Lucky Cap (7 page)

After that, the presidency was a slam dunk.

Yes, I was elected president. Some cap, huh?

I knew Mom and Dad would be proud, but Desi—she just flipped. She couldn't believe I had gotten so popular so fast. I guess she must have thought I had been a major loser. It worked out pretty sweet, actually, not only because she stopped bossing me around so much, but also because whatever Desi did, Susana did. So I had two nice-ish sisters for a change.

Lupe was too busy being jealous to be happy for me. She got nominated for eighth-grade class president—as she had been in sixth and seventh—but, like in those years, she'd gotten weeded out in the general elections. With the other weeds. She didn't have the maturity, however, to see past her own failures and to congratulate her brother on his triumph. She was small that way. It was probably one of the reasons she'd never won the presidency. Which I did on my first try.

And Nadine? I didn't bother telling her I'd been elected. I figured she would have a problem with it somehow, like she did with most things that had to do with normal people doing normal things.

My campaign manager, Kyla, acted as if my election made us, like, boyfriend-girlfriend. Which was crazy. When she started telling people we were going out, I had to set her straight. I caught her one day at her locker. She was yakking with a couple of girls from my campaign crew.

“You been telling people we're going out?” I asked her. “Because we're not.”

Her mouth fell open, and then her eyes got all wet. Her friends hooked her arms, as if she was going to collapse or something.

“I never said we were going out,” I said. “You're the one who nominated me. I didn't ask you to. I didn't ask you to make posters or write a speech, either. You wanted to.”

Her chin started quivering. One of her friends whispered comforting words in her ear, all the while glaring at me like I was a criminal.

“I didn't—” Kyla started to say, but the words stuck in her throat. She swallowed and started again in a shaky voice. “I didn't t-tell anyone that.”

Her glaring friend added, “She knows you don't like her that way. She knows you just
used
her to get elected.”

“Used her? Ha!” I said, though that was pretty much true. It wasn't personal, though. It was political. And it sure didn't give her the right to pretend we were going out.

After that, Kyla stopped talking to me, or acknowledging me in any way, which didn't bother me one bit. Then word got out that she was trash-talking me, and that did bother me. I didn't confront her about it, though. I just sucked it up. A president can't expect to be loved by everyone. Or—let's be frank here—to love everyone.

The student council met every other Thursday. Misa, the blonde with the pink streaks who Chase said crushed on me, was vice president, Iris was elected treasurer, and another girl, Cassie (she and Misa were both cheerleaders), was secretary. Me and three girls. Sound familiar?

The meetings were a total drag. It wasn't in my power to make any important decisions, even though I was president. I had a vote and all, but it counted exactly the same as the others. I thought it would count at least triple. And I couldn't veto the principal's or the school board's decisions. I couldn't make changes to school policies or the schedule or the budget. I couldn't fire teachers. I couldn't even repeal the no-caps-worn-in-school rule. I didn't have any real power at all. The whole election turned out to be a total joke, one of those stunts adults pull to get kids thinking they have power in their lives. The school gods wanted us to believe that school was like real life, when they knew the elections were a fake.

The council's only actual job was to raise money for our class, which meant devising and organizing events like car washes, raffles, bake sales, and boring carnivals with no rides. I thought I was going to die of boredom. Evan had been right. I should have never run for elected office. Lesson learned the hard way.

The only good part about being president was getting to
be
president. Having the title. President Enzo Harpold.
¡Enzo Prezidenzo!
From then on, I got introduced at most class assemblies, and some school body assemblies. The sixth-graders would rabbit-punch the air like boxers, because of the punching bag bit in my speech, and the crowd would go berserk. Ms. Kish would always quiet everyone down with a threat of some kind, then glare at me. It was in those moments that I enjoyed being president.

Word had begun to spread about my trip, all my cool gear, and all the famous people I'd met. Plus I'd made the basketball team. All this had transformed me into an overnight sensation, a middle-school superstar.

