Kickoff to Danger Read online

  Joe’s back ached where Golden had rammed into him. He turned away from his teammate to watch Dan Freeman. The photographer was quietly roving around the locker room, shooting pictures of guys at their lockers.

  Dan noticed Joe watching him and gave an embarrassed smile. “It’s Liz’s idea,” he said. “She thought it would make a more interesting page than one with the team all lined up in their uniforms.”

  Joe nodded. “Yeah, that usually ends up looking like a yearbook picture.”

  “We also got some good shots during your practice, I think.”

  Joe blinked. “Really? I didn’t even notice you.”

  Dan gave a half shrug. “I guess that’s the sign of a good photographer.” He nodded to Liz, still interviewing Golden. “Your friend Golden sure noticed.”

  “Don’t call him my friend!” The words were out before Joe could stop them.

  Dan Freeman stared at Joe in surprise, then looked at Terry again. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I could understand that.”

  Now it was Joe’s turn to feel embarrassed. Had Dan seen the stunt that Golden had pulled in practice? Even worse, had he taken a picture of it? “Hotshot Sacks Teammate”…that headline would be great for the team’s morale.

  Joe’s thoughts must have shown on his face. Dan Freeman shook his head. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Liz wants to see Bayport win and Seneca lose. She’ll make this a nice, upbeat story.”

  He glanced at Liz and Terry and said, “It will be fine as long as she doesn’t believe everything he says.”

  After Dan snapped a few more shots, Liz asked him over. “I’ve got what I came for,” Liz said. “Now to get it off the tape and onto some paper. We still need a shot of Terry at his locker. You take care of that, then meet me at the newspaper office. Okay?”

  Dan nodded. “Okay.”

  Liz looked around. “Thanks for the story, guys.”

  “Thank you, Liz,” Terry replied, still smiling.

  That smile disappeared as soon as Liz Webling was out of the room. Golden sneered at Dan. “You’re such a wimp, Freeman. Doing everything some girl tells you. ‘Yes, boss. Okay, boss.’ ” He made his voice higher and squeakier with every word.

  “She’s the editor,” Dan replied, keeping his voice even. “If you don’t want me to take your picture—”

  “What will you use instead?” Golden interrupted. “An extra-wide shot of Fatso Morton over there?”

  Chet Morton had the locker beside Joe’s. Joe watched his friend’s face go red as Chet pretended to be interested in buttoning his shirt.

  “I suppose a camera is about all the equipment a nerd like you can handle.” Now Golden was back to insulting Dan Freeman. Still sneering, Terry lounged on the bench in front of his locker. He ran a hand through his long blond hair. “So what will it be? Full face? A profile? Just make sure you get my best side.”

  “I can’t,” Freeman replied.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re sitting on it.”

  Terry Golden shot up from the bench, ready to take a swing. Then he staggered back as the camera’s flash went off in his face.

  “That’s a pretty good action shot,” Dan said. “But I don’t think it’s what Liz had in mind.”

  Golden looked ready to tear the camera from Freeman’s hands, but he obviously realized that wouldn’t look too good. “Just do your job,” he growled.

  “Fine,” Dan replied. “If you’ll stand by the locker door…Lean back a little . . .”

  Terry regained his golden-boy smile.

  Dan took a few more pictures, then turned away. “I’d say that’ll do,” he said, heading for the door.

  As Terry stood facing his locker, the room became dead silent.

  Except, that is, for the snicker Chet Morton couldn’t keep in as he obviously recalled Dan’s comment about Terry’s best side.

  Golden whirled to glare at Chet. “You see something funny, fat boy?”

  “I—um—” A little too late Chet realized he’d made himself into a target.

  “Maybe you’ll think this is funny, too.” Golden snatched the damp towel from his shoulders and snapped it like a whip at Chet.

  The tip of the towel caught Chet on the arm. “Ow!” he cried, his hand going to the spot.

  “Hey, come on—” Joe began.

  His protest was cut off by the snap of another towel aimed at Chet. This one was in the hands of Wendell Logan, a hulking linebacker.

