The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2 Page 9

  Travis felt the morning sun, already hot, as it burned through the thick canvas of the tent. The air felt heavy, stale, and he threw back the flap to breathe in the fresh air and take his first look at a Florida morning.

  It was a beautiful day, the dew sparkling on the grass and the pine needles, the campsite already alive with activity. Mr. Cuthbertson was headed down the pathway toward the showers, shorts on over legs the colour of milk, and a towel, nearly as white, slung over his shoulder. Muck, in his old windbreaker despite the warmth of the day, was at the Coleman stove, boiling water for a cup of coffee. Muck caught sight of Travis staring out from the tent and winked. It was just a wink, but it was all Travis needed to know that the Owls’ coach, who hadn’t much wanted to come when the Florida trip was first suggested, was now quite content to be here.

  “Is it time to get up?” a voice broke from behind.

  Travis turned, his eyes adjusting to the darker interior of the tent. It was Simon, and he was blinking through red eyes.

  “Are your eyes ever red!” Travis said.

  “They are?” Simon said, rubbing fists into both of them. “Allergies, I guess.”

  Travis guessed not. Unless, of course, Simon was allergic to Nish’s taunts.

  “Up ’n’at ’em, Lindsay!” Muck called from over by the picnic table. “We’re on the ice in an hour!”

  The following hour had passed quicker than winter had vanished on the way down, and now the Screech Owls were on the ice and everything about it felt wrong.

  The Owls had reached their destination only the evening before the tournament was to begin, and so had no time to practise. They were about to play the Ann Arbor Wings, a peewee team from Michigan, but instead of skating out for a warm-up and firing a puck off the crossbar to get ready, Travis was preparing for the match by hanging on to one side of a bedsheet, with Nish holding on to the other. Had there been enough wind in the Lakeland Arena, they would have been sailing, not skating down the ice.

  “Fog,” Muck had announced the moment the Owls got off the school bus and headed into the old rink. When the hot, humid Florida air from outside hit the cold air inside the arena, the result was a thick cloud of fog. It was so bad that Jeremy Weathers, who was to start the first game in goal, couldn’t see to centre ice, let alone all the way down to where the Wings’ goaltender was busy preparing his crease.

  The Zamboni driver came out with an armful of old sheets, handed them out, and Muck and the Ann Arbor coach organized the players to skate about in pairs with the sheets billowing between them, trying to break up the fog.

  “We look like ghosts, not hockey players,” grumbled Nish.

  “It’s working, though,” Travis answered.

  It was, too. As the players skated about, they began to create air currents. From one end of the ice to the other, Travis could see the fog moving in chunks, first sideways, then up, eventually melting away. Players came into view, vanished, and appeared again. Nish was right; they did look like ghosts.

  Finally, the referee blew his whistle at centre ice. There were still some cloudy patches, but the players could now see from one end of the ice to the other. They dumped the sheets into the outstretched arms of the arena attendant, and the game was on. No warm-up. Travis didn’t feel right at all.

  Sarah’s line was first out, with Travis on left wing and the speedy Dmitri Yakushev on right. Nish and Data were starting, as usual, on defence.

  For a moment, Travis was able to study the Ann Arbor team. They were larger than the Owls, and had beautiful green uniforms with a magnificent white wing on the chest. He checked the winger opposite him: Nike skates, the best money could buy.

  Travis shivered, then remembered something Muck had once said to them: “The one thing in hockey you can’t buy is skill.” Muck hated to see a kid come out with a brand-new pair of gloves–“You may as well dip your hands in wet cement,” he’d say–and told them all that top-of-the-line skates were a waste of money for players who were still growing. “What’s it matter if you start the season with an extra pair of socks and end it in your bare feet?” he’d ask. “Bobby Orr never wore socks in his skates–and he was the best skater there ever was.”

