  Sure! She probably thought I was too dumb to figure it out. But I wasn’t dumb. I’d figured it out.

  Analisa was the thief!

  12. Interrogation of the Cheerleaders, Part Two

  “It was lousy of me to go into Chase’s duffel,” I said to the team, who Coach had huddled up to listen to me. “I’m sorry.”

  The guys shifted their weight from foot to foot in boredom and awkwardness. Except Chase. The apology wasn’t working on him. What was he so mad about? He got everything he wanted. So I unzipped his bag—big deal!

  After I apologized to the team, I had to sit down and write out the apologies to the principals of Lardo Middle School and Stan. While I was doing that, the team stretched. The cheerleaders did the same on their side of the gym: Misa, Cassie, Mackenzie, and the traitor-thief, Analisa.

  When I finished the apologies, I joined in on the practice. I was so distracted, though, that I messed up every play I was in. Not having the cap didn’t help. I had never played worse, which was not going to get me back in the starting five.

  No one talked to me in the locker room after practice, especially Chase. I told myself I didn’t care. Who needed friends who like you only when you’re on top, who dump you like a hot potato when you’re down, friends with no loyalty whatsoever?

  Friends like me.

  I understood then why it just might have been Kai who stole the cap. I had been a bad friend to him. He would have been right to try to drag me down a couple notches.

  “Any luck?” Analisa asked. We were back in the gym, back in our street clothes, and she was looking super concerned and sympathetic. The big actress.

  I shook my head, going along with her little pretend play. I figure she’d let on more if she didn’t know I knew she was the cap thief.

  “Both Chase and Lance are acting pretty suspicious,” I said. “Misa, too. Did I tell you that Coach Keller told me that he saw a cheerleader in our locker room just before the pep rally?”

  I watched her the way I watched LeBron James when he showed me some of his moves: with intense focus. She faked a passable look of surprise bordering on shock. I bet she practiced making looks of surprise bordering on shock at home in front of the mirror.

  “So you think it was Misa?” she asked.

  Clever. Trying to shift the blame.

  “No,” she corrected herself. “She crushed on you.”

  “Maybe she was after a souvenir,” I offered.

  “And now she likes Chase?”

  “I guess.”

  “Maybe she liked him all along. Maybe she was only pretending to like you.”

  Analisa had a suspicious mind. Like me. And she was highly logical. Also like me. That might have been why I liked her. Part of me wanted her to slip and give herself away as the thief. Another part wanted her to do something that would prove she was innocent.

  “She denies going in,” I said, “but I don’t believe her. She acted really guilty. Cassie and Mackenzie said they didn’t go in, either, but I believed them. They didn’t really have a motive anyway.”

  Analisa wrinkled her brow, like she was thinking hard about something, or maybe worrying, or maybe dreaming up more backstabbing schemes. Who knew what girls thought?

  “So you grilled the other cheerleaders and now it’s my turn, huh?” she asked at last. She was angry. Or was she pretending to be mad to hide her guilty feelings?

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You’re grilling me,” she said, getting madder every second. “You think I went into the locker room.”

  “No, no,” I said. Real or fake, her anger made me uncomfortable. She’d never been mad at me before.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a cheerleader,” she said. “Maybe Coach made a mistake.”

  Was she suggesting my key witness was unreliable?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Coach sounded pretty sure.”

  “Maybe he took it.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

  “Why would Coach want my cap?”

  “Maybe he has a nephew with a birthday or something coming up. Don’t ask me to think like a thief. Or a man.”

  Ooh, she was good!

  I was done being on the defensive. “You did once say it was the most amazingest cap you’d ever seen…”

  “You do think I took it! You total creep!”

  Suddenly, I had my answer, and it was exactly what I had hoped for: Analisa was completely innocent. It was written all over her face. It was written in her voice. She wasn’t acting. She was furious. I had wrongly accused her. Oops.

  “No, no,” I said. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t you?” she asked, then stormed away.

  My last friend left in the world—gone, just like that. And all because some idiot stole my cap.

