The Boston Breakout (5 page)

C
lang!

“
Yes!
” Travis shouted to himself, the sound contained inside his face mask. He had just cranked his first shot of the warm-up off the crossbar, the puck sailing high into the wall of glass behind Jeremy Weathers’s net.

This one was going to be different.

The Screech Owls were again at the Wilmington arena, this time up against the Pittsburgh River Rats, a team they knew only too well. The two
teams had met previously at the Peewee Winter Classic played outdoors at Heinz Field in the River Rats’ home city.

It was the big winger on the Pittsburgh side who had drilled Travis headfirst into the boards in Game 1 of that tournament. The hit had given Travis a concussion. Travis didn’t like to remember it: the pain of the hit, the unshakable sense of being awake in a dream, the headaches, the way he had to avoid light and sound – but mostly being unable to play until cleared by the doctor. He never wished to go through an experience like that again.

Travis scanned the opposition during their warm-up. He couldn’t see the big player who had hurt him. Sarah, it turned out, had been doing the same and also noticed the player’s absence.

“Mr. D says that the guy felt so bad about causing the accident, he quit hockey for good,” Sarah said, as she and Travis lined up to take practice shots at Jeremy and Jenny.

Travis could only nod. It was too emotional for him to say anything. He hated being the reason
someone had given up this wonderful game. The winger hadn’t deliberately set out to hurt him.

He changed the topic. “I can skate a lot better today,” he told Sarah.

He could see her smile behind her face mask. “Me, too,” she said. “Feels good.”

The Owls were not the same team that had been thrashed the day before by the Young Blackhawks. They had jump this time, and speed, and their timing was coming back fast. Travis no longer had to think about his skating. He was thinking about where he should be and what he would do when he got there. He was “thinking the game,” as Muck always said they needed to, and no longer “thinking the player” – himself.

Lars led the Owls’ first rush against the River Rats. He flew out of his own end with the puck dancing on his stick as if it were attached by invisible strings, up to center, where he dished off to Dmitri on his right, who skated over the opposition blue line but left the puck sitting right on the line for Sarah to pick up as she came up behind him with speed.

Sarah threw a pass over to Travis, the puck flying over the reaching sticks of the Rats’ defense, to be knocked down by Travis with a quick chop. He kicked the puck ahead to his stick blade, faked a shot at the goaltender, but instead twisted a pass back to Lars, still coming with the rush.

Lars had an empty net to fire at.

1–0, Owls.

The Pittsburgh team wasn’t ready to lie down so the Owls could feel better with a comeback win. They were a good team. They had replaced the big winger with a highly skilled little guy who could outrace every Owl but Sarah and Dmitri.

Early in the second period, the little River Rat came down Travis’s side and sent himself a perfect pass by bouncing the puck off the boards and picking it up again after he’d raced around Travis.

Travis turned and gave chase, furious at himself for getting caught in such a predictable play, but he stood no chance of catching the little speedster.

Up ahead he saw Nish coming cross-ice fast. Nish didn’t have the speed of Dmitri or Sarah, but in times of great need he could move quickly.

Nish left his feet! He wasn’t falling – he was
flying
. He hurled himself into the air and seemed to float a moment – seemed even to turn his head in Travis’s direction and grin – before slamming down on the ice, chest and stomach first, and barreling into the path of the speedster.

Nish swung his stick along the ice and clipped the puck off the stick of the little rusher. The River Rat tripped over Nish and crashed harmlessly into the far corner, the puck trickling in underneath him.

The River Rats were sure the referee had called a tripping penalty. Fans in the crowd cheered, and players on the bench rapped their sticks hard on the boards to signal their approval. But the referee had called no penalty. He had lost sight of the puck and blown the whistle, as he was supposed to.

The River Rats’ coach was screaming for an explanation.

“The kid played the puck first,” the referee told him. “Fair and square. And then your guy fell over him on the ice. No trip. Good play.”

Now the Owls started rapping their sticks on the boards by the bench, an act that was instantly halted by Muck.

“We’ll have none of that,” he said. “This is a hockey game, not a theatrical performance.”

When play resumed, Andy took the face-off and managed to slip the puck back between his skates to Nish. Nish looked down the ice, faked a pass up to Jesse, then took off himself.

Travis and Sarah were watching from the bench. “Let’s not have the Mario move,” Sarah said.

Nish was at center ice, still carrying the puck. He wasn’t the fastest on the ice, but he had more determination than anyone. And when Nish decided to play, he could really play.