To my surprise, I loved it. Even the attention from girls. I let them love me; I just didn't let them near me. (Well, none of them except Analisa, who I'll talk about in a minute.) I actually looked forward to going to school each day. I had school spirit. I had pep. Strange but true.

I had to keep my grades up to stay on the team, so I listened a bit more carefully during class. This was not easy with all the notes girls kept sending to me. I studied some at night in my room, after basketball practice and dinner. Sometimes Dad helped me. Sometimes Mom did. Sometimes
Desi
did. All this help did the trick: I kept my grades up.

The team practiced throughout September and October, gearing up for our first game in November. Coach Keller said we were in a tough division, very competitive, so he pushed us hard. Even though I knew I was a lock for the starting five, I gave 110 percent during practice. I was getting used to getting most of the things I wanted then and was willing to do whatever was necessary to get the rest. I owed it to myself, and to the cap.

The cheerleading squad practiced in the gym at the same time the team did, wearing their short, pleated, red-and-white skirts and red-and-white sweaters, chanting and clapping and flipping. Sometimes, they would chant my name—“
E!
E-N-Z-O!
He!
He's our man, O!
On!
On offenzo!”—and I would feel… I don't know… sort of electrified. Energized. It helped my game.

There were four cheerleaders in all. Besides Misa and Cassie, there was Mackenzie, who was in my science class and was always mean and sarcastic, and a girl I didn't have in any classes, Analisa.

Rumor had it that Analisa crushed on me, too, but I didn't believe it. Of the girls on the squad, she was the one least interested in boys, and the most interested in sports. She was the only one I'd ever had a normal conversation with.

Kap was her favorite brand, so, after hearing about my trip, she came up to me and gushed about how lucky I was that my dad worked there. She wanted to hear every detail about the trip, and, though I'd promised myself I wouldn't, I told her everything. I think it was because she was so totally awestruck by every word I said, more awestruck than anybody else I'd talked to. She kept saying “No
way
!” in this breathless way that I liked. And she knew all about Kap, and was so jealous of all the sports I got to try, and the sports stars I got to meet, and when I showed her where LeBron James signed my cap, I swear she almost fainted.

“That's the most amazingest cap ever,” she said.

Yeah, we kind of spoke the same language.

But there was no crushing going on. I want to make that perfectly clear. She didn't have a crush on me, and I certainly did not crush on her. I don't crush on anyone. I don't crush. In fact, I hate crushing.

In fact, just because Misa crushed on me and Chase crushed on her, Chase got all sore at me. Like I did anything! It wasn't my fault. I didn't ask to be cute. I hated being cute. So it was totally stupid for Chase to get mad at me for what stupid Misa felt. I never encouraged her. Once I found out, in fact, I started acting really rude and obnoxious to her on purpose, but it didn't cool her off one bit.

Chase also got bent out of shape when Coach announced I would be starting and Chase wouldn't be. I tell you what, it's tough being cute and excellent at sports. I started understanding what guys like David Beckham and A-Rod went through. Getting adored by people you don't know can be cool, but it can make things uncomfortable with people you do know. Chase, for example. And Kai and Lance, and Misa and Kyla. Some people just can't deal with other people's success.

Chase acted like a big baby the day of our first game. We had to dress nice and wear a tie to school on game days, and, right in front of Chase, Misa said I looked handsome. Ugh. But you know what Chase did? After she walked away, he punched me. What did
I
do?

When Coach introduced us at the pep rally, the cheerleaders ran out and did cartwheels and flips. Then Coach introduced us, one at a time, starters first. I got the biggest response. Kids hooted and whooped and yelled and did the rabbit-punching thing. Misa did about a million handsprings down the court, ending with this amazing aerial thing, but, for Chase's sake, I didn't so much as clap.

