The Ice Chips and the Haunted Hurricane Read online

  Fweee-uuurllll!

  The referee whistled to make sure the players were in their positions.

  Lucas was happy to feel his edges catch as he stepped back onto the ice and hurried to get to his spot as centre. At the blue line, he turned to skate backwards so he could admire the long bracket marks his razor-sharp skates left in the fresh ice. If he were an artist, this would be his masterpiece.

  Of course, right now Lucas was more concerned with being an athlete—even just an average one. If he could think like a hockey player again—if all the Ice Chips could, just for this one game!—maybe their season wouldn’t start out as a total disaster.

  Chapter 6

  The referee and linesmen took up their positions, and the ref whistled for a player from each team to come to centre ice. Lucas skated over slowly, making sure he tapped his stick on the pads of his linemates, Mouth Guard and Edge, as he passed.

  He coasted nervously to the faceoff dot, then looked up to see Beatrice Blitz skating toward him, a sneer on her face.

  “How’re your skates, loser?” Beatrice asked.

  Lucas burned red. Is she the one who put Lars up to it?

  He looked around for some kind of sign that the hockey gods might be on the Ice Chips’ side, as his bompa had said—but nothing. That is, until the Stars’ goalie banged his stick against his pads . . .

  Before Lucas had stepped onto the ice—before falling on his butt—he’d made sure to check out the other team’s players, especially their goalie. He’d noticed that the kid had a good glove hand and liked to flick it out with great drama. He’d also noticed that the goalie liked to go down early, sliding on his big pads across the crease to ensure no one could slip a puck through his five-hole.

  That had given Lucas an idea. If he got a chance, he’d try it.

  All eyes were on Lucas, Beatrice, and the small black disc in the referee’s hands.

  And then all of a sudden, the puck was thrown down and the game was on.

  Beatrice won the draw and sent the puck back to one of her defencemen, who came up fast through the middle and dropped the puck just before hitting the Chips’ blue line. Jared Blitz picked it up, slipped right between Crunch and Bond, faked a shot that Swift went for, and easily drove it into the Chips’ net.

  It was 1–0, and Lucas hadn’t even touched the puck!

  As Lucas’s line was called in and Lars’s line took its place, Blades skated by Lucas.

  “I’m surprised the Stars didn’t bring an anthem singer,” she said, making him laugh.

  She was right: Coach Small was alone at their bench, wearing a bulky sweater and his old grey cap. But at the Stars’ bench, Coach Blitz was all dressed up with some fancy assistant beside him. The two men looked almost identical in new caps, team jackets, shirts, and ties.

  Lucas shook his head. What, do they think they’re in the NHL?

  Throughout the period, Lucas’s line was back on the ice and then off again, but nothing seemed to improve. At the end of it, the Stars were ahead 4–0.

  “We’re going to try a change,” Coach Small said, tapping Lucas on the arm. “You trade places with Lars.”

  Lucas understood that lines sometimes get changed around. And he knew that Lars had played well, while he’d been having trouble. But to lose his spot to that bully was like having his heart yanked out of his chest!

  Was this Lars’s plan all along?

  For the second period, Lucas played on a line with Blades and Dynamo. The Stars were up 7–0, but Lucas caught a long pass from Blades and found himself on a breakaway.

  He came in hard over the other team’s blue line, looked up, and saw the Stars’ goalie flick his catching glove like a lobster about to grab something juicy. Lucas knew he wouldn’t be trying a shot there.

  Instead, he slipped to the side, looping in on the net from the right and skating hard across the front of the crease.

  As expected, the Stars’ goalie went down on his knees, ready to block any backhand that Lucas might try.

  But Lucas had other ideas.

  Instead of shooting, he let the puck slide and fall back between his skate blades. He then reached his stick back with one hand and tapped the puck. It slid into the net as slow as a curling stone landing on the button.

  The referee’s whistle blew—Lucas had scored!

  And now he was piling into the boards!

