The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 3 Page 8

  The big playmaker brushed by him, reaching out to tap Jenny’s pads.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “You played great.”

  Jenny smiled through her tears. Travis could tell how much that meant to her, the best player she’d ever faced showing her that kind of respect. Travis was impressed. It was a very classy thing for the big Olympian to do.

  “I’m ready,” Nish announced.

  Muck didn’t seem convinced. But he had no choice. He stared long and hard at his new goaltender, who was standing in front of the bench, his mask on top of his head, spraying water directly into his face.

  “Do what you can,” Muck said. “And don’t worry about it.”

  But Nish was into it. He sprayed the water, spat another mouthful out, yanked down his mask as if he were a fighter pilot about to take off, jumped over the red line, jumped over the blueline, skated to where Mr. Imoo was standing, clapping, smashed his stick into the glass, then turned and headed for his net.

  A quick few words with his goal posts, and he was ready to go.

  Nish, the samurai goaltender.

  It was over, Travis figured. They could barely hold the Lake Placid team with Jenny playing her best. How could they hold them off now with Nish in net? Nish, who didn’t know the first thing about playing goal.

  “Let’s just get it over with fast,” Sarah said. “And hope we don’t embarrass ourselves too badly.”

  The Lake Placid team seemed to take new energy from the fact that Nish was in net. Whether it was because they were impressed by his hot-dog moves or because they knew how weak he was, Travis couldn’t tell. But suddenly the Olympians were even stronger.

  Sarah, however, had her own ideas. If Lake Placid was going to score, the big playmaker wouldn’t be the one to do it. She began playing as furiously as her opponent, sticking to him with every move, lifting his stick when he reached for passes, and stepping in his way whenever he tried for the fast break.

  It didn’t seem to matter. The Olympians tied the game on their very first shot, a long bouncing puck from centre ice that skipped funny and went in through Nish’s skates.

  “Oh, no!” Sarah said as they sat on the bench watching.

  “This is going to get ugly,” said Travis.

  Next shift, one of the quicker Lake Placid forwards broke up-ice, and the big playmaker put a perfect breakaway pass on his stick.

  But Nish took the forward by surprise, coming out to block the shot like a defenceman instead of waiting on it like a goalie, and the shot bounced away harmlessly.

  “Way to go, Nish!” Travis found himself yelling as he turned back up-ice.

  Nish seemed to find himself over the next few minutes. It wasn’t pretty–it wasn’t like anything anyone had ever seen before–but it worked. He kicked, he turned backwards, he threw himself, head-first, at shots.

  And not one got past him.

  “That idiot’s playing his heart out!” Sarah said when her line came off for a rest.

  “I know,” said Travis.

  “We owe him a goal for all this, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Next shift, Sarah raced back to pick the puck away from Nish’s crease. He was flat on his back, looking like he was making snow angels instead of playing goal, and he cheered her as she took the puck out of harm’s way and up-ice.

  “Do it, Sarah!”

  Sarah played a quick give-and-go with Dmitri, who fed the puck back to her just as she hit the Lake Placid blueline. She slipped past the defenceman and curled so sharply in the corner, the other defenceman lost his footing and crashed into the backboards.

  Travis had his stick down before he even imagined what he might do. It was as if his stick was thinking for itself. It was down flat and out in front of him, and Sarah’s hard pass hit it perfectly, a laser beam from the corner.

  Travis didn’t even have to shoot–the puck cracked against his stick and snapped off it, directly into the open side of the Lake Placid net.

  Travis had been mobbed before, but never like this.

  He felt them piling on, one by one, and then the huge weight of the goaltender, who had skated the length of the ice to join the pile: the samurai goaltender.

  “We did it! We did it! We did it!” Nish was screaming.

  “We’ve done nothing yet,” corrected Sarah. “There’s still five minutes to go.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Nish said. “I’ve got everything under control.”

  It seemed he had. The game started up again with the Owls leading 4–3, and Nish took everything the Olympians could fire at him.

  With a minute and a half to go, and a face-off in the Owls’ end, Lake Placid pulled their goaltender.

  “Sarah’s line,” Muck said. “And nothing foolish. We protect the lead, okay?”

  They understood. No trying for the grandstand empty-net goal. If it came, it came, but their first job was to protect Nish and the lead.

  Sarah dumped the puck out, but not far enough for icing. Travis and Dmitri went on the forecheck, twice causing the defence to turn back.

  They were killing the clock. So long as the Olympians couldn’t rush, the Owls didn’t care how long they held on to the puck.

  The big playmaker circled back, picking up a puck the Lake Placid defence dropped for him.

  He was in full flight.

  Travis had the first chance and foolishly went for the poke check. One quick move of the big playmaker’s stick and he was past Travis and moving away from Dmitri.

  Sarah stuck with him, leading him off along the boards and into the corner, where he stopped with the puck.

  Ten seconds to go!

  Sarah moved toward him and he backhanded the puck off the boards, stepping around her and picking the puck off on the rebound. A play worthy of Sarah herself.

  He circled the net, Nish wrongly stabbing for the puck as he passed by the far side.

