Nish levelled the blond centre behind the Owls’ net and came up with the ball, settling it on the end of his stick with a quick little pat.
Nish looked up ice – or up plastic – and eyed Travis, who broke hard across the surface for a pass.
Nish hit him perfectly, the ball looping over the sticks of two checkers and landing, perfectly, on Travis’s blade.
He had barely corralled it when he flicked a quick backhand through a defenceman’s legs to a spot where Sarah was headed.
Sarah caught the ball in her skates, dragged the ballbearing wheels just long enough to kick it up onto her stick, and broke hard down the left side. Nish steamrolled straight up centre to join the rush, and Dmitri was already far down the right side.
With only one defender back, the Young Lions had no idea what to do. The defenceman backpedalled and fell as Sarah burst around him. Sarah had the shot, Dmitri flying in for the rebound. But instead of shooting, Sarah did a beautiful back pass to Nish, who was already swinging with all his strength.
Nish’s stick clipped the ball oddly, almost like a foul in baseball. From Travis’s angle, he could see perfectly what happened next.
The ball shot off Nish’s stick, heading wide of the net – only to slice sharply back and all but curl right around the goalie into the net.
Young Lions 5, Screech Owls 1.
The Owls’ bench burst into cheers, as if Nish had scored the winning goal in the Stanley Cup. They ignored the referee’s whistle and poured over the boards. Even Mr. Dillinger, with a big white towel wrapped around his neck, was dancing and war-whooping across the playing surface and then snapping his towel at imaginary enemies.
Nish was at the bottom of the heap, screaming that he was going to die, but no one paid him the slightest heed.
When Travis got to him, Nish had a grin bigger than the Hallowe’en pumpkin that Travis’s mother had lit with a candle and set in the front window. Nish seemed even to burn with his own inner candle.
“Your shot sliced!” Travis shouted at him.
“Eh?”
“Your shot curved right around the goalie!”
“Of course it did. You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
Travis was laughing too hard to care what Nish was saying. The Owls had scored their first-ever goal as an in-line hockey team, and it had been a beauty.
It would, however, be their last for this day. After the Owls had cleared the court, the Young Lions scored three more goals to end the game 8-1.
Travis was glad it was over. He had seen a dozen areas where the Owls could improve, and Muck had surely seen a dozen more. Data was already typing notes to himself on his laptop. The Owls would improve.
The two teams lined up to shake hands, and Mr. Wolfe moved to the centre of the playing surface with a microphone in his hand. When he spoke, speakers at the far end crackled and echoed, but it was impossible to make out anything he was saying, so he gave up and simply stood at centre and shouted.
“Thank you, teams, for this early demonstration of what will truly be a magnificent exhibition match at Wembley Stadium next Tuesday evening.” He paused, casting a critical eye over the lined-up Screech Owls, barely able to hide his disappointment at the level of play. “We know the Snow Owls are tired from their long trip …”
“Screech Owls!” shouted Sarah, fire dancing in her eyes.
“Yes, Screech Owls. We know they will recover and the big game will be more competitive. We would like to honour the most valuable players from each side, however, with a special gift to each.”
An assistant ran out with two boxes, the tops loosened, and began to open them up.
“Would Edward Rose from the Young Lions step forward, please?” Mr. Wolfe asked.
The blond centre took his helmet off and shook his hair. Even when wet it seemed to shine like sunlight.
“Ohhhhhh,” said Sam.
“Yes!” agreed Sarah, giggling.
“Pathetic,” said Nish.
The assistant pulled a golden helmet out of a box and handed it to Mr. Wolfe.
“In England,” Mr. Wolfe said grandly, “we say you have won a cap when you play for your country. In some European hockey leagues, the leading scorer for each team wears a golden helmet.”
“We did that in Sweden,” Lars said to Travis.
