Nish and Andy tiptoed over to the bunk where Data lay mumbling in a deep sleep. Nish kept giggling, and Travis and Lars crept up to see. Travis had no idea what was going on.
Nish pulled Data’s boom box out from under his bunk. He hoisted it up and set it beside Data’s head. “Shhhhhhhh,” he repeated. It was hardly necessary, but Nish was now into heavy dramatics.
Andy balanced the boom box carefully and, on Nish’s signal, turned it on.
Instantly, the room filled with the sound of a circling, angry mosquito. It sounded, Travis thought, as much like a siren as an insect, but Nish and Andy seemed to want it loud.
Nish pulled a white gull feather out from under Data’s mattress, and as soon as the mosquito’s whining stopped for a moment, which meant it had landed, Nish very lightly tickled Data’s nose with the feather.
Data stirred, and Nish giggled softly, delighted with the results.
The mosquito on the tape recording took off again, the sound rising as it circled closer and closer. This time, when it landed, Nish ran the feather very lightly along Data’s ear. Data’s right hand came up and brushed away the tickle, but he didn’t wake.
Nish signalled to Andy. Andy hit the stop button and then pushed rewind.
Nish reached under Data’s bunk bed again and this time pulled out an aerosol can of shaving cream. Very carefully, he began to fill Data’s right hand with foam. When he had built up a nice big mound, he capped the can and slipped it back under the bunk.
Nish gave Andy the thumbs-up. Andy pushed the play button and the mosquito took off again. Andy turned up the volume and moved the tape recorder even closer. Data stirred, mumbling.
The taped mosquito landed. Andy pulled the boom box away. Nish leaned over and poked the feather just under Data’s nose, then ran it down over his mouth and onto his chin.
Slap! Data’s right hand came up and smacked into the imaginary mosquito, sending shaving cream spattering into his face and pillow. Data mumbled, but didn’t wake up.
“Perfect,” hissed Nish, backing away from the bunk.
“Better than we thought,” whispered Andy.
“Why Data?” Travis asked.
“Test case,” said Nish. “Nothing personal.”
“What do you mean, ‘test case’?”
“If it worked this well on Data,” grinned Nish, “think how great it’ll look on our good friend, Buddy O’Reilly.”
“Fat Boy” was going to have his revenge.
Travis woke before the morning bell. It was going to be a glorious day. He lay in bed, staring out the window and listening to the birds. He wished he knew birds better. He wished he could say things like “white-throated sparrow” instead of just “bird.” He decided he would become an expert on birds some day. He’d even find out what an osprey was.
Data was sitting up in bed. He was rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, but still hadn’t noticed the dried shaving cream all over his face. He hadn’t even noticed it on his hand. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for him.
“You feeling okay?” Nish asked with utmost sincerity.
Data blinked. “Yeah…why?”
“You don’t look so good, you better go look in the mirror.”
Data still hadn’t caught on. Puzzled, he slipped out of his sleeping bag and peered into the mirror over the sink.
“What the–?” Data shouted.
“You’re foaming at the mouth, pal,” Nish told him. “Looks like rabies to me.”
“In-your-face hockey!
“You understand me–you, Fat Boy? You understand what I’m getting at here?”
They were at the arena in the tourist town just down the road from the camp. Buddy O’Reilly was standing at centre ice, sweat pouring off his face. Nish lay flat on his back in front of Buddy, moaning as he gasped and twisted on the ice.
Buddy had just flattened Nish with one of the hardest and meanest checks Travis had ever seen, and the hardest, by far, he had ever seen at a “practice.” The hit had caught everyone off guard, but none more so than Nish himself, who had had his head down as he moved up toward centre on a simple five-on-four power-play drill. Nish knew his job: pick up the puck behind the net, then lug the puck up past the blueline and hit Sarah as she cut across centre ice. He’d timed it perfectly, slipping a nifty little pass in under Buddy’s outstretched stick and sending Sarah and Travis and Dmitri in toward the opposition blueline.
Then Buddy had struck. He hit Nish full on, his hands and stick coming up hard into Nish’s helmet, and Nish had dropped instantly.
