The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1

by Roy MacGregor

  Nish was skating backwards as fast as possible. The ice was old now and choppy, and he dug in as best he could. But he could not cut off the swift River Rat without turning toward him and shifting from backward to forward skating.

  Just as Nish made his move, the skater made his. He pushed toward Nish instead of going away from him, and as he did so he flipped the puck so it rolled high over Nish’s stick and fell flat behind him. The skater simply hopped over Nish as he fell in desperation, picked up the puck, walked in, and pulled Jennie to her right before dropping an easy backhander in behind her.

  The game ended 7–1. The players shook hands–Jennie congratulating the scorer on his play–and then headed for the dressing room.

  Muck came in a few moments later, not at all pleased.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, Nish?” Muck asked.

  “What’dya mean?” Nish asked.

  Muck smiled. “You got deked out of your underwear out there.”

  Nish shook his head in disgust. “He can have them.”

  “You gotta come and see this!”

  Travis had rarely seen Nish so excited.

  And certainly never so early in the morning.

  Travis had just finished showering and was getting dressed to go down for breakfast. It had been a quiet night; the team was tired from the excitement of the first game, if not the actual playing of the game, and everyone had gone to bed early.

  Nish, of course, had tried to turn on the late-night sex movies, but all the television screen would say was: “ADULT MOVIES HAVE BEEN BLOCKED BY REQUEST. PLEASE CALL THE FRONT DESK FOR ACCESS.” He had tried his old trick of pulling off the cable wires and re-wiring the remote box, but again it hadn’t worked. Finally he had called the front desk and in a low voice pretended he was Muck giving the hotel permission for the kids to watch sex movies. That hadn’t worked either.

  Now here he was, flushed and on fire about something.

  “You gotta come see, Trav!”

  Travis pulled on his Red Wings track pants and a T-shirt and chased, barefoot, after Nish, who was already running down the hall backwards, signalling Travis to follow.

  On the floor below, Nish came to a door and knocked. Not a normal knock, but three long knocks followed by two quick ones. A special code? What was this? Travis wondered.

  Nish held his finger to his mouth, signalling quiet. As he hadn’t been saying anything, Travis could only shake his head.

  They could hear someone on the other side. Travis had the sense he was being checked out through the little spy glass in the door. Then it opened slowly. It was Data. He and Nish must have come down earlier, while Travis was in the shower. But why so secretive?

  Data opened the door the rest of the way. Nish and Travis entered and Data closed the door quietly, still acting mysteriously. It was a smaller room, not a suite like Travis and the others had lucked into. Wilson and Fahd were standing at the far side of the room, staring down at something on the bed by the window. The door to the bathroom opened and out came Andy Higgins.

  Andy seemed to be trying to look tough even though there was nobody there to impress. He barely looked at Travis.

  Travis went over to the bed and looked. Arranged as if on display were several chocolate bars, three more CN Tower lighters, a Blue Jays mug, a brand-new Toronto Maple Leafs cap–the price tag still on it–a deck of cards still in its wrapper, and a pack of Belmont Milds cigarettes.

  “Tell the world, why don’t you,” Andy said to Nish. He seemed both angry and proud at the same time.

  Travis asked the obvious: “Where’d all this come from?”

  “The lobby gift shop,” Nish answered.

  Nish didn’t have to add that they were stolen goods. Travis knew without asking. He felt suddenly hot, prickly, like the room had only heat and no air and he had to get out. But he knew, too, that he couldn’t let his panic show. He was captain. He was responsible.

  “The old lady on cash is blind as a bat,” offered Andy. He obviously wanted it understood that he had done the stealing.

  “How’d you get the smokes?” Nish wanted to know. Nish also looked flushed. But from excitement.

  “She was sorting the newspapers–I just reached over and grabbed a pack.”

  Nish was obviously impressed: “Shoulda grabbed one for me.”