“We are hoping to bring that tradition to international inline competition,” Mr. Wolfe continued, “to cap our young stars with a golden helmet. These are prototypes, children, and not yet ready for competition, but we thought they would make a wonderful souvenir for the teams. Congratulations, Mr. Rose.”
As Mr. Wolfe and Edward Rose shook hands and posed for a photograph, the two teams rapped their sticks on the playing surface.
It seemed a bit much to Travis – acting as if a little practice game meant anything – but he thought the helmets were a neat idea, if somewhat silly. Why, he had often wondered, would any team want their most dangerous man on the ice identified at all times? Or most dangerous woman, for Sarah was usually the Owls’ leading scorer.
“And,” Mr. Wolfe continued, “for the Hoot Owls -”
“Screech Owls!” Sam shouted angrily.
“Hmmm? Ah, yes, for the Screech Owls, the MVP for today is Mr. Wayne … Nishi … Nisha …”
“Nishikawa!” Nish shouted out, skating over to receive his prize.
“Yes, of course. Nish-i-kawa,” Mr. Wolfe said, spittle flying in every direction. “Congratulations to you, young man.”
Nish took the helmet, bowed gracefully in the direction of each team, and sticks began rapping on the playing surface to honour him.
But not all the sticks, Travis noticed. Many of the Young Lions, including Edward Rose, the star player, were refusing to salute the Screech Owl who had knocked them about in the corners before scoring a grandstand goal.
This, Travis told himself, was going to get awfully interesting.
6
Muck was blocking the dressing-room door when they headed off the playing surface. He had his arms folded over his chest but didn’t look particularly angry with any of them.
“Walk it off,” he told them. “Cool down slowly, otherwise you’ll tighten up so bad you won’t be able to play next game …” Muck smiled, almost to himself: “… not that anyone actually played this one, of course.”
The Owls got the message. It wasn’t so much about cooling down as it was about thinking about the game. Muck knew if they got into the dressing room, their thoughts would quickly turn to London and the sights, but before the inevitable happened he wanted them to think about what went wrong in the game and what, if anything, each of them might do to correct matters.
Travis kicked off his skates and headed out, barefoot, along the path heading for the Serpentine. The pebbles bothered his feet, so he switched over to the grass, walking toward the trees and some welcome shade.
Travis thought about all he’d done wrong: forgetting to kiss his sweater, not adapting well to the newfangled “puck,” failing to understand the new rules … He was replaying the disastrous game in his head when he heard a familiar voice.
“Yes, Fox here …”
There was a mammoth elm between Travis and the voice, but he knew it instantly: Mr. Wolfe.
“Fox here,” the man was saying rather breathlessly into his cellphone. “That you, Parley?”
Mr. Wolfe seemed to be having trouble with his connection, repeating again and again his question, finally almost barking it out.
Travis started giggling. What was wrong with this strange man and his memory? He’d called the Screech Owls the Barn Owls. He’d called them the Snow Owls. He’d called them the Hoot Owls.
And now Mr. Wolfe couldn’t even keep his own name straight: “Fox here,” he’d said.
Travis shook his head. Maybe it was just a nickname.
Perhaps Mr. Wolfe was just one of those legendary British eccentrics Muck and Mr. Dillinger had been laughing about on the flight over – a man so abse
nt-minded he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone the names of those he’d just met.
“Yes … yes … yes.” Mr. Wolfe’s voice was fading as he walked deeper into the trees, still speaking into the phone. “They have the helmets – it went fine.”
Travis smiled. Perhaps he was absent-minded and mixed up, but at least he was thorough. It was hard to fault him for that.
By the end of the trip he might even remember that they were the Screech Owls.
Travis shook off the distraction and went back to thinking about what he himself could do to turn the fortunes of the Owls around. He could check harder. He could play smarter. He could try harder. He would try harder.
Sam had obviously been unable to shake it off. When Travis and the others returned from their thinking walk, she was already sitting in a far corner of the dressing room, her face red and sad as she took the tape off her shin pads and worked it onto her beloved tape ball.
