Reese studied the genie’s face.
“Fascinating,” she said. “What do you think would happen if you got farther apart than that?”
Fon-Rahm and Theo just stared at her.
Parker said, “Let’s hope we never have to find out.”
19
THE PUCK SLAMMED INTO THE glass right in front of Parker’s face. Theo and Reese both flinched, but Parker kept right on smiling. Fon-Rahm looked like he would rather be back in his lamp.
“And this is what, exactly?” the genie asked, gesturing to the ice stretched out in front of them. “Another football field?”
“Close! Good, Rommy!” Parker said, nodding his head approvingly. “Actually, what this is is a hockey rink. People put metal blades on their shoes, like so.” He held up his new ice skates. “So they can go really fast, and then they use sticks to push a hard piece of plastic into a net.” He gestured at the goal.
“Ah. It is a waste of time.”
“Nailed it in one,” said Reese.
Parker shrugged. “Maybe. What I just said is literally one hundred percent of everything I know about hockey.”
The rink was vast, with high ceilings and mainly empty bleachers lining the sides. The floors off the ice were concrete and covered with black rubber mats. The plexiglass topping the barrier that surrounded the rink was cloudy and scratched. It was a classic rink, open since the fifties, and it had been home to countless hockey games, birthday parties, skating lessons, and first dates. There was a snack bar that sold Snickers bars and popcorn, and a pro shop where you could buy gear and get your skates sharpened.
It was so cold inside the building that the kids could see their breath. Fon-Rahm, of course, didn’t breathe.
“Then why are we here?” he asked.
Theo said, “Because those jerks are here.”
He pointed at the guys finishing up their hockey practice on the ice as they gathered in the center of the rink and took off their helmets. They were the jocks that had tormented Parker on his first day of school. The goalie took off his mask and shook the sweat out of his hair. Then he turned to the bleachers and nodded at a group of bundled-up eighth-grade girls watching from the bleachers. Caitlyn Masters, the redhead Evan had been after all year, turned and whispered something into the ear of a friend. Evan smiled to himself. Caitlyn was having a party later that night and, if he played his cards right, he just might be able to get her alone for a couple of minutes.
“Why, hello, Evan,” Parker said.
Theo shook his head. “Let’s grab a seat,” he told Reese. “This is gonna be good.”
The Robert Frost Junior High hockey coach was a patient guy. He liked kids, mostly, and he really liked hockey. He had, in fact, briefly played minor league hockey for the rough-and-tumble Syracuse Crunch, but he spent a lot of time on the bench, and he hung up his skates when he realized that if he couldn’t start for the Crunch he was probably never going to play left wing for the Canucks. He brooded about it for a few months, but then he met Debbie and bought the place in New Hampshire, and he never looked back. He kept in shape by running laps at the school, he built a deck for the house all by himself, and things had worked out pretty well at the tire shop. Plus, he got to spend his free time teaching kids the game he loved. Not so bad at all. Coach Decker was that rare guy who was completely content with his life. Let the other idiots break their necks trying to get rich and run the rat race. He thought he had it all, and on occasion, he acted like he thought he had it all.
He blew his whistle and skated out to his boys. “All right, you doorknobs, let’s wrap it up,” he said.
Parker finished lacing up his skates and turned to the genie. “Okay. Wait till I give you the signal.”
“What is the signal?” Fon-Rahm asked, genuinely confused.
“Um, I’ll go like this.” Parker shot imaginary guns with both sets of fingers.
“Ah. And where shall I be?”
“Close! The whole effect will be ruined if my head explodes.”
“I concede the point.”
Parker put on heavy gloves and hobbled to an opening in the wall. He had been on skates once before, with his father, but he was just a little kid then. The only thing he remembered about that whole day was the cup of hot cocoa his dad had bought him after. That was right before his dad took “the job” that turned into “the trial” that turned into “the jail.”
Now he placed his left foot gingerly on the ice. It immediately got away from him, and he had to wave his arms in the air to keep from going straight down.