Up over the blue line and he still had the puck, though three Rats were trying to check him. He stopped suddenly, slipping the puck back just
as one skater flew past, then tucked it between the skates of the defenseman ahead coming straight at him.

Nish had only one player to beat. He faked a quick shot and instead pushed the puck to the side, looping back in a curl toward the blue line, where the one remaining defender tried a poke check and fell.

He was in free.

“
No Mario!
” Sarah screamed from the bench.

No worries. Nish came in, faked the shot on net, forehand, backhand, and then back to front. The Rats’ goaltender, trying to anticipate the shot, made the first move. The wrong move, it turned out.

Nish very gently tucked the puck into the open net and turned to skate back.

The River Rats and the crowd roared their disapproval. The Rats’ coach was livid. “Fatso shoulda been in the box!” he screamed at the referee. Travis was glad Muck never screamed like that. Nor would Muck insult a player, no matter how upset he might be inside.

You could almost always predict what Muck might say or do. Nish, however, was not behaving like Nish. Where was the fist pump? Where was the slide on shin pads? Where was the leap into the air and the butt-check against the glass? (“Nish’s Ovechkin,” the kids called it.) Where was the race to the Owls’ bench to punch gloves with his teammates and soak in the praise?

This was a new Nish. Crouched over, his stick across his shin pads, Bobby Orr style, Nish merely drifted back to his defense posting at center ice as if he’d just come off the bench.

Sarah and Travis turned to look at each other. There was nothing to say. Laughter was the only possible response.

The Owls won 4–2. Sarah scored on a rebound left behind by Dmitri on a nice rush, and in the dying seconds, Travis scored an empty netter – he thought of them as half-goals rather than real goals – when the Rats were trying to tie it up.

It had been a clean match, and the River Rats had proved to be good opponents.

Nish, the hero of the moment, dressed quietly, and for once carried his offensive underwear over to the laundry bag rather than tossing it without caring where it landed.

“What’s up with you?” Sarah asked him. “Mr. Humility on the ice and now Mr. Helper in the dressing room?”

Nish grinned. “All part of the maturing process,” he said. “I’m no longer in school, so I’m now a grown-up, right?”

No one bothered with an answer.

On the way back to the city center from the Wilmington rink, Mr. Dillinger pulled the team bus in at the first McDonald’s golden-arches sign.

The Owls all cheered his decision. All except one.

Sam informed the team that she would not be going in with them.

“I no longer eat meat,” she told them.

“I’ll eat yours for you,” Nish offered.

For once, Sam did not shoot him a reply. “I am a vegetarian now,” she said very quietly.

“
Free the celery!
” Nish shouted.

So much for the “maturing process,” thought Travis.

T
he scientific career of inventor Wayne Nishikawa was not off to a great start. Having quit school, like Ben Franklin, he was now determined to invent something – but unfortunately he had no idea what.

But then the small plastic disc shooter he had purchased at Mr. D’s Stupid Stop gave him an idea, and Data, who was as close to a scientific genius as the Owls could claim, agreed to serve as Nish’s assistant.

The disc launcher, Nish said, could be adapted to become an “automatic puck shooter.” At Data’s suggestion, he even laid out a “prospectus” for the invention, all dutifully written up by Data on his tablet computer:

Nish and Data – well, actually Data – were busy drawing up models on Data’s tablet. Data was
also compiling a list of materials necessary for them to build the first prototype of the machine.

Travis wondered exactly what Nish had done apart from lend his name to the ridiculous idea.

Travis was not the only one wondering about Nish. His teammates were still talking about Nish’s lack of hotdogging after he had scored that spectacular goal against the River Rats.

And then, of course, there was Nish’s mother.

In the evening after the game against the River Rats, Muck asked Nish to meet him in the lobby. When Nish went down, fully expecting to be congratulated for his mature behavior following his magnificent goal, he found the Screech Owls’ coach sitting in a chair, rubbing his large hands together, and looking worried.

“Sit down, young man,” Muck said seriously.

Nish sat, his own hands twisting with concern.

“I’ve received a call from your mother,” Muck began. “She told me about the postcard you sent her. I am presuming that this was your idea of a little joke, correct?”

“No, sir. I meant it. I
mean
it. I’m going to quit school – just like Ben Franklin. I’m going to be a famous inventor.”

“You do realize it’s against the law to quit school until you’re sixteen, don’t you?”

“Ben Franklin was ten.”

“Ben Franklin lived at a time when there was child labor. And people owned slaves. You don’t live back then, Mr. Nishikawa. You live now, and you’ve upset your mother rather badly.”