The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck Read online

  “Come on, Swift,” Bond said. “It’ll be us, the girls from the Stars team, and a few house players. Kinda cool to be all girls—almost like being back in roller derby.”

  “Bond!” grunted Swift. “You saw what happened out there tonight. Beatrice tried to take me out.”

  “Actually,” corrected Blades, “she did take you out. But so what? This is hockey. I can’t wait to play in this tournament!”

  “You don’t even know hockey,” Swift said with venom in her voice.

  “Swift, can’t you just—” Lucas started, but then he stopped. He loved hockey just like Swift, but he knew only the girls could decide what playing on this new team would mean to them.

  “Look, you two can say yes,” Swift said, not even looking Bond and Blades in the eyes, “but I’m saying no. Beatrice Blitz is the dirtiest player in the league, and I will never play on any hockey team with her. Ever!”

  * * *

  Swift had never felt such pressure.

  She knew she was the only girl who played goal in Riverton. She also knew that Coach Small had tried to put it delicately when he’d warned her that Mayor Ward wanted an answer by the end of the week.

  This was big. It was also why Swift had asked Lucas to meet her here, between school and their next practice, at his parents’ WhatsIt Shop. She knew she couldn’t handle this all on her own.

  “Lucas wants to know if you want whipped cream on top,” Mrs. Finnigan said as she leaned into the bay window behind Swift’s chair and removed a potted plant that was no longer doing well—one of the final details in the WhatsIt Shop’s new makeover.

  In the last few months, the Finnigans’ store had finally come to life. Thanks to Mrs. Finnigan’s idea of putting a few chairs and tables in the front window, new customers were showing up to sip coffee and munch on homemade cookies. They soon found themselves wandering up and down the aisles, investigating the wonders that were tucked away in the bins and baskets the Finnigans had stacked on the shelves—“bits and bobs for the oddest jobs,” according to their motto. Swift liked to think of the store as one giant junk drawer, but she also thought it was one of the coolest places in town.

  “No whipped cream, thanks,” she said, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. She was reading a sign taped to the window explaining that, starting tomorrow, the store would host a weekly “fix-it club,” where volunteers could meet to drink coffee and fix other people’s broken objects for free.

  “So I can guess why you buzzed me,” Lucas said solemnly, arriving with two hot chocolates on a tray and glancing down at his comm-band—the walkie-talkie-like bracelet the Ice Chips used to communicate with each other.

  Lucas knew the mayor had been on Swift’s case—the local newspaper, too—and even her parents seemed to be pressuring her.

  He sat down beside his friend, pushing a cup toward her, but she didn’t appear to notice its existence. She was looking out the window. She was lost.

  “I want to say no—I really want to say no,” said Swift. “But it seems that everyone’s already decided I’m playing in that tournament. It’s not fair.”

  “Well, why don’t you say yes? It sounds awesome,” Lucas said. He took a sip of his hot chocolate but decided it was too hot. “Is it just because of Beatrice?”

  “Mostly—definitely,” Swift admitted with a shrug. “But it’s . . . my sister, too.”

  “Blades is like your best friend,” he said, unable to stop himself from trying his hot chocolate again. Still too hot.

  “Yeah, she is—I mean, she was,” groaned Swift. She didn’t quite know how to say it. She was embarrassed to let the thought escape her lips. “But hockey used to be just my sport—my thing—and now it’s hers, too. And that’s hard. Is that awful of me?”

  “A little awf—” Lucas started, but he could see his mom coming back with two new plants to place in the window.

  “Oh, Swift! That Hopewell tournament will be great, won’t it?” said Mrs. Finnigan, smiling and looking at the Chips’ goalie. “I always wanted to be in it when I used to play. But in those days we definitely didn’t have enough Riverton girls to make up a team!”

  “She’s not going,” Lucas said impulsively, which got him a kick under the table.

  “I’m thinking about it!” Swift lied with an awkward smile.

  “You should do it. It’s a great opportunity,” Mrs. Finnigan said, almost singing as she made her way back to the cash to ring in another customer.

