The Boston Breakout Read online

  There had been no time for practice sessions. The tournament was beginning immediately so that all games could be fitted in before the championship round on the weekend. First up against the Screech Owls would be the Chicago Young Blackhawks, one of the top peewee teams in the country.

  The Owls and the Young Blackhawks had met before, at the Big Apple tournament in New York City. Travis remembered that they had been a tough team to play, smart and quick and well-coached. The Owls had only got past them thanks to a brilliant play by Nish at the blue line. Nish had twisted and danced his way in with the puck and then dished off at the last moment to Travis, who scored the winner in a close 3–2 game.

  Travis also remembered the championship game in that tournament. Again, it was the Nish show. The Owls had come back all the way to even the score against the State Selects, and Nish had then settled the game, scoring a truly ridiculous goal by sticking his stick between his legs and roofing the puck. Nish had seen an old YouTube clip of Mario Lemieux doing this for the Pittsburgh Penguins and vowed he’d do the same. Muck was not amused – the Owls’ coach hated “showboaters” – but the team had been delighted. They’d won the championship.

  Travis dressed slowly. After several weeks away from the ice, he wanted to savor his return. He put his gear on precisely as always, first right side then left – shin pads, socks, shoulder pads, elbow pads, skates – then kissed the inside of his jersey as the Screech Owls crest and the letter C on the outside slipped over his head and shoulders. He placed the helmet over his head, snapped the face shield in place, tucked on his gloves, grabbed his stick – and was set.

  So, too, were the other Owls. Sarah was concentrating so fiercely on her hands it seemed she might burn them with X-ray vision. And Nish was doubled over, his head between his padded knees as he stared hard, hard, hard at the floor. Each Screech Owl had his or her own special ritual. Each respected the others’ little quirks, even if, as in the case of Nish, it was hard to keep a straight face when watching them get ready to play.

  The ice felt slightly alien. There was no way, Travis knew, that he would feel as comfortable as he did mid-season, when it seemed his feet and skates had melded together as a natural part of his body. He never thought about skating then. Now he had to concentrate on his stride. He could feel unfamiliar muscles – “hockey muscles,” Muck called them – straining into action. It was almost as if he’d rusted up while being off the ice.

  The Young Blackhawks had clearly been playing summer hockey. The Owls sensed it immediately in the warm-up. They seemed to be in a higher gear and brimming with confidence.

  “I’d love to wipe the smiles off those smug faces,” Nish hissed as he and Travis moved in on Jenny Staples to tap her pads and goalposts. It was a pregame ritual that Jenny insisted be followed exactly the same each time: Nish tapped one pad, Travis the other; Nish bumped one post with his fist, Travis the other.

  Hockey rituals fascinated Travis. He’d once read a book called A Loonie for Luck about the Canadian gold-medal victory at the Salt Lake City Olympics. The book told the story about a “lucky loonie,” a one-dollar coin that Canadian ice-maker Trent Evans secretly buried at center ice to inspire the men’s and women’s hockey teams on their way to the gold, but it also included other stories of weird hockey superstitions.

  When Gretzky played, he used to put baby powder between his stick blade and tape to “soften” his passes. Hall of Famer Phil Esposito wouldn’t stay in any hotel room that had the number 13 in it, and he kept so many rabbits’ feet and lucky charms hanging in his stall he could barely find his equipment. Bobby Orr never wore socks in his skates. But Travis’s all-time favorite concerned a player named Bruce Gardiner who had fallen into a terrible scoring slump while with the Ottawa Senators. Gardiner became so frustrated with his lack of goals that once, between periods, he took his stick into the washroom, placed the blade of his stick into the toilet bowl – and flushed. He immediately went out and scored. Soon all of the Senators were “flushing” their sticks before games.

