The Boston Breakout (8 page)

Derek one-timed a hard shot. The Detroit goaltender brilliantly kicked it out with his left pad, but the puck landed right on the stick of Lars,
who lofted it over the fallen goaltender into the Detroit net.

Detroit Wheels 4, Screech Owls 4.

“This is
my
time to shine!” Nish hissed at Travis as the horn blew to call an end to regulation time. There was nothing in the world Nish liked better than overtime hockey – providing he could be the hero.

But it was not to be. Two minutes into overtime, Nish took a penalty for tripping, and no amount of whining to the referee could take it away.

The Wheels had the power play they needed. Soon they had the Owls boxed in down at their own end as they worked the puck around the edges in search of a clear shot on Jenny.

They set the shot up perfectly – or almost perfectly – as their top defenseman found himself in the slot and ready to hammer a one-timer.

Fahd, put out by Muck out of necessity, because Nish was unavailable, appeared out of nowhere, sliding and spinning toward the puck as the big defenseman continued through on his swing.

He slapped the puck. It flew off his stick blade –straight into Fahd’s shin pads.

The puck hit Fahd’s pads so hard it rebounded, still in the air, all the way back to center ice, where, of all people, Simon Milliken picked it up, raced in, and shot.

Or, rather, he missed his shot. Simon’s stick slid over top of the puck and it barely changed direction.

It was almost nothing, but it was enough to fool the Detroit Wheels’ goaltender. The goalie watched helplessly from the far side of his net – where he’d leaped in anticipation of Simon’s shot – as the puck moved, slowly as a curling rock, just over the red line.

Victory for the Screech Owls, 5–4 in overtime!

The Owls flooded off the bench and over the boards. Dmitri raced first to Simon, leaping and landing on him and crashing the surprised little forward into the boards past the despondent Detroit goaltender.

Sarah raced for Fahd, who had made it all possible, hugging him and slapping his pads. Fahd
seemed to wonder what it was he had done to deserve all the attention.

The penalty box door opened and out skated a red-faced, scowling Wayne Nishikawa, looking for all the world like his team had just suffered its worst defeat in history.

Travis took note. What was it about Nish that Travis liked anyway? At the moment, he couldn’t be sure.

“Good game,” Muck told them in the dressing room. “We’re in the final now. We just don’t know yet who we’ll play. There are three possibilities – these guys we just played, the Young Blackhawks, or the Mini-Penguins from Pittsburgh. Could be any of them. We don’t care.”

And with that, the coach stepped out of the dressing room, leaving the Owls to undress and talk amongst themselves.

“You
rule
, Fahd!” Sarah said. “And you, Simon! You’re our first two stars.”

“Hey,” protested Nish. “Who’s the guy who sent the pass down the ice that got us into overtime?”

Sarah feigned ignorance. “I have no idea, Nish – who would that be?”

He answered with a raspberry.

I
t was morning. The summer sun streamed warm through the hotel room window as Travis sat on the edge of his bed and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the backs of his fists.

There was a light knock at the door. The others were still sleeping – Nish snoring like Travis’s grandfather did when he napped at the cottage – and Travis opened the door quietly.

It was Sarah. Sam was gone again.

“When?” Travis asked.

“No idea,” Sarah said. “I thought she was in the next bed, but she’d just covered up a couple of pillows to make it look like she was.”

“Does Muck know? Or Mr. D?”

Sarah shook her head.

Travis felt the pincers of a dilemma begin to squeeze his brain. He was captain of the Screech Owls. He had a duty to look out for his teammates. But he also had a duty to the coach and general manager of the team. If he went to Muck and Mr. D, Sam might get in trouble – and for all he knew, she might simply be down in the lobby. If he and Sarah found her there, their worries would have been for nothing. Then again, they had reason to be worried. Sam was not acting herself.

A quick check might be the right thing to do.

“Wait there,” Travis said. “I’ll get dressed and be right with you.”

Nish stirred as Travis dressed. His snoring stopped, then started up again even more loudly. The others were sound asleep.

Travis slipped out the door and closed it gently. “We’ll check the lobby first,” he said to Sarah.

They quickly caught an elevator and descended to the lobby without a stop. It was still very early in the morning. They searched everywhere, but to no avail.

Travis hurried to the revolving doors on the side of the hotel nearest the New England Aquarium, Sarah moving quickly to catch up to him. There were few people out and about so early. One hotel worker was watering plants, and another was washing down the sidewalks with a hose.

“Over there!” Sarah said, pointing toward the aquarium.

Travis turned and looked. On the side of the aquarium closest to the harbor, he saw the yellow caution tape and barricades to keep people back from the construction work, but there was no one at the site. A large black tarp completely covered the gap in the concrete that the crew had opened up on the aquarium wall.

Off to one side, taking photographs of the construction site, was Frances Assisi, a.k.a. Isobel Twining.

Sam was there as well.

Travis and Sarah looked at each other. Travis grimaced; Sarah looked perplexed. What was Sam up to?

They wandered over. “Frances” noticed them before Sam did, and scowled. She obviously had no desire to be disturbed.

“Sam!” Sarah called out.

Sam turned, blushing deeply, as if caught doing something she’d been warned not to.

“Hey, Sarah, Trav … what’s up?”

