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  Books by Matt Christopher

  Sports Stories

  The Lucky Baseball Bat

  Baseball Pals

  Basketball Sparkplug

  Little Lefty

  Touchdown for Tommy

  Break for the Basket

  Baseball Flyhawk

  Catcher with a Glass Arm

  The Counterfeit Tackle

  Miracle at the Plate

  The Year Mom Won the Pennant

  The Basket Counts

  Catch That Pass!

  Shortstop from Tokyo

  Jackrabbit Goalie

  The Fox Steals Home

  Johnny Long Legs

  Look Who’s Playing First Base

  Tough to Tackle

  The Kid Who Only Hit Homers

  Face-Off

  Mystery Coach

  Ice Magic

  No Arm in Left Field

  Jinx Glove

  Front Court Hex

  The Team That Stopped Moving

  Glue Fingers

  The Pigeon with the Tennis Elbow

  The Submarine Pitch

  Power Play

  Football Fugitive

  Johnny No Hit

  Soccer Halfback

  Diamond Champs

  Dirt Bike Racer

  The Dog That Called the Signals

  The Dog That Stole Football Plays

  Drag-Strip Racer

  Run, Billy, Run

  Tight End

  The Twenty-One-Mile Swim

  Wild Pitch

  Dirt Bike Runaway

  The Great Quarterback Switch

  Supercharged Infield

  The Hockey Machine

  Red-Hot Hightops

  Tackle Without a Team

  The Hit-Away Kid

  The Spy on Third Base

  The Dog That Pitched a No-Hitter

  Takedown

  Animal Stories

  Desperate Search

  Stranded

  Earthquake

  Devil Pony

  Copyright

  Text Copyright © 1990 by Matthew F. Christopher

  Illustrations Copyright © 1990 by Margaret Sanfilippo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-316-09436-8

  To Richard and Celeste

  A special thanks to my nephew, Craig Christopher, former wrestler at Lansing Central School, Lansing, New York, and to Coach Jim Barnes, wrestling coach at Rock Hill High School, Rock Hill, South Carolina, for their help with the wrestling portions of this book.

  Contents

  Books by Matt Christopher

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  How many of these Matt Christopher sports classics have you read?

  1

  One minute the street in front of us was completely empty. The next minute three guys appeared as if by magic. Each was about my age, but bigger — about the size of my stepbrother, Carl. They stood spread-legged in the middle of the street, glaring at us as if to say, “Come on! If you’ve got the guts!”

  “Look!” Carl cried, his voice frightened. “It’s that new kid they call the Octopus! And two of his punk buddies!”

  I recognized them, too. Max Rundel, “the Octopus,” was in the middle. Hunter Nyles, “the Squasher,” was on his right, and John McNeer — who hadn’t earned a crazy nickname, yet — was on his left. Rundel had moved into Mount Villa during the summer and already had created a name for himself. And I don’t mean just the nickname pinned on him because of his wrestling style. He had also gained a reputation as a leader, and if you refused to follow him you’d pay for it, one way or another. Anyway, that’s the word that got around.

  Me, I’m no follower, and I don’t intend to be.

  “Go past ’em!” I yelled at Carl, who was riding his dirt bike on my right side. “You swing to the right, I’ll swing to the left!”

  I don’t often order Carl around. Even though I’m two years older, he’s bigger than I am. It’s generally he who tries to give me orders. But I seldom, if ever, pay attention to them.

  This time he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t look to see what kind of expression he had on his face, either. I had no time.

  I wheeled to the left and Carl wheeled to the right. At the same time the guys split up, Nyles sweeping directly into my path. A scared look came over his suntanned face, as if he thought I was going to smash right into him.

  But I took my thumb off the gas lever and braked, stopping less than a yard in front of him, and looked him straight in the eye. Then I glanced at Carl and saw that he’d done the same thing with McNeer.

  “What d’you think you’re doing?” I snapped at Nyles. “Who says you own the street?”

  “I says,” Max answered, sounding like a tough army sergeant.

  I stared at him. He was about five-ten, with heavy eyebrows and wavy blond hair that swept back over his head and ended in a bunch of curls behind his neck. His cream-colored shirt and blue jeans were so tight I wondered how he’d gotten into them. A round button with I AM KING inscribed on it was pinned to his shirt.

  “Off,” Nyles said, grabbing the handlebars of my bike. “Off! You hear me?”

  I glared at him, my heart thumping like a hammer, then glanced back at Max. He grinned at me, one of those grins you’d like to wipe off with a fist. “You heard him, Bailor. Off! We’d like to check out your wheels. Nothing wrong in that, is there?”

  “There sure is!” I yelled, and socked Nyles’s hand with a fist. “Out of my way, Nyles!” I shouted, and started to twist the gas lever.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Max yelled as he rushed at me, grabbed my leg, and started to pull me off my bike. “Off, Bailor!” he snarled again. “This is no joke, Squirt!”

  I couldn’t believe this! What guts! Did he think they could take our bikes from under us without our putting up a fight? I didn’t know about Carl, but I wasn’t going to let them get away with it!

