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    Break Point
    Break Point
    Break Point
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    Break Point

    By Kate Jaimet

    ()

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    About this ebook

    It's the summer of Connor Trent's sixteenth birthday, and the stakes for him have never been so high. Connor's summer job at the Bytowne Tennis Club allows him to train at a historic facility. It also throws him into confrontation with his rich-kid rival, Rex Hunter, whom he will battle for a berth in the National Junior Tournament. After a series of fundraisers is sabotaged, Connor suspects that someone wants to bankrupt the club and take over its valuable riverfront property. A fabled trophy, rumored to contain hidden cash, might solve all of Connor's problems—if he can win it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateMay 1, 2013
    ISBN9781459803541
    Break Point
    Author

    Kate Jaimet

    Kate Jaimet spent 13 years as a daily news reporter before turning to fiction and freelance writing. Her Canadian bestseller Dunces Anonymous and its sequels Dunces Rock and Hypnotic Dunces have been nominated for many awards, and continue to delight children in Canada and abroad. Kate enjoys yoga, clever repartee, and eating pie for breakfast.

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      Book preview

      Break Point - Kate Jaimet

      BREAK POINT

      KATE JAIMET

      ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

      Copyright © 2013 Kate Jaimet

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Jaimet, Kate, 1969-

      Break point [electronic resource] / Kate Jaimet.

      (Orca sports)

      Electronic monograph.

      Issued also in print format.

      ISBN 978-1-4598-0353-4 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0354-1 (EPUB)

      I. Title. II. Series: Orca sports (Online)

      PS8619.A368B74 2013       jC813’.6       C2012-907478-0

      First published in the United States, 2013

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952955

      Summary: When Connor and Maddy discover that their tennis club is going bankrupt, they set out to try and save it.

      Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

      Cover photography by Getty Images

      Author photo by John Major

      www.orcabook.com

      16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

      For my husband, Mark

      Contents

      chapter one

      chapter two

      chapter three

      chapter four

      chapter five

      chapter six

      chapter seven

      chapter eight

      chapter nine

      chapter ten

      chapter eleven

      chapter twelve

      chapter thirteen

      chapter fourteen

      chapter fifteen

      chapter sixteen

      epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      chapter one

      Maddy raised her hand to her mouth.

      What are we going to do, Connor? she said. What are we going to tell my mom?

      I looked at the wreckage in the common room. It was hard to believe this was the same place Maddy and I had spent hours organizing the night before. Vintage tennis rackets lay smashed amid a jumble of overturned chairs. Mangled mannequins were knocked to the floor, their antique tennis clothing slashed to rags. Strewn over everything were shredded bits of paper that had once been autographed photos of famous players.

      Looks like someone broke in, I said.

      Who would do a thing like this? said Maddy.

      I picked my way toward the back of the room, where a row of windows looked out on the second-floor balcony of the clubhouse. Shards of broken glass jutted from the wooden window frames. Shattered glass lay on the floor beneath. I peered through one of the smashed windows, as though I expected to see the vandals running away across the back courts. But whoever they were, they were long gone. They must have struck in the middle of the night.

      The rising sun turned the sky Easter-egg pink. Mist hung over the tennis courts, and over the river that formed the back border of the Bytowne Tennis Club property. Birds called to each other in reedy voices. It was going to be a beautiful day.

      I was going to get the guys who had done this.

      I turned back to face the common room. Maddy was crouched amid the pile of broken stuff, holding a smashed tennis racket. It was a Slazenger Challenge #1, a vintage racket from the 1970s. The strings hung loose from its splintered frame. Worst of all, the grip was snapped in two, destroying the autograph scrawled on the wood: Björn Borg.

      Borg was one of the greatest tennis players of all time, winner of five Wimbledon trophies and seven Davis Cups. He had played with that racket in the 1974 Italian Championships, when he’d won the singles title at age seventeen, the youngest player ever to take the prize.

      We could’ve got at least a thousand dollars for this, Connor, Maddy said.

      I’m calling the cops, I answered.

      I was heading for the phone when the sound of a car on the street below made me freeze. The car puttered along in low gear, then growled to a stop. The engine shut off with a sigh.

      It’s my mom, said Maddy. She turned her brown eyes toward me with a desperate look.

      I’ll go down and meet her, I said.

      Would you? she asked. I’ll call the police.

      I nodded and headed toward the staircase. I was acting on an impulse to help Maddy. But truthfully, I didn’t know what to say to her mom either. I ran down the stairs two at a time and opened the front door of the clubhouse.

      The street was quiet, the houses dark with sleep. A crow flew, cawing, from a rooftop and landed in one of the big, leafy trees that lined the sidewalk. Aside from that, the only movement in the street was the door of Mrs. Sharma’s Volkswagen Jetta swinging open.

      Good morning, Connor! Mrs. Sharma called cheerily as she climbed out from behind the wheel. She waved with one hand, took a large purse out of the car with the other and shut the door with a flick of her hip. She was all glammed up in high heels, a red silk dress and gold jewelry. Her hair, long and black like Maddy’s, was pinned up in a complicated style of tucks and swirls. The faint foreign lilt to her voice and the gold bangles that jingled on her bronzed arms made her seem exotic and intimidating. I waved back, feeling too dumb to speak.

      It was the first time I had seen her dressed up like that. Even though she was the general manager of the club, Mrs. Sharma usually came to work in khakis and a polo shirt. Her ritzy outfit was clearly meant to impress the wealthy bidders who would be arriving at noon for the vintage tennis auction.

      Except now those wealthy bidders wouldn’t be arriving. Now, we would have to call the whole thing off.

      Good morning, Mrs. Sharma, I said as she came toward me.

      Connor. She took my hand and squeezed it. It’s so sweet of you to come early and help Madhavi and me get ready.

      She breezed past me into the clubhouse.

      Mrs. Sharma, there’s a problem. I choked the words out, speaking to the back of her fancy hairdo.

      Don’t tell me the auction house wants to send that man Bismuth! she called over her shoulder. I told them, I want Walker! I was on the phone for an hour last night, sorting this out!

      By now Mrs. Sharma was halfway up the staircase. I ran to overtake her, but the old wooden steps were so narrow I couldn’t pass without shoving her aside. I came up behind her instead. As she reached the top and stepped through the door into the common room, Mrs. Sharma stopped in her tracks.

      Oh God, she said.

      She raised her hand to her mouth. It was the same gesture Maddy had made. She staggered sideways. She was about to stumble into an overturned chair when Maddy caught her by the arm. I grabbed a chair from the heap and set it upright for her to sit on.

      It’s ruined, Mrs. Sharma said. The look in her eyes was like something inside her had just been shattered—shattered as badly as the Slazenger tennis racket. Everything is ruined.

      chapter two

      Ten minutes later the police arrived, followed by an appraisal guy from the insurance company. The two officers had a quick look around the scene. Then Maddy and I took them down to the front desk and showed them the security videotape from the night before. Meanwhile, Maddy’s mom went through a list of the vandalized items with the insurance agent. We had already posted notices on the front door and on the club’s

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