Guys Read: The Trophy: A Short Story from Guys Read: The Sports Pages

By Gordon Korman

Lucas and his friends are still reveling in their city-wide middle school basketball championship when the trophy they won goes missing. Foul play is afoot, and it's going to take all their basketball and detective skills to find it.

This short story from the collection Guys Read: The Sports Pages is a winner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062243584

Gordon Korman

Gordon Korman published his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than one hundred middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the New York Times bestselling Ungifted, Supergifted, The Superteacher Project, The Unteachables, Pop, Notorious, Unplugged, Operation Do-Over, Slugfest, and the Masterminds series. Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York. You can visit him online at gordonkorman.com.

Book preview

THE TROPHY

BY GORDON KORMAN

Every time Lucas closes his eyes, the scene plays out like a YouTube video imprinted on his brain waves:

Shimmy gets the ball in the corner, down by a point. Four seconds left on the clock. There’s a defender in his face. No way can a four-foot-eleven point guard shoot over him. Shimmy’s trapped. Three seconds now … There it is, the trademark shimmy! He head-fakes to the left while moving to the right. A gasp threatens to suck all the air out of the gym as his high-top comes down millimeters—no, what’s smaller than millimeters?—from the out-of-bounds line. The silence of the referee’s whistle not blowing is the loudest sound Lucas can remember.

Two seconds. Shimmy’s pass is on its way. Lucas snatches it out of the air at the top of the key. He charges into the paint. A big body blocks his way, appearing as if by black magic.

Wham! Collision. But—no foul. The ref is going to let this play out.

One second left. A game clock loaded with twenty-four hundred heartbeats has run down to this ultimate tick. Defenders can be beaten, but not time itself. No chance to put the ball on the floor, no move to the left or right. There’s only one option, one direction—

Up.

Lucas isn’t much of a leaper, but in that instant, his legs are superpowered by the screams of the crowd and all the desperation of the final second of the championship game. He springs, feeling the