by Jon Scieszka
Max looks thoughtful. “For the restaurant to show up in the background, the trophy would have to be”—he swings around to face the park across the street—“there.”
It’s a smallish square taking up six city blocks, with pathways and benches organized around a central fountain.
“Remember the picture,” Dalton advises. “There was a roof, or some kind of cover, with a support pole in back.”
“We’ll scour the place,” Max decides. “Every inch. If our trophy’s here, we’ll find it.”
In a third-floor apartment on Sterling Avenue, a very large twelve-year-old boy gazes out his window at the park below. He picks up a cell phone and speed-dials a number.
“Yeah?” comes a sharp, piercing voice.
“They’re here,” says the boy.
“Really? Are you sure?”
He squints down through the glass, watching the Hollow Log Hammers exploring the square. “Get the gang together. It’s time.”
“What do you mean, it isn’t there?” Lucas rasps into the handset, racing along Sterling Avenue, dragging Ariella by the hand.
“Mr. Fluffernutter can’t go any farther,” the little girl complains.
“We searched the whole park,” comes Shimmy’s voice over the phone. “We even went through the bushes. They must’ve moved the trophy after they took the picture. Where are you, man? We’ve been here, like, forever!”
“We missed our bus,” Lucas replies savagely, “because Mr. Fluffernutter had to go to the bathroom—”
“He’s only human,” Ariella sulks.
“—so we ran like crazy, but the bus we got on turned out to be a T-18 not a T-19—wait! I think I see you guys!” Squeezing the girl’s wrist, which makes her cry out, Lucas turns on the jets. They sprint past Epic Jerk and into the park to their companions.
Overcome with relief, Max enfolds his sister in a bear hug. She pulls back and boots him savagely in the shin.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You’re supposed to take care of me!” she rages. “If I get lost, where does that leave Mr. Fluffernutter?”
“He was lost with you!” Max tries to defend himself.
Shimmy approaches Lucas. “What are we going to do, man? There’s no trophy here. I’m starting to think we came all this way for nothing!”
Lucas looks desperately around the square. There are not a lot of potential hiding places. It’s a small park, with a kids’ playground, a basketball court, a dog run, and a handful of paved paths and benches arranged around a huge fountain in the middle. At the center of the fountain, atop a granite pedestal, is a wrought iron sculpture of two young children huddled under an umbrella. The “rain” is provided by a ring of jets around the circumference.
“Wait a minute … Guys—” Lucas points. The pieces are starting to fit together. In the Facebook photograph, the roof is actually the umbrella; the pole is its handle. The blurry spots are caused by the cascading water. And, far in the background, the clue that brought them here—Epic Jerk.
They all look, and catch a glint of gold.
There, balanced on the spot where the figures’ hands come together, sits the Interboro Cup.
“Our trophy!” exclaims Shimmy, leading the stampede to the fountain.
“Yeah, but how are we going to get it?” Jeff wonders. A lot of water stands between them and the cup. “We’ll drown!”
Lucas doesn’t care. He kicks off his shoes and socks, rolls up his pants, and steps over the edge, disappearing almost to the knees in the cold, clammy pool. The chill makes him laugh with sheer delight. “Come on, guys. What’s a little water compared with the blood and sweat that went into winning this thing?”
Footwear flies, and all six Hammers are in the fountain in less than thirty seconds.
“Boys are crazy,” says Ariella from the sideline. “Oh, I don’t mean you, Mr. Fluffernutter. You’re not a boy; you’re an elderly rabbit gentleman.”
Rescuing the trophy turns out to be a major operation. Max and Lucas form the base of the pyramid, with Shimmy on their shoulders. He, in turn, boosts Dalton to the top of the pedestal. There are a few scary moments since the polished stone is wet and slippery. But soon the whooping Hollow Log Hammers are splashing their way out of the fountain in a flurry of dripping high fives, surrounding Max, their triumphant captain, who holds their trophy aloft in the brilliant sky. It’s a good thing the spring weather is warm or their next stop would be the hospital, to treat six cases of hypothermia. They are drenched yet jubilant. The Interboro Cup is once again with its owners, and all’s right with the world.
