by Lindsay Eyre
“Ow!” that boy — Armino, I think — cried as the puck flew into his leg.
“Are you all right — ow!” I shouted, because Jamie had smacked me in the back of the leg with her stick. A puck was coming our way. Jamie shoved me with her hip and stole it. Then she skated down the ice and scored. Again.
“Nice work, Jamie!” Coach said.
When practice ended, I stomped off the ice. This had been a horrible practice. I hadn’t scored one goal, and it was all Jamie’s fault. She distracted me with her smirks and her laughs and her advice.
I took off my skates and zipped up my bag. Well, there’d be no more of that. Jamie would never get the bester part of me again. I would figure out how to hit that puck before next practice, or my name wasn’t Sylvie Elizabeth Scruggs the First.
I was about to stand up when I saw something hiding next to my bag. It was a small glass jar. I bent over to pick it up, but stopped when I saw the label.
MAYONNAISE, it said in bright blue letters.
The jar was mostly empty, but there were white globby smears on both the inside and outside. A tiny piece of paper sat on the lid. Careful not to touch the mayonnaise, I picked it up and opened it.
I thought about that Gotcha note all night (except for when I was sleeping). Someone had put mayonnaise in my lotion bottle on purpose, and whoever it was had probably unscrewed the lid to my water bottle too.
Someone was out to get me.
But who? Whoever left that note couldn’t be on my team, because they were practicing while I was practicing, and I didn’t know anyone else in the hockey rink. Why would a stranger prank me unless they had some sort of pranking disease?
At seven o’clock a.m. time, I called Miranda. “We need to practice hockey,” I said. “And we need to figure out who is pranking me.”
“Sylvie?” Miranda said. “Is this you?” She sounded like she hadn’t planned on me calling this early in the morning.
“We have to meet,” I said, “any minute now. Will you call Georgie?”
“Sure,” she said after a giant yawn. “But why don’t you call him?”
“Because he’s a boy,” I said.
“But I’m a girl and I call Georgie.”
“You’re a scientist,” I said. “That’s different.”
“But you call Josh.”
“Briskly,” I said. “I call Josh briskly. Be here by nine o’clock a.m. time. My dad’s making waffles.”
“Will the twins be there?” she said. The last time Miranda came over, the twins put slugs in her hair.
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s all right. My mom made them put their slug collection outside.”
“Oh!” she said with relief. “Good.”
“Call Georgie now, okay?”
“Roger,” Miranda said.
“No,” I said. “Don’t call Roger, I don’t even know who Roger is. Call Georgie.”
Then I called Josh.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s me.”
“I know,” Josh said.
I paused. “What do you mean, you know?”
“I mean, I know it’s you.”
“But who do you think ‘you’ is?” I said. “I haven’t told you yet.”
“It’s always you,” Josh said.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s always you’?”
“I mean, whenever anyone calls me and they say, ‘It’s me,’ it’s always you.”
“What?” I said.
“Huh?” he said.
“Let’s stop talking about it,” I said sharply. “Be at my house at nine o’clock a.m. time. There will be waffles.”
“Okay,” Josh said. “I’ll see you. You, you, I mean.”
At nine o’clock sharp a.m. time, Josh rang the doorbell.
I opened the door. “Come in,” I said, and Josh came in.
“Nice day for waffles,” I said, because someone had to say something.
“I like waffles,” Josh said.
“Tate!” my dad shouted from inside the kitchen. “Stop dropping dental floss in the waffle batter. It won’t make them minty!”
Josh glanced in the direction of the kitchen. He bit his lip.
The doorbell rang again. It was Miranda and Georgie. I showed them into the dining room, and we sat down at the table. “We have to eat fast,” I told them. “We don’t have much time to practice. Just all day today and all day tomorrow. We can’t practice Monday because we have to go to school.”
“Cale!” my dad shouted. “Not cat food!”
“Did you get a cat?” Miranda said.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Georgie was looking stubborn — his pretty-much-normal look. “I don’t want to practice hockey,” he said. “I came here for waffles.”