“Poor Parker,” said Reese, settling into her seat.
“Yeah,” said Theo. “He’s not the most coordinated guy in the world.”
Parker balanced himself on the wall. “Here we go,” he said, and he pushed off.
“Oh, come on. What the”—Coach Decker glared at him, so Evan changed his sentence midstream—“heck is this jerk doing?”
The other guys snickered.
“Hi!” said Parker, slipping on the ice. “Whoops! Sorry!”
“Can I help you?” asked the coach.
“I’m Parker Quarry? I’m here to try out for the team!”
“Are you kidding me?” said Evan.
“All right, guys, just...I’ll handle this.” Coach Decker turned to Parker. “Tryouts were last week. We’re already practicing.”
“Yeah, but I’m new! I just found out about it.”
“I would love to let you try out, really, but it just wouldn’t be fair to the other...”
“Let him try out!” said Evan.
Coach Decker sighed. “Evan, come on.”
“No, he’s right! We should give him a shot. You don’t know. He might be the next Sid Crosby!”
“More like the next...” Evan’s friend searched his brain for a good person to compare Parker to, but he had nothing. “The next loser.”
“Yeah, um, it’s Parker, right?” said the coach. “I don’t mean to be harsh, but have you ever played before?”
“Nope. But I was watching you guys, and I have to say, it doesn’t look all that tough.”
A wise guy. Coach Decker knew the type, and he knew how to deal with it.
“All right. You want to try out, let’s do it.”
“Great!”
Caitlyn Masters and the other girls in the bleachers laughed as Parker lurched on the ice. He managed to stay upright, but just barely.
The coach touched Evan on his shoulder. “Get in the goal.” Evan put his mask on and skated gleefully to his spot. “Parker, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.” He put his hand on Parker’s back, causing another near wipeout, and dropped a puck in front of Parker’s feet. “Evan’s going to stand in front of the goal, and all you have to do is give this puck a whack with your...” He saw that Parker didn’t have a stick. “Coleman! Give Parker your stick.”
Coleman handed it over. “Ah, man, it’s brand-new. I got it for confirmation.”
Parker took the stick and used it as a prop to keep himself standing.
“Hit the puck into the net,” said the coach. “That’s it. You make three goals, you’re on the team. Do you think you can do that?”
“I’ll do my best, Coach!”
“All right. Good luck!”
Parker grinned and held out his hands out awkwardly, trying to signal Fon-Rahm, but was stymied by his bulky gloves.
The coach said, “Um, what are you doing?”
Parker scanned the arena in search of Fon-Rahm. “I’m, uh, shooting you with imaginary guns.”
“Why?”
“It’s, um, it’s a signal to...for...” Parker broke into a cold sweat. The girls in the stands laughed and pointed as he craned his neck looking for his genie. Without Fon-Rahm, Parker was just a moron in for the humiliation of his life. He would never live it down. Where could the genie have gone? Finally, Parker leaned his head back and spotted Fon-Rahm twenty feet in the air directly above him. Parker waved to the genie madly. This ca
used him to lose his balance for good, and he went down hard on the ice.
“Ouch!” said Theo.
“That’s going to leave a bruise,” said Reese.
The girls roared, and Evan grinned behind his mask. This was almost too good.
Parker struggled back to his feet, peeled off his gloves, and gave Fon-Rahm the signal just as his legs went out from under him and he felt himself going into what would be an incredibly uncomfortable split.
This time there was no missing it. The genie nodded almost imperceptibly, and Parker’s legs stopped moving out. He straightened himself up and slowly put his gloves back on. He grabbed the stick, held it out to gauge its balance, and slapped it down on the ice.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go!”
With that, Parker swung the stick back and drilled a shot bullet-straight at Evan. It came in so fast that Evan, scared, dove out of the way. The puck caught the center of the net and dropped to the ice.
The arena was silent. Then a lone voice came from Caitlyn Masters.
“Holy crap!”