  Lucas never saw what happened; he just felt it. A stick was between his legs and suddenly he was down, sliding hard into the end boards. He spun as he fell, his back taking the blow while he watched the Stars’ number 13 skate away, laughing.

  The whistle went again—a penalty to Beatrice Blitz.

  The Chips started the third period on a power play because of Beatrice’s penalty—their first of the game. Coach Small sent out Edge, Mouth Guard, and Crunch, then tapped Lucas again.

  “Your line’s up. Play the point with Bond, okay?” Coach Small said.

  Lucas jumped over the boards, not even bothering with the gate. The coach was showing faith in him again. He felt his heart swell. He was back on his line!

  With Beatrice out, the Chips had one more skater on the ice than the Stars—“the man advantage,” as they called it in the pros—and Lucas knew that an extra player could make a big difference.

  Edge won the faceoff and shot the puck up-ice, with Mouth Guard chasing hard and reaching it just before it went over the icing line. While trying to get the pass back to Lucas, however, Mouth Guard fumbled it. The puck was easily picked up by Jared Blitz, who fired it high along the boards to get it out of the Stars’ end.

  Only, it didn’t get out. Bond, gliding out of her zone, chopped the puck right out of the air. Nervously, she took her shot, but it was weak and fluttered, and a Stars’ defenceman blocked it with his shin pads. It then rebounded over to Edge, who stickhandled it back in behind the Stars’ net.

  No one was covering Edge, the extra man, so Lucas pinched in from the blue line, driving hard to the net. Edge fed him the puck, and Lucas fired to the blocker side—but the puck rang off the crossbar and rebounded high over the Plexiglas!

  So close, so close. Lucas swore if he got another chance, he’d fire the puck along the ice.

  Next, Mouth Guard took the faceoff against the Stars’ other forward—a new, big guy whose name Lucas didn’t know—and was beaten cleanly. The player swept the puck to Jared, who again fired it hard around the boards.

  The puck was in the air, and Lucas managed to knock it down with his stick.

  Bond, the only player not covered this time, advanced out of her zone again, pinching hard toward the Stars’ net. She slammed her stick twice on the ice to let her teammate know she wanted the puck.

  Lucas fired his pass to Bond, but Jared Blitz beat her to it—just as Beatrice bounded back onto the ice.

  The Chips’ power play was over.

  It was now a two-on-one in the Chips’ end, with only Lucas back—and he wasn’t a defenceman.

  The only Chip within range was Edge, but he was behind the twins and coming in on the wrong side.

  Beatrice, who now had the puck, skated toward Lucas. He tried to poke-check her, but she faked left and niftily sent the puck over to her twin, who had a clear path to the net.

  Jared roared in on Swift, and just as she thought she had him, he slid the puck back to his sister, who roofed it high into the net.

  Stars 8, Chips 1.

  Gliding past Lucas with her stick in the air, Beatrice cackled. Slowly, she raised her gloved index finger and marked a point in the air.

  A disaster, just as Lucas had feared.

  Chapter 7

  No one spoke in the dressing room. The Ice Chips slowly took off their equipment, sighing and groaning. Coach Small came in shaking his head, but he said nothing.

  Finally, someone broke the silence. No surprise that it was Mouth Guard.

  Lucas saw it coming the moment his teammate stripped off his sweaty T-shirt and slipped his hand in under his armpi
t.

  PPPPFFFFWWWWHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!

  This was Mouth Guard’s new thing: throwing farts—the same way a ventriloquist with a dummy on his lap throws his voice. He’d just made it sound as though the fart had come from the rusty bathroom stall beside their dressing room door.

  Some of the Chips giggled, unable to help themselves. But Lucas didn’t.

  He knew it was a fake fart, but he also knew that the Ice Chips stunk. For real.

  Lucas wanted to believe that the hockey gods had been against them this game, but really he knew that the Chips just hadn’t played well enough. They needed practice. And they needed help. Everyone on the ice knew it, and so did everyone in the stands.

  Mouth Guard had tried his best to make good passes out there, but they always seemed to fall behind the moving player, the same way they had during practice. The guy could shoot, but he couldn’t direct the puck unless he was aiming at a net—one of the few things on the ice that didn’t move.

