The Missing Baseball

by Mike Lupica

  “Mateo,” Zach said, “I’m not accusing you of anything. I just want my ball back. I’m sorry I even brought it with me to school today.”

  “Where could it have gone?” Malik said.

  “That’s the mystery,” Zoe said.

  Zoe had noticed when they got back to their classroom that two of the four windows were now open.

  “These windows weren’t open when we left the room for lunch,” Zoe observed.

  “It’s such a nice day out that I wanted to let some breeze in,” Ms. Moriarty said. “So I opened all the windows. But then a gust of wind blew in and scattered the papers on my desk all over the floor. I decided it would be safer just to open a couple of windows.”

  “But before you closed them, is it possible one of the balls might have rolled off the windowsill without you noticing?” Zoe asked.

  “I guess it’s possible,” Ms. Moriarty said. “But I doubt the breeze was big enough to blow a baseball around the way it did my papers.”

  “Whatever happened,” Zach said, “there were three baseballs here before, and now there are only two.”

  His ball had either disappeared on its own, which he knew wasn’t possible, or now belonged to somebody else.

  He wished Ms. Moriarty’s cat, Sundance, could talk. The cat was the only one who’d been here the whole time.

  FOUR

  When it was time for the bus home, Zach couldn’t find Zoe. He started to think maybe she had left something back in their classroom. But about two minutes before their bus was scheduled to leave, she came running up to him and they boarded the bus together. She was out of breath, but had a big smile on her face.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, worried.

  “Investigating,” she said, like it was obvious.

  “Did you find my ball?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “But you found something, didn’t you?” Zach said. After all, she wasn’t smiling for nothing.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Zach sighed. “I can always tell when you think you know something no one else does.”

  One time, Zach told her he didn’t think her favorite sport was soccer or softball or even basketball. It was solving mysteries.

  “I don’t know something,” she said. “But I did find something.”

  She unzipped the front pocket of her backpack and showed him a key. It was round at the top, almost like a coin.

  Zach gazed at the key for a long while. “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “It means we have our first clue,” said Zoe.

  FIVE

  On the bus ride home, Zach and Zoe went over what they knew so far about the missing baseball. They were always bouncing ideas off each other. At home, in school, and everywhere in between.

  They knew it was nearly impossible to solve the mystery in one afternoon. But they couldn’t help but wonder if they might have missed something.

  “I don’t think Mateo took it,” Zach said.

  “He could have,” his sister said, “whether we want to admit it or not.”

  “But he really was only in the classroom for a few seconds. And even if he did take the ball—which I don’t think he did—where would he stash it?” Zach said.

  Zoe thought for a minute. “And we looked in everyone’s cubby, including his.”

  Zach shook his head and sighed. “I’m going to keep looking until we solve this puzzle and find my ball,” he said.

  “Same,” Zoe said, without missing a beat.

  They agreed to tell Mr. Parker, the school’s maintenance man and custodian, to be on the lookout for Zach’s ball. But they would have to wait until Friday. Mr. Parker had gone away for a few days to attend his nephew’s college graduation. He’d left right after classes ended. Though Zach was anxious to ask Mr. Parker about the ball, he also hoped Mr. Parker would be back in time to coach the big Spirit Week baseball game Friday afternoon.

  Zach couldn’t help it, though. He was still upset about his missing ball. But somehow, the challenge of trying to find it made him feel better. So he tried to focus on that instead.

  Later that night, while eating dinner with their parents, Zoe explained how she’d found the key. “After school, I asked Ms. Moriarty if she could help me look for clues outside the windows of the classroom, in case the ball had fallen down there without her noticing. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything,” Zoe said.

  “That sounds like something you would do,” their mom said.

  “You know what we like to say, Mom,” Zach said. “That’s just Zoe being Zoe.”

  “So we poked around in the bushes,” Zoe said, “even though it was muddy from all the rain we had yesterday.”

  “But no baseball . . .” their dad stated.

  Zoe shook her head. “Nope. Just the key.” She held it up for everyone to see.

  “The good news,” Zach said, “is that Zoe’s sure it’s a clue.”

  “The bad news,” Zoe cut in, “is that it’s not the kind of key that fits the locks on any of the classroom cabinets. I know because we tried the key on a few locks before it was time to get on the bus. And it’s too short to be the key for a door. But Ms. Moriarty told me to hold on to it so we could do more investigating tomorrow if we got the chance.”

  “What if it’s just some old key that’s been lying out there for a long time?” their dad asked.

  “Dad, the ball had to have fallen out the window. Even though I can’t prove it did,” Zoe said. “If it didn’t, it means somebody really might have stolen it. I don’t believe anybody in our class would do that.”

  “What if the person who found the ball dropped the key at the same time?” their mom wondered aloud.

  “But then why wouldn’t that person just return the ball?” Zach pointed out.

  Zoe grinned at her brother. “Maybe that person thought it was just another ball.”

  “But it’s a signed ball,” Zach said. “And pretty new. And it has ‘Major League Baseball’ written on it.”

