The Ice Chips and the Magical Rink

by Roy MacGregor

  “Come here and say that!” Swift shouted with a smile, trying to push Sadie into stepping onto the ice. She knew her sister couldn’t resist a good fake fight.

  But Sadie scrunched up her mouth and shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere near you—or those puddles!”

  Swift was getting anxious: Crunch was now sitting in the stands with his garbage bag, poking at the screen of his tablet, but where were Edge and Lucas?

  Like Lucas, Swift took the game of hockey very seriously. A lot of training and a lot of commitment had gone into getting her onto this team—onto this ice.

  When Swift was five years old, she’d become very sick with meningitis. The doctors had told her parents that they might have to replace the bottom part of her leg with a robotic one. And in the end, they had.

  In her hockey equipment, no one could tell the difference between Swift’s two legs—and that wasn’t only because both skates had purple laces. Swift was an amazing athlete, on either foot. The other Ice Chips were convinced that she would eventually compete at the Paralympics—probably in more than one sport.

  “Forget about the water. Sadie, let’s see what you can do!” Swift called from the crease, slapping her stick down into a puddle for emphasis—just as Edge and Lucas emerged from the dressing room.

  Edge, Lucas . . .

  . . . and Lars.

  * * *

  “If you can skate here, I can skate here,” Lars threatened, pushing his way ahead of Lucas and Edge, as though he wanted to beat them onto the ice.

  Edge moved as if he was going to run after him in his skates, but then didn’t. They’d been arguing ever since Lars had walked into the dressing room. How had he known they’d be there? Why had he come out? And why wouldn’t he just leave them alone?

  Swift couldn’t believe it. Neither could Crunch. And Sadie didn’t know what was going on.

  Did Lars actually think he was going to skate with them?

  The look on Lars’s face was angry . . . mean. But once he reached the stands where Crunch and Sadie were sitting, he suddenly turned around and burst out laughing—at Lucas.

  From the waist down, Lucas had dressed in full hockey gear, but as soon as he’d seen Lars enter the dressing room, he’d decided to keep his coat on up top. He hadn’t wanted this mean new kid to see Speedy’s ketchup-stained jersey (at first Lucas had thought it was blood—but no) or his oversized shoulder pads (he hadn’t even put them on). Lucas was already embarrassed. He didn’t need Lars telling him he was a loser who was never going to make it to the NHL.

  “Hey, Lucas, you stink. I mean . . . you actually stink,” Lars howled, pointing at Lucas’s lower half—Speedy’s old gear. “And that is the woooooooorst ice I’ve ever seen!” Lars’s voice boomed across the arena. He pretended to steady himself against the boards, laughing far louder than necessary. “No wonder they’re closing your rink!” he sneered, his raised eyebrows hiding behind his bangs.

  Lucas looked out across the ice, deflated. Edge, who was always optimistic, was disappointed, too.

  “This isn’t how I thought it’d be,” Lucas said under his breath.

  “You can skate on it,” said Swift, now leaning in the open doorway of the boards. “You just don’t want to take any dives—or else you’ll go for a swim.”

  That was it for Sadie. In one quick movement, she grabbed the skates she’d just taken off and put them back in her skate bag. “Well, I’m not going swimming. I’m going home,” she said, hopping down out of the stands. “I’m sorry”—she looked at her sister sympathetically—“but this was a bad idea.”

  “An awful idea,” said Lars with an annoying grin.

  All the Ice Chips instantly wished that they’d thought to lock the rink’s doors behind them.

  “Why don’t you take Lars with you?” Edge said to Sadie. “He obviously doesn’t want to be here.”

  Like Edge, Lars was still in his street clothes. All he had to do was change back into his boots.

  “First, I want Top Shehhhhhlf to take off his coat so we can see the rest of his gear,” said Lars.

  Lucas’s face burned red. This was mortifying . . . and time was running out.

  “I’ll take my coat off,” Edge offered, coming to Lucas’s defence. He removed his puffy green coat and placed it on the stands. “I wasn’t going to skate with it anyway.”

