Panic in Pittsburgh Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 by Roy MacGregor

  Published in Canada by Tundra Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, One Toronto Street, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6

  Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947612

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  MacGregor, Roy, 1948-

  Panic in Pittsburgh / Roy MacGregor.

  (Screech Owls)

  eISBN: 978-1-77049-424-4

  I. Title. II. Series: MacGregor, Roy, 1948- Screech Owls series.

  PS8575.G84P36 2013 jC813′.54 C2012-905833-5

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  Designed by Jennifer Lum

  www.tundrabooks.com

  v3.1

  For Raphaël Jacques Macgregor Dalle,

  France’s first Screech Owl.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  1

  They were laughing at him, and Travis Lindsay knew it, and he knew why. He’d been “creamed.”

  But no way was he going to give them any satisfaction from their stupid little trick. He simply sat there, staring straight ahead, pretending not to notice the snickers. Inside, he was laughing right back at them.

  Travis had dozed off almost as soon as their bus pulled out of the airport. There had been a delay before the airplane carrying the Screech Owls took off. Another delay when it landed and they had to wait for a ground crew and a gate. Then there was a long wait for the luggage carousel to start coughing up the team’s backpacks and hockey equipment. Travis was tired by the time they got on the highway, and the heat on the bus had been turned up too high.

  But now Mr. Dillinger, the Screech Owls’ manager, was calling for them all to pay attention. He was standing up near the driver, with two fingers stuck in the sides of his mouth as if they were necessary to hold up his big mustache. He blew sharply – loud as a referee’s whistle – and everyone on the bus stopped giggling at Travis.

  “Listen up, now!” Mr. D shouted over the roar of the tires. “You are about to see a sight that no one should miss. We’re going into the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and what you see when we get to the other side is going to take your breath away. Okay? Everyone ready for a treat?”

  “YES!” several of the Owls shouted at once.

  It was dusk on a cold evening in early January. In the brief moment of darkness after they entered the tunnel before the bus’ interior lights came on, Travis deftly cuffed the top of his head to remove the high “ice cream cone” of shaving cream that some smart aleck – Nish would be a good guess – had sprayed on him while he slept. He wouldn’t give the others the pleasure of seeing him discover he was walking around with a second head. It was hardly the first time Travis had been “creamed.” Sadly, he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Not so long as Wayne Nishikawa was a member of the Screech Owls.

  Travis would bide his time, and then he’d get even with Nish. He had lost count of the number of times a teammate, never Nish, had woken up to find a mound of shaving cream riding light as air on his or her head. How Nish kept thinking this was funny was beyond Travis. Much about Nish was beyond Travis – and beyond most of the Screech Owls, for that matter.

  The long tunnel glowed yellow with lights along the ceiling and wall. There were cars ahead, their rear lights flaring red, and cars behind, their sun-bright headlights running along the wall as the tunnel slowly turned. Up ahead, Travis could see an opening, but nothing beyond it.

  “Ready?” Mr. D called out, his big mustache bouncing with anticipated delight.

  “READY!”

  They shot out of the Fort Pitt Tunnel with night falling, their surroundings suddenly pitch-black after the bright yellow lights of the tunnel they had just come through.

  It was snowing lightly, and the headlights of the bus reflected off the large white flakes, surprising and partially blinding those looking through the windshield.

  Travis felt as if they were floating on air through the falling snow. It reminded him of “The Magic Carpets of Aladdin” ride at Disney World, a feeling of rising and then falling slowly, effortlessly, silently. And spread out before the Owls through the wide, clear windshield was a city of lights – lights colored blue and red in some of the skyscrapers, lights on the bridges heading over the river, lights from the cars snaking through the streets. It was beautiful.

  “Welcome to Pittsburgh!” Mr. D announced, as if he himself had built the city and lit the bridges.

  The Screech Owls cheered and shouted out their approval. They were here for the Peewee Winter Classic, the biggest hockey tournament ever to be played on outdoor ice. They would be playing at Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers football club, in front of more than sixty-five thousand seats, if not quite as many fans. But no matter how many empty seats there might be at the final, it was certain that the championship game would be seen by more fans than any peewee hockey game in history.

  Nish might finally get into the Guinness World Records. Not by mooning the most people in history, or by stuffing more straws into his big yap than anyone had ever done – but as part of a team, if the Owls made it to the final.

  “Hey!” a voice growled from behind Travis.

  He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

  “Our boy Travis lost his head!” Nish squealed.

  Everyone laughed but Travis. He stared blankly at Nish – the defenseman’s face bright enough to light a dozen Pittsburgh bridges – and shrugged as if to say he hadn’t a clue what everyone was talking about.

  Little did Travis know that before the Screech Owls were back on a bus heading through the Fort Pitt Tunnel to the airport and home, he would dearly wish he did have a second head.

