But Irwin was.
“So I guess you need to pick which is more important to you,” he told her. “The CrimeBiters or other stuff.”
Daisy turned bright red. “We’re not even officially a gang right now.”
“I only took up lacrosse because you said you’d come to all the games,” I reminded her. “And you’ve barely come to any.”
“You guys are putting too much pressure on me!” Daisy snapped. “I should be able to have a life, you know! And sometimes that life is outside the CrimeBiters!” She flashed her eyes at me and Baxter. “You two are busy with lacrosse, you should know that better than anyone!”
“Uh—” I said, but Daisy wasn’t finished.
“If you guys can’t handle me having a life, then I’m sorry, but we can’t be friends.” Then she stormed back to her table, leaving us standing there with our mouths open.
“Who needs her!” Irwin said finally. Then he winced in pain. “I have a stomachache all of a sudden. I think I need to go to the nurse’s office.”
He ran out of the cafeteria.
And just like that, we’d broken up again. It was the shortest reunion in history.
I looked at Baxter.
“See you tonight at the game,” he said.
WE WERE PLAYING THE CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL at the high school, and it was our only night game of the season. That meant two things:
(1) There wouldn’t be any injuries caused by our lousy field.
(2) Abby, who loved nighttime, would be all hyped up.
“Are you sure we should take her?” my mom asked my dad as we were leaving the house. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.”
“You said!” I insisted. “You can’t change your minds now!”
My dad, who cared way more about the game than I did (not that he would ever admit it), looked worried that I would become distracted and upset. “Let’s just do it for Jimmy,” he told my mom. “It’s fine. I’ll hold her. Mrs. Cragg can help us too.”
I stopped walking. “Mrs. Cragg is coming?”
“Yup,” my dad said. “She wanted to watch you and Baxter play.”
I smiled inside. “Cool.”
I had to get there early for warm-ups, so once we got there my dad decided to try and tire Abby out before the game started.
“I’ll take her for a nice long run,” he said.
“Sounds good, Dad. I have to go.”
I started to run away when my dad said, “Jimmy.”
I turned back. “Yeah, Dad?”
“About Abby …” he said, but then just shook his head.
“Dad, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out after the game, okay?”
He looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind.
“Okay, son. Good luck.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
I ran off to join my teammates, who were gathering by the bench.
“Yo, Jimmy!” Chad said, coming up to me and giving me a big high five. He was on crutches, so obviously he wasn’t going to be playing. “You get a good night’s sleep? You’re going to need to be wide awake out there today.”
I nodded and started putting my stuff on. I didn’t feel much like talking. I just wanted to have a good game, since it was pretty much the only thing in my life that was going well right about then.
After a few minutes, Baxter pointed across the field. “Hey, Jimmy, isn’t that your dad with Abby? She’s playing with some dog who’s, like, three times as big as she is!”
I turned and saw Abby and my dad at the far end of the field, by the track. She was jumping on top of a Saint Bernard. A Saint Bernard I recognized.
Coach Knight came up to me. “Jimmy, please go tell your dad he’s not allowed to walk his dog on the field,” he said. “And be quick about it.”
“Got it,” I said.
I ran over, and sure enough, it was Thor. I had no idea what he was doing there. Some man I’d never seen before was walking him. Abby, meanwhile, was jumping up and down on Thor’s back, with my dad holding on to her leash for dear life.
“This big dog has the patience of a saint,” my dad said.
“Well, he is a Saint Bernard,” I said. Then I looked at the man. “Are you friends with Mr. Swab? Why are you here with Thor?”
“I work for Coach Swab,” the man said. He nodded down at the two dogs. “He says Thor is his good-luck charm.”
“Coach Swab?” I asked, shocked.
The guy nodded. “Yeah, Ned Swab. The coach of LaxMax.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Are you serious? Mr. Swab is the coach of LaxMax?”
“You’re darn right I’m serious,” the guy said. “But not half as serious as Coach Swab. That man doesn’t kid around. He’ll stop at nothing to win.” He pointed up the hill. “Look, here he comes now.”
I followed his gaze to the parking lot and saw two giant luxury buses pulling in. They both said LAXMAX on the side.
FACT: It’s never a good sign when the opposing team has buses nicer than the pros.
My dad whistled. “Whoa.”
“Like I said, he doesn’t kid around,” the guy said.
Kids started piling out of the buses. It seemed like there were zillions of them, and they were all giant.
“Jeez,” I said.
The man smiled. “Yeah. Jeez just about sums it up.”
Mr. Swab was the last one off the second bus. He saw us, walked over, and shook the guy’s hand. “Can you make sure all the water gets to the sidelines, Jeff?” he said.
The man named Jeff nodded. “I’m on it, sir.”
Mr. Swab turned to me and frowned. “Jimmy! What are you doing here?”
“I’m the goalie for Quietville,” I told him.
“No kidding! You’re the kid Bill Knight has been telling me about? What do you know!” He looked at me intently. “Well, maybe we’ll see you on our LaxMax squad next year. In the meantime, be careful out there today. We got some big boys on our team.”
