Face-Off

by Michael Betcherman

  Lara was waiting outside Fraserview Hall when Alex and Stefan arrived.

  “How are you feeling?” Alex asked.

  “Nervous,” she said. She was going up against her old nemesis, Tonya Livingstone, who had defeated her the year before.

  “You’ll be fine,” he said. She looked past him, scanning the horizon. Alex knew she was looking for Jason. I bet the prick doesn’t show, he said to himself.

  “I’d better get inside and warm up,” Lara said.

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  Alex and Stefan went to the Tims at the corner to get something to eat. When they got back to the arena, Lara’s fight was about to start. They took a seat in the bleachers as she stepped into the ring. She stood in one corner, dancing on her feet to stay loose, her black hair tied in a neat ponytail, a grim no-nonsense look on her face. Tonya stood in the other corner. She was shorter and more powerfully built than Lara.

  The two girls stared each other down as the announcer introduced them. “This is the title match in the Junior Girls K One Lightweight class. In the blue corner, wearing red trunks, from Vancouver, weighing one hundred twenty-one pounds, Lara Wellington.”

  Alex and Stefan cheered, along with Lara’s teammates and friends.

  “In the red corner,” the PA announcer continued, “wearing white trunks, from Chilliwack, weighing one hundred twenty-five pounds, Tonya Livingstone.”

  Tonya’s supporters cheered and clapped just as enthusiastically.

  “She looks mean,” Stefan said. “I hope Lara doesn’t get hurt.”

  “Don’t worry about Lara,” Alex said. “She can take care of herself.”

  Lara slipped her mouth guard into her mouth. As she walked into the middle of the ring to receive the referee’s instructions, Jason walked into the gym. He walked by the ring on his way to the stands. He made eye contact with Lara and held up his fist in a gesture of support. A big smile momentarily flashed across Lara’s face before she put her game face back on. Jason took a seat in the stands a few rows in front of Alex, beside a cute redhead who was there with a friend.

  Both fighters started out cautiously, sizing each other up. The first round ended with each fighter landing a few good blows, but none that did any damage. Alex noticed that Jason was paying more attention to the redhead than to the fight.

  The second round was much like the first. Lara was quicker than Tonya but she wasn’t using her speed to its best advantage. Her coach was urging her to attack and with a minute left in the second round, she did just that, landing a flurry of kicks and punches that had her opponent reeling and brought Alex and Stefan to their feet. Jason was still engrossed in conversation with the redhead.

  Tonya grabbed hold of Lara, hanging on to give herself a chance to recover. The referee stepped in to separate them. As Lara stepped back, Tonya landed a punch flush on her face. She immediately held her hands up, as if to say it was an accident, but it was no accident. The referee gave her a warning and looked at Lara to make sure she was okay. She nodded, wiping her lip with a glove. It had already started to swell. A fierce look crossed her face.

  “It’s over,” Alex said.

  “She’s not hurt that bad,” Stefan said.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Alex said. He’d seen that look on Lara’s face before.

  The referee signalled for the two girls to start fighting again. Tonya rushed in, thinking she had an advantage. Lara stepped aside and snapped a hard punch to Tonya’s stomach, causing her to drop her guard for just a moment, giving Lara enough time to launch a vicious kick to the side of Tonya’s head that sent the girl from Chilliwack to the canvas. She landed with a thud that left no doubt that she was down for the count.

  Ten seconds later Lara was the provincial champion.

  Alex and Stefan jumped to their feet, cheering madly. As they walked down the aisle. Jason joined them. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “What a great fight.”

  “Too bad you missed it,” Alex said.

  Jason ignored him. “You must be Alex’s brother,” he said to Stefan.

  “You think?” Alex said.

  Jason ignored that, too. “I’m Jason.”

  “Stefan.” They shook hands.

  Alex waited for him to say something stupid about how much they looked alike but Jason surprised him. “Lara told me how you guys found each other,” he said, shaking his head in wonder. “Awesome.”

