The Soccer Secret

  ALSO BY #1 BESTSELLER MIKE LUPICA

  Travel Team

  Heat

  Miracle on 49th Street

  Summer Ball

  The Big Field

  Million-Dollar Throw

  The Batboy

  Hero

  The Underdogs

  True Legend

  QB 1

  Fantasy League

  Fast Break

  Last Man Out

  Lone Stars

  Shoot-Out

  No Slam Dunk

  THE ZACH & ZOE MYSTERIES:

  The Missing Baseball

  The Half-Court Hero

  The Football Fiasco

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Published simultaneously by Puffin Books and Philomel Books,

  imprints of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Mike Lupica

  Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Chris Danger

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780425289471

  Illustrations by Chris Danger

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Hannah Lupica and all the other players on the undefeated Green Machine, the last of her soccer teams I was lucky enough to coach.

  Contents

  Also by #1 Bestseller Mike Lupica

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  About the Author

  The Walker twins, Zach and Zoe, were on different teams this season in travel soccer. But that was just fine with them. As much as they loved being teammates, they loved competing with each other in sports even more.

  Most of all, they loved the start of any new season. It was their chance to see just how good they could be, and how good their teams could be.

  Zach was playing on the Bears. Zoe was playing on the Lions. Their first official games weren’t until Saturday. So far all they’d done was have practice scrimmages, though the Bears hadn’t faced the Lions yet. But their coaches had promised there would be at least one scrimmage between the two teams, and maybe more, before Saturday.

  “I can’t wait until we do scrimmage,” Zach said to Zoe. “Then I can show you some of the new moves I’ve been working on.”

  “You think you’re the only one with new moves?” his sister said.

  As soon as they got home from school on Tuesday, they ran out to their backyard and began kicking a ball around. Now that it was soccer season, their father, Danny, had set up a net so they could practice their shooting. Even though neither one of them was a goalkeeper, Zach and Zoe would sometimes take turns standing in front of the net while the other twin tried to score. Danny Walker had always told them the best players were able to pass and score with either foot. Zach and Zoe always made sure to practice with both.

  Danny said that was the way to play the game right. By now, the twins knew how important it was to their dad that they did the right thing in sports.

  “I know all your best moves already,” Zoe said. “You show them to me all the time back here.”

  “But you haven’t seen the ones I’ve been working on with the Bears,” Zach said.

  Zoe was standing in front of the net.

  “Okay, show me one,” she said. Then she grinned. “I promise not to tell my teammates.”

  “Ha!” Zach said, throwing his head back.

  He moved back toward their house then, pretending he was trying to split a couple of defenders as he closed in on Zoe. But as he approached his sister, he suddenly kicked the ball into the air with his right foot, as if lifting it over the imaginary defenders. It was almost like he was making a pass to himself. When the ball came down, he timed his next kick perfectly, and was able to blast the ball past Zoe and into the upper corner of the net.

  “Nice!” Zoe shouted.

  Zach winked at her. “I’ve got more where that came from.”

  They both loved playing soccer, mostly because of how much they both loved to run. Grandpa Richie always talked about what a streak of light Danny Walker had once been in basketball. But Zach and Zoe’s dad said that as fast as he had been, the twins were even faster.

  They ran around happily now behind their house, all over the backyard, making long passes and short ones to each other. Finally Zach put the ball behind him, as if making a behind-the-back dribble in basketball, and pushed the ball to Zoe, who blasted a big shot of her own into the empty net.

  “Gooooooaaalll!” she shouted, the way the soccer announcers did on television. Then she ran over to her brother so they could jump and spin and bump elbows and hips the way they did in their special high five. They always celebrated, no matter which sport they were playing.

  When they came back inside the house, they were ready for some of their mom Tess’s homemade lemonade. She had left an ice-cold pitcher for them on the kitchen table.

  But they noticed something else on the table beside the pitcher and two glasses.

  There was a package addressed to Zach that must have just come in the mail. Zach looked at the front and back of the large envelope, but couldn’t find a return address. There was no way to tell who’d sent it.

  “What’s this?” he asked aloud.

  “Only one way to find out,” Zoe said. “Open it.”

  Zach did. Inside was a soccer jersey just like the one he would be wearing this season with the Bears. It was white with orange stripes running down it.

  Zach held the jersey up in front of him. It even appeared to be the same size as his jersey, with the image of a bear on the front.

  “Why would somebody send me a jersey I already have?” he wondered.