She had been assembling her famous ball for nearly a year now. She had started it without really noticing, ripping off her stretchy plastic shin-pad tape and, instead of tossing it in the garbage can, rolling it together into a little ball. Over time, it grew and grew. Sarah started adding her equipment tape to the ball, then Travis offered his, and now most of the Owls were routinely ripping off their tape and carrying it over to Sam to add to the collection, which was now roughly the size of a soccer ball.
There was only one player who routinely refused. Nish thought the tape ball was “stupid” and “girlish.” He would say things like “Do you think Paul Kariya keeps a tape ball?” Several times he tried to hide it on Sam.
But there was no fooling around this time, not even from Nish. Travis thought his friend was about to burst, so proud was he of his new golden helmet, but even Nish sometimes had the good sense to keep quiet. Especially after an 8-1 loss. And especially after Muck had taken the unusual step of sending one of the players to the dressing room for bad behaviour.
The silence was unbearable, but it could be broken by only one person: Muck.
And Muck would do it in his own inimitable way.
Travis undressed slowly, his legs burning and his feet cramping with pain. It always puzzled him how you could be in good shape from sports and yet, with each new season, each new activity, feel as if you had done nothing but sit in a lawn chair from the moment the last season ended. It happened in the first week of hockey, and the first few practices in lacrosse. It happened when he went skiing for the first time each winter. It happened when he broke out his mountain bike each spring, and again when they started playing touch football at school in the fall. And now it was happening after his first-ever game of in-line hockey.
It was, he thought to himself, as if every activity had its own unique muscles in addition to all the others, and it was these special hidden ones that hurt with each new sport.
Mr. Dillinger was picking up the jerseys and stuffing them into a duffle bag for washing when Muck, dressed as always in his old sweatpants and raggedy windbreaker, came in and stopped dead in the centre of the room.
The coach had his reading glasses on. He stared hard over them toward the far corner, where Sam, who had stopped moulding her tape ball for the moment, mouthed the word “sorry” in his direction.
Muck made no response. He stared a moment longer, then looked down at his clipboard.
Strange, Travis thought – there was not a word written on it. And yet anyone who knew anything about the game of hockey, in any of its forms, could have written volumes about what the Owls had done wrong in this game.
Perhaps Muck had decided, instead, to write down everything they had done right.
Muck plucked off his reading glasses and stuffed them, unprotected, into his windbreaker pocket. “Be in the lobby at one o’clock sharp,” he said.
Fahd asked the obvious question. “What for?”
“We’re headed first for Westminster Abbey and then the Tower of London.”
Muck turned back toward Sam, still sitting sheepishly in the corner.
“We have a player to lock up.”
Travis felt much better. He had showered and changed and was waiting in the hotel lobby by 12:45 with most of the rest of the Owls. He’d left Nish in their room, sitting like he was hypnotized in front of the big mirror over the dresser.
The moment they got back, Nish had put on the golden helmet, and he hadn’t taken it off since. Travis eventually concluded Nish would have showered with it on if he had to, but Nish showered so rarely this was not really very likely. Nish declared himself ready after a few more checks in the mirror, but Travis had given up waiting and gone down ahead of his roommates.
Sarah and Sam were already sitting on the wide sofa in the lobby, both of them talking about the blond kid, Edward Rose, who had starred for the Young Lions. Travis talked a while with Data and Fahd, who were trying to figure out if they could use Fahd’s cellphone to transfer digital photographs from Data’s camera to his laptop – the sort of technical talk that put Travis fast asleep if it went on too long.
Finally, all were ready to go – even Nish, despite the fact that his sweaty hair had taken on the shape of the helmet he’d been so reluctant to remove – and the Owls headed up the Edgware Road to the nearest Tube station, where they caught the Yellow Line, which would carry them straight through to the Westminster stop.