“We have to practice,” I informed him. “We stink.”
“You mean you stink,” he said.
“You stink worse,” I said.
Georgie nodded, but said, “You just want to beat Jamie Redmond.”
“I do not!” I pounded my fist on the table. “Come on, we’re wasting time. We also need to figure out who put the mayonnaise in my lotion bottle.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Georgie said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “It was Jamie.”
A stunned silence hit the table. “What did you say?” I said into the stunning silence.
Tate entered the dining room wearing a flowered apron on his head. “I am now presenting the first waffle.” He set a plate in front of Georgie. He let out an omnivorous giggle. “Enjoy.”
Georgie ignored the giggle and dove right in. He chewed for a few seconds, then spat out a yellow LEGO piece.
“You saw Jamie put mayonnaise in my lotion?” I said.
Georgie rinsed off the LEGO in his orange juice. “I saw her zipping up your bag during practice.”
Cale came in the dining room with a waffle for Josh.
“Is that a piece of paper?” Josh said, pointing to something sticking out from the side of the waffle.
“It’s a check,” Cale said. “I took it from my dad’s wallet. In case you need money.”
Josh pulled the check out slowly. It was covered in waffle chunks.
“When did you see her?” I said to Georgie.
“I don’t know. Sometime during practice.”
“During practice! What was she doing exactly?”
Georgie put his palm against his forehead like I was wearing him out. “She was pulling on the zipper. Shutting it. I think.”
“You think? Did she put something in my bag first?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “Alistair was blocking my view.”
“I think we should be nicer to Alistair,” Miranda said. “He seems lonely.”
“I’m not hungry anymore,” Georgie said, looking at something hairy he’d just found in his waffle. Probably cat food.
“I’m not hungry either,” Josh said, standing up. “Let’s go practice.”
Miranda practically ran out the back door after them.
I stayed at the table. Jamie Redmond put the mayonnaise in my lotion bottle. It made perfect sense. She wanted to be team captain, and she was afraid Coach might choose me. I was her competition. I was her enemy.
* * *
“You should get her back,” Georgie said, many hours later. We were in my backyard. We’d been hitting bouncy balls with our hockey sticks all morning. My arms were tired. Miranda looked saggy. Josh kept yawning.
“We don’t know it was Jamie,” Miranda said for the bazillionth time.
“Maybe you should try to get proof,” Josh said.
“How do I do that?” I asked.
“Catch her the next time she tries to prank you.”
“I can’t,” I said. “She pranks me during practice, and I have to play hockey. I can’t just stare at my bag.”
“You could bring the twins,” Georgie said. “They could guard your stuff.”
“No,” Miranda said. “That’s a ter
rible idea. They’re too little — Sylvie would have to watch them the whole time.”
It was an intriguing idea, even though it came from Georgie. “If I paid them, they might be good,” I said.
“They don’t care about money,” Miranda said, meaning “Please, Sylvie, think. Don’t do this.”
“I have jelly beans,” I said. “They love jelly beans.”
Georgie nodded because jelly beans are good. “Let’s take a vote,” he said.
“Okay,” Miranda said. “All who think Sylvie should pretend nothing happened, say, ‘Aye, aye!’ ” Then she said, “Aye, aye!” with a terrible pirate accent.
Georgie smiled without showing his teeth. “All who think Sylvie should bring the twins to the rink to catch Jamie in the act of pranking, say, ‘Aye, aye!’ ”
“Aye, aye!” Josh and Georgie said.
“Aye, aye,” I said, without looking at Miranda, who was probably thinking about slugs.
On Monday after school, a miracle happened. My mom needed to take Ginny to a doctor’s appointment and my dad had a work meeting, so he called our neighbor Gloria Zhu to babysit. Gloria told my dad she thought it would be fun to bring the twins to my practice, and my dad actually believed her. What Gloria didn’t tell my dad was that she had a crush on Peter Sullivan, who worked at the arcade inside the skating rink.