  A spare head, sort of, that he could use to replace the one that no longer worked right.

  2

  “Perfect!” Sam and Sarah said simultaneously, their voices dripping with sarcasm.

  “Whaddyamean by that?” a familiar voice squealed.

  Travis turned around – not to identify the voice, which obviously belonged to Nish, but to see exactly what it was that Samantha Bennett and Sarah Cuthbertson were ridiculing. The Screech Owls were waiting to head out for their first practice, most of them sitting around the coffee shop in their hotel.
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br />   Travis first saw the two girls shaking their heads in disgust. Then he saw Nish.

  Or, at least he presumed it was Nish. Whatever it was, it was wearing an ice-blue mask, which covered the eyes but couldn’t disguise two puffy cheeks that were growing redder by the second.

  Nish was not only wearing a mask, he had on this tight T-shirt, whitish blue, with a huge icicle forming the letter I splitting his chest in two.

  “What could be better than a big I on you, Big Boy?” Sam shot.

  The other Owls were giggling.

  Nish looked about to burst. He tore his mask off and tossed it onto the nearest table, almost causing Fahd Noorizadeh’s cherry Coke to tip into his lap. Fahd, who had never been known for his good hands in hockey, caught the drink just in time.

  Nish’s mouth moved as if it were trying to trap a bumblebee. “The I,” he said, speaking very carefully and very loudly, “stands for ICEMAN! I am the new Iceman! And if you don’t smarten up and shut up, I’ll freeze you both solid!”

  “Deal, Big Boy,” laughed Sam, using an elastic to put her red hair into a ponytail. “We’ve been trying to freeze you out for years now.”

  The rest of the Owls roared. Nish slammed his thick fist down on the table – this time causing Fahd’s cherry Coke to jump completely off the table and onto the floor. Nish grabbed his mask and stomped back toward the elevator.

  “I’m going to get my equipment,” he said in a defeated tone.

  Sam took one last shot: “Don’t forget to thaw out your underwear, Mr. Iceman!”

  Travis hadn’t seen this coming. Maybe Fahd might do it. Maybe Simon Milliken. But Wayne Nishikawa? The Iceman?

  Though when he thought about it, there had been some signs. In the past few months, Nish had become obsessed with superheroes. He had all the X-Men videos, and had even taken up reading – mind you, comic books rather than real books, but reading all the same. This was a huge change for Nish, who had once told Travis that the only possible use he could see for books was to use them as goalposts while playing mini-stick hockey in the basement.

  Nish had convinced his poor suffering mother to buy every superhero movie at Walmart and now considered himself the world expert on Superman and Batman and the Flash and Green Lantern and Spider-Man and Wolverine and even Wonder Woman. He knew about special powers, magic rings, and bracelets. He knew all about the various enemies – the Joker, Scorpion, Sabretooth. He knew so much about the X-Men he could give Data a run for his money. Larry Ulmar was called Data by the Screech Owls because he seemed to know everything about everything, so it was pretty impressive to Travis that Nish could equal him.

  Travis had never known his friend to show such interest in new knowledge. It might be a little weird, but at least Nish was finally learning something. His tiny little brain, it turned out, was actually capable of thinking about something other than hockey and funny body sounds.

  Travis had tried to figure it out. Nish still hadn’t made the Guinness World Records for any of his mad schemes, nor had he got himself displayed as a wax figure at Madame Tussauds. Maybe the superheroes were just another madcap plan to get him there.

  Travis knew where the silly mask had come from. Mr. Dillinger had driven the team to the airport in his old bus, and on the way he had treated the Owls to one of his beloved Stupid Stops – this time at a huge variety store near the highway that sold everything, from fireworks to party hats, to the tourists heading north each summer to their cottages. Mr. D’s rules were always the same: two dollars a player – once in a while as much as five dollars – and it had to be spent on something totally useless. That must have been where the shaving cream had come from that ended up on Travis’s head. And the party section of the store was obviously where Nish had found that glittery blue and white “ice” mask.

  At one point, Nish had even tried to explain his new obsession to Travis, with little result. “You see,” Nish had said, “the thing is that most superheroes start out perfectly normal. Batman, for example – he’s just a kid growing up who has a lot of money and a cave and decides he’s going to live this secret life fighting crime. And Green Lantern, he was just this kid, Hal Jordan, who was given the magic ring and lantern by an alien he didn’t know was an alien. And then you’ve got Bobby Drake. He’s perfectly normal, too – fights with his family, has trouble at school – until one day he discovers by accident that he has this special power.”

  “What power?” Travis asked.

  “He’s out on his first date, and this bully dude tries to take his girlfriend away. So Bobby gets all angry. Now, you’ve got to understand that his anger is way different from Dr. Bruce Banner, another completely normal guy at the start, who gets angry and suddenly breaks out as the Incredible Hulk. Bobby has no idea what’s going to happen. All he does is point at this bully dude to warn him and – poof! – the bully turns into a block of ice.”

