The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck

by Roy MacGregor

  Excited, Swift picked up a stick that was resting on top of the net so she could try it, too. She had to—what Chicken was doing was such a cool trick!

  The Chips’ goalie felt the puck on her blade. It felt firm and real. She stickhandled back and forth, the puck moving smoothly from the front of the blade to the back, and from the back to the front. She began skating, the cold night air stinging her cheeks. She kept her face up, as Chicken had instructed, and as both Lucas and Blades were now doing in their own corners of the rink. Swift even looked up at the stars from time to time—and was amazed to see that the puck stayed with her!

  I can feel it, she thought—wondering for a moment if she should have been a forward instead. What a great skill for an out player to have, but how will this help me in net?

  She did know one player it would help, but he was all the way back in Riverton.

  Edge should be here, Lucas was thinking, too, as he moved up and down the ice, sliding his own puck back and forth. I don’t even have to look at what I’m doing! I’m looking straight up into the dark, but I can still see the stick and the puck in my mind!

  Suddenly, the two Chips both knew what their team’s star forward needed to do to get out of his slump: stop skating with his head down so much. Coach Small had told them to keep it simple and to keep their eyes on the black disc, but Edge, under pressure to stay on top, had taken that too seriously. If he looked up more, he’d see what was coming and would stop panicking with the puck! That was it!

  “Okay!” Chicken shouted from across the ice, forgetting her own rule to be quiet. “Now give me your pucks!”

  Lucas, Swift, and Blades all passed their pucks across to her, and she flipped each one up by the blade of her stick and caught it before it fell back on the ice. She then placed their three pucks on top of the net.

  “Let’s try reading each other!” Chicken called out.

  She took off with her remaining puck, stickhandling softly back toward them. The Chips, all of them trying to use their other senses like their new friend, could hear the sizzle of her skates on the hard black ice and a bare whisper of sound as she moved the puck from side to side.

  Chicken had her head up and saw everyone—their outlines, at least. Swift had moved back into net with her goalie stick, and Lucas was now racing across the ice to pick up Chicken’s perfect backhand pass. He felt the puck tap his stick as he snared it, and then he began skating and stickhandling—just like she had!

  He sensed rather than saw Blades moving behind him, and he dropped a pass between his own skates that Blades picked up easily.

  Chicken rapped her stick on the ice in admiration.

  Blades got the puck back to Lucas and he turned sharply, sending a saucer pass that floated through the air like a Frisbee and then slapped onto the ice just ahead of Swift’s skates. He wasn’t sure if he was actually supposed to shoot it on Swift’s net in the dark—or if that would be too dangerous for her. That was something he’d have to ask their expert.

  Swift lurched forward, her stick held out across her body, but she wasn’t even sure where the puck had landed. Does this trick of not seeing the puck even work for goalies? she wondered.

  “Perfect!” Chicken shouted. “You’ve got it, Lucas and Blades! You’ve got it!”

  “Wait, what about m—” Swift started. But suddenly, a light flicked on in what had to be one of the neighbours’ kitchens.

  Soon, a back door was sliding open.

  “What the—?!” a man’s sleepy voice called out.

  Swift, Lucas, and Blades looked back in fear as the man stumbled out the door, rubbing his hands together to keep warm. He flicked on one of the small floodlights that had been fastened around the backyard rink, momentarily blinding the Chips and their new friend.

  “CHICKEN!” the man called out, obviously surprised. He was standing on his back steps in his pyjamas and slippers, and he had his arms crossed while he shivered. “It’s 3 a.m.! You’re going to miss the tournament tomorrow!”

  “Your dad calls you Chicken, too?” asked Blades, leaning on her stick.

  “He’s not my dad,” said Chicken, but she didn’t have time to explain any further.

  “And you other kids—go back to your billet families! It’s the final game tomorrow!” the man ordered, his breath escaping his body like a fog. Then he slipped back into the house and closed the door, leaving it unlocked for the young hockey player who was supposed to be inside, tucked tightly into her sleeping bag on their living room floor. Their guest.

  Blades and Lucas looked at each other. Go back where?

