Jay Versus the Saxophone of Doom

by Kara Kootstra

  “Of course, sir,” Adams says sweetly, shooting me a look and then walking away with his teammates.

  “Did you hear the buzzer? It’s second period,” Stan says to me, taking another swig from his can.

  “Already? Listen, I’m starting again this period…and I just need to fix my elbow pad,” I whine, giving him my best version of puppy-dog eyes.

  “All right, all right. Hurry up. I’ll make sure they delay it a couple more minutes,” Stan assures me.

  “Thanks, Stan, you’re the best,” I say, running into the dressing room.

  I quickly pull off my jersey, readjust the pad, and move my arms around to make sure I’ve fixed the problem. Everything feels comfortable, so I stick my jersey back on and bolt out the door, one arm still being pulled through the sleeve. When I get back into the rink, Stan is talking to my coach, who obviously doesn’t even realize I am not on the ice yet, and I slide on, undetected.

  The whistle blows. The puck is dropped. Time for us to defend our lead.

  CHAPTER 12

  I wish I could tell you that we held our lead and I scored two more goals and it was BIGGEST VICTORY IN THE LEAGUE. But in actuality, we tied the Stars 3–3, which wasn’t the desired outcome but is still pretty awesome, considering that they’re the league champions. Most of all, I was happy that I didn’t have to listen to #8 and crew brag about a win. So I’ll take the tie for now, but I fully plan on schooling them next time we play. In fact, I look forward to it.

  But I’m not thinking about any of that right now. Because today is the very first day of Christmas Break. Let me write that again for effect: CHRISTMAS BREAK. My school project is finished and we actually got an almost-perfect mark on it, so having Kaylee in our group maybe wasn’t the worst thing ever after all. (But I will never admit that to the guys. I will deny it to the grave.) I have also successfully made REAL noises out of my saxophone. I know, it might not seem like a big deal, but you forget that I will soon have to play it in front of the whole class, which is still stressing me out, MAJORLY. Anyway, like I said, I don’t have to think about any of that right now. I have two weeks off from everything, even from hockey, which kind of sucks, but it’s not like I won’t still be playing on my own. The point is, I have two weeks to do whatever I want. Two weeks of hanging out, staying up late, and sleeping in. Nothing to worry about. Nothing I have to get done. And when does all of this nonstop fun and relaxation start? Well, my friend, it starts right—

  “Kids? Could you come down here for a minute? Your father and I would like to talk you.”

  —after this. I’m sure it won’t take long. Mom is probably going to “lay down the law” about how we need to be in at a reasonable hour and not make a mess of the house and blah blah blah.

  My brother and I both come out of our rooms at the same time, and Dylan looks over at me with a raised eyebrow and a slight grin. As is our tradition, we run to the staircase to see who can make it down first. We have been playing this game for years, ever since we realized that our bedroom doors are exactly the same distance from the stairs. So far it has resulted in a broken arm, numerous nosebleeds, a few sprained ankles, and one black eye. But for some reason, not even physical injuries (and certainly not our mom’s pleading) discourage us from our ongoing competition.

  On this particular occasion, I manage to take the lead for the first couple of stairs, but Dylan grabs my arm and shoves past me. I grab the back of his hoodie to slow him down and try to push my way around, but he blocks me and then puts me in a headlock.

  “C’mon, little bro…not gonna happen,” Dylan says, aggressively rubbing the top of my head, which is a total pet peeve of mine. I struggle to get free, but he’s got a good hold on me.

  “Dy…Dylan, let go. Seriously, I can’t breathe. I give up.”

  He lets me go, a satisfied look on his face, and I put my hand to my neck as if trying to soothe it.

  “You are so gullible,” I say then, running past him and jumping down the last two steps to our front hallway. Dylan is right behind me and is about to grab me again, but Mom comes around the corner and he stops in his tracks.

  “There you two are. Honestly, how long does it take to go down the stairs? And where is Jodie? Jodie? Jodie! I am serious, I want you downstairs right now,” my mom says.