“I will, sir,” I said. “I’m confused, though. I thought you were a businessman.”
“I am,” said Mr. Swab. “I’m in the winning business.”
“Is it true your team hasn’t lost a game in six years?” my dad asked Mr. Swab.
“That’s right,” Mr. Swab answered. “At LaxMax, we’re built for success. And with our brand-new facilities and some new coaching techniques, we’re going to be successful for a long time to come.”
“What about all the other lacrosse programs around here?” asked my dad. “Like the team my son is currently on? What happens to them?”
“Well, that’s a good question,” Mr. Swab said. “I know you’ve been having a lot of problems with that field. And as you know, Coach Knight is coming over to our program next year. But there are plenty of programs for kids who want to participate at a less competitive level. We compete at an elite level.”
My dad scratched his head. “Aren’t these kids a little young to be worried about elite levels?”
“Sports is about being the best, no matter what age you are,” Mr. Swab said. “Our goal is to make sure boys like your son here join our program. That’s what it takes to be the gold standard of lacrosse in this whole area.” He looked down at Abby, who was looking up at Mr. Swab suspiciously. “Has she settled down since last night?”
“Again, I’m really sorry,” my dad said. “We are figuring out what to do with her.”
“Well, I hope so,” Mr. Swab said. “We can’t have dangerous animals running free now, can we?”
“Abby never growls at somebody unless it’s for a good reason,” I said.
My dad looked horrified. “Jimmy!”
Mr. Swab laughed. “No, no, it’s okay,” he said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this world, it’s that you can’t make friends with everybody.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said my dad.
Mr. Swab nodded in the direction of his team. “Well, time to get on with it. Good luck today, son.”
As Mr. Swab walked away, I saw my dad looking at him with a weird expression on his face. It was like he was jealous, impressed, and annoyed, all at the same time.
“He’s not so great,” I said to my dad.
“Try telling him that,” my dad answered.
AFTER TWO MINUTES, we were already losing, 3–0.
“Jimmy!” hollered Coach Knight. “Get your head in the game!”
My head’s not the problem, I wanted to holler back. The problem was that we stank compared to LaxMax, especially since we didn’t have Chad. They were bigger, faster, quicker, and stronger, not to mention the fact that they had way fancier uniforms than we did.
After their second goal, the kid who scored ran by me and said, “You’re the kid who’s supposed to join our team next year? Show us what you got.”
By the end of the first quarter, it was 5–0.
We ran to the sideline.
“Guys!” Coach said. “Guys! Guys! Guys!”
The team stood there, waiting for him to come up with a second word.
“Guys! You’re playing scared! They’re good, but they’re not gods. They’re boys, just like you!”
“They might be boys,” Baxter mumbled, “but they’re not just like us.”
At the beginning of the second quarter, our team manager, Mikey Parker, was running off the field after a water break when he tripped on our sideline and skinned his elbow. My first thought was Here we go again!—but then I remembered we were playing at the high school.
“You know it’s not a good sign when someone on your team gets injured and they’re not even playing,” I said. I was standing by myself in the goal, though, so no one heard it.
Then, with three minutes left in the first half, we scored. And wouldn’t you know it, it was an amazing play by Baxter that made it happen. He received a pass at the halfway line, faked out three guys, then shot with his left hand, even though he’s a righty.
Suddenly, we were only behind 8–1!
FACT: Sometimes, the score doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, this was not one of those times.
Okay, so it’s not exactly like we were right back in the game, but it was something to get excited about, right? So we got excited. I hooted and hollered from my lonely spot in the goal, while Baxter ran over to the sideline to slap hands with all our teammates.
He was halfway down the high-five line when I saw him suddenly crumple to the ground and let out a piercing scream. It was so loud that I could hear it all the way across the field.
The whole place went silent as Coach Knight went over to Baxter and helped him to the bench. I saw Baxter’s mom come down from the crowd and push her way through to try to console him. He was crying.
“What happened?” I kept repeating to anyone on the field who would listen. “What happened?”
“I think he fell and hurt his foot or something,” said a LaxMax kid. “Bummer. It was a nice goal.”
After another minute, everyone was ready to start the game again, but something just didn’t feel right. I went over it in my head: Kids had been getting injured all season long. Then, yesterday at practice, two more kids got hurt. Today during the game, two more kids.
I didn’t care what field we were playing on—something weird was going on.
I thought about what Mrs. Cragg had said: It almost sounds like someone is doing it on purpose.
And then I thought about what Shep had said at the first obedience class: When something happens often enough, it becomes more than a coincidence. It becomes a pattern.
Suddenly I found myself running off the field.
I heard voices aimed in my direction.
“Hey!”
“Where are you going?”
“What’s happening?”
“Come on, kid, the game’s about to start again!”
Coach Knight saw me coming and ran out onto the field to meet me. He was smiling, trying to stay positive. “Jimmy, what’s up? We just scored! Come on, we can come back! I need you out there!”
“Is Baxter okay?”