  “He won’t get you in trouble,” said Chicken, looking embarrassed. “My billet house is great—really, the Desmonds are amazing. Well . . . but you guys snuck out, too, right?”

  “Yeah, of course,” said Swift. It wasn’t a complete lie. Chicken had already told her about the tournament while the other two were practising with their invisible pucks. Swift had never said they were part of it, but she hadn’t said they weren’t either.

  “I guess we all need sleep,” said Chicken, rolling her eyes. “It is, you know, the middle of the night!”

  “Yeah, we should be going,” said Blades, who was now wondering if they might be able to find Elizabeth Manley’s hotel. Maybe they’d even be able to watch her compete.

  “You’ll be at the tournament tomorrow morning? The mini-Olympics?” Chicken asked eagerly as they all started unlacing their skates.

  “The mini—what?” Lucas asked, but Swift quickly elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Yes,” the Chips’ goalie said with a knowing smile. “Definitely. We’ll see you at the tournament!”

  Chapter 7

  The morning was bright, with a clear blue sky and the snow seemingly edged in gold as the sun bounced off the fresh flakes that had fallen during the night. The neighbourhood in which Swift, Lucas, and Blades had found themselves once they’d left Chicken and her glorious outdoor rink looked like a postcard.

  They’d left their new friend—quickly, so they didn’t get yelled at again—and wandered back toward the indoor rink they’d found earlier. Luckily, the door was open this time, and there was an early skate (although Elizabeth Manley wasn’t part of it). The Chips had snuggled up together on some chairs in a corner of the lobby, next to the vending machines, and fallen asleep.

  The guy from the tuck shop woke them a few hours later, when he was opening up his little store. He sold them apples for forty-five cents each—this was 1988, Lucas had to keep reminding himself—and offered them all free hot chocolates “to help with the kinks in their necks.”

  “My leg hurts,” Swift said, stretching her arms high above her head. At night, she normally took off her prosthetic leg and placed it in a special spot near her bed, in the room she shared with her sister. When she kept it on for too long, the spot where it attached could sometimes swell up. Not only had she slept with her leg on last night, but she’d also slept in her hockey gear, on an uncomfortable plastic chair.

  “Let’s get up and walk around a bit,” suggested Lucas, thinking that might make Swift’s leg feel better. He checked his comm-band: “It’s almost . . . 8:15 a.m.”

  “Already?!” yelled Swift, suddenly jumping to her feet and scooping up her backpack. “We’re going to miss the tournament!”

  * * *

  Mayhem, thought Lucas. Absolute mayhem.

  Near the bottom of the ski jump, where Chicken had asked the Chips to meet her, a crowd of kids had gathered. Some were half-dressed in hockey gear, and all were moving and talking loudly. In the middle of the commotion was a sweaty, red-faced man with a megaphone who looked like he was about to lose it.

  “LISTEN! JUST LISTEN FOR A SECOND!” the man shouted into the megaphone, but it didn’t seem that anyone could hear him.

  He had lists and seemed to be trying to match the names on them to the kids in front of him. His biggest problem was that the kids from a team called the Shaunavon Badgers only had nicknames on the back
s of their jerseys—nicknames like the Cowboy, Rock-It . . . and Chicken.

  One of the red-faced man’s sheets blew away and he chased it down, stomping so hard on the tumbling paper that it tore in half—one part sweeping away, the other trapped under his boot.

  “LISTEN UP!” he screamed into the megaphone. “WE NEED ALL REMAINING PLAYERS TO GATHER TOGETHER! NOWWWWWW!!!”

  Lucas turned to Swift, his eyes wide open. “This is the mini-Olympics?”

  “Keep it simple, stupid,” she deadpanned, knowing this gathering was anything but simple. What in the world is going on? Why is this so disorganized?

  “Chicken’s over there,” said Blades, pushing herself up on Lucas’s shoulders a little so she could see through the crowd. There had to be at least four or five teams of players all gathered around the megaphone. Swift, Lucas, and Blades were on their way to join them when they finally got a whiff of what was really happening at this tournament.

