Free Lucky Cap by Patrick Jennings Page B

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.
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œNOOOOOO!” I wailed, like a girl.

10. UnKapped
    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?
    â€œSomething 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.
    â€œNo, sir,” I said, my spine stiff. “My ca—I—I lost something.”
    â€œSomething 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.
    â€œNo,” 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.