  “It was heavy,” Stefan said.

  Lara saw them approaching. She was pressing an ice pack against her lip. She smiled, and waved at them with the hand that held the ice pack, revealing a badly swollen lip.

  “Won’t be kissing that for a while,” Jason whispered.

  That’s the jerk we know and love, Alex said to himself.

  “You were great, babe,” Jason said to Lara, giving her a hug. He looked over her head, his eyes tracking the redhead as she and her friend left the gym. Lara put the ice pack back on her lip. “That must really hurt,” Jason said in a concerned voice.

  “It’s nothing,” Lara said.

  “You smoked that girl,” Alex said.

  “Yeah. You were incredible,” added Stefan. Lara shrugged modestly.

  “Awesome,” Jason added.

  “Thanks,” Lara said, beaming at Jason. Open your eyes, Alex wanted to yell.

  “When are the nationals?” Alex asked. Lara’s victory meant that she would be competing at the national championships.

  “Not until March. I’ve got five months to get ready and I’ll need all of them.”

  “We’d better get going,” Jason said. “Eddie said to come by any time after three.”

  Lara nodded. She touched her lip. “This is going to gross everybody out.”

  “You’ll still be the best-looking girl at the party,” Jason said. Lara beamed again. How can she not see that he’s a phony?

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Stefan said after Jason and Lara walked away.

  “Not much,” Alex said. Jason said something that made Lara laugh. She put her arm around his shoulder.

  “You sure you’re not jealous?”

  “No, man. I already told you, we’re just friends. I don’t think he cares about her.”

  “That must be it,” Stefan said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “I’ll meet you in the library after school,” Alex said to Stefan the next morning as they walked through the front doors of the school. The chemistry tutoring campaign was about to begin in earnest. They had a month to prepare for the final exam, but judging by the way things had gone the night before, Alex wasn’t sure that would do the trick.

  “Okay,” Stefan said dully.

  “It’s going to be okay, man,” Alex said with a confidence he didn’t feel.

  “For sure,” Stefan said without conviction before trudging off to class.

  Lara was at her locker. “How’s the lip?” Alex asked, walking up beside her.

  “So-so.” Lara lisped on account of her swollen lip. Tho-tho.

  “It lookth thore,” Alex said. “Exthtweemly thore. I hope it feelth better thoon.”

  “You’re hilariouth. Who writeth your material?” Lara lisped.

  Alex laughed. “How was the party?” he asked.

  “Fine,” she said, in a tone of voice that made Alex think it hadn’t been all that fine. Trouble in paradise? he wondered, but the look on Lara’s face suggested that the thought would be best kept to himself.

  “Coach wants to see you,” Neil Daniels said when Alex walked into the locker room before the Cougars game against the Langley Lions.

  “I’m going to start Earl tonight,” Hampton said when Alex came into his office. “It’s got nothing to do with the way you’re playing. Obviously,” he added. Alex nodded. “You’ve been solid as a rock. But Earl needs to get some game experience under his belt.”

  “No problem,” Alex said. He wasn’t exactly happy about it—he’d come to the arena to play, not sit on the bench—but
he knew it was the right move for the coach to make. If Alex got injured—Or if you screw up, the Voice pointed out, just in case Alex wasn’t aware of the possibility—Bales would have to step in and the coach needed to make sure he would be ready. Earl had played well in practice all year, but no matter how competitive a practice was, it could never measure up to the pressure of a real game.

  “How are you feeling?” Alex asked Bales when he went back into the locker room.

  “Nervous,” Earl admitted.

  “Just do the things we worked on in practice and you’ll be fine,” Alex said reassuringly. “Play the angles, hold your ground, and force the shooter to make the first move.”

  Bales left his nervousness in the locker room. Langley tested him right from the opening face-off, but the big rookie handled everything the Lions threw at him. By the time Richmond walked off the ice with a 3–1 victory, everybody knew that he would be ready if the team had to call on him.