Evan pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed the puck from the net and slapped it back to Parker. “I thought you never played before!”
“Yeah!” said Parker. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it!”
Theo looked over at Reese. She was watching Parker, rapt. “I can really skate, you know,” he said, turning red the second the words left his mouth. “I mean, without using magic.”
Reese smiled at him. “I’ll bet,” she said.
Coach Decker motioned to three of his players. “Get in there and play some D.” They skated out, ready for Parker’s next attempt. Parker looked them over and began to skate in slow, lazy, clockwise circles. Then, when he was good and ready, he broke fast to his right, his skates spitting frost as he deked past one defender after another, finally speeding past the goal and slipping the puck in, untouched, past Evan’s reaching pads.
The girls started to cheer, and Parker raised his hands in triumph as he took a graceful victory lap on one leg.
Theo couldn’t help but smile at the kid’s bravado. Theo himself would never be able to muster that kind of guts.
“All right. Everybody on the ice,” said the coach. “Everybody. Whitten, Spinelli, everybody!”
The entire team took to the ice. Parker raised his eyes to Fon-Rahm and broke into a huge smile. So. Much. Fun.
When Coach Decker blew his whistle, guys came in from all sides. With the genie hovering unseen ten feet overhead, Parker glided elegantly down the ice, faking one way and then going another, flipping the puck with amazing dexterity as he literally skated circles around his defenders. He saw two Robert Frost Fightin’ Poets coming at him from opposite directions, and put on the brakes so quickly that they ran into each other. He stopped and actually gave the puck away to one of the eighth graders, only to steal it back and leave the kid flat on his butt on the ice. He destroyed an entire team, little by little making his way to the goal. When he got there, he raised his stick for a slap shot. Evan buried his head in his hands, waiting terrified for the shot to blow past him. Instead, Parker tapped the puck with the utmost gentleness, and it slid delicately into the goal.
The jocks deflated. They were beaten—worse, they were dismantled—by a seventh grader. From California.
Parker skated balletically to the wall. Before he climbed off the ice, Coach Decker grabbed him.
“Where are you going? You made the shots. You’re on the team! Parker, I’m telling you, I have been around hockey my entire life, and I have never seen anyone play like you. You’re going to be the greatest of all time. Better than Robitaille! Better than Guy Lafleur or Bobby Orr or Espo! Better than Gretzky! Evan, get this kid a jersey!”
Evan hung his head and skated for the bench. He wouldn’t be going to Caitlyn Masters’s party tonight. He might not even be going to school tomorrow.
“No thanks, Coach,” said Parker as he joined his giggling friends outside the rink.
“What? Why not?”
Parker shrugged. “I think I might take up basketball.”
Theo and Reese laughed out loud as Parker unlaced his skates, but Coach Decker was crestfallen. His life was changed forever. He was no longer content, and he never would be. He had lost the greatest hockey player in history.
20
THE NEXT FEW DAYS WERE the best of Parker’s life.
He still had to go to school, sure, and with Fon-Rahm hanging around mopey, unseen, and always within ten or twenty yards, that was a bit of a drag. Still, the genie came in handy. He produced correct test answers with only a whispered wish from Parker’s lips. He gave Parker the ability to dunk a basketball in gym, stunning the teacher into a stupored silence. He guided Parker’s brush in art class, producing a perfect likeness of the hottest girl in school. For the first time in years, Parker really enjoyed the process of learning.
The best stuff, though, happened after school was done for the day. Parker, Theo, and Reese had a blast coming up with new and increasingly more ridiculous uses for Fon-Rahm’s power. They stocked up on all the trendy gadgets they could stuff into their closets without getting caught. They jumped off a bridge a hundred feet over the Merrimack River, using only Fon-Rahm’s magic as bungee cords. Parker laughed as his beloved Dodgers crushed the Boston Red Sox 31–0 at Fenway, hitting home run after home run directly into his and Theo’s gloves in the stands. They tore through the woods, playing paintball on souped-up Segways. Parker learned Spanish, Italian, Greek, and even won an argument with Reese in Latin. When Theo wished for an entire outfit of Ed Hardy clothes, Reese and Parker laughed so hard they thought they might pass out. They had a never-ending supply of milk shakes and Doritos and tacos without getting sick. The only things holding them back were the parents, aunts, and teachers, who would suspect something was seriously wrong if they didn’t keep everything hush-hush, and the constant scowl on Fon-Rahm’s face that reminded them that the genie was not sharing in their fun. At all.