Buddy stepped back to demonstrate.
“You see what I mean by in-your-face hockey? This is what I want to see from you guys–I don’t give a damn whether it’s for the Stanley Cup or summer-camp practice. You take your man out. Understand? You okay, Fat Boy?”
Buddy was laughing–that strange, front-of-teeth, chewing-gum snicker–as he reached down and helped Nish get to his feet. Travis couldn’t help noticing that Buddy seemed a little concerned; perhaps he realized he had hit Nish just a bit too hard. Nish skated away, trying to get the air back in his lungs. He was bent over, his face almost on his knees. His skates wobbled and he almost went down again.
Nish’s face was twisted up and red. He was hurting, fighting back tears.
“You hit, you follow through. Understand? Hit high, follow through like I showed you, with your forearms–it’s perfectly legal. You take him out, okay? You saw what happened. They came out on a power play, I hit Tubby here, and suddenly it’s even-up again, four-on-four, with Fat Boy wobbling off to the bench. Understand now? Huh?”
Buddy looked around, pulling nods of agreement out of some of the shocked Owls and Aeros. Others just stared, waiting to see what Buddy would do next. He had been screaming since the on-ice drills began, and he had skated them until Nish, predictably, had called out, “I’m gonna hurl!”
“Then hurl!” Buddy screamed back at him.
It seemed to Travis that Buddy was particularly hard on Nish. Calling him “Fat Boy” and “Tubby,” and now almost knocking him cold. What had Nish done to deserve this?
Muck had waited until the warm-ups were through before coming out. He had put on his skates and had his stick and gloves–his plain windbreaker a sharp contrast to Buddy’s neon-red tracksuit–and he had stayed out of it, at first. This was Buddy’s hockey camp, after all.
But after the hit on Nish, Muck came forward, pushing through the shocked players and speaking, very softly, to Buddy.
“Can I see you for a moment?”
Buddy looked irritated, as if his train of thought had been broken.
“How’s after practice?” Buddy asked.
“Only if it ends right now.”
Reluctantly, Buddy skated away with Muck. They left the ice entirely, leaving the remaining drills up to the two young junior players, Simon and Jason, who were helping out for the summer.
“I’m gonna get that guy!”
Travis turned quickly. It was Nish. He had skated up behind Travis and was still bent over as he worked on getting his breath back.
“I’ll get him–I promise you that.”
With Buddy out of the way, practice became fun again. Simon and Jason ran a couple of passing drills and then decided to turn the last ten minutes over to a game of shinny–A-to-Ls versus M-to-Zs. That put Sarah and Travis on the same team, just like the old days, and against Nish, who slapped the blade of his stick on the ice and announced for all to hear that neither Sarah nor Travis would score while he was on the ice.
Travis hadn’t played with Sarah since the Lake Placid tournament. And he hadn’t played left wing since he’d replaced her at centre. Derek Dillinger joined them on the right wing for the opening face-off.
Sarah faced off against Liz Moscovitz, who’d joined the Owls after Sarah had left for the Aeros. Liz, who usually played wing, had no idea what kind of tricks Sarah could pull in a hockey game. Simon dropped the puck, but it never even hit the ice: S
arah plucked it out of midair, knocking it baseball-style over to Travis.
“That’s illegal!” Liz shouted. No one paid her the slightest attention.
Travis had the puck, and he turned back quickly, skating behind his own defencemen and dropping the puck to Beth, a member of the Aeros, as he moved back across the blueline. She read the give-and-go perfectly, waiting until Travis had beaten Liz before flipping the puck ahead to him. He hit Derek across ice, and Sarah broke fast toward the opposing blueline.
Derek sent the pass to her–hard and accurate.
But it never got there. A big blur slid across the ice and snared the breakaway pass before it could snap onto Sarah’s tape. It was Nish! He knew Sarah’s renowned speed, and he had guessed–correctly.
Travis could hear Nish’s giggle as he passed while still down on one knee. Nish hit Liz, who was coming back across centre, and Liz, without seeming to look, fired a hard backhand pass up to Dmitri, who was breaking down the right-wing boards. Dmitri was in alone on net, did his shoulder fake, and fired the puck high in off the crossbar.