“Let’s get back to the bus stop,” Shimmy exhorts his teammates. “The sooner we blow this Popsicle stand and get home, the better.”
“Not so fast” comes a deep voice.
For the first time, the Hammers look around. Seven boys have appeared almost out of nowhere and now stand facing them. They don’t seem threatening. But they don’t look friendly, either.
Lucas puts two and two together. “You’re the guys who stole our trophy!”
A sandy-haired boy who’s almost a single extended freckle nods solemnly. “Or maybe you’re the guys who stole our trophy,” he says in a high-pitched, piercing tone.
Shimmy bristles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We’re the Revere Raiders—” Freckle begins.
Light dawns on Lucas. Revere Middle School is a city powerhouse in basketball. In the tournament, it was a major relief when the Raiders were eliminated in the semifinal by Sunnyside, the Hammers’ opponent in the championship game. “So how’s it your trophy?” he asks. “You guys got knocked out.”
A huge kid, at least a head taller than Lucas, pipes up, “We got shafted.”
Freckle explains. “Meet Igor, best sixth grader in the city. We would have crushed Sunnyside with him.”
“So why didn’t you?” O-Mark growls.
“Academically ineligible,” mourns Igor in a voice even deeper than O-Mark’s rumble. “Got an incomplete in Social Studies.”
“That’s your problem,” Shimmy accuses. “Staying eligible’s part of the game.”
“Had mono last semester,” the big boy admits sadly. “My teacher wouldn’t cut me any slack.”
Lucas’s anger evaporates in an instant. Winning the tournament was the greatest feeling ever. To be robbed of a shot at that by a tough break had to hurt.
Even Shimmy finds some sympathy for the Raiders. “Man, that’s rough.”
There’s general agreement among the Hammers. “But why blame us?” Max asks. “We didn’t flunk Igor; his teacher did.”
“We’re not blaming you,” Freckle explains. “You won; we accept that. But we weren’t in that tournament—not the real us.”
“What are you trying to say?” Lucas demands.
Freckle shrugs. “Well—we’re here, and you’re here, and the trophy’s here….”
It isn’t a fair fight, and the boys from Hollow Log know it. First of all, neither team has its full complement of players. Second, the Hammers are soaked to the skin and exhausted from the adventures of the day. And third—
“Why should we have to play a bunch of trophy-stealers to win the trophy we already won?” Shimmy complains.
“The trophy’s not important—” Lucas begins.
“That’s not what you said when you made us wade through Niagara Falls to get it,” Jeff puts in sourly.
“The Raiders have a point,” insists Lucas.
“They’re not exactly Boy Scouts, you know,” Max observes. “They crossed the whole city, walked into Hollow Log, and walked out with the Interboro Cup.”
Lucas holds up his hands. “Listen—what does that trophy mean if we only won because that Igor kid couldn’t play? Is that the kind of champions you want to be: a team that only made good because of somebody else’s rotten luck?”
“I can’t jump in wet jeans,” Dalton complains.
Shimmy smiles in spite of himself. “You can’t jump, period. I
t never stopped you before.”
Jeff asks the question that’s on everyone’s mind. “What if we lose?”
“We won’t,” Lucas says confidently. “We’re the Hollow Log Hammers. We rocked the tournament, and we’ll rock West Hook too.”
The court is concrete instead of hardwood. The nets are made of chain not mesh, so a swish sounds more like a clank. There are no referees and only three substitutes between the two teams. The audience consists of a six-year-old girl and a stuffed rabbit. The Interboro Cup stands by the out-of-bounds line, as if watching the contest that will decide its fate.
It’s on.
The Raiders run off the first three baskets, but Hollow Log recovers quickly, closing the gap to two points. The teams are evenly matched, with Igor’s bulk controlling the middle but Dalton’s outside jumpers keeping the Hammers close. Shimmy uses his quickness to slice through Revere’s zone defense, and soon the Hammers have a narrow lead. Lucas can’t shoot over Igor but finally manages to submarine past the big boy and lay the ball in off the backboard. Another Raider sinks back-to-back ten footers, and the teams are tied at 16.