  Jodie appears at the top of the stairs, holding her hand over her cell phone. “I’m on the phone, Mom! Honestly, can’t I just finish one conversation without people interrupting me?”

  “I don’t know, Jodie. Perhaps I should stop paying your cell phone bill and then there won’t be any phone calls for me to interrupt.” My mom is crossing her arms with a don’t-mess-with-me look.

  “Wow…you got told, Jodie,” Dylan exclaims, laughing.

  Jodie rolls her eyes and lets out an exasperated sigh before making her way down the stairs, and the four of us go into the living room, where my dad is sitting.

  Wait a minute. Something’s not right. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. What is in front of him, is that a…a MAP? That can mean only one thing. But they wouldn’t. They couldn’t be planning a family trip during Christmas Break…MY CHRISTMAS BREAK! No, it’s not possible. There must be another explanation. Just calm down and let your dad explain that the map in front of him is there because…

  “We thought we might take a short family vacation during Christmas Break this year!” my dad announces.

  NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

  “A family vacation? What? Where?” Jodie whines, slumping down in her chair.

  “Well, we thought we might drive to Indiana on the twenty-sixth to see Auntie Laurel and the boys. We haven’t visited them since they moved there, and we thought it might be nice for them to see some family around the holidays,” my mom explains, using an annoyingly chipper voice. I suppose she thinks it will make it sound more fun.

  “Indiana? How far is Indiana?” Dylan asks, a question that results in a quick, hard punch on the leg from me. You never, EVER ask my dad how far it is to get somewhere. In about a minute flat, he has opened the map and is describing in painstaking detail the route from Parry Sound to Indiana.

  Let me give you the short version: it takes eight hours to drive to Indiana.

  I can tell by the extensive marking on the map that this trip is as good as done, so I don’t even put up a fight. One day after Christmas I will be in a van with my family on the way to Indiana. Do you know what I won’t be doing? Having a CHRISTMAS BREAK!

  We hardly have any time to enjoy our presents since we have to leave on our trip the day after Christmas. I am especially out of luck since my big present was a new hockey net for the driveway (we bought the old one at a garage sale years ago and it’s plastic, something for a little kid to play with) and, obviously, it is far from portable.

  Our road trip starts out being completely predictable in every way.

  Dylan and Jodie fight over where they will sit, Mom keeps pestering us to go to the bathroom (because, apparently, we are all still five years old), and Dad gives us minute-by-minute updates about how long we have until we leave. I’m still packing, which for me means stuffing random items into a bag and hoping I don’t forget something important. (Like underwear. Which totally happened once.) I only come out of my room when Dad gives the “five minutes until liftoff” warning. I’m not joking. That is literally what he said.

  We pile into the van, Mom finally settling the seating arrangement with some kind of trade-off system, and I put my earbuds in so that I can do some gaming to pass the time. I know I shouldn’t get too comfortable, as the inevitable is about to happen. We aren’t in the car for even a full hour before it begins.

  “All right, Roberts family! You know what time it is!” I can hear my mother even though my game is just about at full volume (she’s a loud-talker, remember?) and, unfortunately, I do know what time it is.

  Time for ROBERTS FAMILY JEOPARDY.

  My mom started this game on one of our first family road trips to help pass the time,
and every vacation it gets more and more elaborate. A few years ago she started preplanning her categories on index cards, and then last year she bought battery-operated buzzers so that we can all buzz in our answers. It is, in short, all kinds of ridiculous. But she works so hard on it, and it’s not like we’re monsters, so we have no choice but to go along. Even Jodie doesn’t give attitude about it.

  My mom hands us our buzzers, which each light up a different color on this board-thingy that she has programmed them into.

  “Okay, a reminder that all the categories relate somehow to our family, and you must answer in the form of a question. The categories are: Past Pets, Fashion Faux Pas, Silly Stories, Hospital Horrors, and Family Member Mania. Jay, since you’re the youngest, you get to pick the first category.”