  Nish’s goal stick flew away to the corner!

  The big playmaker fired the puck to the point and crashed the net.

  The shot came in. Nish kicked it away.

  Wilson and Sarah hit the big playmaker at exactly the same time, sending him crashing into Nish, who fell hard.

  Nish’s glove shot to the other corner!

  Three seconds to go!

  He had no stick. He had no glove.

  And the defenceman was winding up for a second shot!

  Travis had never seen Nish move so fast. In a flash he was back on his skates, crouching to face the shot.

  The defenceman slammed into the puck, sending it soaring off his stick toward the net. Sarah dived, the puck clipping off her back and heading now for the top corner.

  A bare hand snaked out, and the puck seemed to stop in mid-air!

  The horn blew!

  The Screech Owls had won the Junior Olympics!

  After that, Travis could remember only bits of what happened.

  The Screech Owls–Muck and Mr. Dillinger and Data included–had hit the ice instantly, racing to congratulate Nish, who simply sat back in his crease, holding the puck above his head as if it were some great trick he’d pulled out of his own ear.

  They mobbed him.

  The doors at the far end of Big Hat had opened up and an official delegation, led by Sho Fujiwara, came out. They were followed by a long line of women dressed in beautiful traditional costumes, each carrying a cushion, and each cushion holding a medal.

  They had played the Canadian anthem, with the Canadian flag going up on a huge banner.

  Everyone in the building had cheered.

  After the anthem, the Lake Placid Olympians formed a line and shook hands with the Screech Owls.

  Jenny went through the line with her right hand in a sling. When she came to the big playmaker, he dropped his sticks and gloves and hugged her.

  There were cameras on the ice now, and they captured it all.

  Nish was at the Zamboni entrance. He was hauling Mr. Imoo out onto the ice. Mr. Imoo, his
missing teeth more noticeable than ever, was sliding and hurrying out to join in the celebration with his star pupil.

  Nish took the puck he’d saved–“The Greatest Save in the History of International Hockey,” he would later call it–and gave it to Mr. Imoo, who seemed honoured.

  “I caught it with the force shield,” he explained.

  Travis, the Screech Owls captain, was now face-to-face with the big playmaker, the Lake Placid Olympians captain.

  Travis looked up. The big playmaker was grinning. He looked as if he’d won himself.

  “Great game,” he said.

  “Maybe the best ever,” Travis said.

  They shook hands.

  “Ever see a crowd like this?” the big playmaker asked.

  “Never.”

  “We should do something for them,” the big playmaker said.

  It took them only a moment to decide what.

  They waited until the medals had been given out. Travis felt the gold around his neck and watched while the silver medals were awarded to the Lake Placid team.

  Then, on a signal from the big Olympian, Travis motioned for all the Owls to skate to centre ice with him.

  He went and got Muck, who came reluctantly. Mr. Dillinger pushed Data.

  The big playmaker gathered all his team and coaches as well.

  Then at centre ice they turned, first to one side of the rink, then the other, then the far ends, while the fans continued to stand and applaud.

  And they bowed.

  Arigato.

  A thank-you to Japan.

  THE END

  Please state your name.”

  Travis Lindsay had never shaken so much in his life. Not from the cold wind of James Bay. Not from the thrill of Disney World’s Tower of Terror. Not even from the emotion of seeing Data wheeled out onto the ice the night of the benefit game.

  This was different: this was pure nerves.

  Travis was terrified.

  He was not so much frightened of a lie–which was why he was here–but petrified, to the very bottom of his twelve-year-old soul, of the truth.

  “Your name?”

  The man asking the question was staring at Travis, waiting. He was an older man–an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police–with a white brush cut so thick and stiff it looked as if he could sand wood with the top of his head. His face, however, was soft and flushed. He had his uniform jacket off, and there were sweat stains under the arms of his shirt. A second Mountie, younger, square-jawed and unsmiling, sat closer to the window, where he was surrounded by computer equipment and switches. An open Pepsi can was on the desk in front of him, condensation beading on the sides. Travis was suddenly aware of how badly he himself wanted something cold to drink.

  Travis cleared his throat to answer. A green line on the computer screen jumped. The Mountie monitoring the line checked off something on a pad.

  “T–Travis Lindsay,” he finally said, his voice catching.

  Even in the heat of the small room, he could feel the shiver of cold metal on his skin. There were electrodes taped over his heart and to his arm, and sensors attached to his temples and even to the index finger of his right hand. He tried to tell his body parts not to jump–but they seemed to belong to someone else.

  “Address?”

  “Twenty-two Birch Street, Tamarack.” He tried to be helpful: “You want my postal code?”

  The Mountie asking the questions shook his head. The other Mountie looked up at him, blinking, and again checked something off on the pad. Did he think Travis was trying to be smart?

  “This is just to set the parameters of the computer,” the first Mountie said. “Just relax, son.”

  Relax? Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one on trial here, in the middle of the strangest land any of the Screech Owls had ever visited.

