Nish blinked with the one eye that could see all this happening.
My boxer shorts?
It made no sense, but the knife had found boxer shorts inside Nish’s stomach. They had to be what was making his stomach swell up like he was pregnant.
But how had he eaten his boxer shorts?
A third beam of light – yellow as the sun – poured over the boxers, and the underwear began to float up over the dissected Nish, tipped on its side, and began to … speak!
The aliens asked questions and the boxer shorts answered, the buttons undoing to turn the opening into a mouth!
They asked questions and the boxer shorts told every secret Nish had ever held. Lies he had told, things he had broken, friends he had fooled, tests he had cheated on, even the truth about who had let go the silent sneaker that had all but cleared the gymnasium during the Lord Stanley Elementary School talent show back in June.
“Who does he have a crush on?” the lead alien asked.
“Samantha Bennett,” the boxer shorts answered.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” Nish wanted to scream, but it was impossible to scream with only half a mouth. All that came out was a sound similar to the air brakes on Mr. Dillinger’s old bus.
How could the boxer shorts think that? He hated Sam Bennett, hated her stupid girl-ish clothes, hated the way she kept stealing his best yells – Kawabunga! Eee-Awww-Kee! I’m gonna hurl! – and acting like they were her own, hated her for thinking she could play defence as well as he could, hated her for being a hockey glory hound when everyone knew that the true hero, the heart and soul of the Screech Owls, was Wayne Nishikawa.
“Who is the team’s best player?” the alien asked.
“Probably Sarah Cuthbertson,” the shorts answered. “She’s the best skater, anyway. Dmitri Yakushev is fastest, Travis Lindsay might be the smartest. Travis is also team captain, so he might be the most valuable. Sam Bennett’s likely the top defence player …”
“WWWWHHHHHHAAAAATTTTTTT?????” Nish wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
Why were his boxer shorts lying? What were they trying to do to him? Sarah was good, but who would you want on the ice in the dying seconds of a championship game? And what good was speed when you couldn’t finish? And Travis the smartest? Give me a break! Sam the best D? Not in this life!
It suddenly occurred to Nish that the shorts were talking this way for a reason. The boxers weren’t lying. They were stating the obvious, and somehow Nish had missed it.
He was dead.
That could be the only possible answer. He was dead, and the boxer shorts were talking about a team that didn’t include him. Sarah was the best, now that Nish was gone. Sam was the best on defence, now that Nish could no longer play.
And Travis was smarter – now that Nish had only half a brain.
3
Travis Lindsay had never seen Nish this bad.
He had seen his lifelong friend so wound up he could barely talk. He had seen Nish so angry steam seemed to be coming out of both ears. He’d seen Nish in tears, sobbing and bawling like an infant who had just dropped his soother.
But he had never seen him quite like this. Nish looked flustered and frustrated – but he also looked frightened. Terribly frightened.
Travis had no idea what had really happened to Nish during the night, but whatever it was – a nightmare, probably – it had scared him so badly he was shaking as he tried to convince everyone that he’d been abducted by aliens from outer space.
As if, Travis thought, fighting back an urge to burst out laughing in his best friend’s face.
One thing Travis did know, however, was that not even a lacrosse ball could bounce about as wildly as Wayne Nishikawa’s imagination.
Only Nish could convince himself that aliens had just happened to drop down here in the middle of Algonquin Park, pick Wayne Nishikawa out of an entire campsite of peewee hockey players, and transport him up into their spaceship while they examined him.
Travis laughed to himself. A perfect Nish story! He himself had slept like a baby. He had lain in the tent he’d been sharing with Nish and Lars and Jesse and had listened long into the night to the sounds of the deep forest – the loons calling out on the water, the owl in the trees behind the camp – and once during the night he’d woken up to a light drumming on the tent, rain, only to fall back asleep immediately.
There were beads of water on the tents in the morning, and the sparse grass was wet and cold against bare legs as the Screech Owls moved about the campsite. But the sun was already up, the sky clear and blue, and the water so calm and inviting that Travis figured he had the perfect opportunity to get the camping trip back on track after Nish’s ridiculous claim that he’d been abducted.
“Who’s up for a swim?” Travis shouted.
“Everybody!” Sam called back, charging towards the makeshift clothesline, where the Owls’ bathing suits had been set out to dry last night.
“Last one in is an alien!” yelled Lars.
They grabbed their suits and flew into their various tents to change. They were in and out so quickly it seemed the tent flaps had barely closed when they were tumbling back out, shouting and yelling and heading for the water.
All except Nish.
“What’s with you?” Travis asked his best friend.
Nish just shook his head. He seemed near tears.