Parker, Theo, and Fon-Rahm walked into Theo’s house. They had spent the afternoon watching Theo use his new instant guitar-shredding talent to shut up the guy in the guitar store before dropping Reese off and heading home.
“Maybe we should leave him in the barn,” Theo said, nodding at the genie.
Parker poured himself a glass of water.
“I’d just as soon keep him close. You never know when we might need him for something.”
Theo’s dad called to them from the next room. “Theo, Parker, come in here for a minute.”
Parker and Theo exchanged looks before walking into the living room. Fon-Rahm stayed by the door.
Uncle Kelsey was sitting in a battered but insanely comfortable old easy chair.
“We have a visitor,” he said. “Theo, you remember Professor Ellison.”
Professor Ellison sat with her back to Parker and Theo on the couch. She turned to the kids.
“Hello, Theo,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”
Busted, thought Parker. Busted hard. Busted bad. Busted in new ways he had never even been busted before. Busted, busted, busted.
Uncle Kelsey said, “That’s Parker, my wife’s sister’s boy. He’s staying with us for a while.”
Professor Ellison smiled. If Parker had expected a rumpled old academic, he couldn’t have been more wrong. She was an elegant older woman, maybe sixty years old, with long limbs and expensive clothes. Her eyes were a cold gray that matched her perfectly styled hair. She owned the room. The couch was old and covered with a poorly made quilt, but it might as well have been a chaise longue at a five-star hotel’s pool.
“It’s nice to have family,” she said.
“The professor and I were just talking about security at the university. She was telling me that some things have turned up missing from her office.”
“Really?” Parker said. “That’s weird.”
“What did you say was taken, Professor?”
“I don’t know abo
ut taken,” she said. “Let’s just say it was misplaced. It’s nothing to get too worked up about, anyway. Just a worthless artifact someone dug up a few miles from here.”
She stared at the boys.
“A metal canister, about yay big. I don’t suppose you lovely boys have seen it floating around, have you?”
Busted busted busted busted busted
Theo stammered. “Us? No. Nope.”
“It was a long shot, I admit, but you never know. Sometimes missing objects turn up in the strangest places.”
Parker felt himself turning red. When the professor suddenly stood, both he and his cousin jumped.
Professor Ellison shook hands with Uncle Kelsey.
“Thank you, Mr. Merritt. We’ll discuss the new locks and so forth at your convenience.”
“Whenever you’re free.”
“Such a charming man.” She turned to Theo and Parker. “Theo. It was nice to meet you, Parker.”
Parker didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until Professor Ellison walked to the door and he let it out.
“Oh, Theo,” she said, turning back around. “I almost forgot. You might need this.”
The professor reached into the Louis Vuitton bag she carried with her everywhere and handed Theo a piece of paper. It was one of his old science homework assignments. His name was right on top. It must have fallen out of his bag when everything went flying in the professor’s office. He got a C on it.
Professor Ellison stared at him. “Study hard, Theo. The world needs more great thinkers.”
As she walked past Fon-Rahm on her way out the door, Professor Ellison froze. Impossibly, she knew that something was there. She whirled on Parker and Theo, furious.
“You let him out?” she screamed. “Are you insane?”
Parker and Theo turned white.
Uncle Kelsey was confused.
“Um, what?”
Professor Ellison took a deep breath and got herself together.
“Sorry. I thought the...cat had escaped.”
Uncle Kelsey said, “Oh. We don’t, uh, have a cat.”
Rebels of the Lamp, Book 1 Page 9