  “So you can go home now, Lars,” Swift quickly added.

  “How about we shoot for it?” Lars suggested in a tone that was almost diabolical.

  What is with this guy? Lucas couldn’t believe it.

  He could tell that Lars wasn’t even planning on skating now. He just wanted to make Lucas suffer.

  “Me . . . and Lucas,” Lars continued as he twirled his stick in his hand. “A shootout.”

  Lucas winced as Lars nodded toward a large blue steel door in one corner of the arena. The chiller room.

  “If you hit the doorknob, I’ll leave,” he said with a mocking smile. “If I hit it, you carry my equipment for a week—all the way to the new rink.”

  Lucas looked at the doorknob. He had practised that shot, the one that hit right below the top of the net, a million times over the summer.

  But what if he couldn’t do it?

  Chapter 7

  With a thud, Lars dropped an orange ball from his backpack onto the rubber floor, right in front of Lucas’s skates.

  “This is silly,” said Swift, pushing off the boards and then drifting back again. “No one can hit that.”

  Crunch slid his tablet aside and said he was going to look for a broom “to push the puddles around.” Sadie rolled her eyes and took another step toward the Zamboni doors.

  “What? Are you afraid his awful equipment will fall off when he shoots?” Lars said with a taunting grin. “Wait—what’s that sound? Are your shin pads . . . chattering?”

  Lucas looked at the ball but didn’t move.

  Swift pulled herself along boards to where Lucas was standing. Always protective of his friend, Edge moved in closer, too.

  “All you have to do is hit the doorknob,” Lars repeated smugly.

  “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” Edge shouted, butting in with his biggest voice as he fiddled with his helmet. “That’s not even a real target.”

  Edge loved coming to the rescue.

  He means well, thought Lucas, but his acting is terrible.

  With an exaggerated motion, Edge put his hands on his hips like his mom did when she asked about his homework. “You want him to hit that? Really? No problem, Lars! No problem at all.”

  Lucas would have found this amusing if he hadn’t been so terrified.

  “Okay, but not with a ball,” he said, swallowing hard. “I need a puck.”

  Lucas pushed the orange ball away with his skate and took a puck out of his pocket—the one he’d thrown in there, along with his lucky quarter, just before leaving the house. With a slap, he dropped the puck on the rubber flooring.

  All at once, the room went silent.

  Swift, Edge, Sadie, and Lars were staring at Lucas’s stick. Crunch was still off looking for a broom.

  “Would you hurry up!” called Swift, still worried about their skating time.

  Lucas lined up the puck.

  He drew back his stick.

  And without leaving himself time to hesitate, he fired.

  Shhhhhh-cah-LACK!

  The puck lifted slightly off the ground. It flew fast, in a straight line, and then turned slightly just as it slammed into the metal doorknob.

  BOOOO-ooooom!

  Gaad-OOOOOong!!!

  The loud metallic sound exploded across the arena.

  He’d done it!

  And it was like nothing any of them had heard before. The sound was way louder than the smack of a puck against a metal garage door. It made a bigger boom than Sidney Crosby’s shots off the clothes dryer in his parents’ basement. (They’d seen a video on the internet.) It was . . . incredible, like big, empty metallic thunder.

>   “BOOM-errific!” Edge cheered as he patted Lucas on the back.

  The vibrations were still hanging in the air as Lars sat down and started unlacing his skates.

  No one was surprised that by the time Crunch had come back around the corner from his broom search, a sour-faced Lars was already in his boots, headed for the door.

  “Lars isn’t going to shoot?” Crunch asked, confused.

  Lucas just smiled and shrugged. “And you’re leaving, too?” he asked Sadie.

  “The puddles are too much for me,” she answered heavily, still clutching her skate bag. The melting ice might not be dangerous for hockey, she said, but she didn’t want to swing around for a Salchow jump, slip, and break a leg—she wasn’t that much of a risk-taker.

  “Well, I’m still skating,” Swift said impatiently, looking at Crunch as Sadie bounced toward the Zamboni exit and left. “Did you find a broom?”