  “He kills him?”

  “Freezes him. Gets back his girl and moves on.”

  “What about the bully?”

  “Who cares about the bully?”

  “Well, you can’t just walk around killing people you don’t like. That’s against the law.”

  Nish grinned from ear to ear, his face reddening. “I am the Iceman – I am the law!”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “If you believe in me, it will happen.”

  “I don’t believe in you. You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Say what you want,” Nish said with supreme confidence. “I am the Iceman, and I have superpowers!”

  “Okay,” Travis said. “Show me.”

  “I can’t,” Nish said sheepishly. “I have to wait for them to show themselves to me. Once that happens, then I can show you.”

  Travis dropped it right there. It was too much. He was supposed to accept that Nish was a perfectly normal boy who was really a superhero-in-waiting, and that one day these magical powers would show up, and from then on he’d be a masked avenger whose mission was to save the world.

  “I liked you better when you just wanted to moon everyone.”

  Nish grinned even wider. “Who says I have to give up one to do the other?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Iceman can still moon. It’s not like I’ll freeze my butt off, is it?”

  3

  Coach Muck Munro had called on an old friend from junior hockey who was now scouting for the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the friend had somehow arranged for the Owls to practice at the CONSOL Energy Center.

  The Screech Owls were thrilled. This was “The rink that Sidney Crosby built” – a massive NHL rink high on the hill in the Uptown area of Pittsburgh, above the three rivers that from the air made the city look like a badly sliced pizza. When it opened, it was said to be the best hockey arena in the world. Had Mario Lemieux – number 66, “The Magnificent One” – not taken over ownership of the Penguins, and had the team not lucked into Sidney Crosby in the draft, there would have been no NHL team in the city. Now, however, thanks to Mario and Sidney and the star players who came along later, the team was considered a jewel in the NHL crown.

  And what a jewel the arena was. Travis knew it was just a practice, but he treated it like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final. He dressed in silence, putting on his pads in the right order, kissing his practice jersey from the inside as he pulled it over his head, tapping his heart to feel the cloth of the captain’s C that he wore with such pride.

  Mr. D had given his skates a fresh sharp, and Travis stepped carefully on the rubber mats as he made his way to the ice, walking as if he were about to break through the thin early-winter ice at his grandparents’ cottage. He didn’t want to risk losing an edge.

  Travis could hardly believe he was stepping out onto the same ice that Sidney Crosby had played on, the same ice that the great Mario Lemieux sometimes skated on. He was first out. He cut around the first corner hard, his skates sizzling as he dug in. Then, to strengthen his ankles, he kept his legs together and “s
naked” up the ice just by moving his feet in tandem with each other. He stepped out of his “snake” skate and looked back at the wavy parallel lines that his skates had left in the new ice. His mark would not last long – the other Owls were pouring out onto the ice with shouts of joy – but for a fleeting moment, Sidney Crosby’s ice rink had only Travis Lindsay’s mark on it. His signature.

  Muck ran a smart practice. The Screech Owls did a few breakout drills, then some three-on-one rushes, then three-on-two. Some coaches ran rigid “systems” – you either took the puck up the ice exactly as instructed or you would be benched – but Muck said systems were for work, not play. He also said, “You invent this game every time you play it,” which Travis took to mean that Muck wanted to see creativity. In Muck’s book, the Owls should be ready to try whatever seemed possible, if they did so responsibly. So long as you stayed aware of what might happen if you lost the puck, you could pretty much attempt anything. No wonder the Owls loved playing for him.

  As always at the end of practice, the Owls scrimmaged. In scrimmage, you could do anything you liked, and there was one play Travis had seen on the Internet that he wanted to try. A young Finnish player had gone behind the other team’s net, used a scoop play with the blade of his stick to lift the puck up and hold it there, like a small circle of dough on the end of a paddle about to be put into the oven, and then turned the blade and hurled the puck backward into the net. The goal had counted, too – nothing illegal, just bizarre and crazy and … fun.

  Muck had them playing four-on-four to create a little more open ice, meaning a little more time as well. Sarah, Travis, and Dmitri Yakushev had been working on a crisscross play in which Sarah, who had the puck at center, headed for Travis’s left wing while Travis cut for center. But Sarah would simply leave the puck behind as she flew up the ice. With luck, it would fool the defense. They’d be trying to cut her off, only to realize, too late, that she no longer had the puck. Travis would go all the way over to Dmitri’s wing, putting Travis on the off-wing, a left-hand shot on the right side, while Dmitri took over center. It gave Travis three options: he could pass all the way over to Sarah, he could try to use Dmitri for a tip, or he could shoot himself.