“We were wondering the same,” said Travis.

Sam swallowed. “I couldn’t sleep. Still not feeling well, I guess … so I came out for some air, and Frances was out here, so I just started helping her.”

Frances was smiling at them now – the same emotionless smile – and moved in quickly. “I’m a professional photographer as well as my other work,” she said. “Sam’s been helping me take photos of the aquarium for an article I’m working on. They won’t let me take any photos inside.”

I’m not surprised, Travis thought to himself. This woman had
trouble
written all over her.

“And we’ve been talking about animal rights, haven’t we, Sam?” Frances went on.

“Right,” said Sam.

“Sam’s going to start up a youth wing of our little group once she gets home, isn’t that right, Sam?”

Sam nodded. “Frances sees this movement spreading by the power of kids just like us,” she said. “We refuse to eat animals, and our parents have no choice but to stop killing them. It would be the ultimate grassroots movement – one we think could take off to include the whole world.”

Travis and Sam both looked at their friend, blinking. Neither said anything, but each knew what the other was thinking: this didn’t sound like Sam. She was using Frances’s words. It was almost like she was under some weird spell.

Frances began taking pictures of other parts of the aquarium and the boardwalk, but she was doing so without much enthusiasm.

Travis looked back at the construction site. When Frances had been taking photographs of it, she had been working carefully, deliberately.
She appeared to know exactly what she was looking for. Now it seemed she was just taking shots at random.

Travis didn’t believe that Frances was working on any “article.”

“Muck’s going to be looking for us,” said Sarah.

Sam nodded.

“We’d better get back,” added Travis.

“B-bye,” Sam said to Frances, as if she were being dragged away.

“Keep in touch, Sam,” Frances said, the mouth smiling again. “We have a world to change.”

It was still early enough, when the three Screech Owls returned to the lobby, that none of their teammates had come down from their rooms yet. Muck was sitting in a chair in one corner, reading the Boston newspapers, and didn’t notice them come in through the revolving doors. Travis pulled Sam’s arm, leading her off to the opposite corner, where the three teammates could talk alone.

“What’s up with you?” Travis asked. He tried not to sound too angry – or too much like their
vice-principal at Tamarack Public School – but he knew he sounded cranky and annoyed.

“Nothing,” Sam answered, as if she didn’t quite understand why Travis would ask such a question.

“You’ve been acting
weird
,” said Sarah, looking genuinely concerned.

“Weird?” Sam said. “
I’m
the one that’s weird, while you eat innocent animals that have no idea what real grass or blue sky looks like?
I’m
the weirdo, when the rest of the world thinks it’s a wonderful thing to steal creatures from their mothers and their natural homes and put them on display in zoos and aquariums so humans can pay money and gawk at them?
I’m
the weird one? Give me a break!”

“Man,” said Travis, “that woman sure has got to you, hasn’t she?”

“That
woman
,” answered Sam, “is right. Frances has a lot of followers, people who believe in her and what she is doing.”

“And you’re one of them?” asked Sarah.

“Yes. She’s going to change the world, and I plan to help her.”

“How can you do that?” said Travis. “Humans have eaten meat since we all lived in caves. And places like the aquarium do good work – they
save
animals!”

“All that’s just public relations,” Sam snorted. “They do that to convince people everything else they do is good. Is it good to take penguins and fish away from their homes and family?”

“Fish don’t really have ‘family,’ ” Sarah said.

“How do you know? How does anyone know how a fish feels? Or a turtle? Or that little penguin that was fooled into thinking I was its mother? You saw how it cried and ran after me. I could have done anything I wanted to it, including chopping its head off and eating it.”

“But you didn’t,” said Travis. “You wouldn’t.”

“So? What’s the difference between that penguin and a little goose that’s trapped in a cage so it can’t move and is force-fed so that its liver swells up like a balloon just so you can have something to spread on a cracker? Is
that
fair?”

Travis and Sarah did not know what to say. Sam had a point, thought Travis, but if you agreed about
not harming a single living thing, wouldn’t that mean you couldn’t eat vegetables and fruit? What were humans to do for food?
Suck on a stone?
If you took anything to extremes, it rarely made sense.

Travis decided to change his approach.

“You can’t change the world by holding up a bunch of signs.”

“You have to begin somewhere,” Sam said. “If people didn’t fight back against wrongs, we’d still have slaves.”

Travis couldn’t argue with that. He thought of the little grave marker – “Frank” – and how profoundly it had seemed to affect Wilson.

“It took a war to put an end to that,” Sam added.

“But that’s
people
,” Sarah protested. “No one is going to go to war for animal rights.”

“Frances is,” Sam said. “She declared war against furs – and now she’s declaring war against animals in captivity.”

“She has no army,” Travis said before he could stop himself. He regretted it even as he said it.

“Who says?”

“That little group of protesters?” Travis asked. “What can they do?”

Sam sniffed and turned her back on them.

“You might be surprised,” she snapped.

“W
hat the … !”

First had come the sound of Nish yanking open the big zipper on his equipment bag. There was no other noise in the dressing room. Under strict orders from Andy and Jenny, who were clearly the ringleaders in this attack on Nish’s stinking bag, all the other Screech Owls had “zipped” their own mouths shut.