  “I’m still working on a theory about that,” Zoe said.

  Their mom agreed with Zoe that the key had to be a clue. If they could only find the owner of the key, it might help them solve the mystery.

  “There’s got to be an explanation for where the ball is,” Zoe said.

  “So then where is it?” Zach said.

  “Don’t know,” his sister said. Then, pointing at him with the key, she added, “Yet.”

  SIX

  While they were loading the dishwasher after dinner that night (one of their weekly chores), Zach asked Zoe if she loved sports as much as he did.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “All that matters is that I love sports as much as I do.”

  “But what do you love most about sports?” Zach asked her, curious.

  “Like Dad always says,” Zoe replied. “Playing helps you be the best you can be. Almost like you’re competing against yourself.”

  “Okay, so how’d you like to compete against me right now in a game of one-on-one basketball?”

  Zoe didn’t hesitate. “It’s on,” she said. And with that, they raced out the front door.

  Zach and Zoe loved the basket their dad had hung in their driveway, adjusted to the perfect height for them. He told them it was the same type of basket he’d had in his driveway when he was growing up in Middletown.

  “It was the first real basketball classroom I’d ever had,” he said. “It was where I practiced dribbling and worked on my moves. I’d even set up chairs to act as imaginary teammates and throw passes at them.”

  Sometimes Zach and Zoe would bring out chairs and do the same thing. But tonight they didn’t need any imaginary players. They had each other.

  Zach and Zoe still struggled a little bit to get their sho
ts up to an eight-foot basket, which was two feet lower than a standard basketball hoop. But the more they played, the better they got at shooting and the higher they were able to jump. Plus, they were both fast, good dribblers, and difficult to guard. Sometimes when they played in the driveway, Zach felt as if he were playing against himself. Playing with Zoe was like looking into a mirror. He knew that while he was getting the best out of himself, he was getting the best out of his sister, too.

  They were playing their usual game—the first to reach seven baskets wins. Even though sometimes players had to win by two baskets, they agreed that for tonight, it would only have to be one. Zach quickly got ahead 4–2. But Zoe, never one to give up easily, came right back to tie him. Then she pulled ahead 6–5 on a jump shot she banked in off the backboard. But Zach knocked the ball away from her, picked it up, and made the outside shot that tied the game at 6–6.

  They were playing winners’ outs. That meant if you scored, you kept the ball.

  It was still Zach’s ball.

  “Just so you know,” Zoe said, “I know what you’re going to do.”

  “Tell me, if you’re so smart,” he said.

  “Nope,” Zoe said. “That would give you the edge.” She pointed to her head. “Up here, I still have the edge.”

  “But you may have noticed that I have the ball,” Zach said, shifting the ball from one hand to the other.

  Zoe laughed. “For now.”

  Against most other players, it was Zach’s brain that gave him the edge. But that wasn’t the case with his sister. Sometimes it really did feel like she was thinking right along with him. Like she had this way of getting inside his brain anytime she wanted to.

  But for once, he was one step ahead of her. Zach had a good idea what Zoe thought he was going to do—the crossover move, which was the first their dad had taught them. It was one of Zach’s favorite moves. With a crossover, you quickly switched the ball from one hand to the other while dribbling. It was a way of faking out your opponent. Zach had used the move plenty of times to drive right past Zoe in games like this one. She had done the same against him.

  Tonight, though, he was going to use a double crossover, a move he’d been working on when Zoe wasn’t around. He planned to go from his right hand to his left and then back to his right.

  And that’s exactly what he did. As soon as he dribbled the ball with his left hand, Zoe, who was expecting a normal crossover, jumped to her right to cut him off. Just as Zach had planned. When she did, Zach went back to his right hand. It gave him the opening he needed to drive past her for the layup that made the final score 7–6.

  As soon as the ball came bouncing down onto the driveway, Zoe’s right hand shot up. Zach took a step toward her and put up his hand to mirror hers. It looked as if they were about to give each other a high five. And they were. But first, they spun completely around, bumped elbows and hips, and then came the leaping high five. Their mom said it was like a combination of a secret handshake and a touchdown dance in football. They always did it no matter who won the game.

  “You out-thought me!” Zoe exclaimed.

  “Wow!” Zach said. “That’s even better than winning the game.”

  He tossed his sister the ball, and she went to put it back in the small equipment shed next to the garage. Inside the shed, there were basketballs and soccer balls, baseballs and bats, and floats for the pool in their backyard. There was even room for their tennis rackets. Their mom liked to call it the Walker family sporting goods store.

  Zoe put the basketball in the bin with the other balls and closed the door to the shed.

  But as she turned the key sticking out of the lock, one she’d never paid much attention to before, she noticed it looked a lot like the one she’d found outside their classroom window.

  “Does this look familiar?” she said to Zach, showing him the key.

  “It doesn’t just look familiar,” Zach said. “It looks like it might be another clue.”

  Zoe smiled. “Even better.”

  SEVEN

  There were more Spirit Week events the next day at school. They started with relay races in the morning, followed by a scavenger hunt that took them all over the school grounds looking for objects their teachers had hidden. The soccer game for their class was scheduled for the afternoon.