Travis stared in disbelief. Who always had to be first? Nish, of course. Who always had to be the centre of attention, the star of every moment in the Screech Owls’ world? Nish.
And now here he was, sulking like a little child who has just had his hands slapped.
“Get over it! You had a nightmare, that’s all,” Travis said. “C’mon – we’ll dunk the girls!”
That seemed to change Nish’s mind. He wandered off to the clothesline, flipped off his bathing trunks, and headed for their tent. Travis set off down towards the beach to join the others.
They were just wading out into the water when they froze at a sound coming from back at the campsite.
“AAAAEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!!!”
The blood-curdling scream had come from Nish’s tent.
Travis looked at Sarah, Sarah at Travis.
Nish screamed again and came flying out of the tent. He had his bathing suit on, drooping dangerously, and he was holding his back.
“YOU THOUGHT I WAS LYING!” he screamed accusingly at the rest of the Owls. His face was as red as the paint on Muck’s canoe.
“It was so aliens!” he shouted, his face seemingly on the verge of bursting. “I found where they put the transistor in me!”
Nish was turning his back to them even as he walked towards the rest of the players. He was pointing to something near his waistband.
“They inserted a special device in me so they could control me! Now do you believe me?!”
Mr. Dillinger dropped his Frisbee and went towards Nish, who was still pointing to the spot. It appeared red and swollen.
Travis looked again at Sarah. She was blinking, her hand up to her mouth.
What had Nish found?
Mr. Dillinger examined the spot carefully. He looked at it from several angles. He rubbed his hand lightly over it. He stepped back, thinking.
“Well?” Nish said, unable to keep the self-satisfaction out of his voice. “Was I right?”
“It’s not a transistor,” Mr. Dillinger said.
Nish laughed dismissively. “Well, what is it, then?”
“You really want to know?” Mr. Dillinger said.
“Shoot,” said Nish.
“It’s a horsefly bite.”
4
Travis was laughing so hard at Nish’s “transistor” horsefly bite that he hadn’t noticed Fahd come down to the beach. He had changed into his bathing suit but his shirt was still on, the buttons open and flapping in the wind.
Fahd was carrying his ever-present Walkman and had the earphones in. His habit had grown even worse over the past summer: if he wasn�
�t bopping to the latest song he and Data had downloaded on their computers, he was plugged in to the all-sports talk station, listening for the latest trade rumours. All the way up to Algonquin Park, he’d sat at the back of the old Screech Owls bus, all by himself, listening for word on who would be the new goaltender for the Toronto Maple Leafs, his favourite NHL team.
But Fahd didn’t look like he had just learned the name of the latest player to sign with the Leafs. Nor did he look like he sometimes did when he was playing one of those songs you just had to hear.
He looked frightened.
He yanked out the earphones as if they had turned red-hot, then shouted to no one in particular, “Jake Tyson is missing!”
Travis could not believe what he was hearing. Jake Tyson? The hero of last spring’s Stanley Cup final, who had scored the winning goal in overtime in the seventh game? The first rookie to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the playoffs since Patrick Roy did it with the Montreal Canadiens way back in 1986? Missing?
Impossible. Travis felt like he’d just seen Jake Tyson. And in a way, he had. The NHL star was on the front of the cereal box Travis had opened for breakfast before leaving Tamarack to go on the canoe trip. He’d also been on the front page of The Hockey News the mailman had delivered while Travis and his mother were digging around in the garage for his fishing gear. Jake Tyson, the golden-haired, smiling superstar of the Stanley Cup, the greatest Canadian player, they were saying, since Wayne Gretzky.
Fahd was holding out his earphones for Travis to listen for himself, but there was no point – Fahd was already doing an excellent job of broadcasting the news.
“He left three days ago on a fishing trip! They hadn’t heard from him, and then sometime last night they picked up a mayday call from the plane he was in! They’re saying they think the plane went down somewhere in Algonquin Park – right here!”
“Gimme that!” Nish roared, snatching the Walkman out of Fahd’s hands and clumsily poking the earphones into his still burning-red ears.
Travis knew what Jake Tyson meant to Nish. Nish had claimed the young star for his own right from day one, claiming he’d “scouted” him when Tyson played a season of junior hockey for the Barrie Colts, an hour and a half down Highway 11 from Tamarack. Nish had gone to several of the Colts’ games with Travis and Mr. Lindsay, and once, when the young Colts star was leaving the ice at the end of a game, he made eye contact with Nish and flipped him his game stick – a perfectly good Sherwood 9050, which Nish now had hanging in his bedroom.