  I shut off the engine as Max dragged me off the seat, and, moving as fast as I could, I grabbed him around both legs. He went down like a sack of potatoes. I landed on top of him, got my right leg around his thighs in a scissors hold and started to wrap one arm around his neck. I was hoping to tie him up in a hold and make him promise to leave us alone, but I didn’t count on him turning into a maniac. I guess I’d forgotten for a minute that this was no wrestling match but a street fight, and that Max Rundel would use any method he could to win.

  He squirmed out of my hold in nothing flat, slugged me on the jaw, then sat on my back with one hand pressed against my head and the other bending my left arm up between my shoulder blades.

  “Wrestler, too, huh, Bailor?” he grunted. “Heard you were. But you’ve got to grow a few more inches, Shorty, and learn better holds than whatever it was you just tried to pull.”

  I said nothing, b
ut I was doing a lot of thinking. If Max and his friends got away with bullying us this time, they’d try it again. They had to be stopped… now.

  But I was on the bottom…

  “You going to play with us like a good boy, or do I have to —” Max started to say, when I made my move. Gathering all the strength I could, I rolled over and pulled Max after me. I did it all so quickly I surprised him. For just a couple of seconds I had broken his hold and was on top of him again, grabbing his left arm and pulling it over his back in a hammerlock. I’d started to wrestle in school only last year, but I wasn’t too bad at it, for a beginner. Being short for my age, it was the one sport that I could get into and really excel at.

  I had Max where I wanted him, but again for only a few seconds. He grunted and cursed as he twisted and bolted. Then he squirmed out of my hold and had me in a hammerlock.

  “Thought you had me, huh?” he snorted, yanking on my arm so hard it hurt. “You giving up, or you want a little more of this?”

  “Let him alone, Rundel!” I heard Carl yell out. “You’re hurting him!”

  I glanced at Carl and saw him clutched between Nyles and McNeer. Both guys had his arms pinned to his sides.

  “I am, huh?” Max sneered. “Well, let me hear him say that. Okay?”

  “Okay. Okay,” I said, feeling the pain all the way up my arm.

  He let go of me and pushed down hard on my back as he rose to his feet. I lay there a few seconds, waiting for the pain in my arms and legs to ease up. By the time I felt better and was on my feet, Max was riding my bike down the street. The other two guys were on Carl’s bike, with Nyles steering.

  There go our bikes, I thought. We’ll never see them again, not after that fight. If Max had enough nerve to take on Carl and me in the middle of the street in broad daylight, what would stop him from keeping the bikes?

  “You’re a fool, Sean, you know that?” Carl snarled at me. “It’s a wonder he didn’t break your arm!”

  I looked at him. According to Mom I was temperamental and headstrong. She had reminded me of that a dozen times, saying that I couldn’t control myself, that I got into fights with the least provocation. Well, maybe that was true. But one thing I wasn’t was a fool, and I resented Carl’s remark.

  “I’m no coward,” I said, angrily. “And I’m not going to let anyone take my bike without a fi—”

  Just then something glittering on the grass caught my eye. It was Max’s button, the one that said I AM KING.

  I picked it up, wiped the dirt off it, and stuck it into my pocket.

  Carl frowned. “You’re not going to keep that, are you?” he said. “That’s Max’s button. You’d better give it back to him if you know what’s good for you.”

  I locked eyes with him. “Yes, I am going to keep it,” I said firmly.

  “Why? You want to get in more trouble?” he snapped.

  “If you don’t say anything to him he won’t know I’ve got it,” I said, trying to keep my cool.

  He kept staring at me.

  “I might give it back to him sometime. But not now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think he deserves it,” I said, determined to keep my word. “He’s no king. If he can ever prove he’s a king, I’ll give it back to him.”

  “You’re really an idiot,” Carl said, shaking his head.

  I shrugged. “You think what you want to think,” I said calmly.

  Carl was a lot like his father, my stepfather. Neither of them cared for me very much. As a matter of fact, I sometimes felt that there was even a gap between Mom and me, or she wouldn’t get on my back for every little mistake I made. Sure, I’d clobbered a few kids who had made fun of my height, but I couldn’t just stand back and take it, could I?

  “You’re just too impetuous,” Mom had once said. “You can’t control yourself. At the slightest notion you want to drop everything and fight. I sure hope you’ll grow up one of these days, Sean — if not physically, at least mentally — and straighten up into a decent young man your father and I can be proud of.”

  Sure, I thought. And let my name be muddied all the time I was growing and straightening up. Why couldn’t anyone see things from my point of view? It was no wonder I felt lonely most of the time, as if something — or someone — was missing from my life.

  Mom and my natural father had divorced when I was about two years old, too long ago for me to remember what my father looked like. Mom rarely spoke about him. It was as if there was something about him she didn’t want me to know.

  Once she did say that he had wrestled in high school. I guess that may have been one of the reasons I took up the sport. It was something I could do to remind me of him once in a while.