  How could Travis possibly relax when he’d just seen his best friend, Wayne Nishikawa, leave this same room in the Drumheller RCMP headquarters with tears streaming down his red cheeks? How could he relax when so many of his teammates were waiting in another room to go through the same gruelling experience. Sarah was out there. And Lars. And Jenny. And Jesse. And Andy. Each one of them waiting to take a lie-detector test.

  It seemed the whole world had been turned upside down. It was March break, and yet the younger Mountie had just pried open the window, and the welcome breeze that fluttered the paper on the desks felt like summer. Over the hum of the computer, Travis could hear the river churning behind the curling rink across the street. Between the Owls’ departure from Tamarack and this dreadful moment, winter had vanished like one of those time-lapse shots the nature shows sometimes had of flowers opening in super-fast motion. One day winter snowploughs in the streets, the next day flooding along the low riverbanks.

  There were television cameras in town–somehow, word had got out–though this was no nature program. This was closer to science fiction, but there was no button on a remote to push so that the two Mounted Police would simply flash into a shrinking dot of light on a dark screen. This was real life–only it couldn’t possibly be! Could it?

  “All right, Travis,” the first Mountie said, apparently satisfied with the levels he was getting off the monitors, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, now. You’re simply to answer them honestly, understand?”

  Travis cleared his throat again. The green readout line jumped sharply.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Mountie asking the questions smiled gently, then began.

  “You are a member of a hockey team, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The name of the team?”

  “The Screech Owls.”

  “And you’re out here for a tournament, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The name of the tournament?”

  Travis’s mind wasn’t working right. He couldn’t remember. The Prairie Invitational? The Drumheller Invitational? The Alberta Invitational? Was the word “peewee” in there anywhere? He didn’t want the two Mounties to think him so stupid, so he tried to bluff his way through the question.

  “Prairie Invitational…?” he answered hesitantly.

  The green readout light jumped, a squiggly line like a ragged mountain range forming on the screen. The two Mounties looked at each other.

  The first Mountie smiled. “Care to try again, Travis?”

  Travis coughed. The line jumped. “I, I don’t remember exactly,” Travis said. “Something Invitational. I’m sorry.”

  “Drumheller Invitational Peewee Tournament,” the first Mountie said, smiling as he scribbled something in his notes.

  The man didn’t appear at all bothered by Travis’s error. In fact, he looked oddly pleased, as if Travis’s little mistake had confirmed something. Travis didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it seemed the lie detector would react whenever he wasn’t absolutely certain of his answer. He would do no more guessing. And he would certainly not be lying–whether he was hooked up to a lie detector or not.

  “What happened yesterday to you and your teammates, Travis?”

  Travis sucked his breath in deep. He felt like he was going to explode. In trying so hard to appear calm, he was only making it worse. His arms and legs were jumping on their own. His throat felt dry and tight. But there was no choice but to begin, and to let the machine do its job. It was all so incredible to Travis. He was no longer sure himself what had happened–and what he had seen.

  “We, we went out on the bikes…”

  “Where?”

  “Out along the river. We wanted to look for hoodoos.”

  The Mountie nodded, one eye seemingly on Travis, the other tracking the readout line of the computer. The line was a little wiggly, but steady, with neither high jagged mountains nor sharp valleys.

  “And?”

  “And we also wanted to see where Nish had been.”

  “Who’s Nish?”

  “Wayne Nishikawa. We call him Nish.”

&nb
sp; “Your friend.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nish had already been there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what made this place so interesting?”

  “It was where he saw…the…” Travis’s throat went thin as a straw. He could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  Both Mounties looked up, waiting.

  “Where he saw the what, Travis?” the first Mountie asked.

  “The…the thing he saw.”

  “The thing he saw?” the Mountie repeated. Travis thought he could detect a little sarcasm there. Clearly, they didn’t think Nish had seen anything at all.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you believe Nish had seen anything?”

  “No,” Travis said. “Not then, anyway.”

  The Mounties exchanged the quickest of glances. Travis noticed that the second Mountie, the one handling the computer, was smiling slightly. Travis didn’t like the look of that smile.

  “And did you find the right place?”

  “We rode off the trail and back over some hills,” Travis said. “I’m not sure exactly where we were…”

  “Did you see anything?”

  Travis looked down, swallowing hard.

  “Yes.” He spoke almost defiantly, certain that he would be challenged.

  “And what did you see, Travis?”

  Travis moved his lips but nothing came out. He tried to breathe in, but his lungs had frozen. He felt slightly dizzy and shifted in his seat. He wanted to scream. No wonder Nish had run out of the room crying. Travis felt close to tears himself.

  “What was it you saw?” the first Mountie asked again.

  “I, I’m not sure…” Travis said.

  Both men looked at him hard.

  “Do you mean you might have seen nothing?” the first Mountie asked.

  “No.”

  The Mountie’s red face darkened further.

  “But you’re not sure what you saw?” he asked, his lips narrowing.

  “No, not that. I know what I saw. But I can’t believe what I saw.”

  The first Mountie smiled, encouraging.

  “Just say what you think you saw, then.”

  Travis sat up in his seat, blowing air hard out of his cheeks. He swallowed and looked directly into the Mountie’s eyes.