  Still, Travis felt a bit embarrassed by his equipment. His skates were not only used–“one season only,” the newspaper ad had claimed–but they still had the previous owner’s number, 16, painted in white on the heel, whereas Travis’s number was 7. He worried sometimes that other players might think the “C” for captain was left over from another player as well. He wasn’t the best player on the Owls, after all–certainly not when Sarah was part of the team–and he was almost the smallest. Before Simon had come along, he was the smallest.

  The puck dropped and, instantly, the cost of equipment meant nothing. Sarah did her trick of plucking the puck out of the air, and Dmitri picked it up and circled back, tapping off to Nish, who was already moving to the side to avoid the first check.

  Travis knew the play. He knew Nish would be looking for him. He cut straight across centre ice, one skate on one side of the line, the other skate on the other side. That way, even if Nish shot from within the Owls’ own zone, Travis would still be onside.

  Nish fired the puck at Travis’s head. No problem; they’d talked about this play before, though this was the first time Nish had ever attempted it in a real game.

  Travis caught the puck in his glove and dropped it straight down onto his stick. He was free on the right side, Dmitri’s side, and Dmitri crossed over onto Travis’s wing. Travis knew that Sarah would have curled and would be directly behind him as he crossed the blueline. He dropped the puck between his legs and “accidentally” bumped into the closest defenceman, taking him out of the play. Sarah wound up for a slapshot, causing the second Ann Arbor defenceman to flinch, standing up stiffy with one glove over his face, but instead she snapped a perfect pass to Dmitri, now on his off wing. Dmitri one-timed the shot high in behind the goaltender, who had made the mistake of heading out to take away the angle from Sarah.

  Owls 1, Wings 0.

  “They’re still in a fog,” Nish giggled when they went off on a line change.

  He was right. And so, too, was Muck. You can buy fancy equipment, but you can’t buy skill. And skill was winning handily against the Wings.

  By the end of the period, the Owls were up 4–1 on Dmitri’s goal, a long shot by Andy that bounced once before slipping past the goaltender, a Derek Dillinger tip-in, and a pretty goal by, of all people, Simon, as he skirted around the Wings’ defence and flicked a quick backhand over the goaltender’s shoulder.

  Muck had nothing to say to the Owls during the brief break between periods. They were playing well, but, more to the point, the opposition wasn’t very good. Muck always seemed to worry more about games like this than he did about close ones. He said lopsided contests encouraged bad habits. What he meant, of course, was that the easier it seemed out there, the more Nish liked to hang onto the puck.

  Travis sat and caught his breath. He had never played in such humidity. It seemed like he was drinking air rather than inhaling it. The others always liked to joke that Travis never broke a sweat, but he was drenched.

  “Let’s go!” Muck said when he got the signal that the break was over. “And remember, Nishikawa, one superstar rush and you’re on the bench. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Nish answered in a choirboy voice.

  The Ann Arbor Wings came out with a little more zip this time and scored a second goal before the Owls took charge. But once they were back in control, the Owls slowly, simply, began to wind the game down. Muck didn’t like it when a team–the Owls or anyone else–ran up the score on an outmatched opposition.

  Sarah, in particular, was great at what Muck called “ragging the puck.” She could hold onto it for ever, circling back and back until it all but drove the other team crazy.

  “I’m gonna try a between-the-leg-er,” Nish said to Travis as they sat on the bench after another shift in which nothin
g happened.

  All winter long Nish had been trying to score a goal like the one on the Mario Lemieux videotape that had come out after the Pittsburgh Penguins star had retired from the game. The Owls all thought it was the greatest goal they’d ever seen: Lemieux coming in on net with a checker on him and getting an amazing shot away by putting his stick back between his own legs and snapping the puck over the poor goalie.

  “Don’t even think of it!” Travis warned.

  But the next chance he got, Nish picked up a puck behind his own net and came up ice, weaving and bobbing, until he suddenly turned on the speed and split the Wings’ defence. He broke through and came in on goal, Sarah hurrying to catch up. She banged her stick on the ice twice, the signal that she wanted the puck.

  Nish, however, had other ideas. Letting the puck slide, he turned, stabbed his stick back between his short, chunky legs, and with a neat flick of his wrists managed to trip himself–all alone on a breakaway! Wayne Nishikawa’s reach was not the same as Mario Lemieux’s.