  Travis looked sharply at him. Don’t encourage him, he wanted to say. But Nish was already lost. The last time Travis had seen that look in Nish’s face was when the team had been in the Maple Leafs’ dressing room. Nish was star-struck–with a shoplifter!

  Travis felt like a clothes dryer: standing still but spinning inside. He knew he couldn’t show his nervousness or they would laugh at him. He knew they would never listen to him if he told Andy to put the stuff back. But he was captain–he had some responsibility to the Screech Owls. And he knew if some of the team got in trouble, Muck would want to know where his team captain had been and whether he had known what was going on. No matter the outcome, Travis already felt he was going to be in the wrong.

  Finally, he steeled himself: “You shouldn’t have done that to her, Andy.”

  Andy just laughed. Nish laughed with him, not even knowing why.

  “It’s not hers,” Andy sneered. “You think a big hotel chain like this is going to miss a few lighters? What kind of a wimp are you anyway, Lindsay?”

  Travis could see he wasn’t going to get any support. Nish was all but sneering himself. Data was playing with one of the lighters.

  “Take one,” Andy said to Data.

  Data seemed surprised, pleased. “You mean it?”

  “Sure,” Andy said. “Plenty more where that one came from.”

  The boys all laughed at the joke.

  Everyone, that is, but Travis Lindsay, team captain…wimp.

  Mr. Dillinger, the team manager, had done a wonderful job of organizing the team’s time in Toronto. They’d been to the Leafs’ practice, and they were going to see the game against the Blackhawks. It wasn’t the Red Wings, but it was still an Original Six team, and Chicago had two of Travis’s favourite players: Jeremy Roenick and Ed Belfour.

  Mr. Dillinger had also laid out a full program of sightseeing for both the players and those parents who had come on the trip. Parents and players weren’t always interested in the same things. This morning the players were going to walk down Yonge Street on their way to the CN Tower, and they were all going up to the top–even Nish, who hated heights.

  Travis should have been more excited, but all he could think about was what to do about Andy Higgins. No one else seemed bothered by it, or maybe they just wouldn’t say. Who wanted to be called a wimp by their teammates?

  It was a beautiful early spring day for the walk. Since they could see the CN Tower from the hotel and there was no chance of anyone getting lost, Muck and Mr. Dillinger said the players could walk on their own, so long as they stayed in groups. Andy joined Travis’s bunch, which both surprised Travis and bothered him.

  They had barely gone a block when Andy stopped, took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, and made a big show of lighting it.

  “Muck better not see you,” Travis said. He thought he sounded like his mother.

  Andy blew smoke out and waved it away as if he’d like to wave Travis away too.

  “‘Muck better not see you,’” Andy whined, impersonating Travis. The others laughed. “Muck’s the coach, not my mother.”

  Travis half-felt like walking away, but he couldn’t. He knew he had to stay with the group. He had to.

  “You guys?” Andy said, holding the stolen cigarettes out and raising his eyebrows as he offered them around. Nish helped himself–“For later,” he added sheepishly–but no one else reached for one. Travis wouldn’t even acknowledge the offer.

  “Suit yourselves,” Andy said. “Which way’re we going?”

  “I’m checking out the Zanzibar,” Nish announced.

  “What’s the Zanzibar?” Data asked. Travis had no ide
a either.

  “Just the biggest strip joint in the world, that’s all,” Nish said, as if it were common knowledge.

  “Yeah, I heard about it,” said Andy.

  Travis knew he was lying.

  “My cousin told me about it,” Nish said. “A hundred barenaked women.”

  Travis closed his eyes. Nish was, as usual, out of control. Mr. Markle had told their class this year that puberty would be coming on soon for some of them. He talked about shaving and voices dropping and moods–but he had never said anything about Nish being committed to a psychiatric hospital.

  “And how do you expect to get in?” Travis asked.

  “I’ll worry about that when I get there,” Nish said.