  Alex was reminded of a line from one of Johnny Chin’s movies, where he played a martial arts master training a young novice. “Nothing pleases a teacher more than when his student surpasses him.” Yeah, right, Alex thought. He and Johnny would have to agree to disagree about that one.

  “Great game,” Alex said to Bales in the locker room after the game. He wasn’t prepared to say that the student had surpassed the teacher, but he knew it was close. Damn close.

  “Thanks to you,” Bales said graciously. Alex nodded. He and Earl exchanged a look. They both knew that Bales’s performance, good as it was, didn’t change anything. As well as he had played, they both knew that Alex was the starting goaltender. Until you screw up, the Voice reminded him.

  Alex had no intention of screwing up. If he did, he had a sneaking suspicion that he might never get his starting job back. It reminded him of a story in a book about sports heroes that Anna had given him a couple of years earlier for his birthday. In the story, an old-time baseball player named Wally Pipp, the starting first baseman for the New York Yankees, went into a slump. The coach replaced him with a player named Lou Gehrig. Gehrig played 2130 straight games, a record that lasted for more than fifty years, and Wally Pipp never got back into the starting lineup. Alex had no desire to play Wally Pipp to Earl Bales’s Lou Gehrig.

  The locker room suddenly went silent as Mike Leonard snuck up behind Neil Daniels, who was kneeling on the floor, stuffing the game jerseys into a laundry bag. Mike tapped Neil on the shoulder. When Neil turned around, Leonard farted in his face.

  Neil instinctively recoiled. He fell over the laundry bag and onto the floor. He lay there for a moment, his glasses hanging crookedly on his nose, a comical look on his face. Everybody broke out into laughter. Alex laughed in spite of himself.

  “You’re an asshole, Leonard,” Neil said.

  Leonard turned his butt toward him and farted again. More laughter. This time Alex didn’t join in.

  “Do you know when we’re going to find out about the Hollyburn tournament?” Alex asked Kenny Nelson as they headed to the front door of the arena after changing into their street clothes.

  The Hollyburn Invitational was the most prestigious tournament of the season. Eight of the top teams in the province would be there. And so would scouts from every major college in the States and every junior hockey team in Western Canada.

  “Not for another month but we’ll get an invite for sure.”

  “Unless we fall apart,” Alex said.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Kenny said confidently.

  “I hope you’re right,” Alex said. “Shit. I left my knapsack in the locker room. I’ll see you later.”

  “Later.”

  Everybody had left by the time Alex returned to the locker room. His knapsack was on the floor, right where he left it. He picked it up and was about to leave when he heard a sound coming from the washroom. He peeked inside. Neil Daniels was sitting on the floor in the corner. He was crying. He must have known somebody was there but he didn’t look up. Alex hesitated for a second, unsure whether to say something, before turning and walking away.

  Alex thought about Neil all the way home. It wasn’t just the farting incident that had triggered Neil’s tears. It was the culmination of two years of being harassed and bullied by Mike Leonard. Alex realized that he’d known how Neil felt all along but he’d deluded himself into thinking that Neil didn’t really mind so that he wouldn’t feel bad about doing nothing. Well, he couldn’t delude himself any longer, not after what he’d just seen.

  But what should he do about? What could he do about it? Adults were always saying that bullies are cowards, that if you stand up to a bully he’ll back down, but everybody knew that was a pile of crap. Alex knew exactly what would happen if he said anything. What are you going to do about it, Petrovic? Mike Leonard would say with a smirk on his face. And then what would he do? He would have to put up or shut up. Putting up meant being willing to fight Leonard, and if he did that, he didn’t stand a chance. Leonard could beat the piss out of Alex with one arm tied behind his back.

  That was the truth, no matter what the adults tried to tell you, but knowing that didn’t make Alex feel any better about doing nothing while Mike Leonard terrorized poor Neil Daniels.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Cougars won five more games in the three weeks following their victory over Langley, raising their record to an unblemished 12–0, but Alex was feeling anxious about that night’s game against Hollyburn. The Huskies had also been on a roll and were in second place, only two games behind Richmond. West Van had won three of its last four and was in third place, two more games back. The early season prediction that the three teams would be vying for the championship appeared to be right on the money.