  With the puck sliding harmlessly past the net, Nish, tumbling on one shoulder, flew straight into the boards, where his skates almost stuck in they hit so hard.

  The whistle blew and everyone raced to see if he’d been hurt.

  Nish lay on the ice, flat on his back, moaning.

  “You all right, son?” the referee asked.

  Nish opened his eyes, blinked twice. “You calling a penalty shot?” he asked in his choirboy’s voice.

  This time it was the referee’s turn to blink.

  “What for?”

  “I got dumped on a clear breakaway, didn’t I?”

  Nish struggled dramatically to his feet. With the small crowd of fans applauding to show they were happy he wasn’t hurt, he skated, stiffy and slowly, straight to the bench, where he walked to the very end and sat down, removing his helmet and dropping his gloves.

  He wouldn’t be getting another shift this game.

  “You gotta come see this!”

  It was Nish, and he was foaming at the mouth. Whatever he’d seen had got him so excited he hadn’t even finished brushing his teeth–he’d run straight to the tent, where Travis was just putting on his sandals to start the day.

  “Where the heck are my glasses?”

  “They’re on top of your head, dummy,” Travis informed him.

  Nish ripped his wraparound sunglasses off and tossed them into his sleeping bag.

  “Not these ones–the X-rays!”

  Nish was thrashing about the tent like a bear in a garbage dump, turning bags upside down, rummaging through everything he came across–whether or not it was his.

  He emerged from his own corner triumphant. “Here they are!” he shouted, holding them up. “Let’s go!”

  “Let’s go where?”

  “Just follow me!”

  Travis followed Nish out of the tent and quickly down along the trail leading to the shower and laundry facilities. Nish was breathing heavily as he ran, the sweat already blackening his T-shirt. He hurried ahead, then left the trail abruptly, aiming for a thick bush almost directly in front of the shower building.

  When Travis caught up, Nish was already trying to put the cheap X-ray glasses on, but Nish was so sweaty they kept slipping off.

  “What are we doing here?” Travis whispered.

  “You’ll see.”

  People were coming and going. Travis looked at men carrying shaving kits and women with towels wrapped around their heads to dry their hair–but he could see nothing unusual.

  “There!” Nish hissed.

  Travis didn’t have to look twice. From out of the women’s shower room came one of the most extraordinarily beautiful women Travis had ever seen. She was tall, like a model, and had wrapped a huge beach towel around herself for the walk back.

  “Damn!” Nish cursed. His X-ray glasses had slipped right off his sweaty nose and disappeared into the thick brush.

  While Nish fumbled for his glasses, Travis watched the woman walk away.

  She seemed a little frightened, thought Travis. Not of Nish, who was thrashing around in the bush, but of something.

  At the end of the path, two men were waiting for her. They both wore dark sunglasses. One, with his head shaved, wore army-style camouflage pants. The other, his dark hair tied back in a ponytail, wore a Chicago Bulls basketball jersey. They didn’t look much like campers.

  The man with the ponytail caught the woman by the arm as she passed and hurried her along the path in the opposite direction. The man with the shaved head waited, watching, as if checking to make sure no one was following.

  “Got ’em!” Nish announced, emerging from his search. There was dirt on his face and all over his prized glasses. He looked absurd.

  “Where’d she go?” he demanded.

  Travis pointed past the guy with the shaved head. “Down that path. I don’t think you want to follow, unless you want your stupid glasses broken.”

  “Whatdya mean?”

  “I think that guy’s a bodyguard or something.”

  Nish removed his glasses, blinking to clear away the sweat. A thought seemed to be registering.

  “You think maybe she’s a movie star or something?”

  “In a campsite? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, who is she then?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Don’t anybody tell him!” whispered Sarah. “Not a word–promise?”

  She quickly went around to the rest of the Screech Owls gathered in the shade of the trees as they waited for the most popular ride at Disney–MGM Studios: the Tower of Terror.