  Maybe things would be different if he were still around.

  I started to walk homeward, because I felt sure I wouldn’t see our bikes again. Wait until Mom and Dad hear about this, I thought. What punishment would Mom impose on me this time? Because she was usually the one who handed out the punishments, not Dad.

  A car hummed by. A minute later I heard the sound of our bikes’ motors and saw Rundel, Nyles, and McNeer riding down the street toward us. I stared, surprised and relieved to see our bikes again. The guys pulled up in front of us, shut off the engines, and got off the bikes, all sober and innocent-looking, as if this was something they did every day.

  “Nice wheels,” Max chortled. “Thanks for the ride.”

  I didn’t say anything. Neither did Carl. Apparently neither Max nor his cronies had missed the button that was gone from his shirt.

  They turned and headed up the street, Max in the middle, swaggering like a real kingpin. Suddenly Max turned around, grinned, and waved. The anger I felt about their taking our bikes for a ride around the block came to a boiling point.

  “Grin, Punkhead,” I muttered. “It’s your last time. And the last time you’ll ever take our bikes, too.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Carl said. “How are you going to stop them, Peewee? You going to grow a foot in a week and take on all three?” He laughed.

  “No, I’m not going to grow a foot,” I said, watching the guys get smaller in the distance. “But I’m going to grow all right.”

  2

  We checked the bikes for damage, but there wasn’t any. Our bikes were twins, except for the color. Carl’s was white with black trim; mine was red with white trim. They were YZ50s. Dad had given them to us on Carl’s twelfth birthday. He’d gotten a pretty good deal on them because he was maintenance manager of a bike shop.

  We put on our helmets, got on our bikes, and headed for home.

  “You wouldn’t have gotten into a fight, you know, if you’d kept your mouth shut,” Carl ranted. “I don’t know what made you think you could handle those guys. Each one of ’em is twice your size! Don’t you have a brain in your head?”

  “They were trying to take our bikes,” I said evenly. “That’s what I was thinking about, not sizes.”

  “Sure. And you saw what happened.”

  This kind of exchange between Carl and me wasn’t new. He’d been on my back ever since he was eight or nine, when he began to grow up like a weed, and I was ten or eleven and hardly growing at all. He’d call me Peewee, or Squirt, or Shorty, more often than by my real name. Why, I didn’t know. Maybe it was because he resented having a stepbrother. Maybe it was because he was bigger than me and got a kick out of flaunting it. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but when we wrestled on the living room floor he’d beat me every time.

  He grumbled on, but I ignored him and got to thinking about Max and his two friends. They went to Franklin Junior High, not far from Jefferson Davis Junior High, where Carl and I went. There’d always been a rivalry between their school and ours. Baseball, football, wrestling — it made no difference. Whenever the two schools got together in any sport it was war.

  We reached home, rode up the concrete driveway to the double garage, and got off our bikes.

  “I suppose you’re going to
spill the beans to Mom,” I said to Carl as he lifted the left-side door.

  He looked at my pants and jersey. “I won’t have to,” he observed. “One look at your clothes and she’ll know you’ve been in another fight.”

  I stared down at my dirt-smudged clothes. “Great,” I said. “I guess I’m in for it again.” Disgusted, I pushed my bike inside the garage and yanked down the kickstand. What would my punishment be this time? No TV for a week, or maybe two?

  As soon as we entered the house, Carl’s prediction came true. “For Pete’s sake, Sean! You’ve been fighting again? Look at your clothes!” Mom cried.

  Carl and I looked at each other, waiting to see who would talk first. I kept mum.

  “Well?” she said, glancing back and forth at us. “Which one of you is going to tell me?”

  I took a deep breath and sighed. “You’re right, Mom,” I said. “I got into a fight.”

  “With whom?”

  “Max Rundel, the new kid, and two of his buddies,” Carl cut in. “They wanted to borrow our bikes. I wouldn’t have minded it, but —” He paused and looked at me.

  “And what did you say, Sean?”

  “I said no, and they forced us off our bikes,” I said. “That’s when it started.”

  “There wouldn’t have been a fight if he’d kept his cool and not been a wiseguy,” Carl said disgustedly.

  “Why, you chick—!” I started to cry out, then stopped. My hands were balled into fists. I felt like slugging him. At the same time I tried hard to control my temper. Getting into a fight with Carl was the last thing I needed to do, especially in front of Mom.

  “Okay, okay, cool it!” Mom said sharply. She grabbed me by the shoulder and looked at me hard. “Sean, I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. I’ve warned you a dozen times about fighting, but I might as well have been talking to the wall.”

  “Mom, those guys took our bikes!” I cried, raising my voice to make sure she’d hear my side. “How’d I know they’d bring them back? I couldn’t just stand there —”

  “You didn’t think they’d take a chance on getting caught with two stolen bikes, did you?” she snapped back. “I’m sure they’re smart enough to realize that they could be arrested. Why, just their taking the bikes for a ride around the block is enough cause for us to press charges. But we’re not going to do that. I don’t want to make trouble.”