  Travis had his own little tics. He had to kiss the inside of his jersey. He had to hit the crossbar with a warm-up shot. Jenny had to have her shin pads and posts tapped. Nish had to put his head between his knees. Sarah and Sam had a secret message they exchanged just before heading onto the ice. They refused to let anyone else know what it was for fear it would “break the spell.” Travis suspected that even Muck was superstitious. The Screech Owls’ coach insisted on wearing his scruffy old hockey jacket behind the bench when virtually every other peewee coach wore a jacket and tie as if they were in the NHL.

  So when Travis missed the crossbar in the warm-up, he hoped it didn’t mean anything.

  It turned out it did. Nish had wanted to “wipe the smiles” off the faces of the Young Blackhawks, but quite the opposite happened. By game’s end, the team in Blackhawks red and black was whooping and hollering and openly laughing. They had outskated, outplayed, outhustled, and outscored the Screech Owls 9–2.

  Travis could not recall the Owls ever getting such a severe whipping. They had lost many games, but usually it was close. This was a rout – a “spanking,” as they said in hockey.

  It had gone wrong from the beginning. Sarah lost the opening face-off – unusual in itself, as she prided herself on gaining that very first puck of the game – and Dmitri, racing in alone after Sarah retrieved the puck and sent a long pass up the right wing to set him free, missed on his familiar forehand fake to be followed by a backhand to the roof. The puck didn’t even tick off a post or the crossbar before it pinged into the glass behind the Young Blackhawks’ net.

  Fahd scored in the first period on a shot that he’d intended as a pass to Andy Higgins but instead deflected off a defenseman’s skate and into the far side of the net. And Sam scored on a shot from the point that bounced once before reaching the goalie and took a weird turn to the right as the goaltender positioned himself to handle the bounce.

  Two goals from the defense; none from the forwards. The Owls’ top line of Travis, Sarah, and Dmitri could not recall a time when they’d been shut down so completely. None of them could perform against their opponents’ heavy checking. They barely managed to get the puck into the Blackhawks’ end.

  The most spectacular Owls play of the game had been pure disaster. Nish took the puck behind his own net, banked a pass to himself off the back boards as a checker flew past him, then broke out hard up the right side. At the blue line, he fed a pass across to Travis, who used the give-and-go to get the puck right back to Nish as the big Owls’ defenseman blew past center ice.

  Nish perfectly split the Young Blackhawks’ defense as he came in, leaping high at one point to clear their sticks as both defenders fell.

  He was in alone. Which was when he tried his “showboat” play of putting his stick through his own legs for the spectacular Mario Lemieux shot.

  Only it didn’t work. Nish ended up tripping himself and crashed to the ice. He slammed into the backboards, where he lay moaning while the puck trickled harmlessly off into the other corner.

  The referee blew the play down, thinking Nish might be badly hurt.

  “Give him a penalty for tripping himself!” one of the Young Blackhawks shouted from the opposition bench.

  Travis could hear the other team howling with laughter. His face burned with more than the exertion of playing.

  Now he, too, wanted to “wipe the smiles” off those smug laughing faces.

  Muck took it philosophically. The Owls all knew their coach would be furious at the Young Blackhawks’ coaching staff for allowing their team to run up the score – in Muck’s opinion, one of the greatest sins in hockey – but he wasn’t saying anything to them about that. If he had something to say, he would say it privately to the Young Blackhawks’ head coach.

  “You can’t win or lose a tournament in the first game,” Muck told his exhausted team in the dressing room. “It’s over and done with. Forgotten. They have their hockey muscles from play
ing all summer. You don’t. It’s as simple as that.”

  Muck said no more. He stepped outside the dressing room and closed the door, leaving his team with their own thoughts.

  And what thoughts they were. As captain, Travis felt he had failed his entire team. As the team’s top playmaker, Sarah felt she had failed her linemates. As the team’s greatest player and future Hall of Famer (his opinion, not necessarily shared by his teammates), Nish felt he had made a perfect ass of himself when he could have put the Owls back in the game.

  Mr. D quietly went about packing up his skate-sharpening equipment, tape bag, toolbox, and first-aid kit. He whistled softly to himself, his thick mustache moving to its own rhythm as his lips worked through an old rock ’n’ roll song.

