The Boston Breakout Read online

  This was a new Nish. Crouched over, his stick across his shin pads, Bobby Orr style, Nish merely drifted back to his defense posting at center ice as if he’d just come off the bench.

  Sarah and Travis turned to look at each other. There was nothing to say. Laughter was the only possible response.

  The Owls won 4–2. Sarah scored on a rebound left behind by Dmitri on a nice rush, and in the dying seconds, Travis scored an empty netter – he thought of them as half-goals rather than real goals – when the Rats were trying to tie it up.

  It had been a clean match, and the River Rats had proved to be good opponents.

  Nish, the hero of the moment, dressed quietly, and for once carried his offensive underwear over to the laundry bag rather than tossing it without caring where it landed.

  “What’s up with you?” Sarah asked him. “Mr. Humility on the ice and now Mr. Helper in the dressing room?”

  Nish grinned. “All part of the maturing process,” he said. “I’m no longer in school, so I’m now a grown-up, right?”

  No one bothered with an answer.

  On the way back to the city center from the Wilmington rink, Mr. Dillinger pulled the team bus in at the first McDonald’s golden-arches sign.

  The Owls all cheered his decision. All except one.

  Sam informed the team that she would not be going in with them.

  “I no longer eat meat,” she told them.

  “I’ll eat yours for you,” Nish offered.

  For once, Sam did not shoot him a reply. “I am a vegetarian now,” she said very quietly.

  “Free the celery!” Nish shouted.

  So much for the “maturing process,” thought Travis.

  7

  The scientific career of inventor Wayne Nishikawa was not off to a great start. Having quit school, like Ben Franklin, he was now determined to invent something – but unfortunately he had no idea what.

  But then the small plastic disc shooter he had purchased at Mr. D’s Stupid Stop gave him an idea, and Data, who was as close to a scientific genius as the Owls could claim, agreed to serve as Nish’s assistant.

  The disc launcher, Nish said, could be adapted to become an “automatic puck shooter.” At Data’s suggestion, he even laid out a “prospectus” for the invention, all dutifully written up by Data on his tablet computer:

  The “Nishikawa Stinger” automatic puck shooter will do for the sport of hockey what the automatic pitcher has done for baseball and the automatic server has done for tennis. Coaches, hockey schools, and goaltenders will be able to dial up the types of shots they wish to face – slap shot, hoist, snap shot, saucer pass, bouncer – and choose the speed of shot, from “minor hockey” to “NHL.” The “Nishikawa Stinger” will run off electricity and be entirely portable, for use everywhere from an NHL rink to an outdoor rink to a driveway. Cost to be determined.

  Nish and Data – well, actually Data – were busy drawing up models on Data’s tablet. Data was also compiling a list of materials necessary for them to build the first prototype of the machine.

  Travis wondered exactly what Nish had done apart from lend his name to the ridiculous idea.

  Travis was not the only one wondering about Nish. His teammates were still talking about Nish’s lack of hotdogging after he had scored that spectacular goal against the River Rats.

  And then, of course, there was Nish’s mother.

  In the evening after the game against the River Rats, Muck asked Nish to meet him in the lobby. When Nish went down, fully expecting to be congratulated for his mature behavior following his magnificent goal, he found the Screech Owls’ coach sitting in a chair, rubbing his large hands together, and looking worried.

  “Sit down, young man,” Muck said seriously.

  Nish sat, his own hands twisting with concern.

  “I’ve received a call from your mother,” Muck began. “She told me about the postcard you sent her. I am presuming that this was your idea of a little joke, correct?”

  “No, sir. I meant it. I mean it. I’m going to quit school – just like Ben Franklin. I’m going to be a famous inventor.”

  “You do realize it’s against the law to quit school until you’re sixteen, don’t you?”

  “Ben Franklin was ten.”

  “Ben Franklin lived at a time when there was child labor. And people owned slaves. You don’t live back then, Mr. Nishikawa. You live now, and you’ve upset your mother rather badly.”

  “She’ll be proud of me when she sees what I’ve invented,” Nish countered.

  “And what’s that?”

  “A puck-shooting machine,” Nish said proudly. “Me ’n’ Data.”

  “Data and I.”

  “No, me ’n’ Data! Not you ’n’ Data.”

  “And you don’t see why you still need to go to school?”

  “No, why?”

  Muck closed his eyes. He almost seemed to be giving up. But he had something to say and was determined to say it.

  “I want you to listen to me, young man,” he said to Nish. “And I want you to listen very closely.”

  Nish nodded.

  “You know I played junior hockey, correct?” Nish nodded again. “I played with people who went on to the NHL. It was good hockey.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “No, son. I was unlucky first, and only after that I got lucky. I broke this leg here.” Muck tapped his bad leg. “I broke it so badly I never played another game. I had no choice but to stick with school and try to make something of myself other than a hockey player. Other guys weren’t so lucky. They didn’t break their legs. Instead, hockey broke their hearts. Because they believed they would be playing in the National Hockey League, they dropped out of school the second they could. They had no need for school. They were hockey stars.

