The Great Shelby Holmes Read online

  Here I was, a little over forty-eight hours later, playing with a new group of potential friends.

  See, I didn’t need Shelby. I was doing fine on my own.

  Despite almost getting lost, I made it here.

  Corey blocked one of my shots, which knocked me down to the ground.

  “Sorry, Watson.” He held out his hand to help me up.

  “No problem.”

  These guys weren’t so different from my old friends. There was the requisite teasing that took place during any games between friends. We took a few breaks to hydrate. They all had those expensive (and sugary) sports drinks that I’d always seen on TV, while I drank the water that Shelby had given me. I was even more grateful for it now. Back on the post, we’d just run home if we were thirsty or hungry since the court was usually only a couple blocks away from home. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring anything.

  “So where you from?” Antonio asked.

  “All over,” I began to explain. “I’m what you would call an army brat, most recently from Maryland, but before that, Kentucky, Georgia, and Texas.”

  “Sweet!” Corey replied. “I’ve lived here my whole life, but I’m finally breaking free in a couple weeks to go to school at Rutgers. Even though it’s only in New Jersey.”

  I didn’t realize we were playing with a college kid. I felt even better about my basketball skills since I was able to score a couple points on him.

  Corey continued, “Must be cool to see so much of the country.”

  The others nodded, like spending your entire life in New York City was boring.

  I was sure you could become accustomed to wherever you live, but I couldn’t ever imagine having a dismissive attitude to living here.

  “What’s it like living on a military base?” Jake asked.

  “It’s called a post,” I corrected him, but then I felt like Shelby for doing it. So what if he wanted to call it a base? “It’s pretty awesome.” I might have slightly exaggerated. I mean, I liked having a little community of friends who knew what it was like to move all over the place. Or to have a family member serving overseas. But this was New York City, and it was awesome from whatever angle you looked at it.

  “You’ve ever been in a tank?” Antonio asked. “Or a fighter jet?”

  I did my best to not laugh at their questions. It was kind of nice to be someone who was different in a good way. I was the new kid. I was a breath of fresh air for them.

  “Did your dad go abroad?” Zane asked.

  “No, my mom did. She was in Afghanistan.”

  “Whoa.” Zane nodded in awe. “Your mom must be pretty tough.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  Zane hit Jake. “I wonder if she’s as tough as Candace.”

  The group began laughing and started talking about people and inside jokes, which left me a little clueless. Luckily, I was able to rejoin the conversation once they moved on to a discussion of the chances we all thought the Yankees had to make the play-offs.

  “As long as your bullpen stays healthy, you’ve got a real shot,” I remarked.

  “Yes!” Corey slapped me on the back. “Watson here knows what he’s talking about. It all comes down to the pitchers.”

  I nodded like I’ve been following the Yankees for years. Although this was something I always did before I went to a new place—become an expert on the local sports team. When in doubt (and out of things to talk about with new guy friends), go with sports. So the last two weeks, I’d brushed up on all professional New York City teams—and it was work since there are so many of them: two baseball teams, two basketball teams, two football teams, and two hockey teams.

  It was the most homework I’d ever had to do before moving.

  After seeing the Yankees and Knicks posters on Zane’s walls yesterday, I narrowed down my research and did some light reading last night on the Yankees’ current season.

  Truthfully, I could’ve stayed there all day. It was only when Zane looked at his phone that I realized it was getting late in the afternoon. I’d promised Mom that I’d be home for dinner and I didn’t want to completely ignore her for my new friends. I knew she’d understand, but she was new to this city, too. We were both starting over.

  “I gotta bounce,” Zane announced to the group. He took his blue-and-orange messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder.

  The other guys began to disperse, all telling me they’d catch me later.

  I wanted to ask when or get their information but didn’t want to appear desperate. I began to follow Zane out of the courts, not wanting to get lost again.

  “What was the house like when you were there?” Zane asked, his voice laced with worry.

  “I’m not going to lie. It was a little intense.” I wondered if Zareen and Tamra always fought like that. “I feel bad for Zareen. I think she’s going to be blamed for it.”

  He sighed. “Ugh. That’s what I was afraid of. You have to understand, Zareen’s my twin. I’ve always been protective of her. I can tell you she didn’t do it. There’s no way.”

  “Did you hear the bell ring the other night when she was sleepwalking?” I asked, because even though he and I were simply hanging, I couldn’t get the case out of my head.

  “Naw, she wasn’t sleepwalking.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I would’ve heard her.”

  “Well.” I debated telling him what Shelby found out, but I knew he was going to eventually hear about it. “Shelby proved that she was sleepwalking that night.”

  Zane’s head jerked to look at me. “How? You know what, it doesn’t matter. Even if she was sleepwalking, it doesn’t mean that Zareen took Daisy. Whenever we find a bug at our place in the Hamptons, she always puts it outside. She’s the kindest person. She didn’t do it.”

  “I know,” I replied, because I believed her. I was tempted to ask him what he thought of my theory that Tamra was setting her up, but I didn’t want to offend him. Tamra was still his little sister.