  The Owls packed their bags and set out their sweaty underwear for washing back at the hotel. Still no one said anything. What was there to say?

  It was Mr. D who finally spoke. With a single sentence, he changed both the subject and the mood.

  “Second thing in the morning,” Mr. D said, his mustache curling into a wide smile, “we’re all going to the New England Aquarium.”

  “What do we do first thing in the morning?” Fahd asked.

  Mr. D kicked at the pile of laundry, making a face at it.

  “We wash Nishikawa’s underwear,” he said, turning to Nish with a sly grin.

  “Bad enough you stunk out there. You don’t need to stink up the place in here as well.”

  4

  The Screech Owls had never seen anything quite like the New England Aquarium. It was a short walk from their hotel along a small park and then a wide boardwalk that wrapped around the huge gray aquarium building. The aquarium looked like an airplane hangar and an art gallery at the same time, a massive building, without windows for the most part, but with a spectacular glass entrance with a sweeping glass-and-steel roof over the front. On the other side of the walkway, the water of Boston Harbor sparkled in the morning sun.

  Nish had other plans. He told Muck and Mr. D he wanted to go out to Boston College, where football quarterback Doug Flutie – who later became a star in the Canadian Football League – had made his famous Hail Mary pass to win a game over Miami in the final seconds, throwing the ball so high and far that only blind luck had made it land in the hands of a Boston College player. Nish wanted to head for Fenway Park, where baseball’s Red Sox were having a home stand against the Toronto Blue Jays. He wanted to detour by the Ben Franklin statue to pay his respects and thank the Founding Father for inspiring him to quit school. He wanted to board one of the many Super Duck tours – weird-looking yellow buses that took tourists along the streets and then drove right into the harbor and kept on going. He wanted to do everything, it seemed, except actually learn something.

  “This will be educational,” Travis had argued. He also thought, though he didn’t say it, that it would bring the Owls back to their old, positive selves. They were still crushed by the result of their opening game.

  Nish quickly dismissed him. “I’m done with education. You saw the postcard. I’ve got more education than Ben Franklin – so what can school do for me?”

  “You’re impossible,” Sarah pitched in.

  “I’m a genius,” Nish shot back. “I don’t need no more school.”

  “You don’t need any more school,” Sam corrected.

  “That’s right,” Nish said, grinning proudly. “Glad you agree.”

  Before they reached the aquarium, Mr. D, who was leading the adventure, gathered the Owls together in the small park. He had to wait a while for Nish, who had dragged his feet the whole way. The boardwalk was swarming with tourists, and there were long lineups for tickets into the aquarium.

  An area on the side of the aquarium closest to the harbor had been cordoned off with yellow DO NOT CROSS tape and metal barricades. Behind the tape, scaffolding had been erected, and several construction workers were moving about. It appeared they were punching through the wall to make a new entrance or delivery area for the huge building.

  The construction work sort of ruined the opportunity for a good photograph of the aquarium, but Travis took one anyway. His grandparents, who had all sorts of books at their cottage on fish and water life, would want to see everything when he got back to Tamarack.

  Beyond the construction area, along a narrow strip between the building and the water, a large group of adults had gathered. Some held signs that they kept down at their feet. They seemed to be listening intently to someone, a person dressed in what appeared to be a penguin costume. Once in a while, Travis thought he could hear the speaker shouting. It was a woman’s voice, but Travis was unable to make out what she was saying over the sound of traffic in the street just behind.

  Something about the group suggested they weren’t there to see the exhibits. But Travis had no time to find out what their purpose was. The Owls were ready to head into the aquarium.

  “We’ve already got tickets,” Mr. D announced, beginning to hand them into the reaching hands of the various Owls. “We are to meet our guide at the harbor seal exhibit at the front of the building.”

  The harbor seals were the first thing visitors encountered at the aquarium. They were both outside and inside, with their own pool, and the Owls were being granted access to the inside of their display area.