  And Bond’s stickhandling problems were even worse than before. The one time Mouth Guard did get a proper pass to her, moving in from the blue line, she’d whiffed on her shot completely and fallen down, sliding helplessly into the corner. Jared and Beatrice had both laughed so hard they’d turned red. Coach Blitz and his fancy new assistant had cracked smiles, too!

  The Chips were jokes out on the ice—ridiculous clowns with blades strapped to their feet and zero ability to protect their net.

  Of course, Lucas was one of those clowns. Coach Small, who never yelled but was never really able to hide his emotions, had clearly grown impatient with Lucas on the ice. He’d lost confidence in him.

  Why else did he give Lars my position?

  Lucas knew that if he didn’t step up his game, he could lose that position permanently.

  “Listen up!” Coach Small called as Mouth Guard finished off another big fart—this time making it come from the metal garbage can in the corner of the room. “Look, guys, we missed some practice time while the rink was being repaired at the beginning of the season. We’re rusty. We all know that.”

  A few of the players nodded.

  “This was just an exhibition game, but it counted all the same because it was a test,” Coach Small continued carefully, clearing his throat. “A test of where we stand this year against the Stars.”

  “Where we stand? You mean where we fall on our faces,” Bond said, half laughing, half trying not to cry.

  Lucas nodded in her direction, wishing he could make her feel better. Swift, who was standing beside Bond, quietly linked arms with her.

  “Yeah, what happened out there?” Lars asked loudly from one of the benches along the far wall. He glared at Mouth Guard, then at Bond. “You gotta be able to play better than that.”

  “We will play better,” Edge said, shooting the exact same glare back at Lars.

  Coach Small ignored the looks flying around the dressing room and went back to his speech. “I just don’t want you to forget that while we might not have the Stars’ fancy rink or their expensive uniforms, we have something even better—something that can’t be bought. We have heart.” As the coach said this, he thumped his fist proudly in the centre of his chest. “I want to see your heart at our next practice, regardless of what happened out there today. Understand?”

  “HEART!” Swift repeated, unlinking her arm with Bond’s so she could smack her goalie stick against the metal garbage can.

  “Heart!” Edge yelled, thumping his chest twice.

  “Heart!” others called.

  Some pounded their sticks on the rubber flooring. Others clapped.

  Lucas tapped his stick along with them, but he couldn’t bring himself to shout.

  How can you yell “Heart!” when you’re heartbroken?

  And how can you say you love your team when you’re dragging it down?

  On Sunday night, a few of the Ice Chips met in Bond’s driveway. They’d set up a Shooter Tutor—a rubberized canvas guide—across the front of an old hockey net. They took turns trying to fire the puck through the five different holes that marked the best places to score.

  Lucas wasn’t the only one struggling after yesterday’s loss. Coach Small had made it clear to everyone that if they wanted to feel better, they’d have to improve.

  Edge had little trouble and hit all five holes in under ten tries. Mouth Guard hit five in twelve tries. Lucas was five in fifteen—way worse than last year. And Bond only managed to hit the three bottom holes after about twenty tries. She couldn’t hoist the puck at all.

  “Can we . . . help?” Edge asked, smiling and leaning on his stick. He didn’t want to offend Bond, but if he could do something to make this easier for her, he would.

  “Well . . .” Bond started, sounding unsure. “How do I lift it up? Is it the angle of the stick or something?”

  “Kind of,” Lucas said as he scooped up a ball for a quick wrist shot that didn’t make it in. He knew how to lift a puck off the ground—knew when it felt right—but he’d never actually tried to explain it to anyone.

  “I’m also afraid someone will steal the puck from me. I don’t really like that part of the game,” Bond said as she carefully lined up another shot. “Stand back, okay?”

  Swift hadn’t come out because she needed to work on her hurdles for track, but with the Shooter Tutor, Bond could practise her shot anyway. A few of the Chips had gone to the Riverton shopping mall that morning to get it with Bond’s dad—who, they’d learned, had his own wild sports story.

