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  The game started and I gave up everything to work on the boards. The dude I was up against, a West Indian brother I knew, was strong and did a lot of pushing but he couldn’t really sky. I was snatching bounds pretty easy.

  The whole thing was that all of us went into the game with Bobbi’s numbers in our heads. It was a little freaky at first, but I didn’t want to fall down on my count.

  In the end we beat them. No, we crushed them. Okay, we left them bleeding and whimpering on the court! Cody scored thirty points and was getting so mean I had to help Powell defend him. I only scored sixteen points because I’m a merciful kind of guy.

  I felt great about the game and especially about beating Powell. But the way that Ashley wrote it up in The Palette you would have thought that Bobbi beat Powell all by herself.

  I saw Kambui in the media center and he asked me if Bobbi was going to replace me on the team.

  “I just hope the coach doesn’t fall in love with those numbers,” I said.

  “Did Sidney show up with a picture of a crackhead?”

  “No, he gave me a picture of a chess board with numbers on it,” I said. “Very strange.”

  SCARED STRAIGHT

  My cousin says that sometimes people keep hanging on to a symbol that comforts them,” LaShonda said. “So maybe Sidney showed up with that picture of a chess board because he’s only comfortable around chess.”

  “No,” Bobbi answered. “It’s not just a picture, it’s a coded message.”

  Can you crack it?

  About the Author

  WALTER DEAN MYERS is the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of more than eighty books for children and young adults. His extensive body of work includes Sunrise Over Fallujah, which was named one of the best books of 2008 by Publishers Weekly; Amiri and Odette: A Love Story; Fallen Angels; Harlem Summer; and Somewhere in the Darkness. Mr. Myers’s many awards include two Newbery Honors, five Coretta Scott King Author Book Awards, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the 2010 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Myers lives in Jersey City, NJ.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Walter Dean Myers

  Cover Art Copyright © 2010 By Leo Espinosa

  Cover Design By Elizabeth B. Parisi

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

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  First edition, August 2010

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  eISBN 978-0-545-34755-6