  “Daisy is a cute dog and all, but there’s been nothing but tension since Tamra started putting her in dog shows. Honestly, I thought that if Daisy missed a show, maybe things could get back to normal at our house. But I guess not.”

  “Yeah.” I was struggling for something to say, but then I decided to go for broke. “So who do you think did it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think we’re overreacting—I mean, Daisy’s a good dog. Whoever took her will bring her back. If the person meant her harm, we would’ve heard by now.” He dribbled the ball in his hand for a few seconds. “Who does Shelby think did it?”

  “Beats me. She has her theories but isn’t sharing,” I confessed. “I mean, not like we’re close friends or anything—I only met her a couple days ago.” I winced at the fact that I felt the need to distance myself from Shelby in front of Zane. Was I going to start becoming one of those guys who made fun of people behind their backs? That wasn’t who I was.

  Or maybe I was now?

  “Dude, I was wondering what the deal was with you two. You’re so chill and she’s so … weird!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little in response, but the second the laugh escaped my throat, I felt guilty. Despite Shelby’s knack for being different, she had taken me around the city. She was responsible for the fact that I had Zane and his crew as friends.

  We arrived at the outskirts of the park, with Zane’s apartment building a few blocks uptown.

  “Well, it was awesome hanging with you, John,” Zane said as he reached out his fist for me to bump. “We’ll do it again soon. Cool?”

  “Sure,” I said evenly, not trying to show how excited his offer made me.

  “Look, I better get back to the drama. Catch you later!” Zane jogged across the street.

  It was then I realized I didn’t know how to get home. Shelby and I rode the subway here, and I thought I could find it. It was only a couple blocks away, although there was another subway station across the street, but was it the same line? I th
ought the one we needed was red.

  I reached in my pocket for the MetroCard that Shelby helped me buy so I could pay for my subway trip. I hoped it would have a map or something on it. But it only had the yellow-and-blue MetroCard logo on the front.

  Yet another thing Shelby had helped me with. I’d really be lost without her.

  Because I was without her and really lost.

  I began looking around, wondering if I should go back to the Lacys’ to see if Shelby was still there, but I felt that it was as good a time as any to start showing some independence. It was relying on Shelby too much that had led me to this point in the first place.

  I could make it on my own. I didn’t need her.

  A noise from the bushes on the corner startled me. The branches began swaying and I took a step back, afraid of what kind of animal might be lurking there. The only animals I thought the park had outside the zoo were rats and pigeons. I definitely didn’t want to see a rat that could make a bush move that much.

  Then an annoyed grunt came from the bush as an agitated Shelby stepped out from the branches.

  “Watson!” she scolded me as she removed a twig from her hair. “I had hoped you’d eventually move, as I’m attempt-ing to tail a suspect.”

  “Suspect?” I asked. “Who were you—”

  Then I stopped myself. I already knew who it was.

  “Shelby”—I tried to keep my voice even—“please tell me you’re not following the one guy friend I’ve made?”

  “You may want to rethink the people you choose as acquaintances,” she commented before crossing the street.

  Tell me about it.

  CHAPTER

  24

  I followed Shelby as we kept our distance from Zane.

  This was silly. He told me he was going home. I tried to explain as much to Shelby, but she ignored me (no surprise there).

  We were two blocks away from the apartment building when Zane took a left onto 88th Street.

  My throat tensed as we turned the corner, but we stayed on the opposite side of the street at least a half block away so we wouldn’t be spotted.

  Maybe he is simply running an errand, I tried to explain to the sinking feeling in my stomach. He didn’t say he was going straight home. He is allowed to do other things.

  But Shelby wasn’t going to spend her time following someone unless she had a good reason.

  “What did you find when you looked at the footage?” I asked cautiously, afraid of the answer.

  “A few things, actually,” she replied before pulling me behind a parked truck as Zane was on the corner across from us at a stoplight. “Do you have anything to report from your assignment?”

  I was about to ask what assignment until I remembered what she told me before I left, that I was supposed to observe everything. Was that the reason Shelby was eager for me to leave: so I could spy? “You mean besides the fact that we had fun?” I replied defensively.

  “Please take this seriously, Watson.” Shelby peeked around the truck and then signaled me to continue walking. “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything unusual?”

  “No, it was just guys playing ball.” Although I was positive that Shelby could never fully understand that friends can hang out simply as friends.

  “Which means …” she prodded me.

  “Which means we had fun.” Even though I knew it was pointless, I began telling her, in the detail she so loved, about the game. I knew she couldn’t possibly understand some of the terms, and okay, once I referred to a layup as a “gliding pirouette” just to see if she was as clueless about basketball as she claimed (spoiler alert: she was). But then I got excited about Jake, Corey, and all the other guys I met. I found myself basically telling her everything we talked about.

  Shelby remained silent the entire time. Every once in a while, she’d say “Interesting …” but she seemed distracted. Or maybe she wasn’t interested at all about my afternoon.

  “That was the bag that Zane had?” Shelby interrupted my story about the Yankees play-off discussion as she pointed across the street to Zane’s messenger bag.