  They walked on down Toronto’s busiest street, the sights and sounds and smells almost too much for a head to hold at once. The hint of good weather had brought out the sidewalk vendors: hot dogs, jewellery, T-shirts, sunglasses. There were kids not much older than himself with green hair and safety pins through their cheeks. There was a man reading aloud from the Bible and another screaming in a strange language at everyone who passed by.

  “Isn’t this fantastic?” Nish shouted.

  Travis didn’t know if that was quite the right word for it, but it was something–fascinating and frightening at the same time.

  “There it is!” Nish shouted again, pointing ahead of them. They could see the sign, “ZANZIBAR,” and they could see a rough-looking crowd milling around the photographs of the dancers on the front of the building. Loud rock music burst out every time the door opened and closed. Travis felt alarmed–but also curious. He hadn’t the nerve to walk up and look in.

  But Nish did. He elbowed his way through the crowd and stood, hands in pockets, staring at the photographs as if he were shopping for something and knew exactly what he wanted. Andy joined him, his cigarette now burned down near the filter. He stomped it out on the sidewalk and spat. The two of them looked ridiculous, Travis thought.

  Travis, Gordie, Fahd, and Data hurried on past the bar and stood waiting nervously.

  Finally Andy came along, putting a fresh cigarette in his mouth. He stopped to light it, acting as if nothing at all was happening, when he knew perfectly well that the others were almost in full panic about Nish’s whereabouts.

  “Where is he?” Gordie shouted. Andy raised his eyebrows as if he hadn’t heard. But of course he had.

  “What’d you do with him?” Data asked, smiling.

  “He’s probably on stage by now,” Andy chuckled.

  “He is?” Gordie and Data said at the same time. Andy nodded, drawing deep on his cigarette, then choking. Good, Travis thought.

  Before they had time to ask anything else, the crowd behind them parted as if a mad dog were coming through, and out from the middle burst Nish in full flight, a huge, angry man close behind him shaking his fist. He swung at Nish but missed, Nish’s thick legs churning on down the street and past the other boys.

  At top speed, Nish turned the first corner he came to, but his hip caught the edge of a vendor’s table, flipping it as he tore by. The table, covered with sunglasses, spilled out onto the street, blocking the man from the Zanzibar, who came to a halt and between gasps for air screamed after Nish.

  “And don’t you ever…try that again, punk!”

  The vendor was tempted to take up the chase but turned instead to his more-immediate problem: a street covered with sunglasses. After looking twice in the direction Nish had run, he cursed and bent down to pick up his spilled goods. People in the street, including the boys, came to help, and soon the table was back up and the vendor was trying to pop a lens back into a pair of glasses.

  “Thanks,” the man said. He didn’t look too pleased.

  The boys hurried on down the street, the CN Tower periodically looming high to their right when the skyscrapers gave way to open space. They knew they would eventually come across Nish again. At least they hoped they would. If someone didn’t kill him first.

  “Hey!”

  They looked across the street. It was Nish, waving. They crossed at the light and joined him. He was red as the stoplight and puffing hard. He must have crossed and doubled back. He kept looking back up the street for his assailant, but he was grinning.

  “What happened?” said Data.

  “Did you get in?” Gordie asked.

  “’Course I got in,” Nish said angrily. Travis knew Nish too well not to know the truth. He hadn’t even come close.

  “What’dya see?” Data asked.

  “More’n you can imagine, sunshine.”

  Travis knew it was really just as much as Nish could imagine. Some people could look at a cloud and see things; Nish could look at an empty blue sky and see anything he wanted.

  “You’ll probably need these after that eyeful,” Andy said.

  He was handing Nish a brand-new pair of sunglasses. He’d swiped them when they were helping the street vendor clean up.

  “Where’d you get these?” Nish asked, impressed.

  “Found ’em on the street,” Andy said.

  Everyone laughed.

  Everyone but Travis. This wasn’t some rich hotel that “would never miss” a few lighters and chocolate bars; this was a real person trying to make a living. Travis was furious that Andy would do something like that to the vendor–who had thanked them, for heaven’s sake.