“I’m just going to step into the arcade,” Gloria said when we got to the benches next to the ice. “Do you think you two can be good and stay here and watch Sylvie’s practice?”
“Oh yes,” Cale said. “We are always good. Especially when we sit.”
“You don’t need to watch us at all,” Tate said. “You can stay in the arcade the whole time.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them,” I told her, because I needed her to go away.
Gloria darted off like a lovesick hyena.
I’d already explained the Jamie situation to my brothers. They knew exactly what to do.
“So we’re supposed to watch a guy named James and see if he does anything to your bottles?” Tate said.
“No,” Cale said. “We’re supposed to be quiet and watch a girl named Jamie in case she throws something at Sylvie’s bag. And we can’t talk. Not ever. Not even to burp. And we’re not supposed to tell Jamie that we’re watching her.”
“Can we tell her if she has a zit?” Tate said.
“Just sit still and watch my bag,” I said through gritty teeth.
“Okay!” Tate and Cale said. They looked down at my bag and opened their eyes wide.
I sighed because I always sigh about my brothers and skated onto the ice. It was time to unify. “Are you ready for a great practice, Ravi?” I said. “Quinn, I love that sticker on your hockey bag. ‘Barf bag,’ that’s funny. Hey, Jamie’s munion — I mean, friend — I like your braid! Oh, sorry. I won’t talk to you anymore.”
Coach Diaz blew his whistle, and we gathered around him on the ice. “Okay, folks, we’ve only got three practices left before our first game. I’m going to be on the lookout for a team captain today, so work your hardest. We’re going to split into two groups and run some drills. Josh, do you remember where I put that list?”
While Josh helped Coach find his list, Jamie announced that she had selected the perfect name for our team. “The Rockets,” she said.
One side of my nose went up higher than the other. The Rockets? Talk about a snoozefest.
“What about the Ice Cheetahs?” I said, whipping out my best name.
“The Ice Cheetahs?” Jamie said, like I’d said, “The Skunk Bottoms.”
“I like the Ice Cheetahs,” the tiny boy said, Apollo or whatever his name was. “Or maybe the Ice Serpents. Or the Sabertooths!”
“No,” I said. “Those are third-grade names.”
“The Sabertooths isn’t bad,” Jamie said.
“We don’t want to be named after an extinct animal,” I said. “That would mean we died.”
Coach blew his whistle. “Pick a side!” he shouted.
I glanced toward the benches, where I expected to see my brothers sitting quietly. Cale was sitting quietly. Tate was not. He was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Tate?” I mouthed at Cale.
“I’m not allowed to talk!” he shouted. Then he covered his eyes and said, “Oops.”
“Sylvie!” Coach Diaz called. “Everyone’s in position but you.”
I got into position, then checked the bench. Tate was still missing.
“I call this drill ‘Eat the Puck,’ ” Coach said. “Each of you will get a puck. Then you’ll skate toward the opposite goal, keeping the puck inside your stick. If you make it to the blue line in front of the net without losing your puck, you may shoot, but if you lose the puck, you have to start over.” Coach said it was a skating drill and a puck-handling drill mixed into one. Only the truly focused would survive.
I looked at the benches. Now Cale was gone too. How was I supposed to focus when my brothers had disappeared?
Coach set pucks in front of everyone. He blew his whistle. The rest of my team began taking their pucks down the ice. My brothers weren’t by the benches. They weren’t in the lobby.
Coach blew his whistle again, long and loud.
“All right, we’re running that one more time. Sylvie, you didn’t even move.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry! I, um, forgot.” I looked at Miranda. “Have you seen my brothers?” I mouthed. Miranda’s eyes got big.
The whistle blew. Then it blew again.
“Sylvie!” Coach called. “When I blow the whistle, you have to go. Michael nearly ran you over.”
“Okay!” I called. “Sorry, Coach.”
Forget about the twins! I told myself. What’s the worst that could happen?