The Frisbee hockey game was instantly forgotten. The Owls, Mr. Dillinger, and Muck all gathered around the smoking firepit and talked about what Fahd had heard, with Nish – still wearing the earphones – jumping in every now and then to report new details.
“They say there are rescue planes out already!” Nish shouted at one point.
The all-sports talk station – which came in badly, the signal fading in and out, the sound crackling and breaking at times – claimed that the Ontario Provincial Police were now trying to pinpoint the emergency locator of the small plane. All planes, from airliners to small float planes, carried a device called a black box, which, the moment the plane went down, would send out signals that could be used to pinpoint the area in which the plane had gone missing.
But so far, the search-and-rescue people had heard nothing.
Jake Tyson had not been alone. The plane was owned, and flown, by a friend of his from Barrie, a man who had been one of the owners of the Colts and had maintained his friendship with the young hockey player. The man, Paul LeSage, was apparently an experienced pilot, with armed-forces training behind him, and the float plane was said to be in excellent condition.
Nish was repeating more of what he had heard when suddenly Muck turned back towards the hills and cocked his ear. He held up his hand for everyone to be quiet.
No one moved.
At first, Travis could hear nothing, then he detected what sounded like a very faint buzzing.
The buzz grew louder. The Screech Owls stood like statues, waiting.
The buzz became a roar, the roar now coming from almost right above them.
Travis looked high into the sky – clear blue now, not a cloud to be seen – but he could see nothing.
The roar became, for an instant, almost deafening, and suddenly it seemed as if two huge yellow birds had burst from the top of the pines and sent huge, startling shadows over the campground as they headed out over the lake towards the far hills.
Then, just as quickly, the planes and the deafening sound were gone.
“Ministry planes,” announced Muck. “Twin Otters.”
“They’ll be looking for the downed plane,” said Mr. Dillinger.
“You mean it happened here?” shouted Simon Milliken.
“Jake Tyson crashed here?” said Jenny Staples.
“They’ll be doing grid runs,” said Muck. “They’ll work their way back and forth across the park until they pick up the signal from the black box. But they must have some reason to think the plane could have come down around here.”
“Wasn’t around here,” offered Mr. Dillinger.
“How do we know?” asked Derek, his son.
“We would have heard it,” said Mr. Dillinger, nodding his head up and down decisively.
“Not necessarily,” said Muck. “Not if the engine quit on them. It could have glided some distance and nobody would have heard a thing. All they might have seen were the plane’s lights.”
The words were barely out of Muck’s mouth when everyone came to a stop.
The Owls turned as one to stare at Nish, who still had the earphones in and was frantically trying to tune in to a clearer signal.
He noticed them staring.
He yanked out the earphones, his face reddening. “What?”
Sarah was first to speak. “Those lights you saw last night …”
“Yeah, I know, you don’t believe me,” Nish said, twisting his red face in spite.
“It wasn’t a UFO you saw,” Sarah said. “It was Jake Tyson’s plane going down!”
Nish just stood there, blinking.
“The lights,” Sam repeated. “That was Jake’s plane, you idiot!”
Nish slowly nodded, realization setting in. The blood was rising in his cheeks.
Mr. Dillinger stepped forward. “Where was it, Nish?”
Nish stared up into the sky, then pointed into the high pines directly behind the campground. “I heard it there,” he said. “Just a kind of cough.”
“Like an engine that wouldn’t start?” Mr. Dillinger asked.
“Yeah, like that. I looked up and saw the lights. But that’s all I remember.”
“Which direction was it heading?” Muck asked.
Nish thought for a moment, then raised his arm and drew a finger from the trees out over the lake. “That way … I think.”
Mr. Dillinger shook his head. “That leaves an area of more than a thousand square miles.”
“I … I didn’t see it crash,” sputtered Nish. “I thought it landed right here. I guess I must have dreamed that part …”
“Dreamed up the horsefly bite, too!” laughed Gordie.
Muck looked once, sharply, at Gordie, who immediately fell silent.
“This is serious business,” said Muck. “I think we better fan out and see if we can find anything.”
“I’ll head up the river,” said Mr. Dillinger. “I’ll take Sarah’s group and Wilson’s with me.”
Muck nodded. “I’ll take Andy’s and check the south bay area.
Travis, you think your gang could cover the far shore?”
Travis nodded, pleased to be asked. “Sure,” he said.
“I don’t want anyone getting lost,” Muck said in his no-nonsense tone. “You stick together, you wear your safety vests, and you always stay within sight of the water – understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Travis.
5
They split in
to the three groups and set out. Mr. Dillinger took two canoes, Sarah in charge of the second, and headed up the twisting Crow River, looking for signs of the crash. