Rocket Blues

by David Skuy

  Almost without thinking, he put his arms around her and gave her a hug. “What should I do to help?”

  Maddy began to cry harder, holding on to the back of his jacket with her fists. They’d never done more than high-five before. Soon she let go and wiped her eyes.

  “You don’t need to do anything,” she said. “And thanks for saying that. Maybe that’s all I really needed.” Her lips slowly formed into a crooked smile. “Besides, you can’t do much anyway — you can’t even stay on the trivia team.”

  He figured that was her way of trying to change the subject. “Do we have time to get new clothes before Griffen rolls in?”

  She checked her phone. “Probably not.” Her crooked smile reappeared. “So what do you think of your mom’s new boyfriend, anyway?”

  “What are you talking about? She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “What do you call Griffen?”

  “A jerk.” His stomach tightened. “Wait. Are you serious? My mom and Griffen — together?”

  She shrugged. “That’s what Griffen said.”

  He certainly wasn’t going to complain to Maddy about it, but whenever he thought his life couldn’t suck any worse, it did!

  A red car turned the corner and honked three times. The driver’s window lowered.

  “Hurry up, superstar,” Griffen smirked. “I don’t want to spend my night in a stupid hockey rink.”

  Rocket and Maddy went over.

  Griffen turned to Rocket’s mom who was in the passenger seat. “Wasn’t he supposed to figure out a carpool? Why am I driving him to a game on Friday night? We could be getting a drink or something.”

  Rocket put his bag in the trunk, placed his stick between the seats as gently as possible, so Griffen wouldn’t get mad, and got in the back seat next to Maddy.

  His mom turned around to give him a smile. She looked pale and tired. “Hi, honey. How was school?”

  “School was … school. Nothing happened.”

  “It never does. Kids never tell us anything, right?” she said cheerfully.

  Rocket knew something was bothering her. The two most important people in his life were unhappy right now, on top of everything else.

  “Smells like Coke in here,” Griffen said. “Maddy, you wasting my money on junk food? All I do is pay for your crap, and all I get is laziness back. Like mother, like daughter.”

  He drove onto the street.

  “I spilled a Coke on my pants,” Rocket said. “I bought it with my money.”

  Griffen grunted. “No wonder you’re like a metre tall, drinking crap all the time. This hockey is a stupid waste of time, if you ask me. You ever seen an NHL player? Average size is like six feet and two hundred-twenty pounds. What’re you? Four feet and eighty pounds of nothing?” He chuckled to himself.

  “He’s only thirteen,” Rocket’s mom said.

  “Whatever. Kid’s a shrimp and this is a waste of time. We should be doing something fun, you and me, not driving to a rink,” Griffen grumbled. “Anyway, I know a café near there. We can drop the kids off and get a coffee and then swing by when it’s over.”

  “I’d like to see the game,” his mom said.

  “We’ll see some of it, but it’s Friday night, and I’m not going to spend it in a dumb rink. At the least I want a good coffee.”

  His mom didn’t respond. Maddy was looking out the window. Rocket resigned himself to a very awkward ride. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  CHAPTER 24

  The dressing room sounded more like a birthday party than a team getting ready for hockey. Guys were tossing tape around and laughing and talking away.

  Rocket pulled his bag through the door and leaned his stick against the wall. André moved his stuff over. Rocket took a seat next to him.

  “I still think it’s unfair,” Blake said.

  “Totally is. No point playing,” Reid said. “My dad’s totally pissed.”

  “Coach is talking to the tournament organizers right now. We should get our money back at least,” Michel said.

  André gave Rocket’s knee a tap. “The first division didn’t get enough teams,” André said. “The clowns running this tourney put two AAA teams in our division.”

  “These spring tournaments are dumb anyway,” Dominic said. “Who wants to play hockey in May? I wore shorts to school today.”

  The boys began talking at once, outdoing each other about how much they didn’t want to play.

  “Does someone have a Coke?” Blake said, sniffing the air. “I could totally go for an ice cream float.”