  “And they were – up to a point. They were stars when they were young, and average players when they got older and the competition got harder – and soon enough they just weren’t good enough. They didn’t make pro. And then they found out they had nothing to fall back on. They were lucky to end up selling cars or delivering beer. They put all their eggs in the hockey basket, and their eggs broke. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You can’t play hockey with eggs?”

  “You’re a great smart aleck, Mr. Nishikawa, but you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are. Now, I’m going to call your mother back and tell her you meant that card as a joke, okay? Are you good with that? Because that’s what it is, young man – a joke. Do you hear me?”

  Nish knew this was no time for fooling or playing dumb. And since that was all he usually did, he had trouble doing anything else. So he just nodded.

  Muck nodded back, then stood up and walked away to make his phone call.

  8

  “NO FAIR!”

  Nish was livid. He was bouncing around the hotel room, slamming his fist into furniture, slapping walls, and kicking beds and the coffee table. Beet red, near tears, flailing like a two-year-old having a tantrum at the mall. Yes, Travis thought to himself, Nish is all grown up and mature now.

  “They can’t do this to me!”

  Data wheeled his chair out of the raging bull’s way. Data had come to the door with his tablet, and Nish had thought they were going to work on the Nishikawa Stinger.

  In a way, they were. Data had come to close the project down.

  “I was looking through websites for propulsion ideas,” Data told Nish, his fingers tapping on the tablet as he worked through a search engine. “And I’m afraid there already is a company out there that sells the same thing. It’s called the Boni Goalie Trainer. Here, have a look.”

  Nish ripped the tablet from Data’s hands and began poring over the website.

  “They stole my idea!” he shouted.

  Lars giggled. “I imagine they had the idea before yesterday, Nish.”

  “No way!” Nish yelled. “Look at this.” He practically slammed the screen into Lars’s nose.

&n
bsp; “They even stole my name,” Nish hissed. “I called mine the Nishikawa Stinger. They have three pro models, and one of them is the Stinger! How do you explain that?”

  Lars looked bewildered. “Maybe coincidence?”

  “Ha!” said Nish. “I’ve just proved they stole my idea. I should take them to court and sue the pants off them.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” said Data, trying to bring Nish back to reality.

  There was a light tap at the door and Travis hurried over to let whoever it was in.

  It was Sarah, and she looked as white as a ghost.

  “What’s up?” asked Travis, instantly concerned.

  “It’s Sam,” Sarah said in a shaky voice. “She’s gone!

  9

  “Sam picked up some leaflet at the demonstration outside the aquarium,” Sarah said, as she and Travis hurried to the room Sam, Sarah, and Jenny were sharing. “She got really caught up in it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, you saw her reaction at McDonald’s. She says she’s a vegan now.”

  “A what?”

  “A vegan is like a vegetarian times a hundred. She says she’ll never eat an animal product again – no beef, pork, chicken, seafood, not even milk or cheese.”

  “She’d die.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. She’d eat vegetables and other foods – just nothing that has any connection to any living creature. She says her world was changed forever at that rally outside the aquarium.”

  “I thought they were a little extreme, didn’t you? It looked to me like the penguins were happier and safer there than they would be in the wild.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you and I might think, Trav – Sam has become a true believer. She must have found something in that leaflet that made her head out this evening on her own. She didn’t tell any of us she was going. I tried to find the leaflet but she must have taken it with her.”

  “Wait!” Travis stopped fast and reached for his back pocket. “I might have it right here.”

  He fished in his pocket and pulled out the leaflet. He hadn’t even looked at it when he took it, and had forgotten all about it until now.

  Quickly he unfolded the leaflet. “FREE THE PENGUINS!” was written in bold letters across the top. Inside was a lot of information on human cruelty to animals around the world, including photos of tightly penned pigs and beakless chickens and force-fed geese, and several of wild animals struggling to escape from traps. One showed a fox that had chewed its own foot off to get free of a snare.

  “Yuck!” said Travis, and he quickly turned the page. He and Sarah scanned the words as quickly as they could in search of a clue, any clue, to where Sam might have gone.

  On the back page, they found it. An announcement with a green box around it:

  INFORMATION SESSION

  Boston’s “FREE THE PENGUINS!” cell will hold an information session

  Tuesday evening at Boston Public Garden by the Swan Boat pond.

  All welcome!

  Donate what you can to the movement.

  Session begins at 7:00 p.m.

  “I bet she’s there,” Sarah said.

  “Boston Public Garden isn’t far.”

  “Let’s go!”

  “Shouldn’t we tell someone?” asked Travis, ever cautious.

  Sarah shook her head. “Sam might get in trouble for sneaking off. Let’s just go ourselves and see what she’s doing.”

  10

  The evening sun was casting long shadows across the Common as Sarah and Travis made their way toward the Boston Public Garden. The big trees along the Swan Boat pond loomed like dark giants in the shadows.

  On the bridge above the docks, where tourists were lining up for the final Swan Boat tours of the day, a group of people was gathered. They were listening intently to a woman who was talking without a microphone but loudly enough to be heard even across the water, where Sarah and Travis were hurrying along the shoreline trail.