  “Uh…I’ll pick, um…Past Pets for 200?”

  “Excellent choice. This pet escaped from its cage and was never seen again.”

  BUZZ.

  “Green. That’s Dylan.”

  “Who was Hammy the Hamster?”

  “That is correct, for 200 points, and it’s your board,” my mom says.

  I am fully aware that Hammy was, in actuality, found a few weeks later in one of the kitchen cupboards. My parents never told me because I took it exceptionally hard when he escaped, and they didn’t exactly find him…alive. A few years later, Jodie let me in on the family secret, but for some reason I kept pretending I didn’t know, and now it seems weird to let the cat out of the bag. Or the hamster out of the cage. You know what I mean.

  “I’ll take…what was the Fashion Fo something?”

  “Fashion Faux Pas for 200?”

  “Yeah, I’ll take that one.”

  Mom shuffles through her index cards until she gets the right one. “Your father wore these two items together at Jodie’s grade eight graduation.”

  BUZZ.

  “That was red. Okay, Jodie?”

  “What are sandals and socks?”

  “Another correct answer for 200 points,” my mom exclaims, turning back toward my dad and flashing him a grin.

  “Hey, that is a completely acceptable look. I stand by my fashion decision,” my dad says firmly, but I can see him smiling in the rearview mirror.

  My mom shakes her head. “Moving on, Jodie, it’s your board.”

  “I’ll do Hospital Horrors for 200.”

  “Okay, this is what the X-ray showed Jay had swallowed on his third—”

  BUZZ. BUZZ.

  “That was close, but Dylan had it.”

  “A Ninja Turtle candle.”

  “I’m sorry, that is incorrect, Dylan. The next person to buzz in was blue. Jay?”

  “WHAT IS a Ninja Turtle candle?”

  “That is correct, Jay. You are now on the board.”

  “C’mon…seriously? The stupid question rule? You gave one to Jay last year when he forgot,” Dylan argues. “This is totally unfair!”

  Here’s a funny thing about Roberts Family Jeopardy. It’s the lamest, most ridiculous game in the whole world.

  But we all still want to WIN the lamest, most ridiculous game in the whole world.

  Go figure.

  CHAPTER 13

  I survive the trip (just barely) and the first month back to school isn’t altogether terrible. No group projects, tutoring has been going all right, and by the end of the month I have successfully made more than ONE sound out of the saxophone, but I wouldn’t say I’m playing anything that sounds remotely like music. Ben is super nice about my very mediocre (that might still be a nice way of describing my playing) saxophone skills. Fortunately, I did pretty well when we were group-tested in our instrument sections (and by “did pretty well” I mean that I moved my fingers on the keys and pretended to play along).

  It’s not my fault I’m bad at this. I mean, there’s just so much stuff to learn. I don’t know if you know anything about music but it’s written in its own language. There are all these dots and sticks that go up and down on a bunch of lines, and after you stare at them long enough, they move. I swear! And if you look at them even longer, they spell out things like:

  and

  and

  and

  It’s enough to make a guy go nuts. Or, at the very least, fail a test. But the fact is, I’m going to have to do this thing, so unless I want to die of embarrassment (that’s a real thing), I need to make some major headway. So tonight, I practice.

  Just me and my saxophone.

  A man and his brass.

  A little quality time with the old note machine.

  Some one-on-one with…

  Fine. I’m stalling. You would be too if your mother had complimented you on your “wonderful rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

  I was playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  —

  GAME TIP #11: When you are getting ready to blow out the candles on your birthday cake and feel like you have a sneeze coming on, but you’re not sure if it’s really a sneeze or just one of those feels-like-a-sneeze-but-then-doesn’t-come-out-and-just-leaves-your-nose-feeling-kind-of-itchy things…play it safe. Turn away from the cake.

