‘Rat, can we talk?’ I called. He was scuttling down the stairs. ‘Rat!’

Rat stopped and turned, wiping his face with a dirty sleeve.

‘Something in my eye,’ he muttered.

‘You want a tissue, Rat?’ Bryce asked, catching up to us.

‘Nah, whaddya want?’

‘Well, I was just wondering whether you knew anything about the trophy that was nicked from our library last week.’

Rat eyed us carefully in turn. Me, Bryce and then Bubba.

‘Nope,’ he replied and walked off.

‘We’re gonna be the first to win all four winter sports, Rat!’ I called after him.

‘You’re one of us now, Rat,’ Bryce called. He stopped, but didn’t look around. Then he moved on.

‘That went well,’ Bubba said. ‘Joking!’ he added, noticing my look.

‘There’s one thing we can do,’ said Bryce. We waited for him to continue. ‘Take a really good look in the tunnel and see if there’s anything that might suggest that the Hoods stole the trophy.’

Bubba was nodding. ‘Good thinking, Brycey,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’

The tunnel was becoming Bubba’s second home.

‘Thanks, Bubba, that’s very good of you, but I think we’ll all go,’ said Bryce.

‘Everyone except Luci,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t like the tunnel. Not one bit.’ I thought about how she had grabbed my hand and nearly squeezed the life out of it. ‘But we should ask her, anyway,’ I added.

‘Absolutely,’ said Bryce. ‘Now, I reckon we’ve run our race with the Wednesday afternoon jobs. Miss Javros has got to be getting a bit suspicious over the whole thing. Or else she’s blind.’

‘Night-time, huh? Sure, I’ll just say, “Hey Mum, I’m just going to break into the school library, crawl through a tunnel and see if I can find me a football trophy. Back about nine o’clock – if I make it back”. Can’t see any problems with that,’ I said, shaking my head.

Bryce was looking at me, smiling.

‘You know me better than that, Mitch. Leave it with me. I’ll have plans for each of you by Monday.’

‘Okay. Hey, Bryce, how did you go in the quiz?’ I asked.

‘No idea,’ Bryce replied.

We took every opportunity we could to get to the gym the following week. Luci and Becky were fired up and eager to improve their skills. Mia was a good basketball player and they knew they would have their work cut out to get near her by the end of the Legend of Basketball competition.

Mrs Cartwright held a one-and-a-half hour practice for the firsts and seconds on the Wednesday afternoon. She made us work on fitness and flexibility. We didn’t even touch a basketball until the last twenty minutes of the practice.

Bryce, who had more courage than anyone else, finally tackled Mrs Cartwright.

‘Mrs Cartwright, I wonder, perhaps, given that the tournament is next week whether we could–’

‘I thought I told you that I wouldn’t allow anyone playing in glasses on my teams. Now, get out!’

‘Well, Mrs Waite has actually said–’ Bryce persisted.

‘Don’t you dare tell me about my job.’

Bryce looked shattered, but I suspected this wasn’t the end of the story.

To involve everyone, we played a game in which we numbered off and lined up along the sidelines. When Mrs Cartwright called out a player’s number, that player ran onto the court and joined the game. If a player made any sort of error, they would have to sit out for the next five minutes. Some kids only got to play for a few minutes. Two numbers were never even called out.

The next morning Bryce handed out a sheet of paper with instructions for our next expedition into the tunnel. Here’s what mine looked like:

Dear Mitch

DO NOT SHOW THIS

DOCUMENT TO ANYONE!

Please meet in the library at 1:00pm this Friday for a briefing.

We will be going into the tunnel at 6:30pm that night. Please tell your parents that you will be going to my house for a visit from 5:00pm till 8:00pm and that you will need to be picked up from there.

I was the last to get to the library the next day, arriving just after one o’clock.

‘Okay, now here’s the plan,’ said Bryce, who seemed to be enjoying his role. ‘Luci and Mitch, you meet by the big tree between the top oval and the workers’ sheds. Make your way to the library wall by 6:25.’

I looked at Luci.

‘I’m not going in, Bryce,’ she said firmly.

‘No, I know. We need you to stay back and provide support and information.’

Luci now looked more eager to be involved. Bryce continued outlining his plan and, after about 37 questions from Bubba, we left for afternoon classes.

I checked out the Legends noticeboard on my way home from school, but there was nothing new to see. I had been hoping the quiz results would be posted. I was curious about Fisk’s score. Another hundred per cent from him and I would really be getting suspicious. The basketball section still looked tatty; just a few scrappy notes written in Mrs Cartwright’s scrawly handwriting.

As things turned out, it was quite easy to get to the tree by 6:20. Everyone’s parents assumed we were at Bryce’s place, except Bryce’s parents, who thought Bryce was at my place. The risk, of course, was that one of the parents might ring Bryce’s home. If that happened there’d be strife. But Bryce had done some probability calculations (I think that’s what he’d called them) and figured it was worth the risk. He’d even timed it so the alarms would still be off, as the cleaners were still working in the junior classrooms at the other end of the school.

Bryce had left one of the library windows slightly open earlier in the day. Becky scrambled over the railing alongside the library’s external stairs and walked along a small section of roofing to the window.

Whenever a car passed, Becky ducked and hid her face, remaining still until the beam from the headlights swept over her. When she reached the window, she pulled it wide open and crawled through. A moment later she appeared at the library entrance and let the rest of us in.

As we crept inside, the headlights from a passing car helped illuminate our way to the sports end of the library. There we got our first shock. The year boxes had been pulled out and were scattered on the floor.

‘Someone could be in the tunnel,’ Bubba whispered.

‘This is not good,’ said Luci.

‘C’mon Bubba. We need to find the catch,’ said Bryce.

‘But what about the boxes?’ Becky asked. No one answered.

Bubba found the catch and the panel slid open. He took out his torch and jammed it up against the panel to hold it in place.

‘Okay, Luci. Believe it or not, you’ve got the toughest job of all. At least we’re doing something. You’re just sitting up here, alone, in the dark, wait–’

‘Yeah, okay. I’ve got the picture. Just get in there fast and get back even faster, okay?’

We made our way down the staircase and into the tunnel. But this time we went slowly, each of us scanning the wall, the floor and even the roof of the tunnel for possible exits.

About halfway along, when we must have been right underneath the sports ovals, Becky gasped.

‘Look, guys! Check this out.’

On the wall we could make out something that looked like blobs of white paint. Had they been there before? Surely we would have noticed it though.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Hold your torches on different sections so we can see all of the white at once,’ Bryce said, stepping back.

It became clear very quickly what the paint was. Each blob was a badly written, yet still recognisable, letter.

The dob of paint in the middle could have been a doorknob. Or maybe a full stop. Or maybe it was just a dob of paint.