“He’ll be fine! Just a little knee sprain. Good as new in a few weeks.” Coach tapped me on the helmet, expecting me to turn around and run back to my position.
But I just stayed there. His smile disappeared. “Jimmy, are you serious? Let’s go. Now.”
“Too many people are getting hurt. It’s been going on the whole season.”
He pulled me aside, where no one could hear us. “Jimmy. I get it. But you have to realize, that’s sports. People get injured. Even kids sometimes. Everyone gets knocked down in life. It’s learning how to get back up that defines us as boys … and men.”
I looked at him. That was a great speech, but he was missing the point.
“Too many people are getting hurt,” I repeated. “And I think it’s because someone wants them to get hurt.”
Coach Knight looked at me like I had two heads. “Huh?”
I turned around and ran to the center of the field, where the face-offs take place after every goal.
“Somebody is after us!” I shouted, loud enough so the people in the crowd could hear me too. “We’ve had eleven kids injured this year, including four in the last two days! Somebody is trying to hurt us!”
Everyone started murmuring. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, but I’m pretty sure it was along the lines of This kid is crazy.
“Play the game!” hollered someone from the LaxMax side of the crowd.
“Man up!” yelled someone else.
But I wouldn’t budge.
As people got more confused, I saw my family in the crowd. My parents were making their way down to the field, trying to figure out what was going on, so they’d given Abby’s leash to Mrs. Cragg. She saw me and yelled, “Good for you!” then gave me two thumbs-up.
Oops.
FACT: Never give someone two thumbs-up when you’re holding a hyperactive dog on a leash.
Mrs. Cragg dropped the leash for a second, and that was all Abby needed.
In a flash, she leapt over about four rows of people (remember I said she could fly?), easily cleared a four-foot-high fence (the flying thing again), and bolted onto the field, where she came running up to me and started jumping up and down.
“Not now, girl,” I said. “Not now! Stop jumping!”
She did stop jumping—but only because she was ready for her next activity, which was to run giant circles around me. After the first two circles, the other kids on the field started laughing, but the adults weren’t amused. First I refuse to keep playing, then my dog decides to make the field her own personal playground. This was not the way the championship game was supposed to go.
Another dog started barking, and everyone perked their ears up, Abby included. The barking was coming from the LaxMax side of the field.
I knew who it was, and so did Abby.
She sprinted over to the LaxMax sideline and barged her way through the crowd until she found Thor, who was tied to the bleachers. It was the happiest reunion you’ve ever seen, even though they’d seen each other approximately twenty-five minutes earlier. Abby was running around Thor, who had managed to free himself from his leash and was chasing Abby.
Mr. Swab was hollering, “Get off the field now!”
My dad had reached us too, and he was hollering at Mr. Swab.
“How dare you talk to my son that way!”
“I’m not talking to your son!” Mr. Swab yelled back. “I’m talking to the dogs!”
Coach Knight was standing between them. “Let’s just call an early halftime and get this sorted out,” he said, but no one was listening to him. My mom was there too, and some other parents, and soon a bunch of adults were screaming at each other, even though no one appeared to be listening to anything anyone else was saying.
Abby and Thor, meanwhile, had begun their favorite activity of all time: digging holes. And as it turned out, a lacrosse field is the perfect place to dig holes.
As I watch
ed them dig, an idea started forming in my head.
Hey, I thought.
Wait a second.
WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD, I hustled back to our sideline. As I ran, I thought about the four kids who’d fallen and hurt themselves over the last two days. They’d all fallen right near our bench!
I ran over to Mikey Parker, who was standing on the sideline with a bandage on his elbow. “Can you show me exactly where you got hurt?”
He scratched his head, confused. “Huh?”
“Where you got hurt! Show me!”
“Oh. Uh, sure.” He walked over to a spot near the bench. “It was somewhere around here.”
I kneeled down and felt on the ground. Sure enough, there was a hole. It was surrounded by dirt and covered up by cut grass, so it was hard to see, but there was definitely a hole. Which looked a lot like a hole a dog might dig.
I ran over to Baxter, who was still icing his ankle. “Baxter! Where did you fall?”
He scowled at me. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Try to remember!” I hollered, then remembered he was in pain. “Please,” I added.
He moaned and rolled his eyes, but he pointed to a spot on our sideline. “I came off the field around there.” I ran over to the spot and knelt down on the ground. And again, there was another hole—just as hard to spot as the last one, but unmistakable.
Suddenly I heard someone yelling my name. “Jimmy! Jimmy!” I turned around and saw a familiar face sprinting toward me. He was wearing his CrimeBiters sweatshirt.
It was Irwin.
“No way!” I said. “What are you doing here? What are you doing on the field?”
Irwin shrugged like it was no big deal. “It seemed like you needed help.”
I suddenly felt incredibly grateful. “I do.”
Irwin held up a small blue dog tag that said NORTHPORT ARF! on it. “Look what I found!” he said. “I found it over by one of the holes near the benches. Isn’t that where Abby went to obedience training?”
I turned the tag over and read the back. CONGRATULATIONS THOR—YOU’RE AN ARFULLY GOOD DOG!
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