Freddie Ramos Stomps the Snow Read online

  I ran back to the school carrying Erika’s backpack as far away from my body as possible. My plan was to toss it at her feet, like somebody feeding a lion, and get away in a Zapato Power flash. But when I walked into the gym, there was crying and commotion

  “MY MONEY!” the gray-haired lady with the red wart on her chin wailed.

  “Somebody stole my abuela’s purse!” Erika shouted. “Call the police!”

  5. A Masked Thief

  Mr. Vaslov put away his cell phone. “The police will come as soon as they can. But with the snow, there are emergencies all over the city.”

  Erika’s grandmother covered her face with her wrinkled hands and leaned over like someone about to throw up. I felt sorry for her, even if she was related to Erika and had a red wart on her chin.

  It got me thinking. Could I do something? Superheroes helped the police. But would that be helping Erika too? Do superheroes have to help people they don’t like?

  “Somebody here is a thief!” Erika pointed at the crowd gathering around her grandmother’s chair. “Give my abuela’s purse back. It has our rent money.”

  I knew what it was like to worry about rent money. Mom and I did before she got her job at the doctors’ office.

  “Don’t say things like that,” Mr. Vaslov told Erika. “We’re all neighbors here.”

  Was there anyone in the school right now who didn’t live at Starwood Park? It was time to do a little Zapato Power snooping.

  Right away, I spotted footprints— lots of them—up and down the hall by the back gym door. Were they all from the people in Building D? Or did one set of footprints belong to a crook?

  I searched the rest of the school.

  Most of the halls were dark. I saw only one light coming from a boys’ bathroom. Then it clicked off. I took two steps closer. That’s when I felt cold air in the hallway. Was there a thief near me…or…a ghost?

  Superheroes are supposed to be brave. But they don’t have to do everything alone. I ran back to the gym for help.

  “Mr. Vaslov!” I tugged on his arm. “Can I show you something?”

  He followed me right away. Mr. Vaslov wasn’t like some grown-ups who didn’t listen to kids. “I’m glad you came for me, Freddie.”

  And I was glad I had Mr. Vaslov by my side as we tiptoed down the darkest hall of the school. Mr. Vaslov switched on the light in the boys’ bathroom.

  “The window is open,” Mr. Vaslov said. “Looks like somebody made a getaway.”

  We looked around for other clues.

  “Look!” I pointed. “A blue ski mask!”

  Mr. Vaslov picked it up. “This could be important!”

  “Does anyone at Starwood Park wear a ski mask?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Mr. Vaslov said. “Let’s go ask around.”

  In the hallway, we heard shouting again.

  “My purse! Who took my purse?” It was my mom’s voice. I’d forgotten she was coming to Starwood Elementary to bring food to the people of Building D. Did the thief get her purse too?

  6. Cheese in a Mousetrap

  The police came to investigate the purse stolen from Erika’s grandmother and found out about Mom’s missing purse too. They got a two-for-one deal.

  “My bag was there,” Mom told Officer Sanchez. She pointed to the wall near the door. “I put it down to fix the food on the table.”

  Mom stood beside plates of enchiladas, refried beans, yucca, and guacamole. Neighbors at Starwood Park had made all those dishes for the people of Building D.

  “Was there money in your purse?” Officer Chen asked.

  “Yes,” Mom answered sadly. “One hundred dollars. Money collected to buy more food for the people of Building D.”

  “The thief stole charity?” Officer Sanchez asked.

  Mom nodded. “It’s in a brown envelope.”

  “And what color was your purse?” Officer Chen asked.

  “Yellow.” Mom pulled on her long black ponytail, something she always did when she was upset.

  Officer Sanchez turned to the crowd gathered around them. “Did anyone else see anything?”

  “Freddie did.” Mr. Vaslov stepped up and showed the officers the blue ski mask.

  “Where did you find this?” Officer Chen looked excited.

  Mr. Vaslov and I rushed down the hall with the officers to the boys’ bathroom. We all looked out the open window. There was a set of snow prints leading to a shoveled sidewalk.

  “Look at those three houses over there.” Mr. Vaslov pointed. “Do you think the thief lives in one of them?”