  Worse yet, Wendell was one of Chet’s defensive squadmates.

  “You think it’s funny to have that nerd mouth off to a teammate? I guess we’ll have to change your mind.”

  Logan snapped his towel again, looking around. “Right, guys?”

  “Yeah.” One of the players leaned past Joe, aiming his towel at Chet, too.

  “Count me in,” a big tackle said, taking a shot.

  Another towel flicked past Joe. Whoever took that shot didn’t give any warning.

  Chet stumbled away from Joe, trying to avoid the snapping towels. Joe attempted to block him from the guys on his side but got pushed away.

  Terry Golden might have a big mouth and ego to match, but his teammates were backing him up. In their eyes, he was one of their own.

  Caught against the lockers, Chet took another couple of shots. His face slowly went red. Joe sometimes thought that Chet was too easygoing, that he didn’t have the killer instinct needed for football. But Chet could get mad. He grabbed one of the flicking towels and pulled it from his tormentor’s hand.

  Then another towel snapped in to nail him on the shoulder. When Chet saw who was behind this blow, he dropped his newly seized weapon.

  Joe was just as surprised. Biff Hooper had swung on Chet. Biff, who’d been Chet’s friend since they were kids!

  Chet’s face showed a different kind of pain. All the fight went out of him—he just wanted to get away from this. Spinning around, he took a couple of blind steps. The bench set in front of the lockers caught him right beneath the knees. Chet sprawled across it to land on the floor.

  Wendell Logan’s laughter sounded like an animal’s snarl as he came over the bench toward Chet.

  Chet must have had the wind knocked out of him because he just lay where he was.

  “Brace yourself, fat boy!” Logan gloated as he brought the towel back for another shot.

  “I guarantee you—this one’s really gonna hurt!”

  3 Against the Odds

  The instant he heard Wendell Logan’s words Joe Hardy moved. He vaulted over the bench and caught hold of the towel behind Wendell’s back.

  The linebacker started to swing but turned in surprise as the towel was yanked from his grasp.

  “That’s enough.” Joe tossed the towel to the floor.

  Wendell Logan bent down, reaching to regain his weapon.

  Joe pinned the towel to the floor with his foot. “I said, that’s enough!”

  The big, burly Logan looked around. None of the others on the team had followed him. They were just standing in front of their lockers, staring.

  Joe turned to Chet. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Frank Hardy came home after his college class to find his supper waiting on the kitchen table. He pretty much expected that. His mom and aunt Gertrude had gotten used to his new schedule.

  What he didn’t expect to find was Callie Shaw sitting at the table with his math book.

  “I forgot mine,” she said, embarrassed. “And I needed to get the problems Mr. Patel assigned.”

  Frank grinned. “Not to mention a blow-by-blow of what happened to Joe.”

  Callie looked a little more embarrassed but nodded her head. “I guess Golden was sweet as anything when Liz Webling interviewed him for the school paper, but we saw how rotten he was to Joe on the field,” Callie finished. “Everyone’s calling him Dr. Golden and Mr. Hyde.”

  Frank started eating. “Joe can deal with him.”

  Callie shook her head, her blue eyes tr
oubled.

  “I’m not worried about you or Joe around this guy. But he’s gathering a crew, a gang, and they’re beginning to pick on people.”

  A forkful of food stopped on the way to Frank’s mouth. “What people?”

  “Ask your brother,” Callie said.

  Frank put down his fork and went upstairs to Joe’s room. Joe sat on the edge of his bed, doing forearm curls with a dumbbell in time to music from the radio.

  That was a bad sign. Joe usually went in for that kind of exercise to work off a bad mood.

  “Saw your little run-in with Terry Golden today.” Frank expected Joe to complain about being deserted. That’s what he’d been saying since Frank had started his computer course and left the team.

  Joe only shrugged his shoulders, still working the weight. “I guess he’s what people call a necessary evil. We need him to win games, but I don’t have to like him.”

  Joe stopped his exercises and gave Frank a sour smile. “And I suppose it’s just as well you got off the team when you did. It’s hard enough listening to Eddie Taplinger explain why he passes to Golden instead of me. It would be harder hearing that from my own brother.”

