The Rookie Blue Jay

by David A. Kelly

  Mike walked over to the window. He motioned for Kate to join him. Together they searched the bull pen for activity.

  “Nothing there,” Kate said. “It’s probably still too early.”

  “It’s not too early to plan for tonight,” Mike whispered. “We can check again after your mom is asleep!”

  “Good idea,” Kate whispered.

  Kate’s mother finally finished working and offered to take them to the pool. They changed into their bathing suits and rode the elevator down to the lower level. Mike and Kate spent an hour splashing around and racing one another. Then the three of them played a game of tag in the pool.

  Afterward, they each picked a different elevator and had an elevator race back to their floor. Mike thought he was going to win. Then someone got on his elevator to ride up one stop. Kate and Mrs. Hopkins popped out of their elevators at exactly the same time—it was a tie!

  “Time for bed,” Mrs. Hopkins said as they entered their room.

  Mike and Kate put their pajamas on and brushed their teeth. Kate climbed into her bed and Mike slipped into his sleeping bag. Mrs. Hopkins let them read for fifteen minutes while she got ready for bed.

  “We’ve got to get plenty of rest tonight,” Mrs. Hopkins said. “Tomorrow’s a big day. We’re going to the Hockey Hall of Fame, and then we have a baseball game at night.”

  Mrs. Hopkins switched off the lamp. As soon as the light went out, Mike pretended to snore extra loudly until Kate tossed a pillow at him.

  Mike sat straight up. “Hey!” he said. “I was sleeping. Couldn’t you hear?”

  Mrs. Hopkins switched the lamp back on.

  Kate grabbed the pillow back. “The only thing I could hear was you pretending to be asleep!” she said.

  Mrs. Hopkins clicked off the light. “Let’s try this again,” she said. “It’s time for everyone to go to sleep.”

  This time, Mike and Kate rested quietly, waiting patiently for Mrs. Hopkins to fall asleep. It seemed to take forever, but after about thirty minutes, Kate hung her head over the side of the bed.

  “I think she’s asleep,” Kate whispered to Mike, who was still curled up in his sleeping bag.

  Kate had just started to climb out of bed when something caught her eye. Her jaw dropped open. She tapped Mike’s shoulder and pointed to the corner of the room.

  A blue light was glowing on the table!

  Slap Shot

  “What is it?” Mike whispered. “Some kind of giant firefly?”

  “Maybe it’s a night-light,” Kate whispered back. The soft blue light wasn’t very bright, but it was definitely glowing.

  Mike and Kate crept over to the table to find out what the blue light was. Once they got closer, they could easily tell.

  It was the hockey puck they’d found at the game!

  “I’d forgotten about this,” Kate said. She picked up the puck and looked at it closely.

  “Me too,” Mike said. “Where’s the light coming from?”

  Kate turned the puck over. There wasn’t a lightbulb in the puck. It was simply glowing.

  “You know what this looks like?” Kate asked. “Remember that Frisbee I got for my birthday? It glows in the dark. I charge it up under a light during the day and then I can see it at night. This must be a glow-in-the-dark hockey puck!”

  Suddenly, Kate’s mother rustled her bedcovers. Mike and Kate froze. Kate slipped the glowing hockey puck behind her back. They held their breath.

  Kate’s mother moved her pillow a little and turned over. She was still asleep.

  Kate bent down and hid the glowing hockey puck under Mike’s sleeping bag. Then she motioned for Mike to follow her as she crept over to the window. They pressed their noses up against the glass, but there were no lights in the bull pen tonight. They waited for a little while, but nothing happened.

  Mike shifted from one foot to the other and almost lost his balance. As he caught himself, his elbow banged into the frame of the window. He mouthed a silent “Ow!” to Kate and rubbed his elbow. But Kate shook her head. She put her finger to her lips and quietly opened the window.

  Mike and Kate leaned out the window into the darkened stadium. The red EXIT lights glowed around the edges, but the field was dark. There was definitely no movement in the bull pen below them. Their sleuthing seemed like a bust again.