  Standing in front of my mirror, I try to remember all the things Ben has been coaching me to do. Hold the instrument correctly. Breathe right. Ombashoo…ombashore…man, I really thought I had that one. I wet the reed (that’s right, Kaylee Gifford, Jay Roberts knows what a reed is), take in a deep breath, and blow. A few notes come out, accompanied by a whole lot of squeaks and sputtering. It doesn’t sound as terrible as when I started, but it also doesn’t sound even close to good. I take a deep breath to get ready to attempt the second line, but suddenly my door bursts open.

  “What’s up, little bro?” Dylan makes his way over to my bed and plops down.

  “Hey, man, ever hear of knocking?” I ask him, annoyed that I am being interrupted.

  “No, I haven’t,” he responds, feigning confusion. “What is this knocking, and how would one go about it?” he continues, leaning in toward me as if expecting an answer.

  “You are so funny. Seriously, you should think about leaving my room so you can show everybody just how funny you really are. It would be unfair to the world to waste a gift like that,” I say, gesturing toward the door.

  “All right, all right, truce. A couple of us are goin’ down to the bay for a quick game. You coming, or what?”

  “I don’t know…I mean, I really have to practice—” I start to say.

  “C’mon, don’t be lame. Perfect conditions out there. Mom already said it’s okay.”

  Now, I really do need to practice the saxophone. I do. But let’s say someone were to tell you that you could have a plate of steamed broccoli or a chocolate bar. You should eat the broccoli. You know you should eat the broccoli. Your body even WANTS to eat the broccoli. It would be happy to ingest all the wonderful nutrients and fiber that would come from the broccoli. But here’s the simple truth:

  Chocolate bar beats broccoli.

  And before I can change my mind, I have put away my saxophone and grabbed my hockey gear. For pond hockey, you basically take only three things: a pair of skates, a helmet, and a hockey stick. You don’t need any of the padding you wear for regulation games, and my dad says in the “old days” they didn’t even wear helmets. That’s nuts.

  By the time we get to the bay, I realize why Dylan said it would be a quick game. We don’t have much daylight left, and we need to move fast to try to get in as much play time as possible. There are only six players including Dylan and me, so we quickly divide into teams and lay a couple of wood stumps on the ice—probably left from someone else’s game—to serve as our goalposts. When there are more players we might put someone in to play goalie, but not when it’s three-on-three. In this kind of game you’re playing just about every position. And when the other team steals the puck and starts skating toward your net, and you need to get back to play defense? Well, then you find out just how fast you can really go.

  It’s calm, no wind, and
I’m happy not to have to fight against that invisible force. We skate effortlessly from end to end, passing the puck between teammates when we need to, shooting the puck when we think we have a shot to make. Without an actual net to stop it, a particularly hard shot can sometimes glide way beyond the markers, so we have to pause and let someone go after it before we can start again.

  As I glide up the ice, I can’t help thinking that Bobby Orr once played hockey right on this lake. I wonder if he felt the same way I feel about it, like there is nothing else in the world but the feel of the ice beneath your skates and a puck on your stick. I don’t know if it’s lame or not…but I kind of like to think he did.

  We play until the puck becomes barely distinguishable on the ice and our eyes are tired of squinting to try to make out our wooden markers. When the game is finished, we take off our skates, tie them together, and put them over our shoulders to walk home. The six of us walk together, each kid stopping when we get to his house with a quick wave or a “Later.” Dylan and I have the last house on the route, and after we get in the front door, we say nothing to each other as we take off our coats and boots.

  Pond hockey is one of the greatest games on the face of the earth.

  And it’s also exhausting. I barely manage to put back a peanut butter sandwich and get a bit of homework done before crashing on my bed. I’m asleep the moment my head touches the pillow.

  “All right, everyone. The bus has arrived for the field trip, so please put on your outdoor attire and make a single-file line at the door. Please do not bring anything else on the bus with you or it will be confiscated.” Mrs. Vanderson is standing in the classroom doorway, looking slightly frantic as she counts a bunch of permission forms while trying to put on her coat.