  “Not exactly,” Crunch replied, holding out his hands. In them was an old, rusted remote control with strange buttons and a flashing green light. “I, uh . . .” he said, glancing over at the main doors to make sure they had closed firmly behind Lars.

  Swift motioned for him to go on.

  Carefully, Crunch cleared his throat. “I think I found something a little more . . . interesting.”

  Chapter 8

  “NO WAY!!!!”

  None of the Ice Chips could believe it when Crunch showed it to them—the remote-controlled machine that was now cleaning the ice. It was only the size of a ride-on lawnmower, and it looked like someone had assembled it out of spare parts—an old air duct here, a used bike part there—but the job it was doing was . . . magnificent!

  The Chips had never seen anything like it.

  As the machine swerved around the rink, crossing through the middle and then veering left or right with the curve of the boards, it almost seemed to be floating over the ice. But at the same time, it was also part of the ice. Was that even possible?

  Lucas watched in awe from behind the boards as the little flooding robot scratched the surface, glided over it, and smoothed it out. Not a single puddle was left behind.

  It was amazing.

  “It’s a puddle eraser!” Edge shouted, impressed. “It’s like a . . . supra . . . glass-ificating—ugh! I mean, the ice is like new!!”

  Lucas let out a little giggle.

  But Edge was right.

  Wherever the machine had passed, the ice was now unbelievable—solid, flawless, and glossy like a carefully glazed mirror. Their regular Zamboni had never done anything like this before.

  When Crunch had first shown the Chips the remote control in his hands, Lucas had assumed he’d found another drone—maybe the first one ever invented, from the look of it. But then Crunch had flicked the orange switch on the top of the controller, and something magical had happened. Something . . . special.

  Lucas had sensed it, like a shiver going through his entire body.

  The moment the switch was flipped, he’d felt something electrical.

  “Whooooa, what is that?!” Swift had shouted as the boards swung open and the rusty blue-and-white machine rolled onto the ice. Its lights were blinking excitedly, almost like a dog wagging its tail, and Swift spun quickly on her blades and bolted.

  “It’s amazing!” cheered Crunch as he let Swift through the boards.

  “It looks like some kind of pet,” Edge said, laughing. Then he stepped his skates onto the ice, daring to take a closer look at the strange contraption. It had one small seat and a steering wheel on top, but it obviously didn’t require a driver. “It’s so tiny. What’s it for?” asked Edge, leaning in. The name “Scratch” had been carved into the machine’s side and painted blue. Edge reached out his hand to touch it and—

  Suddenly, the machine lurched forward!

  Edge jumped back. Could it be dangerous? Could it . . . bite?

  Frightened, Edge, too, quickly skated off the ice.

  At first, Scratch had chugged along by himself, his large back wheels gripping the ice beneath him, spraying water from two large containers on his back. But the ice had stayed the same. That’s when Crunch realized that Scratch didn’t have a towel attached to the track on his back bumper—the towel that smooths the ice after a flooding machine drives over it.

  If that was what Scratch really was . . . but what else could he be?

  With only twenty minutes left before Dave was supposed to be back, Swift immediately marched over to the change room and grabbed her towel and Lucas’s from their bags. Edge and Crunch then fastened them to the machine.

  Now, as Scratch made his rounds, line after line, with the towels attached, he had Lucas mesmerized—absolutely, completely transfixed.

  Lucas’s heart was fluttering.

  His hands were sweaty.

  Even the idea of his rotten equipment seemed to have faded into the distance.

  As Scratch finally finished his half ovals and rolled back down the Zamboni chute all on his own, Lucas couldn’t stop grinning. He had never seen a sheet of ice so stunning. His beloved rink was now flat and even, shimmering in the big overhead lights.

  It was absolute perfection.

  * * *

  In the hockey world, there is nothing quite so lovely as a clean sheet of ice.

  Sometimes, that first step—that first stride—was Lucas’s favourite part of the game. The rink has been flooded. The game can begin. No one knows who will shine, who will succeed, who will fail, who will triumph.