  Rocket prayed André wouldn’t smell his clothes. He quickly took them off and stuffed them under the bench.

  André didn’t seem interested in a Coke smell, though. “Guys, I don’t want to sound like the coach and rag on anyone,” he said, “but … C’mon. This isn’t hockey talk. I mean, it doesn’t have to be like last year. We can win some games — we’ve already won one. So what if there are AAA teams? We can at least make ’em work for it.”

  “Yeah, right,” Blake said, grinning widely. “You ever seen a AAA team? Those dudes play eight times a week, and they’re huge.”

  “Bryan, you played AAA,” Noah said. “Will we get wiped out if we play them?”

  All eyes turned to Rocket. “It would be a serious challenge. Depends on the team. I, uh, think we could be respectable.” He hoped that would satisfy them.

  He was wrong.

  “See,” André said. “Bryan thinks we can compete and he played AAA for … How many years was it?”

  Not exactly what he wanted to be reminded of.

  “Three,” Rocket said.

  “We’ll go nuts and take it to them,” André said. He was getting worked up. “Hockey’s about effort, not how many times a week you play.”

  “You’re cracked, bro,” Blake said. “We’ll get smoked.”

  André scowled and stuffed his foot into his skate. Rocket found himself liking the fiery captain. Unlike most of the guys on the Blues, he played with real intensity and it showed. In Rocket’s opinion, he was every bit as good as any of the Huskies defencemen.

  “We can compete, that’s the main thing,” Rocket heard himself saying. It came out by accident, almost like he’d been forced to speak. Something about what André said had gotten him worked up, also. “Those guys aren’t such hot stuff, though they think they are. And, sure, they can play, at least some of them. Practising a lot does help, and maybe some teams have bigger guys. But the real difference between AAA and this team, from what I’ve seen is …”

  He hesitated, not sure how his little speech was going over. Blake wasn’t laughing anymore. Noah looked deadly serious. Dominic had stopped strapping on his pads. André gave him a nod. He obviously wanted him to go on.

  “The real difference is how seriously they take it. It’s just a different feeling in the dressing room, on the ice, on the bench. Everyone’s more into it. You make a mistake: you hear it. You make the same mistake: you sit a shift. No joke. Guys fight for every puck. That’s what my old coach used to tell us. Pretend there’s a gun to your head and if you lose a battle for the puck, the gun goes off.” He began tapping his shin pads. “Would we beat the best AAA team in the league? Probably not. But if we outwork them every shift, we could put a scare into them.”

  “What AAA teams are we playing, anyway?” Noah said.

  “The Kings … and the Huskies,” Reid said.

  Rocket felt the energy drain from his body.

  “Isn’t that your old team?” Blake said to Rocket.

  All he could manage was a nod. It was one thing to talk big in a dressing room. But the Huskies would kill them. The news seemed to depress everyone else, too. They all began to finish getting dressed. No one said much. Even Blake sat quietly, staring at the wall. It stayed like that for a while. Rocket was happy when the door opened and the coach came in.

  Coach Sonia came over to him, carrying a white plastic bag. She leaned close to his ear. “Take
this. No sense buying new,” she said.

  Then she stood up and gave her clipboard a whack. “My, my, we are a serious bunch,” she said loudly. “I kind of like it. This is more what a dressing room should sound like before a game. Anyway, I know some of you are concerned about playing teams from a higher division. I spoke with the tournament organizers and they showed me where in the fine print it says they don’t guarantee what level you play against. Of course, it was so small I could barely read it. But it was there, and that means we can’t get our money back. At the same time, it’s not about the money. That’s gone. If you don’t want to play, then we won’t.”

  “We’ll play,” André said.

  She looked around. “How does everyone else feel?”

  Dominic sat back and slapped his pads. “I don’t want to take my stuff off now,” he said.

  “Bad luck to get dressed and not play,” Blake said. “It’s like taking out a samurai sword and not drawing blood.”