  “Why did you—” Swift asked in a loud whisper. “Can everyone just—wait, what’s this?”

  Edge, Mouth Guard, and Crunch had suddenly appeared behind Lucas. The first two had snow on their shoulders, but Crunch had obviously been walking around in the store: both hands were filled with bits and bobs, and he had a tin cookie pan tucked under one arm.

  “I buzzed them while I was getting the hot chocolates,” Lucas said, worried Swift would be mad. “We don’t mean to push you, but we all think you should play.”

  “You, too? Guys! My answer is no!” said Swift, slamming her hand down so hard that the chocolate from both drinks splashed onto the table. “I refuse to play with that girl. She hates me and I hate her. You saw what she tried to do to me. She ran me in last night’s game. There’s no worse thing you can do in hockey.”

  “I don’t get it—what’s wrong with the tournament?” asked Mouth Guard, who hadn’t been paying attention.

  “If you play, I’ll call the game for you,” Edge said with a smile. “Goooooaaaal! Goooooooaal! GOOOOAAAAL-LEE-OOOH-LEEE-OOO! Right? I mean—not on your net, though.”

  Swift just rolled her eyes. She’d had enough.

  “Saying yes would mean sitting in the same dressing room as my enemy,” Swift grumbled. “Don’t you get that?”

  “Lucas plays with Lars now,” Edge said with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “Sometimes Lars is kind of great,” Lucas admitted with a smile.

  “Well, Beatrice will never be great,” said Swift, still arguing. “I hate her.”

  “You said that,” muttered Mouth Guard as he grabbed a chair and pulled Swift’s hot chocolate toward him. He’d decided she wasn’t going to drink it; she was spending too much time yelling.

  “I’ve got to get out of here! I’ll see you at practice,” Swift said, trying to get past Crunch so she could grab her coat. “Ugh! Why do you have all this stuff with you?”

  “It’s for tomorrow’s fix-it club,” Crunch answered proudly. He was almost vibrating he was so excited. “Lucas’s mom and Quiet Dave are going to teach us how to fix things, build things—it’s going to be the greatest.”

  “Wait! Quiet Dave will be at the store?” Swift said with her eyebrows twisted. Lucas had never seen her so interested. “And he’ll be here all evening?”

  Lucas took the final sip of his hot chocolate, not daring to speak. She couldn’t really be thinking . . .

  Swift was looking at Crunch, Mouth Guard, and Edge. “If you can keep Dave here tomorrow night, and make sure he doesn’t come back to the rink,” she said, lowering her voice and ignoring the fact that Lucas was shaking his head, “then I’ve got a plan.”

  Chapter 5

  The first part of the plan belonged to the Ice Chips’ goalie—just as it had the two other times they’d leaped. It made sense: Swift was the only one who could get her dad’s rink keys.

  Once school was done the next day, she took off running as fast as she could to beat her dad home. Getting out of Riverton, even if she had to do it with the help of a rink-flooding time machine, was the only answer that made sense now. And she couldn’t afford to get caught.

  When Swift arrived at the house, her sister was already in the living room, watching old figure skating videos.

  “Can you imagine if I’d stayed in figure skating? I’d be skating on Blitz’s plastic rink every day—awful,” Blades called. “I’m so glad I switched to hockey.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Swift lied, trying to sound normal—trying n
ot to draw attention to herself. She didn’t want Blades to find out what she and Lucas were about to do.

  “Are you sure you’re happy I’m on the team?” Blades asked suspiciously. She looked quickly at Swift and then turned her head back toward the television. The skater had just pulled off a big jump and everyone was clapping.

  Swift saw her moment and moved quickly, slipping into her dad’s office without a sound. The girls’ father usually worked until dinnertime—which was soon. Their mom was already home, but she was all the way upstairs, talking on the phone.

  “You were scowling at me like a grump-a-lump last practice,” Blades called from the couch. She was feeling braver now that Swift was in the other room. “Grump-a-lump” was the one word Edge had invented that had finally caught on.

  “I wasn’t. I just—” Swift yelled from the office. She knew she should leave it alone, but she couldn’t. “Well, why do you have to do everything I do?”

