Line Change

by W. C. Mack

  Cover by

  Paul Perreault

  Scholastic Canada Ltd.

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  Scholastic Canada Ltd.

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  Scholastic Children’s Books

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  ISBN: 978-1-4431-1986-3

  Text copyright © 2011 by Wendy C. Smith.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Scholastic Canada Ltd., 604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada.

  first eBook edition: September 2012

  For my hometown of Vancouver, which will have its Stanley Cup someday.

  And for Mike, who will be thrilled when it does.

  —W.C.M.

  Other books by W.C. Mack:

  Hat Trick

  Breakaway

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Other books by W. C. Mack

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Preview of Breakaway

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  We only had three minutes left on the clock when things started to get serious. And they’d been pretty stinkin’ serious already, thanks to the Thunder’s left defenseman, who was grinding our guys into the boards every chance he got. I had no idea what his parents were thinking, but they’d named the kid Adrian. They should have been able to see what was coming and call him Tank.

  Anyway, this monster had been knocking me around for the whole period, and I was getting pretty tired of the refs not calling it. Coach O’Neal was shouting from the bench, along with the rest of the team and our fans (well, families) in the stands.

  I’d been personally introduced to the kid’s elbow at least six times, but I didn’t let that stop me. I was playing to win.

  So I was pretty disappointed when Coach called me out.

  I skated off the ice, passing our own hulking mass of muscle (and my Math tutor), Eddie Bosko, who high-fived me as he took over the right wing position.

  “Nice job, Nugget,” he said, with a growl like a grizzly.

  “Thanks,” I said, as I climbed onto the bench.

  “That defenseman’s a beast,” Patrick Chen said, shaking his head from farther down.

  “No doubt,” I groaned. “Every time I had the puck, he had me.”

  “You played hard, son,” Coach O’Neal said, patting me on the back. “That kid’s at least twice your size and you gave him a run for the money.”

  I couldn’t help thinking that if my stupid growth spurt would hurry up and happen, I wouldn’t even be having the conversation.

  Or any conversation about size.

  “Man, I hope we can win this one,” Patrick said as he pulled on his gloves, just in case Coach put him in.

  I glanced past Patrick, where David “Bedhead” McCafferty was resting against the wall. He looked half-asleep, as usual.

  It was too bad he never looked half-awake.

  Seriously, who could relax during a hockey game? Especially when they were on the team!

  I watched the game, wishing I was still in there. I’d had to accept the fact that Bosko and I were sharing right wing, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

  If I had my way, I’d play hockey every second of every day. It was my favourite thing to do, and I happened to be pretty awesome at it. If I wasn’t playing, I was practising, and if I wasn’t practising, I was either watching it on TV or reading about it.

  Which reminded me that my copy of Shoot! Volume 4 would be arriving at Chapters any day.

  Yes!

  Was hockey my life?

  Definitely.

  I leaned forward on the bench and watched the action on the ice.

  We’d beaten Victoria before, but this time the game was too close to call.

  They were a strong team, stuck with a weak uniform. While we looked dangerous in our black and red, the Thunder were drowning in purple and yellow. And it didn’t matter that the L.A. Kings wore those colours a million years ago. There was nothing cool about purple and yellow.

  I mean, come on.

  But worse than Victoria’s uniforms was their attitude. Just because they were from the biggest city on the island, they thought they were better than everyone else. They played rougher than they should.

  Rougher than anyone should.

  Hockey had rules for a reason. Seriously, it was a game, not a war.

  I jumped to my feet as Eddie stole the puck from the Thunder’s right defenseman. He hauled past the centre line, his skates scraping against the ice.

  “Come on, Bosko!” I shouted, as I watched that nasty Tank move toward him.

  That kid was fast, too.

  Eddie kept the puck close as he skated toward the Thunder’s goal, but within seconds Tank was right on his tail.

  Our hometown crowd cheered as Eddie got closer to the net and I glanced up to see my parents and sister on their feet in the stands.

  It was getting loud out there.

  I wished the crowd was cheering for me. I wanted to be the one getting ready for the best shot of the game, not my “partner.”

  “Take your time!” Coach O’Neal shouted. “Play smart, Bosko!”

  We had less than two minutes left on the clock and we were still down a goal, so everybody was super tense.

  I was hoping like crazy that Bosko could tie it up and send us into overtime. Then maybe I’d have a chance to get back out there.

  I lived for overtime.

  Eddie was eyeballing his target, preparing to take the shot. I knew he had perfect aim, and that Coach didn’t need to tell him to take it slow. Bosko had patience, for sure.

  “Shoot!” Kenny shouted. (His patience wasn’t quite as developed.)