Freckle is impressed. “Maybe you chumps really are champs!”
“Sunnyside was lucky to get past you guys,” Lucas admits, panting.
“Mr. Fluffernutter’s bored” is the audience’s opinion.
By this time, the Hammers have forgotten their bus woes and wet clothes. They haven’t faced this kind of competition since the championship game. Revere pulls ahead, but Hollow Log roars back, scoring on five straight possessions. A heated argument over an alleged foul evaporates when O-Mark knocks down the longest jump shot any of them has ever seen. Not to be outdone, big Igor rips the ball out of Jeff’s hands and comes amazingly close to dunking it—another vertical inch or two is all he would have needed. By now they’ve been playing for a solid hour, the score knotted at 36 … or is it 38?
A light rain begins, waking Ariella, who’s fallen asleep on a bench using her stuffed toy as a pillow. The Raiders and Hammers are just getting started. A second hour falls away like nothing. Hollow Log leads, 74–72 … or maybe 72–70. But a disputed basket from about half an hour ago means it’s possible the two teams are actually tied again. It’s hard to keep track of the score, Lucas reflects, when the action is so intense; when you’re running your hardest, and jumping your highest, and every gasping breath comes out of your lungs in a ball of fire; when you’re having this much fun.
They are well into their third hour when both teams’ cell phones begin ringing. Soon their game is being set to music amid a chorus of electronic tones. The boys ignore it as long as they can, but it’s starting to get dark …
Suddenly, Shimmy points. “The bus!”
No one wants to leave. But if you miss a bus on a Saturday night, who knows when the next one will be along?
The Hammers grab Ariella and Mr. Fluffernutter and fly—but not before Lucas and Freckle exchange numbers on their phones. This game isn’t over yet! And besides, nobody remembers the score….
Whatever. They’ll settle it next week on Hollow Log’s home turf.
Lucas can hardly wait.
Shimmy slaps him a high five as they take their seats. “That was awesome! Man, we’re some beasts to keep up with those guys!”
There is general agreement, except from Ariella. “Mr. Fluffernutter’s telling!” she promises her brother.
Max is flushed with a mix of exhaustion and happiness. “Go ahead. I don’t care. Today was worth getting in trouble!”
The bus pulls away. The Hammers peer out the window, watching their new friends and rivals heading for home.
In the shadowy darkness of the park, a lone object stands at the edge of the court, utterly forgotten. Its shape is four Winged Victory figures holding up a golden basketball.
I WILL DESTROY YOU, DEREK JETER
BY CHRIS RYLANDER
“Derek Jeter must die,” I announced.
“Uh, Wes, don’t you think that’s a little extreme?” Nate said as he struggled to get his backpack off his shoulder without letting it smash against his right arm.
I stood up from our table in the school cafeteria and paced back and forth next to my seat. I considered what Derek Jeter had done to me, and also to Nate for that matter, his arm in a cast and sling. Then I thought about Jeter’s stupid smiling face after he got base hits that drove in runs and won games, and how he was able to go on with his life as if nothing at all had happened.
In case you don’t know who Derek Jeter is, which is unlikely, he is the All-Star shortstop for the New York Yankees, five-time World Series champion, former Rookie of the Year, beloved hero to pretty much all Yankees fans worldwide, the most liked and praised baseball player in the whole league for almost twenty years, and also likely the most overrated jerk ever to hold a baseball bat.
“Hey, catch!” someone called out.
An eighth grader, walking by with his group of friends, tossed me his pint of milk. It caught me by surprise and, despite my best efforts, bobbled around in my clumsy hands for a couple seconds before landing on the floor with a splat.
The kid and his group of friends laughed. And when other kids nearby saw it was me who had dropped the milk, they all laughed, too.
“Nice catch, butterfingers!” some kid yelled. “Someone check the internet, Jacoby Ellsbury might have just gotten his leg shattered.”
This was followed by more laughter, of course.
