The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck Page 7

Crunch, Mouth Guard, and Bond would definitely want to hear about this leap. But they’d also want to hear the amazing news: Swift was finally saying yes to the girls’ tournament!

  * * *

  To Lucas’s eyes, the fix-it club looked more like a take-it-apart-and-make-a-big-mess club. All he could see through the front window of his parents’ store was junk—odds and ends piled high on the cafe tables, surrounded by smiling faces. There were almost a dozen kids using little hammers, glue guns, and screwdrivers, all under the supervision of Lucas’s mom and Quiet Dave the Ice Man.

  Not far from where Dave was sitting—keeping an eye on him—was Crunch. The Chips’ science guy was painting two blue lines and a red one on that old cookie sheet Lucas’s mom had helped him find.

  “Okay, I’ll play on the girls’ team—I’ll do it!” Swift blurted out as she approached them. Then, to Dave, she added, “You can tell your daughter I’m in!”

  Over by the glue guns, Lucas’s mom broke into a gigantic smile. “Do you want me to call the mayor?” she said gently, trying to contain her excitement. When Swift nodded, Lucas’s mom just opened up her mouth and yelled: “Abigail!”

  Stepping out from one of the aisles, her arms piled high with tubing, was the mayor, showing off the biggest smile the Chips had ever seen. She’d already heard Swift’s final decision!

  “We’re old friends,” Mrs. Finnigan said with a playful shrug.

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that, Swift,” Mayor Ward said, with what looked like tears welling up in her eyes. Swift knew this tournament meant a lot to the mayor, but she was still surprised to see how much. “Most of the other towns have had girls’ teams for years, but we’ve never had enough players to form one.”

  “Until now,” said Swift, suddenly feeling the weight of her decision, the importance of it.

  “Until now,” the mayor agreed, beaming.

  * * *

  “Do you think Dave knows?” was Lucas’s first question after the WhatsIt Shop’s cafe had been cleaned up and the last of the neighbourhood kids had spilled out into the chilly evening air. “Hey, do you think he could tell we’d just leaped again?”

  Lucas was glad his mom had let him walk home through the snow with his friends. They had so much to talk about!

  After the Chips’ first leap, Dave had told Lucas that time travel was dangerous and he should never do it again. Lucas had promised that he wouldn’t, and now he’d broken that promise—twice.

  “Well, it wasn’t a pinky promise, was it?” said Swift, laughing, remembering the funny handshake that Chicken had taught her.

  “Maybe the magic of the rink has made Dave forget that you leaped?” offered Mouth Guard, squinting his eyes like he was looking into a crystal ball.

  “I told you, it’s not magic!” complained Crunch, who was dragging a garbage bag behind him on a sled. Mouth Guard had just told them all he thought there was a wizard in the wormhole who waved a magic wand to send the time-travelling Chips flying through the air.

  “Just wait until you see the rink model I’m building,” said Crunch, ignoring his teammate and glancing back at the bag of fix-it inventions he was towing.

  “Wait until you see the new trick we just learned,” said Swift, throwing her arm around her sister’s shoulders.

  “Yeah,” said Lucas, punching Edge lightly in the shoulder. “We’re the wizards now. And the moment we hit the rink, we’ll show you how to make your puck invisible!”

  * * *

  Swift and Blades were in their beds with the lights off when Lucas and Edge buzzed.

  It was the middle of the night, but the boys were calling from the outdoor rink behind their school. Lucas said they’d stuffed their beds with pillows so they could sneak out—“for a skate under the stars.”

  Of course, both Swift and Blades knew what that really meant: training, Chicken-style.

  “If you’re already on the ice, you’re not giving us much of a warning,” Blades said loudly into Swift’s comm-band.

  “We didn’t want to bother you,” Lucas said sheepishly. He was thinking about the girls and their tournament, and about how they’d better be in good shape for their team’s first practice the next afternoon—especially because the Ice Chips already had a practice scheduled for that morning.

  But it turned out that he needed their help.

  Lucas could still do Chicken’s trick of shuffling the puck back and forth, as quiet as if he were stickhandling a sponge, but he had completely forgotten how to explain it.