When the rally was over, we hit the locker room. Chase ignored me. I ignored him back. I changed back into my street clothes, including my tie—which, by the way, does not go with Kap wear. I grabbed my backpack and slipped it over my shoulder. Then I reached up for my cap.

It wasn't there.

I dug my hand deeper into the top shelf of my locker.

Nope.

I got up on my toes and stuck my face in. No cap.

I felt needle pricks of panic down my spine.

I pulled off my backpack, unzipped it, and groped around inside. I turned it upside down and dumped everything out. No cap.

“What's up?” asked River, our center, whose locker was next to mine.

I didn't answer. My tongue was frozen in fear.

I dropped my empty backpack and started searching the room.

“What you looking for, Enz?” guys kept asking me, but I shrugged them off.

After I'd scoured the locker room, I ran out into the gym. Everyone was already gone. I ran around, frantic, looking, looking. On the bleachers. Under the bleachers. I retraced my steps. I went back to my social studies room, and looked under my desk, under all the desks. People kept asking me what was wrong, if I'd lost something. I didn't answer.

Back in the hall, I tried to remember where I took it off, where I set it down. I remembered carrying it into the locker room, putting it on the shelf of my locker, shutting the door…

Someone must have swiped it. Yeah. Someone in the locker room. One of the guys, probably.

Chase, probably. He was sore at me.

I speed-walked back to the gym in a cold sweat. If someone stole it, I would have to catch him before he got away. I probably had already let him get away. I walked faster.

The locker room was empty. Everyone was gone.

I opened Chase's locker. No cap. I opened a couple of others. It was no use. I broke down. I fell to my knees. Tears squirted out of my eyes. My tongue unfroze.

“NOOOOOO!” I wailed, like a girl.

Coach appeared from somewhere. Had he been in his office this whole time? Had he seen me looking in other guys' lockers? Had he heard me bawling like a baby girl?

“Something wrong, Enzo?” he asked in his deep, manly voice. Coach had this way of talking that made a guy snap to attention and want to salute.

I shot to my feet. I didn't salute, though I did raise my hand to my face—to wipe away my girlish tears.

“No, sir,” I said, my spine stiff. “My ca—I—I lost something.”

“Something important?”

Important? Only the magic cap that made my life a dream come true.

But Coach was not the guy to explain this to. He was tough as nails. Hyper-serious. He wouldn't buy the magic-cap business, or that any cap, magic or not, was worth blubbering about, especially if you were a starter on his basketball team.

“No,” I said. “Nothing important.”

He gave me a quick nod, satisfied with this answer, then strode away in his crisply creased slacks. (He had to dress up on game days, too.)

I ran to the Lost and Found. The cap wasn't there.

I asked around. No one had found it. No one had seen it. That was because it was gripped in the dastardly thief's villainous clutches.

There would be no point asking my dad for another cap. It was a prototype, a model of a cap that wasn't even available to the public yet. There couldn't have been many of those lying around, waiting to be handed out to new employees' kids, especially to those kids who had already lost one. And even if Evan did find me another prototype, what were the chances it would be lucky? I mean, Kap couldn't be making lucky caps on purpose.

Could they?

Maybe Dad would get in trouble if Kap found out I lost their prototype—the secret cap they stupidly trusted me with. Maybe he'd even get fired!

Maybe, I thought to myself, I shouldn't be running around telling everyone I'd lost it. What if Lupe got word of it? She'd go right to Dad.

I decided not to report the cap missing to the office or to the police or the FBI. Other than Evan and the people at Kap, no adults would care anyway. They would say that it was just a hat and that there was nothing they could do about it. Adults have screwed-up priorities.

No, I was on my own. I was going to have to solve the case myself.

Obviously, someone stole the cap. But who? There was a school filled with suspects. I started a list:

Chase was at the top because he was mad at me, because Misa liked me instead of him, and because I was starting instead of him.

Then came Lance, who would have stolen it because he hated me, because Chase was mad at me, or both.