Nish, the hero, lay flat on his back, pumping arms and legs into the air as if he’d just won the Stanley Cup, in overtime.
“He’s never going to grow up, is he?” Sarah said to Travis as she looped past him.
“Not if he can help it,” said Travis.
He could see Sarah smiling through her mask. She didn’t seem in the least upset that Nish had outsmarted them. “Watch this,” she said.
Sarah won a second face-off from Liz and moved the puck back fast to Beth, who waited just long enough to trap the wingers before flipping the puck high and over centre ice. It was obviously a play they’d worked on with the Aeros. So long as the puck went across centre before Sarah, she wouldn’t be offside, and she was so fast she could follow the lobbing puck and almost catch it on her stick when it fell.
The play worked perfectly. Sarah snared the puck on her stick and skated toward the net as Nish backed up, ready.
Sarah skated toward Nish, then cut sharply in a quick circle that let her drop her left shoulder. Nish went for the shoulder drop and lunged with a poke check–but Sarah’s stick and the puck were gone. She had scooped the puck onto the end of her stick blade as if it were a small pizza she was about to place in a hot oven.
Sarah flipped the puck high over Nish’s head and flailing glove as he lost his balance and fell. Then she skipped over him and walked in on net, pulling Jeremy Weathers far to the right before sending a remarkable pass back through her own skates and straight onto Travis’s stick. Travis merely tapped it in.
Travis rode his stick like a horse to the blueline. He yanked the stick from between his legs and turned it on its end, pretending to sheathe it at his side, as if it were a sword and he a triumphant knight returning from the battlefield.
Then he heard Sarah scream.
Travis turned in mid-celebration, suddenly embarrassed that he had made such a show of a totally meaningless goal. Sarah’s scream had come from the corner where she had turned after her cute setup. She was crumpled on the ice, and Nish was skating away backwards, pointing at her with the blade of his stick.
Jason’s whistle shrieked as he and Simon raced toward Sarah. Travis skated over quickly as well, passing Nish on the way. He glanced with dismay at Nish, but he couldn’t read Nish’s look. Anger? Surprise? Shock?
Simon loosened the strap on Sarah’s helmet, and Travis was able to get close enough to see that she was crying before Simon chased everyone away.
“Give her some air! C’mon, back off!”
Travis and the others skated back toward the blueline. Everyone looked shocked.
“What happened?” Travis asked Dmitri.
“Nish took her out. He hit her from behind when she wasn’t looking.”
“Nish?”
“I saw him.”
It had to be true. Jason was ripping into Nish over by the penalty box. Even in the hollow arena, the rest of the players could make out every shouted word.
“You stupid idiot!” Jason was screaming. “You coulda broken her neck. You can’t hit someone like that when they’re not expecting it!”
Nish’s answers were harder to make out, but Travis knew his friend’s voice well enough to get the drift.
“I thought we were supposed to ‘take out our man,’” he said to Simon.
“Who told you that?”
“Buddy. That’s exactly what he said when he creamed me. Remember? Or don’t I count?”
“He didn’t mean like that, you stupid jerk. You never, ever, ever hit from behind like that again. Now get off the ice before we throw you off! Get outta here!”
Nish swore and slammed his stick on the boards so hard it shattered. As he left, he pulled the gate behind him hard, so the noise exploded in the hollow rink.
Travis didn’t need to follow to know what Nish would do next. Kick the dressing-room door. Kick every bag and piece of equipment between the doorway and his locker. Throw his broken stick against the wall. Yank off his skates and throw them against the wall–better yet, strike the blades so Mr. Dillinger has to grind them down and rocker them again before a new sharpening. Throw his sweater on the floor. Throw his shoulder pads in the garbage. Throw his socks. Throw his shinguards. Sit and slump and sulk in his underwear until everyone comes in and sees how badly life is treating poor Wayne Nishikawa.