  Frank felt a little relief when he heard that. “I hear Golden is collecting some sort of crew.”

  Joe nodded. “Some guys on the team seem to think that if they act like Golden, a little of his success might rub off on them.”

  “And since he’s acting like a real nimrod, so are they?”

  “Man, are they!” Joe burst out. “Golden had a run-in with Dan Freeman but ended up looking like a complete jerk. The golden one then tried to take it out on Chet Morton…with lots of help from his crew.” Joe frowned. “It was almost like a lynch mob. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  Frank asked, “Don’t you think you’re being a little too dramatic?”

  “How’s this for dramatic? Biff Hooper joined in the towel snapping against Chet. He and Chet have been friends since they were kids,” Joe said. “B.G.—before Golden.”

  Frank tried to shrug off the story, but Joe’s last line troubled him.

  Things only got worse the next morning. Frank and Biff shared an English class along with Dan Freeman and Terry Golden—English, with Mr. Weeks.

  Mr. Weeks was having his usual hard time controlling the rowdy kids. But Terry Golden was more than rowdy, he was downright belligerent.

  He slammed his poetry book shut. “Why should I be interested in some dusty old sonnet?” Terry challenged the teacher.

  “Surprise, surprise, Golden,” Dan Freeman spoke up. “There are a few other things to learn besides how to catch a ball.”

  Golden swung round in his desk as if someone had smacked him. “Typical nerd,” he sneered.

  “Yeah,” Dan replied pleasantly. “It’s how this nerd will be accepted at Harvard while you go to some cow college with a major in football. If you’re lucky and don’t get injured, maybe—maybe you’ll get a shot at pro ball.”

  Freeman continued to smile at the fuming jock. “Come to my law office when you’re thirty-five and too old to play anymore. You’ll need all the help you can get in your new career as a hasbeen.”

  Golden scowled. “You think you’re smart, Freeman, but all you’ve got is a smart mouth.”

  “I’m still looking for anything on you that’s smart,” Dan shot back.

  Golden’s desk clattered to the floor, knocked over as the jock jumped up.

  Mr. Weeks rushed over. “Sit down, Terence.”

  Terry ignored the order. “I’m going to teach that little snot-nose a lesson.”

  “You and the rest of what muscle-bound army?” Dan Freeman challenged. He, too, scrambled up out of his seat.

  Dan’s got nerve, Frank thought. I just hope he’s not depending on Mr. Weak to protect him.

  Weeks tried to catch Terry Golden’s arm as he drew it back to let fly with a punch. Frank shook his head when the teacher missed. There’s a useless move. Golden spends every day practicing how to get past guys who want to stop him.

  “I want both of you back at your desks—now!”

  The stern command would have sounded better if Weeks’s voice hadn’t cracked.

  Terry Golden took another step forward, his arm still cocked.

  “You’re looking at detention,” Weeks warned. “Both of you.”

  The jock stared at his teacher with scorn. “You think Coach Devlin will let that happen? I’m too important to the team to be sidelined.”

  “Sit down!” Weeks was now shaking with anger. Frank noticed the teacher wasn’t talking about detention anymore.

  Terry Golden spread his hands. “Hey, chill out, Mr. Weak…sss.”

  He swaggered back to his desk as if he’d won this round, but the look he sent to Dan Freeman said that the fight was far from over.

  Joe Hardy stared at his brother across the cafeteria table. “Did they actually start swinging at each other?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I never get any interesting classes.”

  “It didn’t go that far,” Frank admitted. “Not that Mr. Weeks was able to do anything. He threatened Golden with detention but only got laughed at.”

  Slumped in his seat at the lunch table, Chet Morton didn’t say a thing. Frank noticed that Chet was not eating, only playing with the spaghetti on his plate.

  Golden must really be getting to him, Frank thought. Mention the guy’s name, and Chet loses his appetite.

  Joe tried a joke. “Well, with a nickname like Mr. Weak—” He broke off, staring at the lunch line. “Check it out,” he muttered.