  Nish put the glasses on and checked himself out in a store window.

  “Cool,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Andy and Nish began walking down the street together, leaving the other three behind them.

  Data and Gordie moved to catch up, swept up in the adventure, the fun, the daring.

  Travis followed along, furious at himself for being there, for saying nothing.

  He was a failure as a captain.

  Travis wondered how airplanes could fly. Not how they actually did it, but how they could land and take off in a wind like this. The tour guide said it was usually like this at the top of the CN Tower. It felt as if the wind was whipping the tower like the aerial on a car going through a car wash.

  Nish had come up in the elevator, but he wasn’t going back down that way. Halfway up the outside of the thin structure, he had made an announcement that almost panicked everyone packed into the glassed-in elevator.

  “I think I’m going to hurl!”

  But he didn’t. He just turned a bit green and closed his eyes behind his stolen sunglasses and held his breath. When the elevator reached the top he went to the washroom and sat for a long time. Not sick, just gathering his courage.

  Travis couldn’t understand Nish’s fear of heights. He remembered the time they went up White Mountain at Lake Placid and Nish had reacted the same way. Nish would block a shot with his teeth if he thought it would win the Screech Owls a hockey game, but he wouldn’t climb up on a garage roof even if he thought it would get him drafted into the NHL. He’d only stepped into the elevator because he couldn’t stand the idea of them calling him a chicken.

  Travis loved it. He loved the way he could look down and see the SkyDome and the way he could look out over Lake Ontario all the way to the United States. A small commuter plane was coming in to land at the Island Airport, and already it was well below where Travis stood.

  It had been Derek and Lars who’d come running from the far side of the circular observation deck to tell the rest of them about the wind. Standing where they were, they had been protected and hadn’t felt the full force of the blow. But Lars–“Cherry”–had walked around and come upon it, gone back for his new friend Derek, and now the two of them had already mastered one of the greatest sensations Travis had ever felt: they could stand facing the wind, hold their arms out like an airplane, and fall forward–but never hit the ground.

  The wind was cold this high up, but it didn’t seem to bother them. It held them at a forty-five-degree angle, floating in outer space but for the contact of their shoes on the deck. It was fantastic: the wind pushing and falling, t
heir bodies moving with the flow like weeds in a river. Only in their case, the flow was pushing them back up instead of ahead and down. It felt as if they had beaten gravity.

  “Amazing!” Fahd shouted. They could barely hear him.

  “Get Nish!” Gordie Griffth shouted.

  Travis found Nish staring out through one of the coin-operated binoculars. It seemed he was more interested in having something to hang on to than to look through. Though it was cold up here, Nish was sweating heavily.

  “You gotta see this,” Travis said.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Nish answered. “I’m going back down.”

  “But you said you’d never get back on the elevator.”

  Nish looked desperate. “I’m going down the stairs.”

  “Stairs?”

  “Yeah–over there.”

  Travis looked over toward an exit.

  “I asked,” Nish said. “People do it all the time. Willie says there’s 1,760 steps, 138 separate landings.”

  “We haven’t got time.”

  “Sure we do. Game’s not till five-thirty.”

  Travis looked at his good friend. He could sense the terror in Nish’s eyes. This was no time to push him further. If Nish saw what the wind was doing to his teammates on the other side of the deck, he’d pass out. He needed Travis now, and this was one time the captain wasn’t going to let a teammate down.

  “I’ll see if anyone else wants to go.”

  They all thought it was a great idea. Travis presented the suggestion as a team project, something that would bring them all together. They’d “floated” together; now they could all say they’d walked down every step of the CN Tower together, all 1,760 of them. It would be like a souvenir.

  They found Nish waiting at the stairway. He, too, was pretending there was more to this than merely giving him a way to avoid the glass elevator. He had his watch off and was holding it in his hand. He was setting up the stopwatch to time them.