  Zoe picked up the envelope and looked closely inside. Then she turned it upside down to see if anything fell out. But it was empty.

  “Did you leave yours at the field after your last scrimmage?” Zoe asked. “Maybe somebody found it, knew it was yours, and mailed it to you instead of dropping it off at our house.”

  “No,” Zach said. “Mine’s upstairs hanging in my closet. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  They ran up the stairs to Zach’s room. He opened his closet door. Sure enough, there was his jersey, hanging right where Zach said it would be.

  They
wanted to ask their mom about the package and the jersey inside. But when they walked into her room, they could see she was talking on the phone. She smiled, pressed the phone to her chest, and quietly told them she was talking to their cousin Anthony, who’d recently graduated from college.

  Zach and Zoe went back down to the kitchen to have their lemonade. When Tess Walker had finished her call with Cousin Anthony and joined them, she nodded at the Bears jersey on the table.

  “What’s your jersey doing here?” she said to Zach.

  “It’s not mine,” Zach said, a hint of confusion in his voice.

  “Somebody sent this to Zach in that package you left on the table,” Zoe said. “But we don’t know who.”

  “I noticed there was no return address,” said Tess.

  “So did we,” Zach said.

  “And there’s no note inside explaining why somebody would have sent it,” Zoe said. “We checked.”

  Their mom smiled then.

  “You know what this sounds like to me?” she said, glancing at Zoe.

  “A mystery!” Zoe cheered.

  Zach just shook his head.

  “Here we go again.”

  Now that Cousin Anthony had finished college, he’d come to Middletown for a visit, and was staying with Grandpa Richie.

  “When are we going to see him?” Zoe asked her mom.

  “He said he’s busy during the day tomorrow, but promises to come by after dinner,” Tess said.

  “I’ve missed him,” Zach said, shoulders slumped.

  Tess nodded. “We all have.”

  Anthony was the son of Danny Walker’s first cousin Tom. Tom had been like a big brother to Zach and Zoe’s dad when he was growing up. But when Anthony was ten, Tom and his wife moved their family a couple of hours away from Middletown to Massachusetts After that, Anthony stayed in Massachusetts for college. But he came back to Middletown as often as he could. A big reason for that was his great-uncle Richie, the twins’ grandfather. He had always been close to Uncle Richie and was close to him still.

  The twins couldn’t wait to see Anthony on this visit. But for now, they were more focused on the soccer jersey that had mysteriously arrived at their house. It was lying right there in front of them on the kitchen table.

  “I’m not going to tell Cousin Anthony that you two are more excited about your latest mystery than having him in town for a visit,” Tess Walker said, eyeing the twins from her seat at the table.

  “Not true!” Zoe exclaimed.

  “We can be excited about him and the jersey,” Zach said. “We’re just looking for clues.”

  “And I may have just found one,” Zoe said.

  Both Zach and his mom knew that Zoe didn’t miss very much. Their dad always talked about what great vision the twins had in sports. It was why they were both such good passers in soccer. They were always able to see the field and somehow know which of their teammates was more open than the others.

  But Zoe Walker loved applying her vision to everything in her world. Especially when she was looking for a clue.

  “We know there’s no return address,” Zoe said. “But look at the stamp.”

  “I’m looking,” Zach said. “And what I’m mostly seeing . . . is a stamp.”

  “But what does the postmark say?” Zoe asked.

  “Middletown,” Zach read.

  “So . . .” Zoe began, “whoever sent this jersey to you is from our town!”

  She turned to her brother for a quick high five.

  “Goooalllll!” Zoe cheered, just not quite as loudly as she had outside.

  They all laughed. Zach and Zoe hadn’t solved anything yet. They both knew there was a long way to go. But somebody had started this game with the Walker twins by sending Zach this jersey.

  Game on.

  There was finally a practice scrimmage between the Bears and the Lions the following evening.

  There were seven players to a side in third-grade soccer. Zach and Zoe thought that was a perfect number, because everybody seemed to be involved and they all got plenty of chances to touch the ball. Soccer almost felt like basketball this way. It was as much of a team game as it could possibly be.

  Their dad agreed with them.

  “The principles in both games are the same,” Danny Walker said. “Keep yourself moving. Keep the ball moving. And fill open spaces.”

  And that’s exactly the way their scrimmage had gone tonight. Zach scored one goal, and

  assisted on another scored by his teammate Alex Rather, whose dad was the Bears’ coach. Zoe scored a goal herself, and also got an assist on a perfect pass to Pedro Rivera. The score was 2–2 when Coach Rather finally blew his whistle to signal the scrimmage was over. At that point, everyone wished they could continue playing.