  Lucas, Bond, and Mouth Guard had just jumped out of Bond’s parents’ truck in the mall parking lot when Mr. Foster told them about his time on the Jamaican bobsled team.

  “No way!” Lucas shouted, right before Mouth Guard launched into a thousand and one questions.

  Bond’s dad said that while he was taking part in a Jamaican push-cart derby—a race with small wooden go-karts—he’d met two Americans who were putting together a bobsled team. The Americans were searching all over Jamaica for athletes, and when they finally had a team together and trained, they’d sent it to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

  “The whole world loved the team,” Bond said as the mall’s automatic doors slid open in front of them. “Even though they didn’t win a medal.”

  “It’s amazing that they made it so far!” Lucas said, smiling as they walked toward the mall’s glassed-in elevator.

  There was only enough room for the three Chips, an old man with a cane, and a young mother with a baby in a stroller, so the kids all crammed in while Mr. Foster bounded up the stairs toward the sports store on the second floor.

  “The team was amazing—but my dad wasn’t in that bobsled,” Bond said, sadly. “He quit before the big competition, and another bobsledder took his place.”

  Neither of her teammates asked why her dad had quit—they were happy enough to be hanging out at the mall with an almost-Olympic athlete!

  “Does your dad talk a lot about their training? How did they do it without any snow around?” Lucas asked as the elevator doors closed.

  “Yeah, sometimes they had to—” Bond started, but Mouth Guard, unable to focus as usual, had just slipped his hand through the neck hole of his T-shirt.

  PPPPFFFFWWWWHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!

  Lucas rolled his eyes, but Bond could barely keep down her giggles.

  PPFFFFHHWEEET! PPFFFFHHWEEET! PPFFFFHHWEEET!

  Mouth Guard snapped his arm down over his hand like a chicken wing, making the most disgusting sound imaginable.

  Lucas knew his face had to be beet red. There were tears squeezing out of his eyes, he was fighting so hard not to burst out laughing.

  Then Mouth Guard let out two little squeaky ones—Connor-sized toots—and Lucas knew he would lose it. He was killing them!

  PPFFFFHHWEEET!

  PPFFFFHHWEEET!

  Mouth Guard sniffed the air suspiciously and looked quickly at the old man, who was staring so hard at the floor numbers that he might n
ot even have heard the revolting sounds.

  As the door opened at the second floor, Mouth Guard, dramatically holding his nose, jumped free, followed by a giggling Bond and Lucas—both of them also holding their noses.

  The doors closed and the glass-walled elevator continued its rise. The Chips gathered by the railing, staring up and laughing hysterically as they noticed the young mother, still standing behind the old man.

  She was holding her nose, too!

  “You are awful!” Bond laughed, leaning over with her hands on her knees, trying to breathe.

  “Stop!” Lucas cried as he wiped tears of laughter from his cheeks.

  That’s when another noise suddenly burst through the group, grabbing everyone’s attention.

  BUZZZZZZZZ!

  Lucas’s comm-band was buzzing—it was Crunch.

  And it was a call that would change everything.

  With Lucas, Edge, and Mouth Guard now standing on the road beside the driveway, Bond took another shot at the Shooter Tutor. This one lifted a little, but it struck the garage door behind the net—it wasn’t even close.

  “You’ll get it,” Lucas called, trying to be encouraging. He would have said more, but he could see that Bond didn’t want to hear it.

  Crunch, he knew, had already said too much. He’d made that desperate call to Lucas’s comm-band at the mall, and when Lucas answered, Crunch had delivered the news that sent shivers down the spine of every Ice Chip: “The Stars are challenging us to a rematch!”

  Bond’s shoulders had slumped immediately, but they’d still met up with her dad in the sports store and bought the Shooter Tutor anyway.

  Now, they just wished they had more time to use it.

  “Aren’t the losers supposed to be the ones who ask for a rematch?” Bond asked, throwing a hand on her hip after missing another shot. “We’re not ready! At least, I’m not.”