  “Interesting analogy,” Coach Sonia said. “But I’ll take that as an indication that we play. Good. No reason we can’t get some positive results and have some fun. Yeah? So listen.” She walked over to the whiteboard and pulled a marker from her pocket. “I want to go over the breakout we practised on Wednesday,” she said, and she began drawing X’s and O’s on the board.

  CHAPTER 25

  Rocket squirted water into his mouth, swirled it around and sent it flying onto the ice in a steady stream. He put the bottle back on the shelf and grabbed his stick. As pumped as he’d been last night in the dressing room, he was ten times more pumped this morning.

  Last night they’d played the Penguins, a AA team that had finished high in the standings last season — and beaten them 4–1. If the Blues won this game against the Blackbirds, they’d have a chance to move into the playoff round. They were playing hard, down to the last man: total focus on the puck, tons of energy.

  “We’re where we want to be, boys,” Coach Sonia urged. She’d been pacing up and down the bench like a tiger the entire game. “You’re 0–0 in the third period against a solid team. We need to be smart with the puck in our end. We gave up a few chances with passes up the middle. No more. I want it up and off the wall if you have the slightest doubt about getting it out of our zone.”

  Matthew poked at the puck with one hand, sending it around the boards to Dominic’s right. The Blackbirds left-winger stopped it with his skate and curled back to his blue line, surveying the zone over his left shoulder. Rocket fought to control his nerves. He couldn’t help it. Whenever he wasn’t on the ice, he felt disaster was about to strike, especially when they were killing a penalty, like now. Michel had gotten two minutes for tripping: a cheap call, but that was life.

  The Blues forwards shifted to the right to pressure the puck carrier. Suddenly, Rocket jumped to his feet.

  “Behind you, Matt! Back up!” he screamed.

  The Blackbirds centre had cut around the net and parked himself down low, close to the post to Dominic’s right. As if the left-winger had heard Rocket, he slid a pass to his centre. His right-winger charged to the other post. Dominic came across in a butterfly and slammed his skate against the inside of the net. Andrew left the right-winger in front and lunged at the puck. Rocket’s heart sank. The centre calmly passed between Andrew’s skates and the wide-open right-winger just as calmly fired it into the gaping net. Dominic’s left pad didn’t come close.

  Across the ice, Michel slammed the penalty box door shut and skated to the bench. The Blackbirds huddled around the goal scorer, patting his head and slapping his shin pads with their sticks. A dejected Dominic scooped the puck out of his net and backhanded it out of the Blues zone.

  “Sorry, boys,” Michel said on the bench. “Dumb penalty.”

  “We’ll get it back,” Coach Sonia said. “Keep playing our game. Let’s turn up the heat. We haven’t tested their goalie too much. Fire from anywhere: he’ll be cold.”

  “Go Big Blue!” Rocket said to his linemates as they filed off of the bench.

  Blake and Noah didn’t look like they had much confidence. They just took their positions quietly. Rocket skated to the dot, his stick across his thighs.

  “Let’s put this away,” the centre said to his team. “Enough fooling around. We have to face the Huskies this aft.”

  “We’re playing like garbage,” the goal scorer said. “C’mon, Black. One goal is pathetic.”

  “Let’s do this, Black. Crush time,” the right defenceman said.

  They thought the Blues would roll over after the goal. Made sense. Every team in the league was used to beating the Blues. But that didn’t make it easy to listen to, and Rocket wasn’t giving up that easy.

  The centre put his stick down and nodded to his right defenceman. Rocket went with a regular grip. Time to show the Blackbirds that he had a few tricks up his sleeve.

  The ref dropped the puck. Rocket flicked the puck between the centre’s skates. It spun on its end about two metres in front of the right defenceman. Rocket evaded the centre’s attempt to hold him up and got to the puck first. The right defenceman lunged at it wildly. Rocket sliced the puck over his stick and it rolled into the Blackbirds’ zone.

  The left defenceman didn’t have a chance. Just like that, Rocket was on a breakaway, cruising in at top speed — his first really good chance all game. He hesitated a half-step to get the puck to lie flat, and then he drove in on the net. The goalie was crouched deeply in his stance. Rocket faked a shot. The goalie didn’t flinch. Fine, Rocket thought. Try this on for size. He let the puck fly. The goalie dropped instinctively into a butterfly. The puck sailed over his right shoulder, top shelf, stick side.