  The Owls’ guide, Jocelyn, told them all about the playful creatures as the seals seemed to dance underwater to entertain the visitors, blowing bubbles and waving at the little children pressing their faces to the glass.

  Jocelyn introduced the Owls to Chacoda, a seal that she claimed could “talk.” Chacoda said something that sounded very much like “How are you?” when Jocelyn made a great show of introducing him to Simon Milliken, who seemed uneasy at being singled out for special attention.

  Chacoda, the guide explained, was the grandson of Hoover, the most famous harbor seal of all time. Hoover had come to the aquarium at the age of four months, having been rescued as a baby and kept by a family in their bathtub.

  “He could say his own name,” said Jocelyn. “And he knew all sorts of phrases, like ‘Get outta here!’ and ‘How are ya?’ And he said it with a Maine accent, just like the family that rescued him!”

  Hoover had lived to the great old age of twenty-four and for years was studied by scientists, who could never quite figure out how the seal came to sound so much like a human. He had been so famous in Boston that when he died the newspapers ran his obituary, as if Hoover had been a real person. “And to us, here at the New England Aquarium, he was,” said Jocelyn.

  “Get outta here!” hissed Nish.

  All the Owls stared daggers at him. Nish blushed and put on his innocent choirboy look, holding out his hands, palms up, as if he couldn’t understand why they were glaring at him.

  The group went inside, where Jocelyn directed them toward the large penguin exhibit that took up most of the first floor of the building. Travis thought the display looked amazing. There were large swimming areas, where visitors could watch the penguins dive; smaller tidal pools, where the penguins could wade around in the water; and rock structures they could climb upon. Some of the penguins were called rockhoppers, and the Owls delighted in watching them leap about the rocks, the long yellow feathers on their heads flapping as they jumped.

  Jocelyn told them that about one hundred penguins lived at the aquarium – from large emperor penguins to little tiny blue ones. She pointed to one group of birds that seemed to be braying like donkeys about something. “Those are African penguins,” she said, “also known as jackass penguins because of that sound.”

  “How nice,” Sam whispered loudly in Sarah’s direction, “a bird for Nish.”

  Travis was glad to see his teammates returning to normal – even if it meant taking shots at Nish. It showed they weren’t so upset anymore at the terrible beating they had taken from the Chicago Young Blackhawks. Muck had always taught them, “You move on from a loss – you can’t go back and play it again.” But this h
ad been more than a loss. It was a humiliation, and the Owls weren’t used to being humiliated on the ice.

  Jocelyn pointed to Sam and asked her to step forward. Sam – a little red-faced, thinking she was about to get into trouble – did as she was asked. But it was not to be told to smarten up and lay off Nish. Sam was to go right down into the penguin exhibit with one of the handlers and experience something very special.

  Sam seemed bewildered, but one of the workers who took care of the penguins came up and took her hand and guided her into the exhibit. Tourists all around snapped photographs of the little girl from the hockey team who was getting to join the penguins.

  “We have a new baby,” the worker told her. He reached down and very carefully pulled a tiny penguin out from behind a rock.

  “Can I hold it?” Sam asked.

  The handler shook his head. “We want you to take off your shoes. It’s shallow here, so your shorts won’t get wet. We want you to sit by the penguin a moment and then do nothing but get up and begin walking, very slowly, across this tidal pool to the far side. Okay? And keep changing direction as you go?”

  “O-k-kay,” Sam stuttered, unsure what was going to happen.

  The worker stepped away, and Sam settled down near the baby penguin for a while, then got up and slowly began moving across the shallow pond.

  The baby penguin squawked and followed, hurrying to catch up.

  The worker and Jocelyn laughed. Every turn that Sam made, the penguin followed. Sam could not get away from the little bird. If Sam stopped, the penguin stopped with her. If she started up, the penguin started up again, too. Sam zigged, the penguin zigged. Sam zagged, the penguin zagged. It was hilarious to watch.