Travis was fascinated by the Underground. He liked the ticketing machines. He loved the sense that he was headed so deep into the ground he might have been descending into a coal mine. The Owls went down, down, down seemingly endless escalators, past billboards advertising products he had never heard of before.
The Tube itself was thrilling. The doors slid open, the Owls piled on, whistles blew, the doors shut like gentle sideways guillotines, and the train jerked and started off, almost immediately grinding and screeching as it headed into a long turn before the next stop in the line.
“Paddington Station!” Sam and Sarah screamed out at once.
“Let’s switch to platform 9¾!” shouted Simon, laughing.
“What’s he talking about?” Nish growled in Travis’s ear.
“Platform 9¾ …” Travis explained with a slight look of disbelief at his friend. “… Paddington Station … the Harry Potter books … you know.”
“I don’t read books,” Nish grinned slyly, “remember?”
On and on the train rattled and shook, screeching to a halt every so often, jerking to a start again. The girls kept calling out the name of each station – “Notting Hill Gate!” “Kensington!” “Victoria Station!” “St. James’s Park!”- and Travis, with his eyes closed, imagined how much his grandmother would enjoy this. She was forever reading English mysteries, forever talking about Agatha Christie and Miss Marple and pushing them on Travis when he was up at the cottage. She would have loved this. It was like travelling through the pages of one of her books.
The train reached Westminster and they all piled out just as Big Ben struck the half-hour. The sun was shining down warm and bright – an unlikely day to have back in Canada for November, Travis thought. They seemed to have come up out of the Underground into the height of summer holidays: crowds everywhere, tourists with cameras, uniformed schoolchildren being led by tight-lipped, backward-walking teachers shouting at stragglers, older people wearing colourful arm bands to identify them for their tour guides, dark-suited businessmen looking as if they wished they could stab their way through the crowds with their umbrellas, and street vendors hawking everything from miniature Big Bens to bobbies’ helmets and ice cream.
Nish already had a cone in each hand by the time Travis reached the top of the stairs and stepped out, blinking, into the sunshine.
“Stereo!” Nish shouted, and raised both treats to his mouth so he could lick them at the same time.
Mr. Dillinger had his big guidebook out and pointed to the various sights: Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, the giant London Eye ferris wheel turning high on the other side
of the Thames, the beginnings of still-green St. James’s Park, Whitehall – where, Muck jumped in, “Churchill ran the War Room” – and, of course, Westminster Abbey, with its manicured lawns and high grey stone steeples.
Muck and Mr. Dillinger let the Owls enjoy their treats, then led the team on a tour of the Abbey with a young priest who said he had relatives in Halifax and wondered if perhaps any of the players knew them.
He told them, in far too much detail, the history of the church, how there had been churches on this site since the eighth century, though the present building had been started in 1050 by Edward the Confessor.
“Last person in the world I’d hang around with,” whispered Nish in that strange voice of his that carried like a shout. All the Owls giggled, Nish blushed, and Muck gave him a sharp look while the tour carried on.
Travis had never seen such a celebration of death. Back home there were cemeteries, but no one in Tamarack had anything like some of the monuments on display in the Abbey. Nor did anyone in Canada, as far as he knew, get buried in the floor and covered with a massive slab of stone, with a brass plate over it telling visitors who, exactly, they were walking over.
They were shown the graves – or tombs, as the priest called them – of a dozen or more kings and queens.
“Why’s everyone named Henry?” Nish whispered loudly at one point. “Couldn’t they think of any other names?”
Muck shot him another look, but Nish was on a roll.
He suggested that the choir practising in the main part of the Abbey could do with an electric guitar and drums. He pretended to gag when they were shown through Poet’s Corner. He thought the wooden Coronation Chair – “Made in 1300,” the young priest said, “and every monarch since has been crowned on it” – looked like an outhouse seat waiting for the hole to be cut in it.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5 Page 18