Penalty Shot by Matt Christopher

note.”
    “My note? What note?” Jeff demanded. “I don’t know anything about any note. What’s he talking about?”
    “Search me,” Bucky said with a shrug. “I’m telling you everything I know. And giving you my advice to stay away from him until
     he cools down.”
    But Jeff just couldn’t leave it that way. He’d gone a whole day without speaking to his best friend. He was determined that
     the next day would be different.
    That night after dinner, he got permissionto go to Kevin’s house. Instead of going around back as he usually did, he rang the front doorbell. He didn’t want to give
     Kevin a chance to hole up.
    Kevin answered the door. Ranger was right behind him, swishing his tail and barking.
    “Quiet, Ranger,” Kevin said. Then he looked at Jeff. “What do
you
want?”
    Jeff drew a deep breath. The sight of Ranger had shaken him, but he knew he had to get by the dog in order to talk to Kevin.
     So, while Kevin stood with his hand on the doorknob, Jeff barged right in and headed for Kevin’s room.
    “Hey! Wait a minute!” Kevin called. “Ranger, come on!” He followed Jeff into his room and demanded, “What do you think you’re
     doing?”
    Jeff shut the door. “I don’t want anyone to interrupt us.”
    Kevin hugged Ranger protectively. “If you lay one finger on my dog —”
    “Why would you say something dumb like that?” Jeff asked, shocked.
    “Why? Because you said yourself that if you ever got the chance, you’d see what you could do to get rid of him. Well, I’m
     not going to give you that chance!”
    “I never said anything like that!”
    “Did too! You even put it in writing!” Kevin jumped up, tore open his desk drawer, and shoved a piece of paper in Jeff’s hands.
     “Just try to deny it now!”
    Jeff unfolded the paper and read:
    There may be a lot of nice dogs in this world, but some are just plain mean. Kevin’s dog Ranger is one of those. I don’t know
     why Kevin spends so much time with him since he’s such a dumb dog. In fact, he’d be betteroff if he had Ranger put away so that he didn’t waste any more time on that rotten mutt.
    Though there was something slightly familiar about it, Jeff knew he’d never written that paragraph. He’d never written — or
     said — anything so awful.
    Yet the handwriting looked just like his! Before he had a chance to examine it closely, however, Kevin had snatched it away
     from him.
    “You’re pretty quiet all of a sudden,” Kevin said accusingly.
    “Kevin, I didn’t —”
    “I know what your handwriting looks like.”
    “But I never wrote that!” Jeff shouted. “Where did it come from? Where did you find it?”
    “You know I found it in my duffel bag last night. I bet you put it there when you pretended to fix my zipper!”
    Jeff shook his head. “But Kevin, why would I want to write something like that?”
    “Who knows?” Kevin said, avoiding his eyes. “All I know is what I know. And I know that you don’t like dogs and that that’s
     your handwriting on that piece of paper. So if you didn’t write it, tell me who did.” He walked to his door and opened it.
     “If you can’t tell me that, then we have nothing to say to each other.”

16
    T he next day, Jeff had only one thing on his mind: to find out who had played such a dirty trick on him and his best buddy.
     But no matter how much he puzzled over it, he couldn’t figure out who would do such a rotten thing. Or why.
    He and Kevin played no better together than they had at Tuesday’s practice. Jeff had never realized before what a difference
     good communication between teammates made. Now he felt the effects of bad communication every minute he was on the ice.
    It was the same thing on Thursday. Kevinavoided him at school and didn’t talk to him at all at practice. The other Blades were starting to notice. Jeff saw Sam Metcalf
     talking to Kevin. The two glanced over at him and Kevin shook his head. Though he couldn’t hear what they