  Zoe told Zach she wasn’t nearly as interested in the school scavenger hunt as she was in her own.

  “I’m still on a mission to find your ball,” she said to her brother.

  “We’re on a mission,” Zach said.

  Ms. Moriarty and Mr. Jerome, the teacher of the other third-grade class, led them all around the school, hunting for items on the checklist all the kids carried with them: a pack of baseball cards, a comic book, a Frisbee, a can of tennis balls, one of Ms. Moriarty’s Taylor Swift CDs, and a shiny silver dollar that Mr. Jerome had brought. Each grade had their own list of items to search for.

  But even as both Blue and White teams looked for objects, sending up cheers when somebody found one of the items, Zach and Zoe kept their eyes open for clues about the Will Hanley ball.

  They made it all the way down to the field where the big Spirit Week baseball game would be played the next day. Then Zoe stopped cold in her tracks. Zach saw her staring at the equipment shed where Mr. Parker kept the school’s bats and balls. It was next to the machine he used to make the chalk lines on the field look as white as possible.

  “You’re staring at that shed like it’s one of the items we’re supposed to be looking for,” Zach said to his sister.

  “It’s not that,” Zoe said. “I’m just thinking that Mr. Parker’s shed looks a lot like the one we have at home. Just a bigger version.”

  She ran over to where Ms. Moriarty was watching students look through the bushes near the baseball field.

  “Ms. Moriarty?” Zoe began. “Do you think I could check and see if the key I found yesterday unlocks the equipment shed?” If the key she’d found outside their classroom window fit the lock for the shed, they might be one step closer to finding Zach’s ball.

  “I promise you, Zoe,” Ms. Moriarty said. “Mr. Jerome and I didn’t hide any of the items for the scavenger hunt inside that shed.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Zoe said. “But the key I found looks a lot like the one we use on the lock for our shed at home. And what if it opens the door to the shed, and I find Zach’s ball inside?”

  She could feel her heart beating so hard, it was as if it were trying to jump right out of her chest.

  “No reason not to give it a try,” Ms. Moriarty said.

  She called over and asked Mr. Jerome to stay with the other third-graders, who had now moved their search to the soccer field. Ms. Moriarty, Zach and Zoe walked over to the shed together. Zoe held the key in her hand, put the key in the lock, turned it slightly, and . . . it opened!

  “It works!” she said.

  Ms. Moriarty pulled the shed doors open.

  Zoe looked around inside. She saw bats leaning against one wall, an old baseball mitt, some extra bases, and all the equipment Mr. Parker used to take care of the field.

  In the corner was a big canvas bag with balls inside.

  “Can I dump out the balls?” Zoe asked Ms. Moriarty.

  “I don’t see why not,” Ms. Moriarty responded.

  “You’re going to be right, I just know it,” Zach said to his sister, feeling her excitement now.

  “This really is going to be the end of our own scavenger hunt!” Zoe bounced on the balls of her feet.

  Zoe grabbed the bag and turned it upside down. A bunch of dirty baseballs rolled out. Some of them looked older than the shed itself. They quickly went through them one by one, knowing they couldn’t spend all day in here. They had a scavenger hunt to get back to.

  But not one ball was Zach’s.

  Zach and Zoe looked at
each other, the same disappointment on both their faces.

  “I was so sure we were going to find it,” Zoe said.

  Zach shrugged at his sister and smiled, not wanting her to feel worse than she already did.

  “So we keep looking,” he said. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “Never,” Zoe said.

  “Why don’t you hold on to that key, Zoe,” Ms. Moriarty said. “In case it leads to another clue.”

  They came back to the classroom for the rest of show-and-tell before heading to lunch. Sundance, Ms. Moriarty’s cat, was playing with a ball of yarn on the teacher’s desk. At one point, he pushed it off the desk and onto the floor.

  Zoe picked up the yarn and put it back on the desk, smiling at the cat as she did.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Zach said, “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I was talking to Sundance,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Zoe said, and they went to lunch.

  EIGHT

  Once they finished lunch, the only ball Zach and Zoe worried about was the one being used in the Blue vs. White soccer game that afternoon.

  Zach’s team, the Blue team, jumped out to a 2–0 lead. But Zoe’s team came right back to tie. Zoe scored the White team’s second goal on a sweet play, splitting two defenders and pushing the ball past Malik, the Blue team’s goalie.

  Finally, the score was tied 4–4, with two minutes left in the game. They were all having so much fun running up and down the field. This had become a school day no one wanted to end. It was how Zach and Zoe felt whenever they played in the yard after dinner. All they wanted was to keep running around, even as they ran out of daylight.

  Zach once told Zoe that sports sometimes made him feel happy and sad at the same time. Happy to play, but sad when the game had to come to an end.

  After some time, Ms. Moriarty looked at her watch and gave them the one minute warning. The score was still 4–4. The fourth graders had finished their own races on another field and come over to watch. So the cheers were even louder than they’d been the whole game.