  Kate was about to close the window when they heard something off to their left. It was soft but distinct.

  Swish … plunk.

  Swish … plunk.

  Kate and Mike craned their necks to look all the way over to their left.

  Flashes of blue streaked across the edge of the field.

  “It’s the lights!” Mike whispered. “Just like last night.”

  “They must be in the visitors’ bull pen tonight,” Kate whispered. “That’s why we didn’t see them until now.”

  Mike and Kate watched for a while. Then Kate nudged Mike. “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.” She closed the window slowly and then tiptoed across the room to the table near the hotel room door. Mike followed.

  Kate picked up a flat key card from the table. She slipped the door open quietly. Mike pointed at her sleeping mother, but Kate shook her head. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

  Once they were outside the room, Kate closed the door carefully so it wouldn’t make a loud click.

  Mike and Kate stood in the hotel hallway in their pajamas. All the other doors were closed. It was late, so everything was quiet.

  “Are you crazy?” Mike asked. “What if your mother wakes up?”

  “We won’t be long,” Kate said. “And she won’t wake up. She’s a heavy sleeper.”

  Mike looked around at the empty hallway and closed doors. “Okay, now what?” he asked.

  “We just need to find a window that overlooks the visitors’ bull pen,” Kate said. “Then we can figure out what’s going on. Maybe there’s a window down there.”

  Kate ran softly to the far end of the hallway. But it dead-ended with nothing but doors on both sides.

  Mike stared at the wall. “I’ve got an idea, too,” he said. “It’s your turn to follow me!”

  Mike raced back down the hallway to the elevator. He hopped on with Kate when the elevator came a few seconds later. Mike pushed the button with L on it for the lobby.

  “Maybe there’s a window in the hallway on the far side of the lobby, near the soda machines,” Mike said.

  The elevator stopped. With a bing! the doors slid open, and Mike and Kate walked into the deserted hotel lobby. They had made it halfway across the lobby when a woman in a green uniform came out from behind the front desk. She raised one eyebrow at Kate and Mike.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  Mike and Kate stopped in their tracks. “Um, we were just thinking about looking for, um …,” Mike said.

  The front desk clerk looked down her glasses at them. “Where are your parents?” she asked.

  Kate stepped forward. She tugged on Mike’s baseball pajamas. “My cousin Mike just had a nightmare,” she said. “He dreamt that the visitors’ bull pen was filled with sharks. I was trying to show him it wasn’t so he could get back to sleep.”

  The woman smiled and nodded. “I’ve had a lot of nightmares about the Blue Jays this season, but they’ve never involved sharks,” she said. “I’m afraid there aren’t really any windows that overlook the visitors’ bull pen. But you might be able to catch a glimpse of it from the restaurant windows.” She pointed to their right.

  “Thanks,” Kate said. She grabbed Mike’s arm and pulled him toward the restaurant. “We’ll take a quick peek and get right back to bed!”

  Mike and Kate ducked through the open doors into the darkened restaurant. They ran to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the field.

  “Nice thinking back there,” Mike said. “But maybe next time make the sharks man-eating. That’s even scarier.”

  “The only thing scarier would be if
you had actually thought of something smart back there,” Kate said. “Why am I always the one to rescue us?”

  “Because I’m the one always getting us into trouble,” Mike said. “That’s why we make a good pair!” He held up his hand and waited.

  Kate rolled her eyes but still gave Mike a high five. “See anything?” she asked as she looked out the windows.

  “Nope, this isn’t any better,” Mike said.

  Kate thanked the front desk clerk on the way back to the elevator. Back on their floor, she opened the door to the hotel room quietly. Her mother was still asleep. Mike followed Kate across the room to the window. As they passed his sleeping bag, Mike accidentally kicked the hockey puck that Kate had hidden under it earlier. The puck flashed across the room in a bright blue blur and hit the curtain with a soft thud.

  Kate grabbed Mike’s arm. Her eyes were wide. “That’s it!” she whispered. Kate slid the window open. They craned their heads and looked to the left. Listening closely, they could still hear the same sounds as before.

