I figured I would have to wait only another minute or two before I went on to stage two of my plan.
Unfortunately I didn’t even get another ten seconds.
I’d been so worried that the two guys with baseball bats might show up, I hadn’t stopped to think that anyone else might be awake at this early hour.
I glanced up and down the street, worrying about baseball bats. Instead I saw, down at the corner beside a fire hydrant, the outlines of two figures beneath a streetlight. A tall woman in a sweat suit and a big poodle at the end of the leash she was holding. The poodle was on three legs, watering the fire hydrant. The woman had one hand pressed to her head and was staring at me.
I doubted she would believe me if I told her the truck was hissing because it had a bad case of indigestion. I doubted she would believe me if I told her I owned the truck. Not if she had seen me mess around with the tires.
I made my decision.
I took a step away from the truck, ran toward it and rammed it with my shoulder. It was such a heavy truck, it hardly rocked at all.
I took another step and rammed it again. Harder. The woman started walking toward me, hand still against her head.
What would it take to get this truck to bounce?
I hopped onto the front bumper. Holding the hood ornament to keep my balance, I jumped up and down on the bumper.
That did it.
The truck rocked, and the security system detected the motion. The headlights of the truck began to flash on and off. The horn blared at full volume.
Part two of my plan was now complete. I would have liked it if the tires were completely flat, but the woman and her poodle had forced me to act early. I was hoping cops would arrive at about the same time the men got back to their truck. With flat tires, the men with baseball bats would not be able to get away. If they got away on foot, the cops would still have their truck and be able to identify them from the license plate and ownership papers inside.
I would have loved to hide down the street and watch the action, but the woman in the sweat suit was waving at me, shouting at me to stop.
Lights began to flick on in the houses along the street.
If I didn’t clear the scene, I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
I broke into a full run. I intended to circle the block, get back to Dakota’s house, ring the doorbell, explain what had happened and let him or his parents go over to the truck and meet with the cops.
For the second time in less than a minute, the woman in the sweat suit wrecked my plans. Halfway down the street, I looked back over my shoulder as I was running. She had begun to chase me.
I almost laughed. She hadn’t even taken her hand away from her head, and she figured she could keep up with me?
I ran harder.
“Stop!” she shouted.
I didn’t stop. I was a WHL hockey player in the best shape of my life. Did she actually expect me to roll over and play dead?
I rounded the corner. My lead on the woman was so big she didn’t have a chance at catching me.
Just as I congratulated myself on getting away, I heard barking. Not the yipping bark of tiny poodles, but a deeper meaner bark. I hadn’t realized her poodle was so big.
I glanced back.
The dog’s claws slipped and slid on the pavement as it rounded the corner at full speed.
Until that moment, I had thought I was running as fast as I could.
The poodle barked again. It was the size of a Doberman. Suddenly I discovered I had some extra speed left in me.
Still, it was a losing race.
A half block later, the dog caught me. I didn’t see it catch me. I felt it catch me. Its teeth ripped through the back of my jeans about where I’d normally sit. I knew I wouldn’t want to sit for a few days.
The poodle dropped back for a second, getting ready to jump and take another hunk out of me. I veered from the street toward the nearest tree and saw a branch at head height. Without missing a step, I dove up toward it, grabbing it near the trunk of the tree. I pulled myself up, frantically kicking at the dog’s jaws.
It is amazing how much more athletic you can become when you are scared out of your mind. I made it to a standing position up on that branch in record time.
The dog was below me, jumping up and scratching the trunk with its front paws. It wasn’t barking, because my right shoe was stuck in its mouth.
The woman in the sweat suit arrived a few minutes later. When she got to the tree, I saw why her hand had been stuck to her head. She was carrying a cell phone. And speaking into it.
“Yes, officer,” she said, her voice reaching me clearly. “I’ve followed him. He’s here on Birchwood Street. Almost at the corner of Chestnut. You can’t miss us. I’m standing in the street. He’s in a tree.”
She snapped the flip phone shut and clipped it on a belt around her waist.
“I always take a cell phone with me on my early morning jogs,” she told me in a sharp triumphant voice. “You never know when it will come in handy.”
Her poodle moved beside her and dropped my shoe at her feet. “Good dog, Orville.”
My back end was bleeding, my lungs were raw from breathing so hard, the guys with the baseball bats were going to get away as the cops moved in on me, and to top it off, I had been treed by a poodle named Orville.
I could only think of one other time when my life had been worse. I’d cried then. I wasn’t going to cry now.
Thirty seconds later, red and blue flashing lights bounced off trees and houses as a patrol car approached. Two cops stepped out of the car and walked up to the woman in the sweat suit.
The cops shone their flashlights in my eyes. All four of them stared up at me—two cops, the woman in the sweat suit and her big poodle.
At least I didn’t feel lonely anymore.
chapter eleven
An hour later, I sat at the dining room table in the Smith house, staring at the most beautiful girl in the history of humankind. Early sunlight streamed in through tall windows. I had a cup of hot chocolate in my hands, a half-eaten omelet on the plate in front of me and a big lipstick smear on my cheek. Mrs. Smith had served me the hot chocolate. Mr. Smith had cooked the omelet for me. And the most beautiful girl in the history of humankind had given me a kiss.
