Stealing the Game

A
LSO BY
K
AREEM
A
BDUL
-J
ABBAR

AND
R
AYMOND
O
BSTFELD

Streetball Crew Book One:
Sasquatch in the Paint

Text copyright © 2015 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Evan Hughes
Cover art © 2015 by Evan Hughes
Cover design by Tanya Ross-Hughes

All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 125 West End
Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4231-9041-7

Visit
www.DisneyBooks.com

To my own Street Crew: Loretta, Max, and Harper.
The best team ever.
—R. O.

THE
police officer entered my eighth-grade algebra class, without looking at any of us, and whispered into Ms. Kaiser’s ear.
She was standing at the whiteboard, her back to the class, halfway through an equation that I didn’t understand and probably still wouldn’t understand when I took tomorrow’s quiz.
Ms. Kaiser looked surprised at whatever the officer had said.

Then she turned slowly toward the class and pointed at me.

My heart banged against my ribs and my swollen nose ached even more.

The officer glared at me. He was tall and thin and his uniform looked a little too big, like he’d recently lost a lot of weight. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a new uniform yet because he
was afraid he’d gain the weight back. Maybe he couldn’t afford a new uniform because he was putting his kids through college. I couldn’t believe I was even thinking about all that
at a time like this.

The officer crooked his finger for me to follow him.

As I stood up, Clay Yothers in the desk behind me whispered excitedly, “Dude, what’s the cop want?”

“Is this about what happened to your face?” Simon Zuckerman asked. His eyes were big as softballs. “Is this an arrest?”

I shrugged as if I didn’t know.

But I did know.

“He’s got pepper spray,” Tina Yu said, pointing at the officer’s belt full of crime-fighting goodies.

“Forget the pepper spray,” Clay said, “he’s packing a gun! Dude, what did you
do
?”

Tina was trying to sneak her phone out of her purse so she could take a photo. If she did, it would be posted on Facebook by the time I reached the door. I gave her a sharp look and she slid her
hand away from her phone.

Ms. Kaiser looked flustered, her cheeks bright red. She started tugging on her blouse and skirt as if the officer had come in here accusing her of being sloppily dressed. This was only her
second year of teaching, and I guess this was the first time she’d had the cops haul one of her students out of class. It was probably the first time this had ever happened at Orangetree
Middle School. This was the kind of school with banners for excellence and PTA mothers who planned fund-raisers for new computers and students who belonged to several clubs and teams at once. All
the walls were painted in sunshine yellow, I guess to remind us of our bright futures.

As I walked toward the door, I could hear my classmates whispering, but my blood was pounding so loudly in my ears their words just sounded like boiling water.

When the officer and I left the classroom, Ms. Kaiser’s dry marker squeaked against the whiteboard. “Okay, friends, let’s examine the variable
y
….”

She’d never called us
friends
before. This whole thing must have shaken Ms. Kaiser, made her think she was back teaching elementary school.

Friends.
Like we were all best buds. Maybe teachers figured that if they said it enough times, we’d all think it was true. All five hundred of us, linking arms and skipping down
Main Street to a Katy Perry song.

“Chris Richards,” the officer said with a sour face, like my name tasted bad. “What happened to your face?”

I touched my swollen nose, which was still tender. I knew the purple bruising under my eyes gave me a haunted look.

“Do you know why I’m here?” he said accusingly.

His question made me think of the last thing Ms. Kaiser had said.
Let’s examine the variable
y. Only in my head it came out:
Let’s examine the variable why.

Why I’m here.

“
YOU
guys cheated!” Zach Fallon accused, angrily kicking the basketball off the court.

“Hey, don’t kick it,” Eric Trebeck said. “You’ll break the valve.”

“I’m just sick of them cheating!” Zach said.

“We don’t have to cheat to beat you,” Roger said with a snort. “All we got to do is show up.”

Weston, Roger’s teammate, chuckled and high-fived him.

“You stacked the teams,” Zach persisted. He looked for support from his defeated teammates, Eric and Daniel Hood. “Right, guys?”

Daniel was hunched over, hands on his knees, wheezing like a ball pump, trying to catch his breath.

Eric nodded. “You guys do have all the shooters, Roger.”

Daniel, unable to talk while sucking in air, raised a thumbs-up to show he agreed.

Zach added, “And you all play on the school team. We just play here.”

Here
was Palisades Park, the perfectly groomed park surrounded by perfectly groomed homes. The park had tennis courts, three baseball fields, soccer fields, and a playground covered
with a giant orange tarp to keep the sun off the little kiddies. The neighborhoods were so perfect that they attracted families of all nationalities. We had a large Asian population—mostly
Vietnamese—and lots of Latinos. On weekends, the soccer field had cricket players from the numerous Indian and Pakistani families in the area.

“Fine.” Roger sighed. “Let’s mix up the teams. What do you think, Chris?”

I agreed with Zach that Roger had deliberately stacked the teams. We’d crushed them 15–2 in less than ten minutes. It would be even worse if we played them again. Daniel would need
an oxygen mask and a team of paramedics on standby.

“I’ll swap with Daniel,” I said. I walked over and stood next to Zach and Eric.

Zach smiled triumphantly. “Yeah, I’m good with that.”

Daniel shrugged and went to stand with Roger and Weston. He was six inches shorter than them and twenty pounds heavier. He looked like half a vending machine. He probably shouldn’t even be
playing, but his dad had promised him a hundred bucks if he lost ten pounds in six weeks, so here he was.

Roger frowned, clearly unhappy with the decision. “Why don’t we just shoot for teams? That’s fair.”

Of course it wasn’t fair. Because Roger, Weston, and I were the better shooters, the three of us would probably end up on the same team again. But Roger didn’t care about fair or
even having good games. He wanted to win. That was fine when we were playing for the school, but when playing pickup games at Palisades Park, it was ridiculous.

I retrieved the basketball from where it had landed on the grass. When I looked up, I saw two guys in their early twenties sitting on one of the stone benches in the distance, near the snack
stand. They were munching on popcorn and drinking blue Icees, staring right at us, like they were in a movie theater and we were the show. I couldn’t make out their faces, but one had his
short blond hair combed straight up into a fauxhawk. The other wore a black hoodie with the hood up, and dark wraparound sunglasses.

But what struck me was that the guy in the hood had a rolling suitcase standing next to him. Who walks around the park with a suitcase?

“Stranger danger,” Weston said, nodding at the two guys. He grinned. “Maybe we should call the cops.”

“And tell them what?” Zach asked.

“I dunno. They look like criminals. Who wears a hood when it’s eighty degrees out? And what’s up with the suitcase?”

“Maybe he’s selling stolen iPhones or something,” Daniel said.

I handed the ball to Roger. “Your outs.”

Usually we’d shoot from the three-point line for possession, but I knew this would stop Roger’s complaining about the teams. Instead, he’d take it as a direct challenge.

He grabbed the ball from me with a glare. “Ball in,” he growled, and he fired a pass to Weston. Weston quickly spun and banked a five-footer off the backboard.

“I wasn’t ready,” Zach whined. “I thought we were still talking about those guys.”

I couldn’t help but look up the slope at the two guys on the bench. Blond Fauxhawk was laughing and throwing popcorn at Hoodie, who seemed to be scowling down at us.