  “Yeah.” It seemed pretty clear to me that it was the bag he had since we had come directly from the park.

  “I notice that you’re wearing tennis shoes. Is that the appropriate footwear that one should wear when playing a game of the basketball?”

  She was kidding, right? This was a joke. I took a few moments to reply since I was waiting for her punch line.

  Although I didn’t think she was capable of making a joke.

  “Ah, you wear tennis shoes, sneakers, trainers, whatever you want to call them.”

  “So you wouldn’t wear flip-flops?”

  I know she’d said she didn’t have any room in her brain attic for sports trivia, but it was like she’d never even seen any sports being played ever, even on TV.

  I wanted to tease her for not knowing, but I didn’t appreciate it when she was curt to me, so I decided to show her how someone should behave when answering a question (albeit a completely ridiculous one). “It would be pretty difficult to play with flip-flops.”

  “I see,” she replied with a nod.

  Zane was up ahead, walking past fancy boutiques and restaurants with colorful awnings. We were about forty blocks south of where we lived, but the streets were completely different. The sidewalks were mostly filled with women pushing strollers in workout clothes that looked nicer than what my mom usually wears to work. But intermixed with the stores that I was pretty sure I couldn’t even afford to walk into were stores from every suburban town I’d ever lived. There was something strangely comforting about seeing a Dunkin’ Donuts every few blocks in the middle of a large city.

  Zane turned onto Columbus Avenue, and we followed.

  It was time for me to finally ask the questions. “Why are you following Zane? What exactly did you find?”

  “Do you really want to know?” Shelby asked with a raised eyebrow. Then she grabbed my elbow and led me across the street as Zane disappeared from our view as he turned onto 92nd Street.

  “Of course I do!” Although I didn’t want to listen to her accuse Zane. There was no way he could’ve done it. He knew that everybody was blaming Zareen, the person he was closest to. The person he always looked out for. Why would he do something that would only make Zareen miserable?

  She sighed impatiently. “I’m merely checking out each family member, so you have nothing to worry about. I know you’ve become attached to the Lacys, but you do realize that somebody had to have taken Daisy. She didn’t simply disappear into thin air. All I’m doing is following the facts. And right now those facts have led us here.”

  We turned the corner onto 92nd Street to discover that Zane was gone. He’d simply vanished.

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  Shelby began to walk slowly up the street, cautiously peering into each store window before moving on to the next. Her eyes swept the buildings on the other side of the street until they settled on a store directly across from us.

  “There.” She pointed at the store. “While always being right can sometimes be a burden, I truly am sorry about this, Watson. Really, I am.”

  My gaze followed her finger to the bright blue awning with white paw prints.

  PAWESOME POOCHES.

  CHAPTER

  25

  There were many, many times I’ve been confused in the short while I’ve known Shelby. Many times. But I had no idea why Shelby was practically gleeful that Zane was in a dog store. His family has dogs. His twin sister has a dog. This wasn’t a big deal.

  Right?

  We remained hidden behind a parked car across the street as we waited. I wasn’t exactly sure what we were waiting for.

  I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “I don’t understand why we’re hiding. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for Zane going into a dog store.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied cryptically. “Although this gives me an idea. So
we will need to go into the store once he leaves.”

  “Like, to case the joint?”

  Case the joint? Really, Watson?

  “Something like that.”

  “Why can’t we go in there now?”

  “We can’t have Zane blow our cover.”

  While I was excited about going undercover, I was becoming increasingly agitated that Shelby thought Zane was a suspect.

  After a few minutes (according to Shelby’s stopwatch, it was precisely eight minutes and twelve seconds), Zane emerged from the store. To get a better view, I leaned over the hood of a car, but my balance finally gave way and I fell in front of the car with a thud. “Ow!” I screamed out before I could stop myself.

  “Watson?” I heard Zane’s voice call out at the same time Shelby cursed me under her breath.

  Zane jogged across the street and gave me a hand to help me up. Shelby stayed crouched down. She untied her shoelaces while giving me a glare that made it painfully obvious that she was not happy with me.

  “Are you okay?” Zane asked. “What are you guys doing here? Were you hiding?”

  “We’re here to do some research,” Shelby replied quickly. “I was simply tying my shoe while Watson was experimenting with gravity and failed miserably.”

  “Oh, okay.” He looked between us. “Please tell me you’ll find Daisy soon. I’m sick that Zareen’s being blamed for it. In fact—” Zane reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a Pawesome Pooches’ shopping bag. “I figured she needed some cheering up, so I got Roxy this.” He held up a stuffed giraffe.

  Relief spread through my body. I knew there was a simple explanation. Why did Shelby have to make everything a big deal?

  “I think it’s great you’re being so thorough,” Zane said to Shelby.

  “Thank you,” Shelby replied with a hint of sarcasm (so, you know, her regular voice).

  “I’ll leave you two sleuths to it,” he said before heading back the way he came.

  “Well, that was a relief,” I said, but Shelby’s attention was on the store.

  She straightened up, pushed her shoulders back, and seemed taller than her usual slumped position. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a pink sequined headband and pushed it on her head to somewhat tame her wild curls.