Kai also could have done it. He felt rejected and abandoned. I hadn't seen him in the crowd during the rally. But, then again, he's so short I could have missed him.

Kyla felt rejected, too, and was bad-mouthing me. Would she have gone into the boys' locker room out of spite? Yeah, probably.

Iris might have arranged it as a gag, to teach me a lesson, to bring me down a peg. It was a long shot, but not out of the question.

Giovanni? How mad was he that I'd beaten him out for president? Mad enough to steal the thing that got me elected? Without a doubt.

And the other candidates for class president?

And the other forwards who had hoped to be starters?

And all those people who loved the cap—in other words, everyone? Including Analisa. Especially Analisa.

Who knows? Maybe Evan found out I ran for class officer against his advice and decided to take the cap back in retaliation.

Okay, maybe that was far-fetched. But even without him, I had a really long list of suspected thieves.

I decided to start at the top of it, with Chase. He had been in the locker room around the time of the theft. As second-string forward, he would benefit from me not having my cap for the game that night. And he was sore at me because a girl he liked liked me. He looked mighty guilty.

He was also technically my best friend. But was he? Maybe all he had ever wanted from me was the cap.

I made up my mind right then: Chase was the thief.

I had till game time to find where he hid it; otherwise, I would be luckless for the game.

The team, the coach, the managers, the statisticians, the cheerleaders, and the driver boarded the bus after school. I didn't ignore anyone, but I didn't speak to anyone, either. This seemed fine with Chase. He was mad at me. The feeling was mutual. When we did make accidental eye contact, he squinted and looked away.

A fan bus followed us to the game so we'd have a cheering section in Lardo. Even so, the reaction when our starters were announced over the loudspeaker was nothing compared to when the Wranglers' names were called out. The whole gym rattled. Too bad our first game had to be on the road.

We got the ball at the jump. River tipped it to Ryan, who brought it down court and passed off to me. I faked a pass, and the guy on me got caught fat-footed, leaving me an open path to the hoop. I broke by him, but somehow, instead of the floor, I bounced the ball off my foot, and it ricocheted into the stands. The crowd laughed.

The lucklessness had begun.

“Get back on D! Back on D!” Coach yelled over the laughter.

We set up our defense down on the Wranglers' end of the court. My guy danced around, trying to get open.

“Hey, bro,” he said to me as he danced. “You know this is basketball, not soccer, right?”

Ha-ha.

Pop.
The ball was in his hands. He spun one way, then another, then broke for the basket. I drifted back, trying to stay between him and the hoop, and backed into a Wrangler setting a pick. My guy made an easy layup.

Someone blasted a horn, and the Wrangler cheerleaders cheered for their guy: “J-A-C! C-O-B! He's the man! The man for me!”

Man? What was he—eleven?

He snickered at me when I caught up with him downcourt.

“I have a feeling this is not going to be your night,” he said.

I had the same feeling.

I missed my first four jump shots. I missed two free throws after Jacob fouled me. I fouled him three times in the first period, which, after he sank all his free tosses, gave his team six points. Then I missed my next three jump shots. I also was called for double dribbling, traveling, and three seconds in the lane. Then I got pulled for a sub: Chase.

He pulled off his warm-up jacket and ran onto the court. Did he give me an encouraging look as we passed each other, or a “You'll get 'em next time, buddy!”? Nope. He was totally stoked and shot me a sit-down-and-watch-how-this-game-is-really-played-sucka! smirk.

I could only gasp at the depth of his treachery. And give him props. He had planned it beautifully.

He played better than I'd ever seen him play. His jump shot couldn't miss. He made great moves under the basket: passing, rebounding, blocking shots, intercepting passes. He had game. But, of course, he had the cap.

We ended up winning the game by six points. I cheered as best I could, but it was difficult hiding my resentment. In the locker room, the guys were all loud and happy. I gritted my teeth watching them high-fiving and knuckle-bumping Chase, who'd had a great game. I fired eye daggers at him whenever I could. He shot them right back.