  “What, you mean playing stupid hockey?” Blades barked back, hurt.

  “If you think it’s so stupid, why are you playing at all? Hockey’s my sport!” said Swift, her voice shaking a little.

  She knew she shouldn’t be arguing with her sister while looking for her dad’s keys, but she couldn’t help herself. She hadn’t found them yet—her dad must have moved them—and that had put her on edge. All she’d found in his desk was a handful of paper clips.

  “Look, you don’t have to be so jealous that I—” Blades called from the living room, but she stopped when she heard their father’s car pull into the driveway.

  Panicked, Swift scanned the office as fast as she could, until—finally!—she spotted the keys in a small glass jar on the bookshelf.

  She was carefully closing the door to the office behind her—she was almost there—when suddenly her heart jumped into her throat: her sister was standing in the hallway in front of her, her bare feet firmly planted on the cold tile floor.

  With her arms crossed, Blades glanced down at the keys in Swift’s hand and then over at the front door, where their father was turning his key.

  Swift looked back at her, pleading.

  “I won’t tell,” Blades said under her breath as the door swung open. “But you’re taking me with you.”

  * * *

  Blades wasn’t on the ice when Lucas, Edge, and Swift had first travelled through time. She was close to the rink—outside, getting caught by Quiet Dave for sneaking into the arena with her friends—but she never saw any of the magic. She didn’t know what had happened.

  “Lucas. Lucas!” Swift whispered now, as she and her sister moved toward the bushes at the arena’s entrance.

  When Lucas popped his head up, he was surprised to see that Blades had tagged along. Swift dismissed his questions with an apologetic shrug and was soon unlocking the arena door.

  “We’re in!”

  “All clear this time?” Blades asked Lucas with a smirk, remembering the fight they’d had with Quiet Dave the last time. “So what’s the plan—just skating?”

  “I’ll . . . uh, tell you inside,” Lucas said, looking at Blades suspiciously.

  “My pushy sister’s not going to leave early this time,” said Swift as the heavy arena door closed behind them. “We might as well tell her everything.”

  * * *

  Lucas is the one who told Blades about their first leap into the past—about Scratch, the little ice resurfacer they’d found, and how shocked they were when they’d realized his floods were magical. He described how they’d unknowingly skated across the centre line . . . and then—poof !

  Once they’d changed into their hockey gear, Swift explained the rest.

  “It’s like a portal opens up or something,” she said, unable to hide her excitement.

  “Like a door,” added Lucas. “That’s how we ended up in the Prairies in a snowstorm, and how, the next time, we appeared in the middle of a hurricane in Halifax Harbour.”

  “Sounds awful,” said Blades, but there was a smile on her face. She loved anything that sounded dangerous. “Where are we going on this leap?”

  “Honestly?” asked Lucas.

  Swift answered: “We have absolutely no idea.”

  * * *

  Lucas was ready first. He stood by the open door, watching the ceiling lights ripple yellow as the fresh flood hardened. He loved this ice. Edge and Crunch kept saying that science had made this happen, but Lucas had his own idea: it had to be magic.

  Swift led the way as the three players—backpacks on, hockey sticks in hand—stepped out onto the shining surface. They could all feel the hard, fresh ice through their blades. It was perfect.

  Lucas took a stride and turned sharply at the end of it, his skates cutting through the fresh flood with a sound like steak being seared on his grandfather’s grill.

  Swift cut hard with her skates, testing the ice, too.

  Blades was last, her eyes as wide as hockey pucks.

  “EVERYONE READY?” Lucas asked loudly—the rink was empty, after all.

  “Ready!” the two girls called back.

  “We start out together,” Swift said, turning toward her sister. “And we stick together. From the blue line on, there’s no turning back—understood?”

  “Understood,” said Blades, grinning.

  As the three Chips zipped across the centre line holding hands, there was a flash.

  And a sound. A whirring—no, blowing. Like a cold wind whistling by their ears.

  The light grew brighter . . . and brighter . . .

  And then, all of a sudden . . .