  “I gotta get out of here! I’m gonna—” one of the kids ahead of them mumbled before turning, tripping over a friend’s stick, and then throwing up into a small bucket he’d been carrying with him.

  Another kid saw him, and he, too, started to gag.

  “We need that bucket back over here, now!” a voice called out from the crowd. It was Chicken’s voice—the same one they’d heard while skating on that amazing rink surrounded by stars. Only now, she sounded urgent—like a TV doctor working in an overcrowded emergency room.

  “EVERYONE WITH FOOD POISONING,” the man with the megaphone was saying, “YOUR BUSES ARE LINING UP AROUND THE CORNER. A TOURNAMENT DOCTOR WILL BE THERE TO CHECK YOU OUT. AND THEN YOU’LL ALL BE GOING HOME.”

  In one hand, Chicken had a roll of garbage bags, and in the other, she had her own paper and pencil. As she checked on the kids who were throwing up or just looking ill, she marked their names down.

  “Go to the buses if you’re actually sick!” a young girl with thick glasses yelled, trying hard to make herself heard. “But if you’re just puking because you saw another kid puke, then please stay here—WE NEED YOU!”

  Swift was shocked as she watched the sickness move through the crowd like a wave.

  Are the teams too sick to play? she wondered. Are they cancelling the tournament?

  Once Chicken was close enough to talk, Swift grabbed her arm. “You’re not calling it off, are you?!”

  “No, no! But we might need to—” Chicken started. With an embarrassed smile, she held her list out so Swift could see all the names in the sick column. “Look,” she continued, “a bunch of kids went out for dinner last night and got food poisoning. I didn’t go—I stayed to skate on the Desmonds’ rink—but our goalie and backup goalie were there. And . . . well, now they’re sick.”

  “Both of them?” Swift asked, knowing how serious that was.

  “Both of them . . . ,” said Chicken. She paused for a second and then looked Swift square in the eyes. “You guys aren’t actually here for the tournament, are you? You can’t have a team with just three players.”

  “We’re . . . not,” said Swift, careful about which words she chose. “We’re . . . uh, we came here to—”

  “Oh! Oh no!” moaned Lucas. Both Swift and Chicken turned to him immediately, but Chicken was the first to realize that Lucas’s moans had nothing to do with hockey. The Chips’ centre had one hand clutching his stomach and the other held up in front of his mouth. His face was white—no, it was turning green.

  “Lucas!” Chicken called, grabbing his shoulder.

  “Close your eyes—now!” Swift shouted.

  She was afraid of heights—and she wasn’t too happy that their meeting place had brought them to the ski jump again—but she’d forgotten that Lucas was afraid of something far, far worse.

  Barfing.

  More specifically, other people barfing.

  And at this moment, they were surrounded.

  “Everyone’s making everyone else sick,” said Blades, her mouth twisted in disgust. “You’d better not puke on me, Top Shelf.”

  “Well, he can’t have food poisoning,” said Swift. “It’s just the—yuck!—it’s the crowd. We’ve got to find somewhere to sit him down.”

  Chicken handed Lucas a garbage bag, and Swift and Blades hooked their arms in his and led him over to a small pile of snow.

  “Put your head between your knees and breathe slowly,” Chicken told him. “It’ll pass. Don’t worry. Just concentrate on your breathing.”

  “You should be a doctor,” said Lucas. He looked up with a smile and then quickly put his head back down.

  “What I’d really like to do is to play hockey—today,” said Chicken, waving to a tall boy and the girl with the thick glasses, both of whom were now making their way toward them. “There’s no way we’re letting them cancel the rest of this tournament.”

  “How many players have you lost?” asked Blades.

  “Too many—and we’ve got no one to play goal,” said Chicken, sounding worried. “We’re lucky our semifinal was yesterday. But now how on earth can we play for the gold medal?”

  “Chicken!” the girl with glasses called, glancing at Lucas on his snow mound, his head still between his knees. She held up a backpack like she was showing it off, smiled at Chicken, and then raised an eyebrow in Lucas’s direction. “Wait—is this their goalie?”

  “Noooo. Swift plays net,” Lucas replied with a hiccup, without even lifting his head.

