Free The Lemonade Crime by Jacqueline Davies

the basket, Evan came at him with both hands up, and it must have been the look on his face that made Scott freeze and lose half a step. That's all it took. Evan stripped the ball and headed for the top of the key.
    He could have just dribbled to the basket and made the shot, and that would have been that. The game would have been over. And he would have won.
    But no.
    He wanted to make Scott pay. He wanted to make sure that when they told the story—for days, for weeks, for years—of how Scott Spencer got
crushed
on the basketball court, they would talk about the final shot that Evan Treski made.
    So he headed for the top of the key and planted his feet so that he could make that beautiful turnaround jumper that he'd been practicing for months. He stood there, dribbling the ball, practically shouting out to Scott,
Yeah, come get me.
And when Scott did, Evan turned and threw an elbow that caught Scott right on the side of the face.
    Scott went flying and landed hard on his rear end, his hands scraping along the blacktop. Evan didn't even look over to see if Scott was okay. He dribbled once, twice, three times, then jumped in the air, twisted his body, and let fly the ball.
    Everyone watched as it sailed through the air and then swooshed through the hoop.
    Nothing but net.
    The ball dropped to the blacktop and bounced. Nobody made a move for it. Nobody said anything. Scott was still sitting on the ground, the blood on his hands a bright red. Evan was standing, his arms at his side. He felt like he'd been through a fistfight.
    Scott got up slowly, picked up the basketball, and then drop-kicked it as hard as he could so that it sailed over the fence and disappeared into the swamp. Then he ran.

Chapter 15
Balance
balance (),
n.
A device used for weighing that has a pivoted horizontal beam from which hang two scales. In statues and paintings, the figure of Justice is often shown holding a balance.
    "Grandma, can you talk for a minute?" Jessie stuck a moshi pillow behind her head and cradled the phone to her ear.
    "Sure, Jessie Bean. What's up?" Jessie's grandmother lived four hours away, so Jessie called her on the phone a lot.
    "Everything's awful," said Jessie, picking at a corner of her bedroom wallpaper that was peeling. She explained to her grandmother about the trial yesterday and the basketball game and Scott kicking the ball into the swamp. She told her how Evan had to hunt for the ball for half an hour before finally finding it, and how he told all his friends to just go home, he'd find it himself,
just go home.
So they did. And how Evan and Jessie were left to look for the ball, and how Evan didn't talk the whole time they did.
    "And today he's not even
eating,
or anything," said Jessie. "Did you know that it's Yom Kippur?"
    "Yom Kippur, is that the one where the kids dress up?" asked Jessie's grandmother.
    "No, that's Purim." Grandma was always mixing up things like that, things that sounded kind of the same, but were different. During their last phone call, she was talking with Jessie about the sequoia trees in California, but she kept using the word
sequester
instead. "Yom Kippur is the day when the Jewish people ask for forgiveness and they don't eat."
    "Is Evan Jewish now?" asked Grandma.
    "No, but he's not eating. He says he's not hungry," said Jessie.
    "Sometimes that happens to me," Grandma said. "I practically forget to eat."
    "But Evan's
always
hungry," said Jessie. "Mom says he's a bottomless pit."
    "He'll eat when he's ready," said Grandma. "Let it go."
    Jessie hated it when her grandmother said that. She was always telling Jessie to
let it go
and
be the tree.
Crazy yoga grandma. How could anyone be a tree?
    "But ... I want to do something to help," said Jessie.
    "Why don't you bake cookies?" said Grandma. "That'll get him to eat. Right?"
    "I don't think so," said Jessie. "Not this time." This was bigger than cookies. How could she explain to her grandmother how bad things were?
    Jessie had believed