Our fans, including the cheerleaders, mobbed us when we stepped out of the locker room. Misa was in front and went straight for (wait for it) Chase. So
that's
how it was—she crushed on whoever was up at the time. Chase looked like a kid on Christmas morning who'd gotten everything he'd asked Santa for.

Analisa was the only one who came up to me.

“Don't look so glum,” she said. “It isn't sportsmanlike.”

Did I look glum? I'd really been trying to look thrilled and triumphant.

“You probably heard about my cap, right?” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

“I heard you were looking for it. Didn't you find it?”

I glanced around for eavesdroppers, then whispered in her ear, “Somebody
stole
it.”

I wondered why I kept telling her things I'd decided not to tell anyone. Especially considering she was on my list of suspects.

“Noooo!”
she breathed, and set her fingers on my arm. “Oh, Enz, that's terrible. I'm
so
sorry.”

She seemed to mean it, and it felt good to have someone actually grasp the enormity of the tragedy, to have someone really understand what I was going through, that my eyes teared up. I quickly dabbed them with the sleeve of my hoodie.

“Who do you think it was?” she whispered, glancing around.

I glared at Chase. Misa was being extremely chummy, and he was eating it up.

“Chase?” Analisa asked. “But he's your friend.”

“Why do you think he played so well tonight? And I played so lousy?”

“You don't believe…” She stopped to rephrase. “You don't really think you play so well because of a cap, do you?”

I leaned in close to her and whispered, “It's a lucky cap. It possesses magic.”

It was such a relief to finally tell someone. And bizarre that I had done so to a girl.

“Oh, come on, Enz,” she said, her head tilted. “Magic?”

“You don't get it. I was
nothing
before I got the cap. Nothing!” I hung my head. “And now I'm nothing again.”

Analisa stifled a giggle.

“It's true!” I said. “I have to get it back! I have to! He must have hidden it. He can't wear it. Not at Stan. Not around anyone who goes to Stan. It's one of a kind, and he knows it. It's a prototype, you know.”

“Prototype,” Analisa said. “Yes, you told me.”

“He must have the cap with him somewhere. I don't think the magic works long distance. Anyway, I always kept it close by when I couldn't wear it.”

“You're crazy. It's not the cap that makes you good at basketball.”

“I'm going to find it. Will you help me?”

“I guess. I'm not going to do anything wrong, though. I don't want to get in trouble.”

“You think I do? I just want to get back what is rightfully mine.”

“So what do we do first?”

I checked for eavesdroppers, then whispered, “Check his duffel.”

“You can't break into his personal property.”

“He broke into
my
personal property. He
stole
my personal property!”

“You don't know that, and even if you did, two wrongs don't make a right.”

“What do you suggest then?”

“Have you asked him if he took it?”

Girls! Talking is always their solution.

“So you think Chase would say, ‘Oh, your cap, Enzo? Oh, yeah, sure… I took that. Why do you ask?'”

Analisa didn't appreciate the sarcasm.

“No, I didn't ask him,” I said. “He hasn't been talking to me for a while now because of Misa. And because he's sore that I got picked to start instead of him. Now he's got his precious Misa and the cap, so he'll probably start the next game, too.”

Analisa checked out Chase and his admirers, including Misa.

“I don't think he knows it's lucky,” I said. “He probably just thinks I stunk tonight because I was upset about losing it. It's very important, Analisa, that he never finds out that the cap has magic. No one must ever find out.”

She chuckled. “I'll never tell anyone about it.”

“The guys all put their duffels out by the bus to be stowed. I should have a couple minutes to check out Chase's…”

“Don't do it, Enzo. I'm telling you, it's a mistake.”

I was grateful for her concern. But I had to get the cap.

“Wish me luck,” I said, and rushed away.