  Zoe gathered with her teammates on one side of the field. Coach Rather called the Bears players over to the other side, telling them he had an announcement to make. He said the coach of one of the fourth-grade travel teams had just been transferred to another town by the company he worked for. The people in charge of youth soccer in Middletown had asked if Coach Rather could move up and coach the fourth-graders.

  “But then who’s going to be our coach?” Zach asked.

  “It’s only Wednesday,” he said. “The president of Middletown soccer told me they’d have a replacement by the end of the week. Or at least in time for the first game on Saturday. But until then, Mrs. Okafor will be in charge.”

  Mrs. Okafor was the mother of Kofi Okafor, the best player on the Bears. The Oka-fors had moved to Middletown from Ghana, in Africa. Kofi said that when his mom was younger, she’d played on the women’s World Cup team from Ghana. So even if it was just for a few days, the Bears knew they were getting a really good coach. Unfortunately, Mrs. Okafor couldn’t be their permanent coach, because she had to travel a lot for her job. She wouldn’t be in town for most of their scheduled games.

  “I hope you’re ready to run even more than we already do,” Kofi said. “Sometimes with my mom I feel as if I’m training for a marathon!”

  “The more running there is, the better I like it,” Zach said, even though some of the other kids groaned.

  Then he ran across the field and told his sister about Coach Rather. As soon as he did, Zoe crossed her arms in front of her and frowned, as if she was curious about something.

  “You have a question,” Zach said.

  “More like an idea,” Zoe said, “even though it might not be a great one.”

  “How about you let me be the judge of that?” Zach said, grinning at his sister.

  “Maybe there’s a connection here,” she said.

  “A connection . . . to what?” Zach asked, waiting for Zoe to explain.

  “One day we pretty much find a Bears jersey in the mail,” she said. “The very next day, the Bears lose their coach.”

  “But why would those two things have anything to do with each other?” Zach questioned.

  Zoe shrugged. “No clue.”

  “What we need is another clue,” Zach said. “Badly!”

  “Now that,” his sister said, “is a great idea.”

  Even though they weren’t on the same team in soccer, they were still a team off the field.

  As promised, Cousin Anthony called right after the Walkers finished dinner to say he was on his way over.

  “Maybe they taught him a class in college about solving mysteries,” Zach said.

  “Don’t worry,” Zoe said to her brother. “We’ve always figured things out before. We’ll find out who sent you that jersey.”

  “Your sister sounds pretty confident,” Danny Walker said.

  “I just like to set goals for myself,” Zoe said.

  Zach grinned. “And not just soccer goals.”

  “I want to know who sent that jersey before we play ou
r first games on Saturday,” Zoe said, determined.

  “Wow,” Zach said to his sister, “you don’t make things easy on yourself.”

  “What would be the fun in that?” she said.

  After the twins helped their parents clean up the kitchen, Zoe asked Zach if he wanted to go upstairs and take one more look at the mysterious jersey before Anthony arrived.

  “You think we might have missed something?” Zach said.

  “No way we’ll know for sure until we take another look,” she replied.

  When they got to Zach’s room, they carefully placed Zach’s game jersey on his bed beside the one that came in the mail.

  “They can’t just be jerseys with the same colors and the same Bears logo,” Zach said with certainty.

  Zoe was quiet. She was staring hard, first at one jersey, then the other. She even walked over and switched on Zach’s desk lamp, to bring more light into the bedroom.

  “What are you looking at?” Zach said.

  “The colors,” Zoe said, continuing to shift her head back and forth between the jerseys.

  Zach looked with her, then shook his head. “But they’re exactly the same.”

  “Not exactly,” Zoe said.

  She held up the Bears jersey that had been sent to Zach.

  “Check it out,” she said. “The orange stripes on this one are lighter than the ones on yours.”

  Zach put his face close to his jersey on the bed, then the one in his sister’s hands. He realized she was right. She really didn’t miss anything.

  “What do you think it means?” Zach said.

  “I think it means,” Zoe said, “that whoever this jersey belonged to wore it a lot. The stripes could be faded from the sun, or maybe from being washed so often. Or both. Now we know for sure that it’s not a brand-new jersey.”

  “It still doesn’t tell us who might have sent it,” Zach said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Zoe said. “But you know what Mom always tells us. It’s a good day when you know something by the time you go to bed that you didn’t when you woke up in the morning.”