  “Hard!” Patrick added, even louder.

  I held my breath as Eddie pulled back his stick to whale on the puck. He had a killer slapshot (almost as good as mine), and I knew the Thunder’s goalie didn’t stand a chance. Bosko knew right where to put the puck, and I could already imagine it flying into the top of the net.

  “Right in the cookie jar, Eddie!” my dad shouted from the stands.

  I held my breath.

  The crowd was going nuts.

  The clock ticked behind its steel cage.

  My heart bounced around in my chest like popcorn.

  Bedhead McCafferty w
as … sleeping?

  Never mind.

  “Shoot, Bosko!” Patrick shouted, as we all watched the play.

  It was going in, for sure. There was no doubt about it.

  Of course, I wanted my teammate to score. But at the same time, Bosko was two ahead of me in a race for goals this season, and I was itching to take the lead. It was friendly competition, and a Cougars team win was more important than personal glory, but still. I wanted to be top dog.

  “Shoot!” I shouted, loud enough to wake up McCafferty.

  Well, almost.

  Then it was like everything went into slow motion. The goalie was crouched in position, Bosko’s blade was heading for the puck, and Tank was right on him … swinging his stick, high and fast!

  Whoa!

  Before my jaw even had a chance to drop, he hit Bosko right in the back!

  The whole rink went quiet as our monster dropped to the ice and the puck slowly slid to a stop.

  But the crowd was only silent for half a second before everybody went nuts. And I was right there with them.

  “High-sticking!” I shouted to the ref, pointing at Tank.

  He hit Bosko with the stick again, this time on the leg.

  “And slashing!” I practically screamed.

  Coach was shouting for a penalty, the rest of the bench were on their feet, and the fans were loudest of all.

  “Blatant foul!” Coach O’Neal yelled. “Call it, ref!”

  He was right about the blatant part. I’d never seen a kid be so obvious about trying to hurt another player. Sure, we all knew hockey was a rough sport, but playing the boards was one thing and slashing was something totally different.

  The kid should have been thrown out of the game.

  “Way out of line!” Tim yelled.

  By the time the ref skated over to check on Bosko, our giant was already back on his feet.

  Before anyone could stop him, he raced across the ice and shoved Tank.

  The big guy went down. Hard.

  “No,” I groaned. The last thing we needed was a penalty.

  The rest of the team backed away from Bosko and Tank, just like Coach taught us to do if it looked like there might be a fight. We weren’t supposed to jump in. Ever.

  Bosko made another move toward him.

  “Come on, Eddie,” Patrick murmured. “Keep your cool.”

  “Don’t do it,” I whispered.

  The ref blew his whistle and called Bosko for charging.

  “Their man was high-sticking and slashing,” Coach shouted at him.

  The ref shook his head. He hadn’t seen it.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Coach shouted. “It was blatant.”

  The ref shrugged and directed Bosko off the ice.

  Our gorilla would be out of the game for two full minutes.

  Down one goal, with a minute and forty-three seconds left, and we handed the Thunder a power play?

  Seriously. Handed it to them!

  “Man, what’d he have to do that for?” Kenny sighed as we watched Bosko skate toward the box.

  The second he stepped inside, Bosko said, “The kid slashed me and nobody called it.”

  Coach shot him a look. “It’s not your job to settle scores, Bosko.”

  “But Coach, the ref is —”

  “Calling the game.”

  He frowned. “But —”

  “That’s not how my team plays, Bosko.”

  “But —” Bosko tried again.

  “Sit down and watch the game, son. We’ll talk about this later.”

  I’d only seen Coach O’Neal look that mad and disappointed a couple of times in the three years he’d been my coach, and both times were when guys got too rough. He’d always taught us to play hard but fair and he had no patience for fighting.

  At all.

  I didn’t look at Bosko. I couldn’t believe he’d blown it for us.

  Me and the rest of the bench tried to make up for our missing player with a whole lot of shouting and cheering.

  But it didn’t work.

  The Thunder scored another goal with seventeen seconds left and we lost the game.

  “Thanks a lot, Bosko,” Kenny muttered as we all piled onto the ice to shake hands with Victoria and tell them “good game.” Even though we didn’t mean it.

  Coach O’Neal saw Tank sneering at Bosko in line, so he shook his head and stepped out on the ice, heading straight for the Thunder’s coach. If his scowl was anything to go by, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Never mind the fact that he was wearing street shoes.

  He only made it a few steps before his feet slipped out from under him. He flew up in the air, almost like a cartoon, but then landed hard on his butt.

  “Oof!” Kenny said, wincing.