  Everything went black.

  Chapter 6

  Calgary, Alberta–Back to the Leap!

  None of the Ice Chips had ever seen anything like it.

  “How can she do that in the dark?” Lucas asked in awe.

  The clouds had shifted a little more, and Swift, Lucas, and Blades could now perfectly see the young hockey player’s outline on the backyard rink in front of them. The girl was skating and had a stick that she was moving back and forth, up and down the ice.

  They could hear the scraping of her skates, but they couldn’t hear a thing from her stickhandling.

  Does she even have a puck? Or is she just pretending she’s got one? Lucas couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he was witnessing something unbelievable.

  Swift was watching, too, but she was also staring at the large, perfectly groomed surface the skater with the invisible puck was gliding across. It was the greatest backyard rink any of the Ice Chips had ever seen. These neighbours with adjoining backyards, whoever they were, had done a spectacular job. Their rink was about half the size of a regulation one. It had small boards all around it, and if she squinted, Swift thought she could see a red line and two blue ones painted on it. In the daylight, this rink must almost look official.

  The girl on the ice leaned out like she was reaching for a puck that was getting away, but turned it into a slapshot—one that smacked against the boards right where the three Ice Chips were standing.

  Craaaaaa-ACK!

  They all jumped back. Her shot, even in the dark, was incredible.

  “Hey, you guys wanna play?” the girl called over in their direction. They could hear in her voice that she was smiling.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Lucas, opening his coat to show that he was still wearing his jersey—even though he knew she could barely see it.

  “Definitely,” said Swift, raising her goalie stick in the air.

  With a nod from the player on the ice, the Chips bent down, pulled their skates out of their bags, and eagerly laced them up.

  Why not? thought Swift. We don’t have anything else to do while we’re waiting for my Olympic hero to show up!

  * * *

  “I can’t see it. I mean . . . I really can’t see it,” said Lucas, looking down at the ice in front of his skates, where the puck was supposed to be. “Can’t we turn on the rink lights?”

  “We have the stars,” said the girl. “Tha
t’s all we’ll need.”

  “The stars aren’t bright enough,” said Blades, who was tracing teardrop shapes on the ice with her skates. She couldn’t see the puck either.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” the girl replied. Again, they could tell she was grinning.

  Soon she’d hooked her arms in theirs and was slowly skating them over toward Swift, who was moving into one of the rink’s nets. The girl, who was around ten, had already told them not to shout—warned them that they shouldn’t wake up the rink’s owners.

  Are any of us actually supposed to be here? Swift had wondered.

  “Look up for a second!” the girl said, eagerly tapping the goalie’s arm. Swift pulled her mask up so it was sitting on top of her head, then tilted her face toward the sky.

  “Hey, there’s Orion,” Blades said, pointing to a grouping of pinpoints of light in the darkness above.

  “And the Big D—uh, Dipper,” Lucas added, trying to keep his voice down. This was the only star formation he knew, mostly because his brother, Connor, called it the Big Diaper. Who could forget that?

  “Over there is the planet Venus,” the girl said excitedly. “You can tell because it’s low in the sky, it’s very bright, and the light doesn’t change—planets don’t twinkle like stars.

  “Anyone want to wish on a star?” giggled Blades. “There are a million of them!”

  Thinking about the tunnel through time they’d used to get here, Lucas wanted to ask, “Can you see a wormhole?”—that’s what Edge had called it—but he knew he shouldn’t.

  “Oh, yeah—and I’m Chicken,” the girl said, touching gloves with the three kids from Riverton.

  Chicken? Swift repeated in her head, almost giggling. She’d never heard such a funny nickname.

  * * *

  A very light snow began to fall as Chicken plopped four pucks down on the black ice surface in front of the Chips. The flat, round discs seemed to vanish, their colour blending in so perfectly with the dark, dark ice. Even when Lucas looked straight down, the pucks seemed invisible.

  Chicken took off immediately with one of them, effortlessly skating and stickhandling down the ice. Again, the only sound the Chips could hear was the scraping of her blades on the cold, dark surface below her.