  Coach Small often talked to the Chips about character: telling them that who they were on the ice was made up of both the opportunities they saw and the ones they created. Lucas wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he knew he’d never seen an opportunity like this one.

  “It’s perfect . . . the best ever,” he said, breathless, as the Zamboni gate closed behind the flooding machine.

  Perfect—and empty.

  Lucas and his friends could smell the ice. They could almost taste it.

  Their rink was calling them.

  * * *

  The players decided that Lucas would be the first to touch his blades to the clean white surface.

  Then Edge. Then Swift.

  Crunch wasn’t going to put his skates on at all. If their rink could be like this—this changed, this awesome—then they’d have to work harder to keep it. Mayor Ward, Crunch was convinced, would never shut this rink down if she knew what it could do. Someone would have to film “the phenomenon,” as he called it.

  “I’ll start with a wide shot, then I’ll come down to ice level for some close-ups,” Crunch chattered excitedly as he crawled back into the stands. “But I’m warning you now—if Dave comes back, I’m running.”

  Crunch was always afraid of getting in trouble, but he could often find some extra courage when Lucas and Edge were involved. He held his tablet up to eye level and started recording.

  “Okay, action!”

  Slowly, Lucas put one skate onto the untouched surface—afraid to scratch it, but dying to at the same time—and then the other.

  “Lucas, go!” said Swift, giving him a nudge. She was itching to get back on the ice.

  Breathing in the icy air, Lucas pushed off the boards. And flew.

  Shhhhhhhhwuuuuh.

  Shhhhhwoooooooo.

  Weightless, he shifted from one leg to the other. He moved his stick back and forth with an imaginary puck. Skating on the perfectly groomed ice was like floating. No, like . . . flying.

  When Lucas reached the goal line, he cut hard and stopped, angling his skates tight together. A small, perfect spray of ice shot out beside him.

  “This is AMAZING!!” Edge shouted as he bounded onto the ice after Lucas, pushed hard with his legs, and roared up behind him. Edge was gripping a stick with one mitten and held a puck in the other, as though he was weighing it, judging it.

  “It’s . . . wow. It’s unbelievable!” Swift agreed as she skated in beside them. “It’s like a completely different rink.
”

  “An Olympic one,” Lucas whispered under his breath as he moved his skates back and forth, feeling the hardness of the ice.

  “Do we give the rink a moment of silence?” asked Edge with a giggle. He always found solemn moments like this funny and awkward. He never knew what to do.

  “No . . . let’s race!” Swift called out as she took off skating—backwards—toward the blue line. “First one across centre wins!”

  Lucas leaped after her. A moment later, so did Edge.

  Lucas and Edge would be quicker than Swift in her goalie pads, but she had a head start.

  Swift hit the blue line first and turned sharply, almost losing her balance. From there, she skated forward.

  Lucas drove his back leg out hard, pushing with all his strength. He was crouched down now, skating the way he’d once seen Bobby Orr skate in an old video—almost as if he were pulling a chair up to the breakfast table. He pushed out hard with his right leg, then, gliding on his right skate, pushed hard again with his left.

  Edge was doing the same, only faster.

  Edge, Swift, and Lucas all hit the centre red line at exactly the same moment . . .

  . . . and vanished.

  Chapter 9

  Location Unknown

  This can’t be a dream, Lucas thought to himself. It can’t.

  Snow doesn’t really fall in dreams. It doesn’t stick your eyelids together. You don’t slip on the ice and fall backwards with a whuuumpppp and then still feel sore later . . .

  “You don’t have a puck, then?” Edna asked. She and Gordon were still wearing one skate and one boot each, but now they were also holding a few Cheerios.

  “It’s here somewhere,” Lucas answered, kicking at some cereal in the snow. Then he remembered—he’d shot it in the arena . . . before . . . before . . .

  What happened?

  There’d been a flicker of light.

  A swirling motion.

  Snow, maybe snowflakes. Cold.

  Then in a flash, the rink had looked sideways, upside down . . . and bright, bright white. Brighter than anything Lucas had ever seen . . .