  “My wrist still hurts,” said Swift. “I need to rest it up for tomorrow—I can’t come out.”

  “Can you just—” Lucas started, but he wasn’t quite sure what he was asking. “I’m trying to get Edge out of his slump.”

  “Are the stars out right now?” Swift asked, slipping her prosthetic on and walking over to the window to part her curtains.

  “Yeah,” said Lucas.

  “Then keep your eyes on the night sky,” she said confidently. “You can make a wish if you need to.”

  Swift was nervous about tomorrow afternoon’s practice, but she was also excited. It’s too bad Chicken can’t play with us now, she thought—almost wished this time—looking up toward the Milky Way. Is it possible that Chicken—wherever she is—is still looking up at the same stars we are? Where could she be?

  Chapter 15

  On his way into the Riverton Community Arena for the morning Ice Chips’ practice, Lucas had followed his usual tradition. He’d run his hand along the lip of the skate sharpener’s shop, straightened the picture frame on the wall beside it, kissed two of his fingers and pressed them against the glass of the trophy case.

  Same as always. Only this time, it wasn’t.

  Just as he was placing his fingers to the glass, his eye caught something in the top right of the photo of the kids hoisting the championship trophy high above their heads.

  “It can’t be,” he said, blinking and shaking his head. Swift and Edge were now staring, too, but they couldn’t figure out what had him so excited.

  Lucas was almost shaking as he pointed to the banners hanging on the wall in the background of the photo: three second-place ones that said “Ice Chips,” four for the Stars (the Stars had since taken their banners with them to their fancy new rink), and one that said—

  Impossible!

  “What is it?” asked Edge. “You can’t believe the Ice Chips won their division a few times but won the championship only once? We’ve talked about this a hundred times, Top Shelf.”

  “No, it’s—” Lucas started, barely believing what he’d spotted.

  Swift swallowed hard. She could see it now, too.

  “How could it be—?!” she called out, slapping a hand over her mouth in disbelief. They could barely make out the words on the first banner—the oldest one—but neither Swift nor Lucas doubted what it said.

  Peering down over the heads of the kids in the photograph, baring its fangs and smiling, was a big, mean-looking . . . rat.

  * * *

  “Did a team called the Rink Rats used to play here, in our arena?” Lucas asked Coach Small from the bench. The Chips’ centre had slipped out of practice to get Swift some ice for her wrist and was now helping her hold it on her arm while the other Chips continued their practice. Looking around the rink, he couldn’t shake the image of the Rats’ banner that had once hung from the rafters.

  “Yeah, sure,” Coach Small answered, like it was nothing. He banged on the boards and gave the Chips another drill.

  While Coach Small was directing the practice, Quiet Dave was poking his head in and out of the little room suspended above the rink, where the music for the figure skaters was played. He was trying to get everything set up so Edge could call the shots for the girls’ first team practice that afternoon.

  “But when did the Rats play here?” Lucas asked his coach, just as Dave blasted the rink with a few seconds of rock music and then turned the volume down.

  Coach Small
ignored them both; he was busy pointing to different areas of the rink, explaining a play. To Lucas’s surprise, it was Mayor Ward, who’d been watching their practice from behind the bench, who replied.

  “The Rats played here a long, long time ago—in the 1980s, I guess,” she said, almost laughing as she brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “They were the first team to have this rink as their home ice, you know. They were good, even if they were a little show-offy at times.”

  Show-offy, Swift thought, rolling her eyes. In the change room, she’d been told who the girls’ coach would be—Coach Blitz—and that was already making her regret joining the team. Her wrist was feeling a lot better from the icing, but the idea of playing for Blitz was making her head hurt.

  “Blitz the bully,” Swift mouthed at Lucas, nudging him with her knee.

  “What happened to the team?” Lucas asked, ignoring his friend.

  “Well, after they won their division—and got that banner—a whole bunch of kids decided to sign up for hockey,” she said as she started flipping through pictures on her phone. “That was the year my dad and I moved here.”

  “Everyone wanted to sign up, so they cancelled the team?” asked Lucas, confused.