“Mike, you can quit staring at her,” Dakota said. His omelet was long gone, and he had finished a half loaf of toast. “She’s only my sister.”
“I’m not staring,” I said, staring. “I’m listening. If Kendra wants to thank me again for saving her dog’s life, it’s only polite that I give her my full attention.”
Kendra grinned at me. “Are you ready to tell us how it all happened? From the beginning. Right until you and the cops showed up at our door.”
“Are you finished thanking me?”
“For now.”
If I were her dog, I would have thumped my tail and run around in circles at the way she smiled.
I enjoyed staring at Kendra. Her hair was as dark as Dakota’s, her skin a lighter copper. She wore her hair cut so it barely touched her shoulders. It hung straight and even and soft. Where Dakota’s cheekbones were high and sharply visible, hers were high and rounded. Dakota’s nose was strong and noble; hers was straight and perfect.
“My car stalled,” I said. “As I was coming back here, I saw two men with baseball bats.”
That was what I’d told Mr. and Mrs. Smith a half hour earlier in the presence of the cops. I didn’t tell Kendra that I’d raced over from my stalled car, expecting to find the guys on the property. Kendra nodded, assuming that I had been coming over here to borrow the phone. She assumed that I had accidentally happened to see those guys. Earlier, the cops and Mr. and Mrs. Smith had made the same assumption. If they’d known I was coming over to find the guys, there would have been too many new questions. Like, how did I know to follow them? And until Dakota was ready to say something, I was going to keep my mouth shut about the part where Dakota and I had been sh
ot at the day before. Whatever Dakota was hiding, it was still his business, and if he wasn’t telling anyone, I didn’t feel I should either.
“I know you did something to their truck,” Kendra said. “I overheard some of what you were telling Mom and Dad.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I remembered a red truck going past my stalled car. I figured it was theirs, so when they went in the backyard—”
“They wanted to kill my dog,” she said. “There were poison capsules in the steak in the plastic bag we found out there.”
I nodded. She had already said this about ten times. But I didn’t mind when she repeated herself. She figured I was the hero for waking everyone up before the dog ate the steak.
“What happened at the truck?” Dakota asked.
I explained, right down to the poodle chase. As I told the story, they both laughed. I squirmed on my chair once in a while and winced, hoping to get sympathy from Kendra for the wound I had taken in a tender area.
“Cool idea for letting the air out of the tires,” Kendra said when I finished. “Where did you learn that?”
“Reform school,” I said.
“Reform school?”
“For juvenile delinquents.”
She grinned like I was joking. I wasn’t, of course.
“The cops figure those two drove the truck away while they were chasing you.” Dakota said it as a statement, not a question.
I nodded. “They had to have driven it on its wheel rims. They must have been desperate not to get caught.”
“I wish the cops would have caught them.” Kendra’s dark eyes showed anger.
“How about you, Dakota?” I asked. “Wish they had been caught?”
He didn’t show anything on his face. He locked eyes with me for a couple of seconds and shrugged his answer. “They’re obviously crazy.”
“The police think they’re also the ones who burned your truck,” I said to Dakota. We both knew they were. I wanted to see what Dakota was willing to admit. “The cops really want to find those guys.”
“I find it hilarious that Mrs. Belford was the one who chased you down,” Dakota said, “with her poodle.”
He turned to Kendra. “Isn’t her poodle named Orville?”
She nodded.
He turned back to me. “Mike, it would be a shame, wouldn’t it, if the guys on the team knew you had been treed by a poodle named Orville. They’d never let you forget.”
“A real shame,” I said. “Good thing you can keep a secret.”
“Maybe someday you can keep a secret for me.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Any secret you want, I’ll keep.”
Mr. Smith walked into the kitchen, followed by Mrs. Smith. I now understood a bit more about Dakota’s family. Mr. Smith was a professor of archaeology. He’d been born and raised here in Seattle. He was not Native American.
He’d met his wife during some field research in tribal territory in the Interior of British Columbia, the province straight north of Washington. They’d fallen in love, gotten married and moved back to Seattle to the house Mr. Smith inherited.
“Well, Michael,” Mr. Smith said, “why don’t I give you a ride home.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’ve already arranged to have your car towed and fixed.”
Mr. Smith must have seen my horror, which I was trying to hide.
“Yes,” he said smoothly, “it’s only fair that I take care of the expenses. After all, you did come to this household’s defense.”
I nodded. I was relieved because I didn’t have much money. I told myself I would pay him back as soon as I could.
I stood from the table and backed away from Kendra and Dakota. I had no wish for Kendra to see the gaping hole in my jeans where Orville had done his best work.
“Visit any time,” Kendra said.
I grinned. First chance I had, I was going to talk to Dakota and apologize for the stupid things I’d said. Maybe I could eventually come back and visit.
“If only you had remembered to take down their license number,” Mr. Smith said as we stepped outside.
“If only,” I said, knowing it had been a British Columbia license plate, 498 EAH.