  “Maybe,” said Officer Sanchez. “We’ve been tracking a school purse snatcher for months now. He’s hit six other schools already.”

  “We call him the Serial School Purse Snatcher,” Officer Chen said.

  “Keep your eyes open. Let us know if you see something suspicious. We’d really like to catch this thief.” Officer Sanchez waved as he and Officer Chen left the school.

  The police needed someone to snoop! I grinned. My super zapatos made me the perfect guy for the job.

  In half a blink, I was outside, looking at the three houses we saw from the bathroom window. The first one had a white porch. The second one had green shutters. And the third one was red brick. All three houses were quiet with no lights on.

  This was like the footprints.

  How can you tell a crook’s house from an honest person’s house? If I jumped, could I see more through the windows? I pressed the second button on my wristband, the one that gave me super bounce.

  I bounced up and down the sidewalk, my Zapato Power smoke swirling around me. The smoke didn’t just make me invisible; it gave me special vision, like looking through a telescope. If a crook was counting stolen money in one of those houses, my Zapato Power eyes would spot it.

  In the house with the porch, I saw two bedrooms. Both of them had blankets and sheets thrown every which way. The house with green shutters had dirty dishes all over the kitchen table. The brick house had clothes on the floor of the living room. Some people don’t have moms who make them clean up.

  Just because my mom liked things clean didn’t mean the police would arrest someone for being messy. They needed something more suspicious, and I wasn’t finding it just jumping around.

  This job needed more than Zapato Power—it needed brainpower too. I sat on the school steps to think.

  What did the Serial School Purse Snatcher want? That was an easy one. He wanted purses! What if I left one out on the sidewalk?

  Wouldn’t that be like putting cheese in a mousetrap?

  It was a good idea with one big problem. I pressed the button on my purple wristband to solve it.

  Two blinks later, I was knocking at 28G. Maria answered the door.

  “Can I borrow a purse?” I asked.

  7. The Giant Pink Purse

  Maria had a huge pink purse that used to belong to her mother.

  “I’ll let you borrow it on one condition,” she said.

  That condition meant I had to let her be a part of my plan.

  “Policemen like a second witness,” she said. “Don’t you watch TV?”

  Maria had a point.

  “And purses are usually carried by girls,” she added.

  I hadn’t thought about that. “Okay,” I told Maria. “You can be my partner.”

  “Great!” she said. “Let’s get Gio.” “Why do we need Gio?”

  “I promised Mama I’d pick him up at the sledding hill,” Maria answered.

  A few minutes later, we were listening to Gio cry.

  “I don’t want to stop sledding!” His face was so red from the cold that he looked like a cherry.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” I asked. “There’s great food in the gym.”

  “They have guacamole,” Maria said.

  Gio stopped crying and turned his cherry face up. “Let’s go!”

  Some people can be bought with guacamole. Gio is one of them.

  When we got t
o the gym, everyone was eating off green plates and wiping their mouths with green napkins. I saw a big green cake in the shape of a four-leaf clover on the table. It had a rainbow with a pot of gold on it.

  “That looks like one lucky cake,” I said. “Where did it come from?” “A nice man at the supermarket,” Mom said. “He saw the news story on the TV and thought we might like to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day a little early.”

  “Why not?” I said, picking up a green plate.

  Superheroes are always on the job, but they still need to eat. Maria followed me to the table with the giant pink purse dangling off her arm. Gio was right behind her.

  “Guacamole!” Gio smiled. “My favorite!”

  As he piled up his plate, Erika came over and cut into line.

  “Hey!” she said. “Leave some for other people.”

  This was the third time in two days Erika had bothered Gio. With Gio, it’s three strikes and you’re out. He put his arms around the guacamole bowl.

  “You can’t have any,” he shouted. “You’re a bully!”

  “Gio,” Maria warned. “That might not be a good idea.”

  It all happened faster than Zapato Power. Gio took the guacamole and dashed out the gym door. Erika tried to stop him. Maria went to save him. They all grabbed at the bowl. Before I could blink, guacamole was all over Erika, Gio, and Maria.