  Rocket slapped the ice with his stick and hopped three times, then curled on his inside edges to let himself enjoy the moment. Maybe the centre would take the Blues more seriously after that. He looked over his shoulder at the scoreboard. Six minutes left and it was still tied. They could win this thing! He looked into the stands. Maddy and his mom were on their feet clapping. Griffen was reading a newspaper.

  André put an arm around his shoulders. “That was awesome to watch, bro.”

  “We do that again,” Rocket said, “and it’s Go Big Blue!”

  “I’m with ya,” Blake said, laughing.

  The rest of the shift ended without the Blues getting another good scoring chance, but they more than held their own, and for the most part had the Blackbirds on their heels in their own zone.

  Rocket reached for some water and looked up at the coach. He was burning to get out there again and get the winner. Reid had the puck at the Blues blue line. He faked a pass to Michel, who was covered by a winger at centre, and then whirled and rifled the puck blindly cross ice to André.

  Rocket jumped to his feet. The blind pass found a Blackbird stick, and two players went in alone on Dominic. The puck ping-ponged back and forth until it ended up in the net — an easy goal.

  “Bryan’s line is up,” Coach Sonia snapped. “Switch it.”

  She obviously had confidence in his line, which felt nice. She was putting them out to get the goal back. He desperately wanted to do it, not only for her but all the guys. They’d be stoked to even tie this game. Reid and André stood together a metre in from the blue line.

  “Focus, bro,” André said. “You have to play it safe with five minutes left.”

  “I lost the game,” Reid said. He was clearly miserable about it.

  Rocket couldn’t help himself. Everybody messed up sometimes. “Forget the blaming stuff,” he said to Reid, giving his shin pads a solid whack. “It never happened. It’s over. Flush it. No big deal, anyway, because we’re going to get it back quick. They’ll coast now, sit back and try to protect the lead. We take over the game and fire away. What d’ya say?”

  Reid’s jaw jutted out and he nodded. André slapped both their shin pads. “He’s right. I got no right to call you out, bro. Sorry. We’ll get it back and laugh about it later.”

  Rocket appr
oached the faceoff circle, his eyes fixed on the puck in the ref’s hand. They needed this draw. The coach had put him out for a reason. He took a deep breath and put his stick down. Before the puck dropped the Blackbirds centre pushed forward and knocked Rocket’s stick away.

  “You have to call—”

  The ref cut Rocket off. “Outside, Black. Wait till I drop it.”

  “But your hand moved …” the centre began, but then he dropped his head and skated to the right wing. He knew he’d messed up.

  Against a winger, Rocket didn’t try anything fancy. He went for the backhand draw, and the puck slid to Reid. The defender justified Rocket’s faith by passing to André without hesitation. The captain pushed forward. The centre pressured and André bounced a pass off the wall to Noah, who dumped it in hard. It rolled around the net before the goalie could stop it. The Blackbirds left defenceman trapped it on the boards with his skate in the corner. Blake had taken off as soon as the puck went in. He didn’t stop until he’d levelled the defenceman with a massive hit against the boards.

  “Bring it!” Rocket yelled. He’d never seen Blake play so hard.

  Blake jumped over the legs of the fallen defenceman and took the puck on his forehand. Rocket swerved to his left and Noah cut in from the right side. Blake looked at them both and, without warning, bulled his way toward the front of the net, kicking through the goalie’s outstretched stick. The right defenceman lowered his shoulder. Rocket cringed. Blake was going to get creamed.

  The crowd roared and Rocket threw his arms in the air. Blake had plowed through the check and roofed a backhander over the goalie’s left shoulder.

  “That’s bringing it big time!” Rocket cried.

  He joined Noah in the slot, reached up and put his arms around his wingers’ shoulders. André and Reid piled on and they formed a huddle in front of the Blackbirds net.