I was into my second tuna sandwich, and neither Mr. Henry nor his wife had asked me a single question about the game.
I took my eyes away from the trees and blue sky and looked over at them.
They were staring at me. Not eating. Just staring.
I looked behind me to see if a couple of deer had appeared or if a blue jay had landed on the bird feeder just outside the patio doors. Maybe that had their attention.
Nope. Nothing behind me.
I looked back at them. They were still staring in my direction. Still saying nothing.
“Excuse me,” I said.
They nodded.
I went to the bathroom to see if I was growing a huge purple pimple somewhere on my face that I had not noticed yet.
The mirror showed me a face that looked identical to the photo in the team program. Brownish hair. Brown eyes. An okay-looking face. Not much of a smile. Fortunately, no monster pimple. So they couldn’t have been staring at that.
I walked back to the dining room and took my chair at the table.
They looked at me.
I coughed.
They said nothing.
“Um, we won last night,” I said.
“I know,” Mr. Henry said. “We were there.”
Strange he hadn’t said anything about the game-winning goal.
“Still lots to go,” I said. “We still have to win eleven out of the last fifteen games to make the playoffs.”
“I know,” Mr. Henry said. He was a thin man with round glasses who usually wore a brown sweater of some kind. He removed his glasses and polished them with a napkin.
It was definitely strange that he said nothing else. Usually he had tons of questions. He wanted to know if the referees did a good job, wanted to know what I thought of our chances to make the playoffs.
Now, nothing.
Mrs. Henry was nicely plump in her expensive sweat suit, the kind of plump mother you’d want if you needed a mother to hold you when you were sad. Which I definitely did not ever need or want, but I could see how she’d be nice for someone who did.
She finally broke the silence. “We didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
I swallowed a big chunk of tuna sandwich. “Neither did I,” I said. “You know I’m concentrating on hockey.”
“Sure,” Mr. Henry said. He didn’t look like he believed me.
I’m no psychic, but I can tell when something is wrong. I set my sandwich down on my plate.
“What exactly is going on?” I asked.
Mrs. Henry looked at her husband. She twisted her fingers together. “Tell him,” she said.
Mr. Henry cleared his throat. He stared down at the table as he spoke. “We got a phone call this morning from a very angry father.”
I didn’t understand where this was going.
“Yes?” I said.
“He told us if you ever beat up his daughter again on a date, he would send the police over.”
“What?” I said. It didn’t sound like Mr. Henry was joking.
“We can help you,” Mrs. Henry said. “We know some very good counselors. Perhaps if you talk to someone?”
“Look,” I said. I spoke very slowly because I was getting very angry. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t beat people up.”
“Please,” Mr. Henry said, “don’t make this more difficult than it already is. We’re worried you might get into some serious legal trouble. And if the newspapers get hold of this story...”
“You don’t believe me,” I said. “I have no idea why anyone would call and tell you those lies, but you’re going to believe a stranger over me, aren’t you?”
“Craig,” Mrs. Henry began in her soft voice.
“Yes?” I felt very cold inside, and my voice probably showed it.
“You’re a very quiet young man,” she said. “You’ll talk to us about hockey when we ask, but you never say anything about yourself. You go for those long drives at night. So after the phone call, we tried to reach your mother and—”
I stood. “You what?”
“We tried to call your mother. Mr. Henry and I talked it over, and we thought it would be the best thing to—”
“I don’t have a mother,” I said. My voice was so low that they had to lean forward to hear. “I stopped having a mother the day she walked out on me and my dad. Understand?”
“Craig—”
Standing in front of them, I slammed my fist down on the table. “I do not have a girlfriend. I did not beat anyone up.”
Mr. Henry stood to face me. He was shorter, and I could see the top of his hair where it got thin.
“Craig,” he said, “we worry about you. You’re so quiet. You don’t have many friends here. We just want to make sure—”
“I don’t need friends. I’ve got hockey.”
“And you’re very good,” he said quickly, “one of the most promising juniors anyone has seen in quite some time. But you have to develop a life outside hockey. What will happen if for some reason you can’t play hockey? Then what?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “For some reason, like if I got thrown in jail for beating up a girl?”
He gulped. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down above his brown sweater.
“I’m only saying this one more time,” I said. “No girlfriend. No fight. If you don’t believe me, I’ll pack my bags today.”
I hit them with logic. “If the guy was telling the truth, why didn’t he tell you his name? Or his daughter’s name?”
Mr. Henry frowned as he thought that through. Finally he let out a big breath. He reached down with one hand and rested it on his wife’s shoulder. After far too long, he said, “We believe you. I’ll do my best to find out who called here this morning.”
In another two hours, practice would begin. That would take my mind off all this. Just me, my skates, a hockey stick and the ice rink in front of me. My escape.
chapter ten
Practice did not become much of an escape from my worries. First of all, Coach Blair was still mad at us for losing in Medicine Hat, in spite of our recent win, and worked us hard. Frankie Smith, a fifteen-year-old rookie, threw up over the boards and onto the rubber mat of the players’ box.