  Terry Golden made his way through the long cafeteria line, cutting in to grab whatever he wanted. He stepped away with his tray as if he were leading a victory parade.

  “Yo! Golden!” Wendell Logan called from the table where he sat with a couple of other muscular linemen.

  Golden didn’t respond to Logan’s invitation. Instead, he took his tray to the table the Hardys shared with Chet.

  “Join you for a minute?” Golden didn’t wait for an answer. He just planted himself at the one empty seat.

  Frank watched his brother toss his sandwich down. Golden should rent himself out as a miracle diet, Frank thought. He kills appetites wherever he goes.

  Chet, on the other hand, was frozen like a deer caught in headlights.

  “So, how do we rate the honor of a lunch visit?” Frank tried to keep his voice light. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.

  “Hey, I’m not a guy to hang around where he’s not wanted,” Terry said. “I only came over because I’m concerned about Chet.”

  Chet stared at him. “C-concerned?”

  “Yeah. I worry about you.” Golden gave Chet a big smile. “I couldn’t help noticing you had something dangerous on your tray.”

  “D-dangerous?” Chet began to sound like a stuttering echo. He looked down at his tray as if he expected to find a bomb on it.

  Golden pointed to the piece of chocolate cake beside the plate of spaghetti. “I’m talking about that!”

  Chet stared, his mouth hanging open.

  Terry reached over, grabbed the cake, and stuffed most of it into his mouth. “ ’Sbad fuh yuh,” he said, chewing noisily.

  Chet looked as if he didn’t believe what was happening.

  Frank was having a hard time believing it, too.

  Golden scraped chocolate frosting off his hand, using the edge of Chet’s tray. “Got to watch that waistline, Chet boy.”

  He leaned over again. This time he ground his thumb into what was left of Chet’s cake.

  At last Chet began to come out of his trance. “Hey, you—”

  “What are you going to do, fat boy?” Golden’s sneer dared Chet to try something. “I’ve got teachers afraid to go up against me.” He gave Frank and Joe a smug grin. “You should think about joining a winner’s team.”

  Laughing, Golden picked up his tray and headed over to the table of football players.

  “Can you believe that?” Frank asked, shaking
his head.

  “And he actually asked us to go in with him!” Joe said in disbelief.

  Chet sat up straight. “I’m doing it!”

  Joe and Frank just stared at him. “What?” the Hardys said together.

  “I’m going in with the Golden Boys!” Chet’s round face looked determined. “I’m tired of being left to hang by myself. There’s safety in numbers.”

  His expression turned bitter as he looked over at the table where Golden and his newly recruited crew were being rowdy.

  “And the numbers are all around Terry Golden.”

  4 Getting Away with Murder

  “You can’t be serious!” Joe burst out as Chet started to get up from his seat. “Golden leans all over you, and you’re going to try to go in with him?”

  “Biff told me that’s how you get into the Golden Boys. Everybody has to give you a rough time—at first.” Chet shrugged. “It’s sort of like an initiation.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Frank asked. “How about Dan Freeman? Is Golden initiating him, too?”

  “That—that’s different,” Chet said. “He tangled with Terry.”

  “Only after Terry started it.” Joe was about to argue some more until he saw the stubborn expression on Chet’s face.

  Instead Joe sank back in his seat, sighing. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

  “I know what I’m getting out of.” Leaving his tray, Chet walked over to Golden and his boys. Terry seemed to be in a good mood. After ribbing him a little, he sent Chet off to get him a soda. Chet seemed to be relieved as he went on the errand. He couldn’t see the look Wendell Logan sent after him.

  “Trouble,” Joe said, shaking his head. “This is going to mean trouble.”

  Trouble was the last thing on Frank’s mind as he fought the mob scene in the halls at dismissal. The school had just about cleared out by the time he strolled to his locker.

  He was in no hurry today. His college course didn’t meet on Thursdays, and he’d caught up on all his classwork. For once, Frank had a free afternoon. So, of course, Callie wasn’t free.

  “I made plans with Iola Morton to go to the library,” Callie told him. “Both of us have projects we need to research. And since you’re never around, I figured it would be all right.”