  Alex hoped his team would be ready for the game. The Cougars hadn’t faced a strong opponent for a while and he was concerned that the team had crossed the fine line between confidence and overconfidence. They seemed to think that all they had to do to win was show up. Coach Hampton had warned them that sooner or later their attitude was going to catch up to them and Alex had a feeling that tonight might be the night.

  An email alert from the War Crimes Tribunal Twitter feed interrupted his thoughts. It was the first one he’d received in weeks and he opened it with a sense of excitement that evaporated the moment he read it. The authorities had upped the reward to $500,000, more proof, if proof was needed, that they didn’t have the faintest idea where the Stork or the Snowman were.

  He could hear Anna and Stefan talking in the kitchen when he went downstairs.

  “Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong,” Anna was saying. “You’ve been moping around the house for the past few weeks like there’s a black cloud over your head.”

  “I’m just upset with the way I’m playing,” Stefan said.

  “You’re sure that’s all it is?” Anna asked.

  Alex knew that wasn’t the real reason his brother was down in the dumps, although his play of late had certainly been less than stellar and a far cry from the way he was capable of playing. But chemistry, not hockey, was the source of Stefan’s woes. He and Alex had been working hard, putting in an hour or two every day, but they’d had to start from square one and there was a lot of ground to cover. Even though Stefan had made a lot of progress, he’d dug himself a big hole by failing the first two tests. Alex was confident his brother would pass the exam but it was worth only a third of his final mark and he needed to get 66 percent to raise his overall mark up to a passing grade. And with only one week to go, Alex wasn’t sure his brother would make it.

  Anna turned to Alex as he walked into the kitchen. Stefan gave him a warning look. Something was up.

  “I just spoke to the insurance company,” Anna said in the extra quiet, extra calm voice she used when she was extra angry, “to find out why our premiums went up by five hundred dollars. Care to guess what they told me?”

  “Not really,” Alex said. Five hundred dollars!

  “Running a light and illegally
passing another vehicle. On the same day. Would you mind explaining how this happened?” Alex looked at Stefan. “Don’t look at your brother. He can’t help you.”

  Alex shrugged. There was no point trying to explain. If he told her what really happened, he’d just get in more trouble.

  “Were you drinking?” she asked accusingly.

  “No.” She looked at him searchingly and then nodded, satisfied he was telling the truth.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said. “I’ll pay for the increase in the insurance.” Together with the road fines, the damage was close to eight hundred dollars. He could forget about getting the Vespa in time for summer.

  “You’re darn right you will,” she said. “We’ll leave in five minutes,” she said to Stefan. He nodded. She turned to Alex. “Are you coming with us?”

  “I’ll take the bus,” Alex said. Normally he’d jump at the chance for a lift to school even though he had a spare first period, but he’d rather not give Anna another opportunity to get on his case.

  Alex played video games on his computer until it was time to leave. When he went into the washroom, he noticed a faint shadow of a beard on his face and decided to shave.

  He had started shaving a year ago. At first he only had to shave once a week, but recently he’d noticed he had to shave more often. His beard was still kind of patchy so the unshaven look that a lot of the guys sported didn’t suit him. It just made him look scruffy.

  He softened his beard with hot water before lathering his face with shaving cream. It occurred to him that most boys were taught how to shave by their fathers; he’d learned from a YouTube video. He took his razor and started shaving, making sure to shave in the direction his hair grew just like they showed in the video.

  The blade scraped roughly against his face. He dug into his shaving kit for a new blade but he was fresh out. He took Stefan’s shaving kit out of the cabinet. As he was rummaging around for a blade, he spotted a box of condoms. He opened the box. There were only two left from the twelve that came in the box. It confirmed what he already knew. Stefan and Emma were having sex.