  Swish … plunk.

  Swish … plunk.

  “You know what that is?” she asked.

  “It’s a ghost light,” Mike said.

  “No!” Kate said. “It’s someone playing hockey! Someone’s hitting glow-in-the-dark hockey pucks with a hockey stick in the bull pens!” She pointed to the visitors’ bull pen on the other side of the outfield. “See? We hear the swish when the person hits the hockey puck with the stick. Then we see it light up as it goes flying. Then it goes plunk when it hits the end of the bull pen.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mike said. “There’s no ice in the bull pens. How could someone hit hockey pucks?”

  “Easy,” Kate said. “Don’t you remember the time last year when we played street hockey? You don’t really need ice to practice. Just some type of flat surface and a net to hit the puck into.”

  Mike and Kate listened to the sound of the hockey player and watched the blue streaks flash across the bull pen until suddenly the lights were gone and the stadium was dark.

  Time Travel

  The next morning after breakfast, Mrs. Hopkins, Kate, and Mike walked a few blocks through Toronto’s downtown to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

  The hall of fame was in a fancy old stone bank building on a corner. Outside the building was a big metal sculpture of a group of kids leaning over an ice rink wall, waiting to play hockey. They wore helmets, big hockey gloves, and shoulder pads and held hockey sticks in their hands.

  Mike ran behind the sculpture and draped his arm over the rink wall, as if he was waiting to take the ice, too. “Aunt Laura, take a picture of me,” he called out.

  Mrs. Hopkins took pictures of both Mike and Kate with the sculpture. Then they went into the hall of fame. Inside, it was a lot like the Baseball Hall of Fame back in Mike and Kate’s hometown of Cooperstown. The museum was filled with exhibits of old equipment, information on famous players and teams, and videos of important hockey games.

  Mrs. Hopkins let Mike and Kate explore the museum on their own. She made a plan to meet them at the entrance in a couple of hours, so they could walk back for the baseball game later that day.

  Mike and Kate studied the floor map and took turns choosing what to look at. Mike really liked the replica of the dressing room for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. He plopped down on one of the long red benches and pretended to lace up a pair of skates. “Come on, Kate,” he growled in a gruff voice. “Put on your skates and help me go out there and win the Stanley Cup!”

  But Mike and Kate’s favorite exhibit was a mini ice rink with a plastic floor. Visitors could use real hockey sticks to take shots with real hockey pucks against a computer-generated goalie. After waiting in line, Mike and Kate each got a turn. At first it looked like Mike was going to win, but Kate made her last three shots and tied with Mike.

  As they were leaving the rink, Kate stopped in front of an exhibit with pictures of winning Stanley Cup teams. Mike pretended to skate back and forth down the hallway. After a while, he skated up to Kate and nudged her. “Come on, Kate,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

  But Kate didn’t move. She was still in front of the wall filled with pictures of the winning Stanley Cup teams. Kate was staring at one picture from thirty-five years ago.

  “Take a look at this,” she said. “It’s impossible!”

  Mike stood next to her. “Um, okay,” he said. “You think they didn’t have cameras back then? That doesn’t seem that impossible to me.”

  Kate shook her head. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Check out the hockey player in the middle of the front row. He’s a time traveler!”

  When Mike leaned in and took a close look, he let out a long, low whistle.

  Right in the middle of the picture, standing behind the Stanley Cup, was a hockey player with bright blue eyes and curly hair. It was Dusty!

  “Dusty is too young,” Kate said. “He couldn’t possibly have played on the Stanley Cup hockey team from thirty-five years ago!”

  Mike studied the photo. The man standing behind the hockey cup looked exactly like Dusty. “I don’t know,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Maybe that explains why Dusty is nervous. He invented a time travel machine! If I did that, I’d use it to travel backward in time to play on all the great teams!”

  Kate crossed her arms. “I’m not sure that’s what’s going on here.” She stared at the picture some more. Below it was a plaque with the names of the hockey players. Kate looked for the names of the players in the first row. She read across the names. Smith, Allendale, Suraci, Martin, Timmons, Lesch.