I really hoped they hadn’t brought matches.
The whistle blew. I focused on the puck. It was in my stick. I skated forward and — hooray! — it was still there. I approached the goal. My heart pounded. My head thumped. I was going to do it. I was actually going to score. I lifted my stick.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
I dropped my stick. The buzzing sound kept going.
“What’s that noise?” a munion shouted.
“It’s hurting my ears!” Michael called.
“Look at that kid!” Jamie Redmond yelled.
She was pointing at the drink machine over by the concession stand. There was Tate, standing beneath the drink spout, his head tilted back, his mouth open. Cale was punching the button that makes the soda come out. Orange soda poured from the machine straight into Tate. The machine was making the buzzing sound. It didn’t like being punched.
“Hey!” the rink manager shouted. “What are you doing to my drink machine?”
“It won’t turn off!” Cale cried, punching the button faster and harder.
Glug, glug, glug! went Tate.
“Get away!” the rink manager hollered.
Tate stopped guzzling. Cale stopped punching the button, but the soda kept flowing. My brothers ran over to the bench, sat down, wiped their orange-covered faces with their hands, and smiled. Except for Tate. He burped before he smiled.
“It’s jammed!” the rink manager cried. Three moms ran over and fixed the machine. I was glad they did. Watching that soda was making me have to go to the bathroom.
Coach ran a hand through his hair until it stood straight up from his head. “Show’s over, kids. Let’s run that drill again.”
He blew his whistle. I glared at Tate and Cale and pointed at the bench. “Stay!” I mouthed furiously. Then I began to skate down to the opposite net with my puck. I raced faster, and the puck moved faster as well. I was nearly at the net now, and I was going to score!
Jamie Redmond slid up next to me. Her stick went up in the air. I raised mine too.
A puck flew by us, straight into the net. Jamie and I dropped our arms and turned around. Josh was standing behind us, looking surprised.
“Ha!” the tiny boy shouted. “That was awesome. Josh beat
both of you!”
“Great shot, Josh!” Coach Diaz called. He blew his whistle. “Run it again!”
“Where did you come from?” I said to Josh.
“Down there,” Josh said, pointing to the other side of the rink.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”
I knew that scream. It was a five-year-old-twin-boy scream. I looked over at the benches. My brothers were gone again.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”
I could see them now. They had hockey sticks in their hands and they were chasing each other around the rink. The rink manager was chasing them too.
“Sylvie,” Coach Diaz said. “Maybe you’d better take care of that.”
“Yes, Coach,” I said.
It took forever to catch my brothers. Then I had to listen to a lecture from the rink manager and a lecture from Gloria, who was mad that she had to leave the arcade.
It was a serious march back to the bench.
“I’m going on the ice,” I whispered to my brothers with the firmness of a tiger. “Keep an eye on my bag.”
“Keeping an eye on your bag would hurt,” Cale said.
“Unless her bag was made of water,” Tate said.
Coach Diaz blew his whistle. “Practice time is up!”
My mouth fell open. “Practice is over? It can’t be over! It practically just started.”
“It is over,” Gloria said. “It’s four thirty, and I have to go to the bathroom really fast. Watch your brothers for me.” Then she walked off toward the arcade, not the bathroom.
But I really did have to go to the bathroom. It was almost an emergency. “Wait —” I shouted after Gloria. “I have to go to the bathroom too!”
“I could watch the twins for you,” the tiny boy, Archimedes or something, said. “But I think the regular bathroom is full. You should use the secret bathroom.”
“The secret bathroom?” I said.
“It’s the bathroom the coaches and the rink manager use. It’s down that hall, back by the janitor’s closet. My brother told me about it.”
A line was forming outside the girls’ bathroom. There was no way I’d last that long. “Thanks,” I said to Archimedes. Then I snuck down the hallway past the regular bathrooms until I came to the janitor’s closet, full of brooms and vacuums. The secret bathroom was right beside it. I flipped on the light and tiptoed inside.