  The Owls had risen early for their first full day at Walt Disney World. They would do some of the MGM Studios rides in the morning, then head over to the Magic Kingdom, where they would catch the parade down Main Street, U.S.A., before eating on the Boardwalk and waiting for the fireworks display to close out the day.

  The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror had been a topic of conversation for much of the trip down to Florida. Data, who had been to Disney World only the year before, had talked about it endlessly.

  “The elevator,” he said, “drops thirteen floors in less than two and a half seconds!”

  There was just no doubt, from the moment Mr. Dillinger had turned the full school bus onto the entrance drive to Disney World, that the Tower of Terror was a main attraction. Attached to a huge billboard in the median were larger-than-life dummies suspended from a broken elevator, their faces filled with fright and their hair standing straight up on end.

  “Looks like your hair in Sweden!” Lars had called back to Nish.

  “Very funny!” Nish had protested, secretly delighted that everyone remembered the new look he’d tried out in Stockholm.

  “He won’t even go!” Sarah had shouted. “He’s afraid of heights, remember?”

  “Am not!”

  “Oh?” Sarah had said. “And what, then, was all that fuss about when we were up the mountain at Lake Placid?”

  Almost as if they’d planned it, several of the Owls had turned at once and, in exaggerated Nish voices, shouted out, “I’M GONNA HURL!”

  “No way!”

  “You won’t go,” Sarah said, sure of herself.

  “A dollar?” Nish had challenged, his lower lip pushed out as he dared Sarah to bet on whether he’d go on the ride.

  “You’re on, Big Boy.”

  Even though they wouldn’t be going on the Tower of Terror until later in the day, the ride–and the bet–were never far from their minds. The sounds, sometimes distant, sometimes close, of gearwheels grinding, cables slipping, and riders screaming had followed the Owls around wherever they went–even all the way to Catastrophe Canyon. To half of the Screech Owls, the screams were a warning. To the others, an invitation. Travis wasn’t quite sure how he heard it: he was half tantalized, half fearful.

  The lineup for the big attraction was long. A sign said they were forty-five minutes away from the actual ride. Fortunately, the wait would be o
ut of the sun.

  The line, twisting in a gentle curve rising toward the entrance, was shaded by shrubs and trees that were filled with birds. They could buy drinks and ice cream while they waited, and soon the big wait was forgotten as they talked about their day and moved ahead a few steps at a time. Several of the Owls tried to catch one of the speedy little lizards that darted up the walls and around the trunks of the trees. Data had his father’s Polaroid camera with him, and desperately wanted a photograph of himself with one of the cute little lizards in his hand. But the lizards were too quick to be caught.

  The two quietest Owls were Simon and Travis, each trying to calm his growing fears on his own. Nish had already predicted Simon would bail out before they got on the ride, walking around him with his arms flapping and doing that idiotic “Wakkk-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck!” Travis dearly hoped it would be Nish, not Simon, who chickened out, and he planned to have the entire Screech Owls team do a “Wakkk-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck!” around Nish when Sarah collected her dollar bet. That would serve him right.

  Nish seemed to be gathering himself. The closer they moved toward the entrance, the quieter he became. He stood off to one side of the line, his eyes closed and his arms folded across his chest. He was in another world, dealing with his well-known fear of heights.

  Nish didn’t even notice when a brilliantly coloured bird landed on a branch directly over him and let go a sloppy white poop that landed directly on top of his head.

  “Scores!” shouted Lars.

  “Shhhhhh!” hissed Sarah, jumping directly in front of Nish and turning to the rest of the Owls, most of whom were pointing and laughing at Nish, who stood there with his eyes closed.

  “Don’t anybody tell him!” whispered Sarah. “Not a word. Promise?”

  The Owls all stifled their giggles. Andy pointed silently to Data’s camera, and Data got the message. With Andy and Derek’s help, Data stood on the top of the concrete wall and aimed the Polaroid down at Nish’s majestic new hair ornament. The camera flashed–Nish never even blinked–and Andy and Derek quickly helped Data back down onto the ground.