  Kate poked at the plaque with her finger. “That’s it!” she said, her finger on the name Martin.

  “See! I told you he was time-traveling!” Mike said. “How cool is that?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Kate said. “The reason that man looks like Dusty is because it’s Dusty’s father! See, right here it says his name is Buck Martin. Dusty’s last name is also Martin.”

  “You mean Buck? The guy who rescued my hat at batting practice and Niagara Falls?” Mike asked. “But this guy has hair!” He pointed at the picture.

  “Because he’s thirty-five years older now,” Kate said. “He’s changed. But some things are still the same. He’s still got blue eyes and that same chin. Dusty does, too.”

  Mike squinted. “I guess,” he said. “So if Buck is Dusty’s father, and he’s a famous hockey player, maybe he’s the one playing hockey at night!”

  Kate shook her head. “He probably doesn’t have access to the stadium,” she said. “They’d only let in the players and workers. It can’t be him.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Mike said.

  Kate stared at the photo of Dusty’s father in his hockey equipment. “Hey, do you remember yesterday when we were waiting for Dusty in the clubhouse?” she asked. “He had all those pictures taped to the side of his locker.”

  Mike nodded. “Yeah, I remember,” he said. “There were a lot of pictures of him playing baseball when he was younger.”

  “But he also had a lot of pictures of him playing hockey,” Kate said. She tapped the picture again. “Think about it. Dusty has access to the stadium at night. He told us he’s been up late because he’s having trouble sleeping. He played hockey when he was little. And he has a really famous dad who played hockey. I’ll bet Dusty is the one playing hockey at night!”

  A Confession

  “Dusty?” Mike said. “But we asked him about the lights. He said he’d never seen them.”

  Kate smiled. “No, he didn’t,” she said. “He said he’d never seen anything in the stadium he couldn’t explain. That’s different from saying he’d never seen them. Of course he can explain the lights. Because he’s the one out in the bull pen!”

  “We’ve got to talk to him, then,” Mike said. “Something fishy is going on. Let’s find your mom.”

  Kate, Mike, and Mrs. Hopkins returned to the stadium just as batting practice was ending. Mrs. H
opkins headed off to the press room, while Mike and Kate ran down the aisle to the edge of the Blue Jays dugout. A few players were stretching nearby. Two workers in Blue Jays polo shirts were cleaning up. Mike and Kate waved until one of the workers came over.

  Kate did the talking. “Can you please tell Dusty that his friends Mike and Kate need to talk to him?” she asked. “He told us we could ask for him.”

  “Sure,” the worker said. He ducked into the Blue Jays dugout. Mike and Kate waited by the infield fence. They watched as the grounds crew painted the foul lines on the infield.

  Finally, Dusty popped out of the dugout. “I don’t have too long because I have to get ready for the game,” he said. “What’s up? Did you learn anything about the lights in the bull pen?”

  “Kinda,” Mike said. He scuffed the ground with his sneaker and glanced at Kate. “We think—”

  “We think we figured it out,” Kate said. “Someone’s playing hockey in the bull pen at night.”

  “Really?” Dusty said. “But who would do that?”

  “You!” Kate said. “We think you are playing hockey in the bull pen at night!”

  Dusty’s face lost its color. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “We just figured it out at the Hockey Hall of Fame,” Mike said. “We saw the picture of your father winning the Stanley Cup. He looked exactly like you!”

  “At first we thought he was the one playing hockey,” Kate added. “But then we realized he wouldn’t have access to the stadium at night. But you would.”

  “Plus, you have all those pictures of you playing hockey in your locker,” Mike said. “And you said you were up late at night. It had to be you. Why didn’t you tell us yesterday?”

  Dusty stood quietly for a moment. He was thinking. Then he glanced around to make sure no one was listening.

  “Have you told anyone about this yet?” he asked.

  “No,” Mike said. “We wanted to talk to you first.”