  “Oof is right,” I agreed, then skated over to him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, leaning in close as he rubbed his lower back.

  It was pretty obvious from his scrunched-up face and groaning that he wasn’t.

  It didn’t take long before there were parents out on the ice. Coach was answering questions with grunts, and when he finally did squeeze a word out, it was “Wow.”

  I had the feeling he wanted to say something a lot worse than that and when I saw the relieved looks on the parents’ faces, I figured they must have been thinking the same thing.

  “He’s gonna need an ambulance,” Mulligan said. He played Old Timers on Wednesday nights, and came to almost every Cougars game to cheer us on. “Anybody got a cell phone?”

  My parents didn’t, since they liked living in the Dark Ages, and my sister’s was charging at home.

  I was amazed she could even breathe without it.

  “Ungh,” Coach groaned, wincing from the pain.

  “Is there a doctor in the house?” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.

  I’d never actually heard anyone say that before.

  “Right here!” A man I didn’t recognize stood up, then seemed to change his mind. “Well, I’m a veterinarian.”

  Coach groaned again and the man sat down, looking kind of sad that he wasn’t a real doctor.

  When Coach was carried off the ice on a stretcher, the rest of us just stood there.

  “Nice work, Bosko,” Colin said, rolling his eyes.

  “If you have something to say to me, say it,” Bosko growled.

  “I just did,” Colin muttered. “Nice work.”

  Bosko looked at the rest of us, and I’m sure he saw the same frustration in every guy’s face that I did.

  I wanted to say something in his defense, since he’d kind of become a friend while he was tutoring me in Math. But at the same time, I knew I’d be the only one defending him, for something I didn’t think he should have done in the first place. Charging? Come on.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  “You win some, you lose some,” Dad said, quietly.

  Like that helped.

  “What a burn,” Kenny sighed. “And now Coach is all messed up.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Patrick asked, as the Thunder headed for the Visitors locker room, high-fiving all the way.

  “Go home,” I shrugged.

  “No, I mean the team,” Patrick said. “We’ve got two practices this week and we’re up against Nanaimo on Saturday.”

  Nuts.

  “Maybe we should cancel, until we know what’s happening with Coach,” Chris’s mum said.

  “Nah, we just need a fill-in,” her husband told her.

  “Who? You?” she asked, laughing.

  “No … but somebody.”

  All I could hear for the next ten seconds was a bunch of fathers saying how busy they were.

  Then I heard my dad’s voice above the crowd.

  “I’ll do it.”

  And I grinned.

  Chapter Two

  On the way home from the rink, Mum didn’t seem quite as excited about Dad taking over for Coach O’Neal as I was.

  “Are you sure you have time for this,
honey?” she asked. “You’ve had a pretty heavy workload lately. Can you really do this?”

  “Cover a couple of practices?” Dad laughed. “Absolutely. It’ll be fun.”

  I thought so, too. I’d always been proud of the fact that Dad was scouted by the Flames before I was born. When he got hit near the eye with a puck, it ended his career as a player, so he worked as a junior hockey ref for a while, which was cool, too. Not as cool as going pro, of course, but that wasn’t his fault. (Except for the part about not wearing a helmet when he got hit. That was definitely his fault.)

  Anyway, I knew Dad would make an awesome sub until Coach O’Neal came back. And thinking about my buddies seeing how much he knew about hockey made me look forward to practice even more than I usually did.

  And that was saying something.

  “This means getting up at five tomorrow, Gord,” Mum said.

  “Zero dark hundred,” Dad nodded, then gave her a really goofy salute. “Got it.”

  “Okay, can you please not do stuff like that in public?” my sister Wendy groaned from the seat next to me. She was sixteen, and nothing on the planet was cool enough for her.

  “Stuff like what?” Dad asked, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror.

  “I don’t know. All of it,” she sighed. “Talking and whatever.”

  Dad’s eyebrows jumped. “Even talking? Geez, are you okay with the way I breathe?”

  “Not when it’s through your mouth,” she said, looking out the window.

  “Ouch!” Dad said, then turned to Mum and added, “You know, I used to be pretty hip.”

  “Seriously, Dad?” Wendy groaned. “No one even uses that word anymore.”

  “I know you were hip, honey,” Mum said, reaching over to pat his knee. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “Double ouch!” Dad laughed.

  “I think you’re hip,” I told him.

  “Thank you, Nugget,” he said, smiling at me in the rear-view.

  Sometimes us guys have to stick together.

  * * *

  When we got home, I went upstairs to have a hot shower and clean off all the sweat. It was amazing how gross me and my uniform could get after just one game.

  When I dried off, I went to my room, where Mum was waiting for me with a bag from Chapters.