  That did it. I was fed up.

  I was pretty darn sure where the cap was. Pretty. Darn. Sure. Or at least pretty darn sure who had stolen it. It was Chase. Or Lance. Or maybe both.

  I walked out of the gym into the hall. It was empty and quiet, and the lights were dimmed. I could have easily tiptoed down over to their lockers and…

  “Enzo?” said a voice behind me.

  I screamed. It’s startling to be sneaked up on while committing a crime.

  “I’m sorry,” said the voice. It was Misa. She was smiling a little, but not maliciously. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I clutched at my heart. “You didn’t. [breath] I just… [breath]… didn’t hear… [breath] you come up… [breath] behind me.”

  “I wanted to…,” she started to say, then stopped and started over, in a whisper. “I hope you won’t tell anyone about this, but I was the cheerleader Coach saw in the locker room.”

  “You?” I asked.

  Just as I’d suspected.

  It was her I’d suspected, wasn’t it? I was getting confused.

  “I wanted to put a note in your locker,” she said, and handed one to me. It was folded up and had my name written on it in fancy girl writing.

  “Go ahead, read it,” she said.

  I unfolded it and read it silently to myself.

  I stopped reading and looked up at her. She wasn’t ugly. The pink streaks were weird, but her eyes were big and bright. So was her smile. I felt uncomfortable noticing all this, so I looked back at the note.

  It sort of explained why she had been in the locker room. I didn’t understand why she thought it was important enough, like I cared who she crushed on.

  “Coach Keller came in before I could put it in your locker, and I got scared and ran.” She covered her face with her hands to hide her shame.

  So the cheerleader lead was a false one. There were often false leads in crime stories.

  I had totally blown it with Analisa over nothing.

  “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Misa asked from behind her hands.

  I wondered why she had decided to come clean. Maybe she worried one of her cheerleader pals would get in trouble for what she did. Maybe she just felt guilty and needed to conf
ess.

  “Can I tell Analisa?” I asked. “Because she thinks I think she did it. Because I kind of accused her of doing it…”

  Misa lowered her hands. “Oh, that’s terrible! And it’s my fault! She likes you, too. Not like like. She just likes you. I’ll straighten it out. I’ll tell her the truth. Leave it to me, Enzo.”

  “Thanks,” I said. That was pretty nice of her. “Say, Misa, did you happen to notice if my cap was in my locker when you went in there?”

  Her brow creased. “I didn’t get a chance to look in your locker. Because of Coach Keller seeing me…”

  “Shoot.”

  “I heard that somebody took it. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to tell you about the note. I didn’t want you to think I did it.”

  “Right,” I said. “So you’re going out with Chase now, huh?”

  She blushed. “I guess.”

  While she was all dreamy, I sprung: “He took my cap, didn’t he?”

  “No!” she said with a stomp of her foot. “Chase isn’t like that! You know that! He wouldn’t steal!”

  I wasn’t so sure, and I knew him better than she did. But I said, “I guess you’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that it means a lot to me. It has sentimental value.”

  She softened. “I’m sorry for your loss, Enzo. And I’m sorry about the way I treated you in the hall, too. I kind of have to act that way, you know. The girls expect it.”

  I kind of understood. It wasn’t that different with guys, especially in middle school.

  “No problem,” I said.

  “You want to walk out together?”

  I didn’t really think this was a good idea, walking with Chase’s girlfriend. Besides, I had something I wanted to do. So I made up a lie.

  “I forgot, uh… something. Something in my gym locker. I better go back. I’ll see you later, Misa.”

  “Bye, Enzo,” she said, walking away. “I still think you’re cute.”

  What do you say to that? I said, “Thanks.”

  When she was out of sight, I broke into Chase’s and Lance’s lockers.

  14.* Notice

  I didn’t find the cap, but I did find something of value in Lance’s locker: his address. It was in his binder. (Big deal. I went through his binder. I was a detective looking for clues. Besides, I’d broken into his locker.)