The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck
Page 9
Swift did an immediate double take.
On the lower part of the screen, letters identified her: “Hayley Wickenheiser, four-time Olympic gold medallist.”
Hayley, the hosts went on to say, had retired from her amazing career in hockey to become an emergency room doctor.
Only, the player was no longer just Hayley Wickenheiser to Swift—one of her idols, one of her all-time greatest heroes.
The Riverton goalie had finally put the pieces together, and now her cheeks were flushed with both embarrassment and pride.
Hayley Wickenheiser was . . . Chicken.
The bus was still rolling through the night when the mayor started working her way down the aisle, congratulating each of the Ravens’ players. She didn’t care that they hadn’t made it to the finals, or that they hadn’t won anything they could bring home.
They had no medals, but they’d played.
They had existed.
For one amazing little tournament, Riverton had had its girls’ team. The first. And they hadn’t completely tanked. For the girls who’d come out to play, that had meant everything.
“You played wonderfully, I hope you know that,” said Mayor Ward as she got to where Swift and Beatrice were sitting—the same seat they’d taken on the way to the tournament.
“But we didn’t get a medal,” Beatrice said, nearly under her breath. She had crossed her arms and was looking out the window again. Swift couldn’t tell if she was sad or just mad at herself.
“We’ll talk about that next practice,” said the mayor, leaning over her husband’s shoulder to get a look at the snow and then looking back again. “You’ll be there, right, Swift? Beatrice? What we did out there was big—no matter how the game turned out.”
“You mean that’s not the end of it?” asked Beatrice, surprised.
“Not even close,” said Mayor Ward with a gigantic smile. She let Beatrice turn quietly back toward the window but gave Swift a high-five, and then continued to give them down the line, all the way to the back of the bus.
“Beatrice? I’ve got something for you,” Swift offered shyly, tapping her seatmate’s leg. “But you, uh, have to keep it a secret, okay?”
Slowly, she unzipped her backpack and pulled out the silver medal she’d been hiding inside—Henry Blitz’s medal, the one he hadn’t wanted back at the mini-Olympics in Calgary.
“It’s silver,” Beatrice mumbled.
“Yeah, well not everyone can have gold,” said Swift, remembering the big Rat’s attitude—throwing his broken stick into the crowd—when he found out his team had finished second.
“Sorry, I mean it’s great. Silver is great,” said Beatrice, correcting herself. “We didn’t win anything at this tournament, so of course silver is great.”
“You can keep it until next year, as a placeholder,” offered Swift with a smile. “Keep it until we can win our own. Or five, like Hayley Wickenheiser—she got four gold and a silver, too.”
“You think we ever will get our own?” asked Beatrice.
“We’ll start earlier next year, and we’ll hold more practices,” said Swift. “We’ll still be Chips and Stars, but we’ll be Ravens, too. We’ll just have to work harder than usual.”
Beatrice suddenly looked excited. “You think the Ravens could have a chance at the final?” she asked.
“More than a chance,” Swift answered confidently. “Bea, we’re just getting started!”
Acknowledgements
Thank you to our editor, Suzanne Sutherland, whose name might not be on the cover, but whose careful work and guidance are visible on every page of this book. Thanks to Maeve O’Regan in publicity for her encouragement, and to Editorial Director Jennifer Lambert for her support. Thank you to the rest of the amazing team at HarperCollins, who allowed us to feel where this book should go and helped us get there: Janice Weaver, our eagle-eyed copyeditor; Stephanie Conklin, our patient and efficient production editor; and Lloyd Davis, our careful proofreader. Thank you also to Bruce Westwood and Meg Wheeler at Westwood Creative Artists, for their guidance and friendship.
Thanks to the many friends and new acquaintances who lent us their stories so we could shape the characters on the Ice Chips team, especially Gabe Ferron-Bouius, an impressive goalie from Ottawa who taught us how he’s adapted his butterfly for his prosthetic leg, and Harnarayan Singh, for coming up with his Bonino call just in time for Nick Bonino’s Stanley Cup playoff goal.
And a huge thanks to Hayley Wickenheiser, for putting up with our questions, giving us some insight into her years as a young peewee player, and being awesome and inspiring in so many ways.
—Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor
Many thanks to Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor, for creating another adventurous story to illustrate; to Suzanne Sutherland, whose amazing talents brought everything together once again; to Kelly Sonnack, for being my amazing agent; and to the 1988 Olympic ski jumps, for sticking around long enough to draw from—I will miss you.
—Kim Smith
About the Authors
ROY MACGREGOR, who was the media inductee into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012, has been described by the Washington Post as “the closest thing there is to a poet laureate of Canadian hockey.” He is the author of the internationally successful Screech Owls hockey mystery series for young readers, which has sold more than two million copies and is also published in French, Chinese, Swedish, Finnish, and Czech. It is the most successful hockey series in history—and is second only to Anne of Green Gables as a Canadian book series for young readers—and, for two seasons, was a live-action hit on YTV. MacGregor has twice won the ACTRA Award for best television screenwriting.
KERRY MACGREGOR is co-author of the latest work in the Screech Owls series. She has worked in news and current affairs at the CBC, and as a journalist with the Toronto Star, the Ottawa Citizen, and many other publications. Her columns on parenting, written with a unique, modern perspective on the issues and interests of today’s parents, have appeared in such publications as Parenting Times Magazine.
KIM SMITH is an illustrator from Calgary. She has illustrated several children’s books including The Great Puppy Invasion and storybook adaptations of Home Alone, The X-Files, and E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Her favourite hockey team is the Calgary Flames. Go Flames, Go!
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The Ice Chips Series
The Ice Chips and the Magical Rink
The Ice Chips and the Haunted Hurricane
The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck
Copyright
The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck
Text copyright © 2019 by Roy MacGregor and Kerry MacGregor.
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Kim Smith.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Cover illustration by Kim Smith
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition: April 2019 EPub ISBN: 978-1-4434-5236-6
Version 02262019
Print ISBN: 978-1-4434-5234-2
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