Second, my equipment didn’t feel right. I couldn’t figure out exactly why it felt wrong, but I couldn’t get comfortable as I skated.
And third, no matter how hard I tried to think about the puck and skating, I couldn’t get my mind off what had happened at lunch.
It hurt that the Henrys believed I was the kind of guy who would lie. It hurt that the Henrys believed I was the kind of guy who would beat up a girl. It hurt that the Henrys had tried to phone the woman who only now wanted to say she was my mother because it looked like I might someday get a big fat contract to play in the National Hockey League.
Not only was I feeling hurt, but it also bothered me that I would actually let my feelings get hurt. Ever since Dad died, I had pushed feelings away. If you didn’t have feelings, you couldn’t get hurt. Only now it seemed I hadn’t done as good a job as I’d thought.
And on top of all this, there was the telephone call itself. Who would call the Henrys and tell them I had beaten up his daughter? And why?
What if that same person called Coach Blair? Or the newspapers?
I knew I hadn’t beaten up anyone. I knew I could never beat up a girl. I knew I wasn’t dating anyone because I wanted to concentrate on hockey. Hockey, unlike girls, could never hurt your feelings.
But no matter how much I knew I hadn’t done anything, it might not make a difference if someone started spreading the lies. I’d seen enough to know that even rumors could cause me some major trouble.
“McElhaney!” I heard Coach Blair yelling at me. I pulled myself away from my thoughts and looked across the ice at him, dressed in gray and black sweats, the Rebel colors. “You want to skate? Or do you want to push a baby carriage? Get your legs in gear!”
I pushed ahead. The clock showed anothe
r fifteen minutes of practice. It seemed like we had been on the ice since before hockey had been invented.
Coach Blair ended practice without giving us any shooting or passing drills. Instead he kept us skating, blowing the whistle to make us stop, blowing it to make us start, blowing it to make us reverse directions, blowing it to make us very, very sorry for losing so many games.
Finally the torture ended and the guys headed back toward our dressing room.
Coach Blair waved me over to him.
The players left the ice. It was just Coach Blair and me and the rows and rows of empty stands that climbed high into the arena around us. And the guy on the zamboni tractor, ready to clean and water the ice surface.
“McElhaney,” Coach Blair said. His whistle hung from his neck, quiet for the first time in the last two hours.
“Yes, sir?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. Had someone already called him with the lie about me beating up a girl?
“Good,” he said. “The team needs you.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Could you go a little farther than that?” he asked.
“My best is my best,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be rude. “I always work as hard as I can.”
“I don’t mean that,” he told me. He looked me straight in the eyes. “I mean, can you go a little farther off the ice?”
“I don’t understand.”
“With fifteen games left, we need to win eleven more. You know that. I also think you know we can do it. Except for the final two games of the season against Lethbridge, we play some easy teams.”
I nodded.
He kept going, still looking me in the eyes. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I like you. You’re a good kid. But I think you should try to get more involved with the team off the ice. You’re a natural leader, if you want to be.”
“Me?”
“You. Loosen up a bit. Don’t make such an effort to be a loner. The guys on this team look up to you. They’d like it if you’d let them become friends. And it would sure help us as a team. I think if we make the playoffs, we’d have as good a chance as anyone at going all the way.”
All I could do was nod. It hadn’t occurred to me that the guys would like to be my friends. Maybe if I just tried a little.
“That’s all,” Coach Blair finished. “See what you can do about bringing the guys together in our final stretch of games. All right?”
I nodded again.
“Good. See you in the dressing room.”
He skated to get his clipboard where he’d left it on top of one of the nets.
The zamboni tractor rolled onto the ice.
I skated off and went straight to the dressing room, walking along the long rubber mat that protected our skate blades from the concrete.
When I got to the dressing room, I looked around as if I’d never been in it before, proud of what Coach Blair had said about some of these guys looking up to me. It almost took away some of the bad feelings I had from my lunch with the Henrys.
As I looked around, I realized that the guys really were looking up at me. All of them. They were sitting on the benches, staring at me, not saying a word.
“It’s all right, guys. I’m still on the team,” I joked. “Coach Blair didn’t yell too much.”
My first joke in two months didn’t bring much laughter. The guys kept staring at me.
“McElhaney,” Jason said from where he was sitting, half undressed, skates unlaced but not yet taken off his feet.
“Yeah?”
“Check your duffel bag,” he said. “I think there was a mix-up. You might have my bag.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll check.”
The dressing room was very, very quiet as I went to my stall. I pulled a duffel bag from my locker. The white number 3 on the side of the bag was plain against its black nylon.
“Nope,” I said. “This is mine.”
“Look closer,” Jason said. “Mine used to have two threes on it. But last week one of them fell off and I haven’t fixed it yet.”