  “Okay, rad—another girl!” said Chicken’s teammate, obviously a little relieved. She was now looking at Swift. “So what did you say? Are you going to join us?”

  “Join you?” asked Swift, confused. She was only in novice. These guys are already ten years old—and in atom!

  “Yeah, join our team,” said the tall boy, taking off his toque to reveal a mass of curly dark hair. He was wearing his hockey jersey, but for some reason, he also had a plaid shirt tied around his waist, like some kind of fashion statement. “You know, play in the tournament? We need you.”

  “All I told them was that I’d met another goalie last night,” said Chicken, raising her hands with an embarrassed shrug. “I never promised you’d play.”

  On the back of the new girl’s jersey was the word “Ace,” and on the back of the boy’s, it said “Butter.” But it wasn’t their nicknames that had made Swift’s jaw drop—it was the fact that she was standing there in front of three atom-level players, being asked to save their tournament!

  “Uh, yeah she’ll do it!” said Lucas, suddenly pulling himself up with the help of Blades’s arm.

  “All right, wicked!” said Ace excitedly. She snatched her teammate’s list from her hands to look at where they stood, and then quickly looked up from the page. “But, Chicken, we’re down another forward—a good one. Squish is on your sick list!”

  “I know,” said Chicken sadly.

  “And I just passed Farts, who was on his way to the buses,” added Butter, kicking at some snow near Lucas’s feet. “That’s another player.”

  Squish? Farts? Swift let out a snort-like giggle. She couldn’t help it. This team had the most ridiculous nicknames she’d ever heard.

  “We need players, guys. Big time,” said Chicken.

  “No duh,” said Ace, unzipping her backpack. She was smiling like a politician as Butter moved in closer to shield her from view. Once she was hidden, Ace pulled something from her bag and reached her arms out toward the Ice Chips’ goalie.

  Her mind racing, Swift wrapped her hands around the yellow-and-black jersey she was being given.

  “All right, I’m in,” she said shyly, a smile spreading across her face. “But you’re going to need more help than just me. You got two more of these?”

  Chapter 8

  “That girl with the glasses asked me where our team is from,” Blades said with a laugh, glancing over at her sister, who was on the other side of the small boiler room they’d found, tying her purple skate laces.

  The three Ice Chips were in
the arena where the final game of the tournament was about to be played—and they were hiding. They didn’t want anyone to see that they were swapping their Ice Chips jerseys for Shaunavon Badgers ones.

  For the next few hours, Swift, Blades, and Lucas would all have to act like atom-level players from Shaunavon, Saskatchewan.

  And, they’d all have new nicknames.

  “I hope you didn’t tell her anything,” said Swift, turning around to show off the words “Shut Out,” written in dark, bold letters across her back.

  “When we leaped, you said we had to stick together no matter what,” said Blades, annoyed. “All I told her was that we were from Riverton, and that Riverton was far, far away from here.”

  “Hey, how did Chicken know we weren’t already signed up to play on our own team?” asked Lucas.

  Swift rolled her eyes. “She and Ace are the only two girl players in this entire tournament. This is 1988, remember? The International Ice Hockey Federation didn’t hold its first Women’s World Championship until . . . wow, not for two more years! In this time, there’s no such thing as a women’s hockey league. There aren’t even any female hockey players kicking butt in the Olympics—not yet.”

  “If we were signed up, we would have stuck out,” Blades said proudly, pulling on a jersey with the word “Squish” on the back.

  “I guess,” said Lucas. “But hey, why do you get Squish?”

  “Do I look like a Farts?” Blades snapped back with a smile. She thought it was hilarious that they’d finally found the perfect jersey for Mouth Guard, and their armpit-farting friend wasn’t even there to wear it.

  Lucas was, though.

  Just then, the door to the boiler room swung open, letting in the sounds of the other players getting ready in the dressing rooms around the corner.

  It was Chicken.

  “You ready?” she said, grinning. She, too, was fully dressed for the game. “Sorry you had to change in here. Ace and I sometimes have to do that, since we’re the only girls playing on a boys’ team and not all the parents are cool with that—mostly the ones with the other teams.”