  Dave was now waving from the little room with the microphone. “We’ve got music—sort of!” he yelled to his daughter as another quick blast of a rock song rained down over the players on the ice.

  “No, they all wanted to sign up, so they broke the Riverton Rink Rats into two new teams—the Ice Chips and the Stars. Oh, here it is!”

  The mayor handed her phone to Lucas and Swift, who each held on to one end.

  What she had was a copy of the picture in the trophy case, and this time, Lucas and Swift could zoom in.

  “There’s Coach Blitz,” said Mayor Ward, pointing at the two Ice Chips holding the trophy over their heads. “And that’s Coach Small beside him. Ugh, I’ll need my glasses if I’m going to tell you everyone.”

  They really were friends, Lucas marvelled, staring at their arms over each other’s shoulders, the gold medals around their necks.

  “Your mom joined the Chips the next year, Lucas. Otherwise, she’d have been in this photo, too,” the mayor said, smiling. She found her glasses in her pocket and finally slipped them on. “We played together for a few years—she was good.”

  Lucas knew his mom had once been an Ice Chip, but he’d never really thought about what that meant. Was it hard for her back then? Did Mom dream of winning the championship, too?

  “Oh, and there’s me,” the mayor said, turning to the two Ice Chips with a big smile on her face. The kids looked down to see the face of a ten-year-old girl wearing thick dark-rimmed glasses, just like the ones the mayor had on.

  Swift gave Lucas another nudge. Lucas nodded slowly, but his eyebrows were raised as high as they could go.

  The little girl with the medal around her neck, posing beside the trophy . . . they knew her, too!

  “But you’re—” Swift started, just as Dave hit them with another blast.

  “Edge, get over here!” the Iceman yelled triumphantly across the ice—he’d fixed the sound system! As the town’s new play-by-play announcer laid down his stick and quickly made his way over, Lucas and Swift could see that Quiet Dave was beaming proudly at the mayor—his daughter, and the woman who, before moving to Riverton as a ten-year-old, had been a killer winger for the Shaunavon Badgers.

  * * *

  “Can you believe all of that?” Swift whispered to Lucas, once she’d put down the ice and was back doing drills.

  “Blitz even had those green laces in that photo! How could I have missed that?” said Lucas, almost talking to himself. “When we were back in Calgary, I had the feeling I’d seen them somewhere before!”

  Suddenly, the doors of the arena swung open and in marched Henry Blitz—it was almost as though Swift and Lucas had summoned him.

  “Small!” he yelled as he made his way across the rink with Beatrice skipping behind him. “I need an assistant for this girls’ team. You wanna come help me out?”

  Coach Small looked up, but he didn’t say anything. They aren’t friends anymore, Lucas reminded himself, though he had no idea what could have broken them apart. Well, some idea.

  “Hold on—the Ravens need an assistant coach?” Blades yelled back, stopping fast in front of her sister. “I know who would make a good one!”

  Swift looked at her sister, confused.

  “Stick together, remember?” said Blades with a wink.

  “Who?” asked Coach Blitz, smirking.

  “You!” she told him, grinning defiantly.

  Swift expected Beatrice to stick her tongue out at Blades, but instead she seemed to be trying to hide a smile. Is that possible?

  “Well, that doesn’t—” Coach Blitz didn’t know what to say. “Then who would . . . ?”

  Of course, Lucas and Swift knew exactly who. They were staring right at her.

  The mayor of Riverton.

  Or as they’d known her back at the Calgary Olympics: Chicken’s best friend, Ace.

  Chapter 16

  Swift, Blades, and Bond were sitting on top of their packed hockey bags in the snow, watching the sun rise over the Riverton Community Arena. They’d been told to be ready early. The plan was to have all the girls from the Chips, the Stars, and Riverton’s house teams—together, the Riverton Ravens—on their chartered bus by 8 a.m., and on their way to the Hopedale tournament.