  As they hurried, they picked up snippets, the loud voice fading in and out in the wind and the trees.

  “The Second American Revolution should be about the rights of animals … !

  “Drastic situations call for drastic measures …

  “I would lay down my life to save an innocent creature in captivity …”

  By the time Travis and Sarah arrived at the bridge, the meeting was already breaking up. Some of the protesters were cheering and shouting slogans and brandishing placards like the ones the Owls had seen earlier.

  They looked frantically about for Sam. Several young people were there, but they all appeared to be with their parents. Travis and Sarah couldn’t see Sam anywhere.

  They stood in the center of the bridge, turning both ways, uncertain what to do. People were leaving from both ends of the bridge and going in all directions.

  “I’ll go this way,” Travis suggested. “You go that way. Meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

  Sarah nodded and took off in pursuit of a group of protesters making their way toward the Common. Travis ran back in the direction they had come from, hurrying along the shoreline trail, checking group after group.

  He had soon passed all the people who’d come this way. No sign of Sam. He doubled back, checking as many people again as he could, but he quickly realized that unless the protesters were still carrying their placards, he could no longer tell them from all the other people out walking around.

  He hoped Sarah was having better luck.

  But Sarah was not. She had skirted the ticket booth for the Swan Boat rides and hurried along to the street, checking everywhere for her friend. She crossed at the lights and went into Boston Common, but too many paths were branching every which way. After a short while spent running frantically across the large park, she, too, realized it was hopeless. She turned back toward the bridge.

  Sarah was exhausted by the time she got back near the bridge. She stopped and tried to catch her breath, hoping the stitch in her side would soon go. Ahead of her, already on the bridge, she spotted Travis.

  He was waving for her to join him. He looked worried.

  Sarah was still gulping air when she reached him. Travis signaled for her to say nothing and pointed over to a spot across the water from the docks. There, under a very large elm tree, was Sam. She was deep in conversation with the woman who had been talking to the protesters.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s the woman who was wearing the penguin suit,” said Travis. “Sounded like her, too.”

  Sarah nodded, still short of breath. She had thought the same thing.

  “What’s that on her neck?” Sarah said, squinting.

  Travis had seen it, too. A dark patch. “Looks like a tattoo,” he said, “but I can’t make it out.”

  The woman – dressed entirely in black, and tall and lean as a scarecrow – was facing Sam, with a hand on each of Sam’s shoulders and her head leaned in low toward her. She was talking very intently to Sam, and Sam was nodding quickly, as if in agreement with every word the woman was saying.

  Suddenly the woman hugged Sam. Sam hugged her back, hard, and the two of them broke apart. Hand in hand, they began walking back toward the bridge.

  Sarah had her breath back, and she couldn’t stop herself from calling out.

  “Sam! Up here!”

  Sam looked up, startled to see Sarah and Travis looking down at her and waving. She hesitated, then waved back.

  The woman looked up, eyes blazing on either side of a hawk-like nose. She did not seem pleased.

  Sarah and Travis hurried down off the bridge to meet Sam and her new friend. Sam had turned rather pink. She certainly hadn’t expected to see them.

  “We were worried about you!” Sarah said, giving Sam a big hug. “You never said where you were going.”

  “I just slipped out for a bit,” said Sam a bit nervously. “I was just heading back.”

  “We’ll go with you,” said Travis.

  “And who do we have here?” the
woman asked. Her voice sounded like someone acting. Travis looked at her. Her mouth was smiling, but not her eyes.

  Sam sputtered introductions. “Sarah and Travis, this is Frances Assisi.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Sam here might be the brightest young woman I have ever met. She understands the cause.”

  Travis couldn’t keep from wincing. The cause? What sort of talk was that?

  Sarah’s face remained expressionless. “What cause?” she asked.

  The woman gave a dismissive little laugh. “The great fight for animal rights,” she said, as if it were obvious.

  “I’m against the aquarium,” Sam suddenly stated.

  “Why?” said Sarah. “You liked it well enough yesterday. You had a good time. We all did.”

  “She didn’t understand then,” said the woman. Sam just nodded in agreement. “Samantha knows now that we humans have no right to imprison animals. Many people in this country are against the death penalty, yet we carry it out every day on innocent cattle and pigs and chickens. We are destroying our oceans by dragging nets that scoop up every living creature, and we kill and throw away the ones that are caught accidentally. We humans are the single most destructive force the world has ever known. We are killers, until we decide, as Sam has decided, to stop the killing – isn’t that right, Samantha?”

  Sam seemed embarrassed. “Y-yes,” she said.

  Frances smiled the same emotionless smile as before, her eyes all the while looking at them sharply. Travis felt as if he were being scanned with a laser. There was something so strangely intense about her stare that he could not bear it.

  When Frances looked back at Sam, they could see the dark mark on her neck. It was, as Travis had guessed, a tattoo. A penguin in flight.

  Travis’s first reaction was to note that penguins couldn’t fly. He wondered if the woman really didn’t know that. But then he got the message: freedom. A penguin flying away.

  “We’d better get back before Muck and Mr. D find you’re missing,” he said to Sam.