I looked closer. Then I understood. There was the faint outline of another three where it had peeled away from the black nylon. Jason’s number 33 had become a 3.
“You’ve got my bag?” I asked.
Jason held up the duffel bag at his stall, showing my number 3 on it.
“Nuts,” I said, “that explains why my equipment felt weird. We must have gotten them mixed up last night.”
If there had been a mix-up in skates, we would have noticed it right away because skates fit the way they’ve broken in to your feet. Put on someone else’s skates, and you know it right away. But one of the things Teddy always did in the morning before practice was pull out our sweaters to clean them and take our skates to sharpen them. Teddy, of course, would have taken Jason’s skates from the duffel bag in my stall and my skates from the duffel bag in Jason’s stall, then returned our skates to the right places. Since I’d put on my skates, I had assumed it was my equipment too.
I turned to Jason. “So you wore my equipment and I wore yours,” I said. “I’m glad today wasn’t the day you had cockroaches.”
Again, no one laughed.
Coach Blair walked into the dressing room. He frowned at the strange tension in the room.
“Guys?” he asked.
Nobody replied. I was the only one standing.
“McElhaney?” Coach Blair asked.
I shrugged. I had no idea what was happening.
Hog Burnell broke the silence.
“Coach,” Hog said, “remember when I lost my wallet last week?”
Coach Blair suddenly became suspicious. “Yes, I remember.”
“And remember how you told me not to tell anyone? To keep my eyes open in case it showed up?”
“I remember that too,” Coach Blair said. “We weren’t going to accuse anyone here of stealing it. Not without good reason. What are you trying to say, Hog?”
Hog pointed at Jason and let him reply.
“Coach,” Jason said, “I found it in this duffel bag. I thought it was my duffel bag, and when I went into the side pocket to find my comb, I found Hog’s wallet.”
“Oh,” Coach said. He asked the question he didn’t want to ask. He asked the question I didn’t want to hear. “Whose duffel bag?”
“McElhaney’s,” Jason said.
Coach looked at me and gave a grin. It wasn’t much of a grin. “I’m sure there’s a good explanation,” Coach said.
I tried to think of a good explanation. But I didn’t have time.
Louie Shertzer spoke. His voice was angry. “Coach, you didn’t tell me Hog’s wallet had been stolen too.”
Coach Blair sighed. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me, and he still didn’t as he answered Shertzer. “No, I didn’t, Louie. I didn’t want the team knowing that someone had been stealing.”
“My wallet too!” Mancini said. “I had fifty bucks in it. Remember, Coach?”
Coach finally turned his head away from me and looked back at Jason. “Did you find anything else in McElhaney’s duffel bag?”
“Shertzer’s wallet,” Jason said. “And Mancini’s. None of the wallets had any money left in them.”
“Guys, it wasn’t me,” I said. I felt like throwing up at the way they were all looking at me. “I swear it wasn’t me. I didn’t—”
Coach Blair cut me off. “McElhaney, we need to talk. Now.”
Nobody said a word as I followed Coach Blair out of the dressing room.
I didn’t feel like much of a team leader. And I doubted I had done much to bring the guys together for our final stretch of games.
chapter eleven
“Coach Blair, I didn’t steal those wallets,” I said, not even waiting until I was completely inside his office.
He shut the door behind me. He moved to his desk and sat in the chair behind it, still wearing his hockey skates.
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“It looks bad, McElhaney. Real bad.”
“I did not put those wallets there.” I was too scared to be mad. My words felt like a waterfall of marbles dropping from my mouth. “Someone else must have. I would never steal from—”
“You’re not listening,” he said. “It looks bad. Whether you stole those wallets or not, we’ve got a real problem.”
“Coach?”
He rubbed his face with both hands. While I waited for him to speak, I stared at a photo on the edge of his desk of his pretty blond wife with their baby boy.
“McElhaney,” he finally said, “I really want to believe you.”
He watched my face. He probably saw I was thinking he wanted to believe me. Not he did believe me.
“I’m sorry,” he said seconds later. “What I meant is I do believe you. Someone else put those wallets there.”
He had apologized too late, though. It hurt. The Henrys. Coach. Did I keep to myself so much that no one felt they knew me enough to trust me?
“Someone else did,” I insisted. I was starting to be less scared now and more mad. Who was trying to get me? And why?
“Don’t you see?” Coach Blair said. “Unless we prove who did it—”
“It looks like I’m guilty,” I finished.
“Hockey’s a team game,” he said. “Can we be a team if the rest of the guys think you stole from them?”
I couldn’t respond. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I couldn’t get the words out.
We stared at each other.
“You’ll have to sit out a few games,” he said. “I hate to do it. The team needs your skills on defense.”
Miss some games? I felt like a miserable wall of bricks standing there in my hockey equipment, sweat running down my face, my stick in my hand.
“How many games?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Until we find out who did this.”
I got the feeling he didn’t expect to find anyone else. I got the feeling he did think I had stolen the wallets but found it easier to pretend someone else had.
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