Travis knew Nish well enough to be almost certain he regretted his check on Sarah the moment he realized what he had done. The problem with Nish was that he couldn’t put the brakes on even when he knew he should–even when he wanted to. Having made the dumb hit, he had to follow through, knowing that only he would lose in the end. He was like fireworks. Once the fuse had been lit, there was no way to prevent the explosion. You couldn’t change direction, delay, or stop. You could only wait for it to go off and eventually die down on its own.
Sarah was still lying motionless on the ice. Simon had done the right thing by not taking off her helmet or attempting in any way to move her. They were asking her about her limbs–“Your left foot?…Your right arm?…Wiggle your fingers for us”–and Sarah was able to do as they requested.
“I think I’m all right,” she said. Her voice sounded weak and frightened.
“We have to be sure,” Simon told her. “Jason’s calling an ambulance. You just stay exactly where you are and don’t move.”
Simon rose from his knee and turned toward the rest of the players.
“Practice is over for today!” he called. “Off with your gear and shower. We’re headed back to the camp at ten-thirty sharp. Get a move on!” Nish was exactly as Travis had pictured him: slumped against the wall, the results of his personal tornado all about him. He seemed distraught and angry at the same time. He was shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Travis figured it was just as well they couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Everyone gave Nish a wide berth. Apart from Andy Higgins, hardly anyone even looked in his direction.
“That was a dumb thing to do,” Andy said directly to Nish.
Travis was surprised Andy would be so blunt. But good for Andy–he was speaking for them all.
Nish made an empty-hands gesture to show his own surprise. “Fine,” he said, his voice cracking. “It’s a big joke when ‘Fat Boy’ gets creamed by ‘Buddy Boy,’ but it’s a criminal act when ‘Fat Boy’ does the same thing to someone else.”
“Don’t be stupid, Nish,” said Andy. “You didn’t get hit from behind. And besides, nobody thought it was a big joke when that ass creamed you.”
“I was just finishing my check,” said Nish. He looked around, desperate for an ally, begging for anyone to agree with him, or even nod in sympathy.
“You may have finished Sarah,” said Travis.
Nish turned quickly, hurt and anger flashing in his eyes. He hadn’t figured Travis, his best friend, would turn on him.
“It was an accident.”
“No it wasn’t,” said Dmit
ri. “It was just stupid.”
Nish answered by picking up the one piece of equipment still within reach, a dropped glove, and hurling it hard against the ceiling. The glove popped back down and bounced off the top of the door to the washroom stall–up, over, and splash, directly into the toilet boil.
The sound was so unexpected, the bounce such a fluke, that everyone in the room began to giggle. Nish had accidentally released the tension that had built throughout this disastrous practice, and the giggles became laughs, and the laughs became howls of derision, all aimed his way.
Nish slumped deeper into the bench, his arms folded defiantly, his eyes closed, and, it seemed, small tears squeaking out on each side.
The fireworks were over.
After they had dressed, the Screech Owls and the Aeros gathered at the edge of the parking lot to watch the ambulance come and take Sarah away. They stood in silence, not knowing what to say, not wanting to say anything, only hoping that everything would be all right.
Travis stood outside with Data and Wilson and Derek and Lars, the five of them with their hands in their pockets, kicking at loose stones with their sandals. They stared as the ambulance drew up, lights flashing. It backed through the Zamboni entrance and into the arena, right onto the ice and over to the corner where Sarah was still flat on her back, not moving a muscle.
Travis noticed Nish in the parking lot at the far end of the arena. He was leaning into the wall. He seemed lost. As Nish’s best friend, Travis knew that now, only now, he should go to him. And if Nish felt like talking, they would talk. If he didn’t, they would say nothing. Travis didn’t have to hear the words to know how his friend felt.
He broke away from the waiting crowd and walked toward Nish. He came up behind him quietly, but not quietly enough. Just as Travis cleared his throat to speak, Nish raised his hand behind him in a warning to be quiet. He turned quickly, finger raised: “Shhhhhhh…”
Travis tucked in tight to the wall. “What’s up?” he whispered.
“Take a look–but don’t let them see you.”
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 1 Page 29