  “Yuck!” Erika said, wiping green stuff off her face.

  “Double yuck!” Maria said, dropping her pink purse in the hallway. It was covered in guacamole too.

  We all ran to grab green napkins.

  By the time we came back, the guacamole-covered purse was gone!

  “Call the police!” Maria cried, wiping mushy stuff off her shirt. Some grown-ups took out their cell phones as Mr. Vaslov rushed over to us.

  “What happened?” he asked, staring at Erika’s face. She had guacamole on her eyebrows.

  “Get me more napkins!” she demanded.

  Gio ran away to hug his mother.

  I pressed the button on my wristband. It was time to get out of there.

  8. A Lucky Green Cake

  The Serial School Purse Snatcher had a head start. No hay problema. There was a trail of green guacamole in the snow.

  I followed the tiny blobs of green around the corner. But that’s where the trail ended.

  “Did you see where he went?” Mr. Vaslov asked, catching up with me.

  I shook my head. “He just disappeared.”

  “Put on your snowshoes, Freddie,” Mr. Vaslov said. “They might help us.” With my Zapato Power snowshoes,

  I was ready to chase the purse snatcher through the snow. But I had to find him first.

  “Look closely for guacamole.” Mr. Vaslov peered down at the white ground.

  We walked down the block toward the bus stop. That’s where we saw another spot of green.

  “Do you think the thief got away on the bus?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s keep looking.”

  Behind the bus stop was a park.

  We saw some footprints going around the trunk of a big tree.

  “What’s that?” I pointed at a mound of snow.

  “We’ll find out!” Mr. Vaslov said.

  When we got there, we saw someone had made a snow cave, just like Gio had on the sledding hill. But instead of kids playing inside, there were stolen purses. We saw a yellow purse, a pink one, and a third one that I figured belonged to Erika’s grandmother.

  “The thief’s hideout!” Mr. Vaslov whistled. But where was the thief? I turned around to see a tall, thin man in a blue coat running toward the bus stop. And the bus was coming down the street!

  I ran around him in circles, smoke flying everywhere. Just like a snowplow, I pushed enough snow to lock him into a snow jail.

  “Hey! Where did this come from!?” the man shouted.

  Mr. Vaslov ran up. “That’s our thief all right. He has guacamole on his jacket.”

  We heard sirens and saw a police car pull up in front of the school. “Go tell the officers where we are,” Mr. Vaslov said. “Tell them to bring shovels.”

  “Sure thing!” I said, pressing the button on my wristband.

  Maria, Gio, Erika, her grandmother, my mom, and just about everyone else from Building D came to watch Officers Chen and Sanchez arrest the Serial School Purse Snatcher.

  “How long did you think you could get away with this?” Officer Chen asked as he handcuffed the thief.

  The Serial School Purse Snatcher hung his head so no one could see his face.

  “Starwood Park is safe again,” Mom said.

  Mr. Vaslov quietly patted me on the back.

  After that, we all went back to the gym to have lucky green cake.

  “Yum,” Gio said, licking his fingers. “This is as good as guacamole. Green must be a good color for food.”

  The next morning, Maria, Gio, and I went to the sledding hill with all the other kids from Starwood Park. The sun was so bright, we hardly got cold.

  Mr. Vaslov came too with some clean trash can lids so we had more sleds to share. That put everyone in an extra good mood, even Erika. She didn’t say a mean thing all day. In fact, at the top of the hill, she told Gio and me to go down the hill first.

  “How come?” I asked, just to be sure she wasn’t planning to crash into us or anything.

  “I owe you one,” she said, popping a purple bubble.

  So we zoomed down the hill in front of Erika, cheering all the way.

  “Engaging and fast-paced, this title will bait many young imaginations, particularly among the Flat Stanley crowd.”—School Library Journal

  is the author of more than twenty books, including Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off, which won a Cybils Award. She is also a poet, teacher, and librarian. Visit her at www.jacquelinejules.com.

  likes to describe himself as a part-time daydreamer and a full-time doodler. He lives with his wife and two cats in England

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Jacqueline Jules

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Miguel Benítez

  978-1-4804-7545-8

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