I sighed and sat back down. I looked at Nate. He was fidgeting with the top bun of his chicken patty sandwich with his lone functioning arm, trying to simultaneously pretend that he was just there by accident, that he wasn’t really my friend, and that that whole incident hadn’t actually happened. Like he always did.
“No,” I said to him.
“Huh?” Nate asked, barely able to make eye contact.
“You asked me if what I said was a little extreme. My answer is no. In fact, it’s not extreme enough if you want my honest answer. Derek Jeter must die!”
“Yeah, but you don’t really want him dead-dead, do you? I mean, that’s …”
“No, of course not,” I admitted. “But I am going to kill his career, ruin his reputation just like he ruined mine. Mark my words: Derek Jeter is going to pay.” Then I looked north in the general direction of the Bronx and said, while clenching my hand into a fist, “I will destroy you, Derek Jeter.”
The place smelled like stale cinnamon and boiled hot dogs. If I didn’t need help so badly, I probably would have turned and left right away. But as it was, curses aren’t something you can just give to people as easy as handing them a dollar. A trained professional was needed for these things.
“Hey, kid, do you have an appointment?” A man was sitting on a single chair in the middle of the room. He was wearing a white T-shirt with no sleeves that said THIS IS WHAT A COOL GRANDPA LOOKS LIKE, even though he was only, like, thirty years old. Also, he was greasy, like he wouldn’t have been out of place at all in some diner’s kitchen, flipping over giant piles of hash browns. To be honest, he wasn’t really what I’d expected.
Then again, I’d never been to a witch doctor before, so I didn’t really know what I’d expected.
The witch doctor stood up as we approached and then saw Nick’s cast and sling and shook his head. “Hey, I’m not that kind of doctor, you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, handing him a printed copy of the confirmation email he’d sent me. “We have an appointment.”
He peered at it for a while as if he’d never seen it before.
The witch doctor went by the name Doctor Zanzubu Zardoz, according to his website. He had pretty good references and everything. Well, if you can count a couple of online reviews posted by people with handles like “spcehed111” and “nachosnachosnachos” and “tUbEmOnKeYgOaT” as good references, that is. And I tend to think you can.
I’d gotten the idea from the years of suffering for Red Sox fans I’d heard my grandpa complain about
every Thanksgiving. The Boston Red Sox, who have been my family’s favorite team going way back to, like, my grandpa’s grandpa or something, had this curse on them for a really long time. The Curse of the Bambino.
Basically, this curse began the day the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees back in 1920. And for almost one hundred years, the Red Sox didn’t win a single World Series. Some Red Sox fans, like my great-grandpa, lived their whole life and died without ever getting to see them win a championship. But then this dude named Theo Epstein came along and became their general manager and broke the curse, and the Red Sox finally won a World Series in 2004.
Apparently, the Chicago Cubs have an even worse curse on their team. They haven’t won it at all since 1908! And it’s pretty much proven to be the result of something called the Curse of the Billy Goat. They still haven’t figured out how to break it. They stole away the Red Sox curse breaker, General Manager Theo Epstein, but even he hasn’t been able to crack that one yet.
Anyway, that’s where I got the idea to go to a witch doctor. I saw on some message board that secretly that’s how Theo was able to break the Curse of the Bambino. Some people say it was through good farm-system development, others claim it was a series of good trades, and most believe it was a combination of those two things plus truckloads of money used to buy up all the best free agents. But I found out the truth from this dude online who goes by the name BucknerMustDie86. He said his brother’s neighbor’s gardener’s cousin’s best friend’s wife’s masseuse’s former T-ball coach’s nephew’s mailman’s sister’s ex-boyfriend’s mechanic was old college roommates with Theo and that Theo Epstein actually visited a witch doctor at the start of the 2004 season. And that proof of this could be seen when the Red Sox came back to win from being down 0–3 in the Division Series against the Yankees, something no other team has ever done before or since in baseball’s 150-year history.
So I figured if a witch doctor can break a curse that powerful, then surely he could make a curse that powerful, too.
“Basic curses are fifty, and hexes are thirty-five. Payment up front,” Doctor Zanzubu Zardoz said.