Even if Dakota wouldn’t go to anyone for help on this, I intended to do some looking around of my own.
chapter twelve
Mr. Smith dropped me off at my billet’s house by 7:30 AM. Almost twelve hours later, I was at the rink, sitting in the dressing room with the rest of the team, waiting to step onto the ice for a home game against the Kamloops Blazers.
As we waited the final minutes to our 7:30 PM start, Coach Nesbitt informed us of something we all knew already from reading the sports section of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Saskatoon Blades had won their last five games. They were only two points behind us in the overall league standings.
Then Coach Nesbitt told us something we did not know. The Blades were ahead 5–0 in their game against the Brandon Wheat Kings. Because they were playing two time zones away, in Central Standard Time, it was nearly nine-thirty there. In other words, the game was all but finished. The Blades would certainly win.
If we lost tonight’s game, then, we would fall back into a tie with the Blades. They were a hot team right now. We couldn’t afford to give them the chance to take first place, not this late in the season.
I looked around the dressing room as Coach Nesbitt finished telling us how important it was for us to win tonight. Some of the guys were chewing gum. Some were staring at the floor. Some were staring at the ceiling.
I glanced down the bench at Dakota. He’d buried his face in his hands and was completely still. It was something I’d noticed him doing nearly every game.
“That’s it,” Coach Nesbitt said. “Get on the ice and show them what you can do.”
Coach Nesbitt clapped his hands twice, his signal for us to get moving.
Dakota slowly lifted his face out of his hands.
I stood but didn’t join the line of players trooping out of the dressing room. I let them pass. A few clapped me on the back. I was glad it was my back and not my rear end. It was still sensitive where Orville had sunk his teeth into me, and I didn’t need a healthy slap to remind me exactly how sore it was.
“Go crazy, Crazy,” one of our defensemen said. “Burn it up tonight.”
I grinned in reply. “You bet.”
Dakota was at the very end of the line. He didn’t say anything as he moved by me. I followed him and the rest of the guys down the rubber mats in the center of the hallway.
The crowd cheered as, one by one, we stepped onto the ice.
I like this part of the game. I stepped onto the ice and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the bright lights after the dim hallway. I sucked in a few breaths of the chilled air. The ice surface shone, untouched by the gouging and cutting of skate blades. The crowd was loud and hopeful, clapping and yelling to the beat of loud music.
Hockey was the only thing in my life that hadn’t let me down. Any mistakes in hockey were my responsibility. They didn’t happen because someone else made a promise and didn’t keep it.
I grinned with pleasure to be on the ice, circling our half of the end for last-minute warm-ups.
I matched Dakota stride for stride, gliding up beside him.
“Hey,” I said, “let me ask you something.”
“About this morning?”
“No,” I said, “at the start of every game you put your hands over your face. What’s the deal?”
He stared at me for a few seconds as if deciding whether to answer. Uniforms flashed past us as the other guys on our team skated harder.
“Prayer,” he finally said, “that none of us gets hurt.”
“Prayer?” I hadn’t considered that.
His face tightened. “Yeah, prayer. You think I should beat tom-toms and chant to spirits in the sky?”
Not this again. Was it my fault he was going to take everything the wrong way? I opened my mouth to tell h
im he could stuff tom-toms in his ear. Then I took a deep breath instead.
“Dakota, I was out of line this morning with that Tonto stuff. I said it because I was mad. I’m...” I had to take another deep breath to get the words out. “I’m sorry.”
He stared at me a few more seconds. We were still slowly skating around the boards. Other guys ahead and behind were matching our pace, having their own conversations. I doubted they were like this one.
“Mike,” Dakota said, his face less tight, “you don’t apologize often, do you?”
“This is the first time in as long as I can remember.”
“I shouldn’t have lost my cool either,” he said. I was glad he didn’t try to say anything to make me feel better about my mother. People always try to apologize when they hear about her. Which is stupid. It happened a long time ago.
“By the way,” Dakota continued, “thanks.”
“Thanks?”
“You could have told the cops more than you did about the guys in the red truck.”
“Not a big deal,” I said. “Besides, you haven’t told anyone about Orville the poodle.”
No answer from Dakota.
“Right?” I persisted.
He shrugged, grinned and put on a burst of speed to leave me behind. Ten seconds later, the referee blew his whistle to end warm-ups.
Orville the poodle.
I grinned and began to concentrate on the game ahead of us.
chapter thirteen
Almost halfway through the second period, we were down by two goals.
Two big goals.
The Blazers were a strong defensive team. They loved getting the lead, because then they would switch to a version of the neutral zone trap. They would only send one forward, not two or three, into our end to chase the puck. The good news was that it made it easy for us to move the puck out of our end. The bad news was that they would have four skaters waiting for us in the middle area of the ice, the neutral zone. It’s tough trying to pass the puck around with that many skaters in the way. Nearly the only way to beat that kind of defense is to dump the puck behind them into their end and chase it down. Except that they kept so many skaters hanging back, a Blazer usually beat you to the puck. Even if you managed to get to the puck first, a Blazer would be right on you, checking you hard or knocking you into the boards.
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