Free Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes by Wendelin Van Draanen

he doesn't know anything about anything.Doesn't know
who
I'm talking about. Was just cruising the mall yesterday for fun.”
    “But … you don't believe him, do you?”
    “I don't believe anyone with eyes like that.”
    “See?”
    “Oh yeah.” He heads back toward the car, saying, “No one's come to claim Pepe yet, but I've put out an APB for his mother based on your description. The scar should help.”
    He zooms off, and we head out of there as fast as we can, cutting through the park and across Morrison to the high school. And while we're running, I'm filling Marissa in on all the stuff I hadn't told her about before Officer Borsch had shown up. And when I've finally gotten it all out, she pants, “Wow,” and then, “Do you think she could be … dead?”
    I didn't want to think that way. I mean, what if it was true? What if I'd doomed Pepe to a life without a mother because I hadn't gone straight to the police? What if I'd ruined his life? I could just see his epitaph:
    POOPY PEPE
CRADLED IN A SEARS BAG
SOILED IN A ZIPLOC,
SCARRED FOR LIFE
BY A REFUGEE TEENAGER
    Marissa was saying, “All that stuff Officer Borsch was talking about—it doesn't even feel real. It's like we've walked into the middle of some movie.”
    “Yeah. Only there's no theater to walk out of.”
    “Well, at least we're out of
there
,” she said, nodding back across the park. “Ready to check out the fields?”
    Marissa McKenze is one of the few people on the planet who can find beauty in mowed weeds and gravelly dirt. I swear she even thinks chain-link is beautiful. Well, as long as it's in the form of a backstop. Ask her to climb it when it's in fence form and she'll cower like it's a big clanky monster out to rip the clothes right off her bottom.
    Anyway, there were practices going on at the top two diamonds, so we watched for a few minutes, then went down to check out the lower field. Marissa got on the mound and tossed a few pitches, and you could tell—in her mind she was already under the lights, pitching a no-hitter.
    I let her throw about a dozen pitches before calling, “Have you seen enough? I've got a lot of homework to catch up on!”
    “I could stay out here all night, but yeah, we should go.”
    So we headed up past the other fields and hung a right on Morrison. And as we're hiking along toward Broadway, Marissa's jabbering away about how having at least one practice on the high school field before the tournament might really give us an edge. And I'm listening, but I'm also noticing these three girls walking toward us on the sidewalk.
    Marissa sees them coming, too, because she steers her bike onto the high school lawn and moves out of the way,but she's still jabbering away about softball like they're not even there.
    And I know
they
know
we're
there because they sort of shift to the side to pass us by, but they're not seeing us, if you know what I mean. They're more looking through us.
    They're not saying anything to each other, either. They're just shuffling along, kind of stony-faced. Two of them are wearing baggy jeans and strappy tops, and the other one's got on camouflage pants with pockets every-where and a tight white T-shirt that doesn't even come close to covering her stomach.
    Then as they pass us, I notice their shoes.
    Their shoe
laces
.
    They're blue. And black. Doubled up; laced together.
    And all of a sudden it hits me —these girls are gangsters.
    Gangsters from South West.
    And before I can stop myself, I've turned around to talk to them.

I didn't know what I was going to say. And even though one side of my brain was screaming, Let it go, Sammy! Let it go! the other side was saying, It's okay…. What are they going to do?
Shoot
you? So before you know it, there I am, walking alongside three South West gangsters, saying, “Hi.”
    They look at me like, Who let you out of your cradle? then look at each other and bust up.
    Now, to me this no big deal. This is the way most kids in high school treat kids