  But the girls weren’t the only Ice Chips about to board the Ravens’ bus; some of the boys were going, too. Lucas had been “hired” by Mayor Ward to be an assistant for the Ice Chips players, in case she had questions about their strengths and weaknesses, or they needed special help with their equipment. Crunch was going as the team’s amateur statistician, and Edge, now giddy that he was out of his slump, was finally getting his chance to do the play-by-play for a game. Mayor Ward had promised there would be a microphone waiting for him at the Hopedale rink.

  As they sat waiting for the bus, Swift couldn’t help thinking about the unbelievable week they’d had. They’d leaped into the 1988 Calgary Olympics, seen Liz Manley and Eddie the Eagle, and met an amazing girl named Chicken, who’d taught them an incredible trick. And . . . well, they’d also learned a lot more about Henry Blitz, who, as a full-of-himself ten-year-old, had hated the idea of girls playing his sport.

  And now, here they were in the present, part of a Riverton girls’ team that was off to the Hopedale tournament!

  I’d like to know what Blitz thought when the first woman played in the NHL, Swift wondered with a chuckle. Manon Rhéaume, a goalie and one of her idols, had done that in an exhibition game for the Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992—just four years after Blitz played that game against the Badgers. If only I could have seen that sore loser’s face then! Or if she’d been able to see Chicken’s . . .

  As the bus pulled up in front of the Riverton arena, Swift checked her backpack to make sure the precious object she’d stashed in it was still there. Then she grabbed her hockey bag, as did the other girls, and tossed it into the bottom of the bus.

  “Ready to win today, girls?” Blitz asked, as he hung his head over the railing at the top of the steep bus stairs. Beatrice was tucked into the corner of the seat opposite, sitting by herself and staring out the window.

  Swift had no idea what was up with her new teammate, but she did know one thing: they had a tournament to play, and they would be playing it together.

  “We girls are always ready to win,” Swift said, giving the team’s assistant coach the same crooked smile he’d given her back in Calgary. She was tempted to ask Blitz what he’d thought when the three hockey players had accepted his dare and had fearlessly taken the chairlift up the mountain . . . and then never come back down. But she didn’t. He had no idea the girl in front of him was the same one he’d played against in 1988, the one he’d accused of cheating for playing on a boys’ team.

  Instead, Swift nodded to Lucas and Bo
nd and slid her backpack in beside Beatrice, the grumpy-looking blonde-haired girl who, for so long, had been her arch-enemy.

  * * *

  They were almost an hour into the trip when Beatrice finally spoke. “This is just for the tournament,” she said quietly to Swift, offering her a piece of the chocolate bar she was eating. “We’re not really friends. We’re still enemies. We still play for competing teams.”

  “Sure,” said Swift, taking the chocolate.

  During the Ravens’ only practice, Swift had made a big effort to be nice to Beatrice, for the sake of the team. She knew she couldn’t let her fights with the Stars’ forward hold her back—she’d learned that in Calgary. And she knew that if Beatrice did well, the Ravens would, too. So Swift had taught her new teammate and Jessie Bonino, one of the house league forwards, a few new tricks: how to “keep it simple, stupid,” and how to make their pucks invisible.

  “Oh, hey, Bea?” Blitz said, looking across the bus aisle and using his usual bossy tone. “We’ll get Jared to show you that play we’ve been working on when we get to the Hopedale rink, okay? He’s got some great ideas. If you listen to him, I’m sure we’ll bring back the gold!”

  Swift couldn’t believe she’d never noticed this before. Beatrice was the league’s top scorer, but to her father, she was still just a girl playing on a boys’ team. This must be one of the reasons that Beatrice wanted a girls’ team so badly—so she could stop being compared to her brother, Swift thought, shaking her head. No wonder she’s always in such a bad mood on the ice!

  “You’ve got some ideas? That’s nice,” said the mayor, jumping in. She’d been walking toward the front so she could talk to her husband, who was driving the bus. “Well, we’ve got a few beauty ideas of our own, don’t we, Bea? Swift? I’m sure our girls will be great.”

  Swift and Beatrice had no idea what those ideas might be, but they nodded anyway.

  Chapter 17

  There were four rinks in the Hopedale complex, and all of them would be used for the single-day tournament. First there would be a few regular games, then a semifinal, and then a final to determine the winners of the cup.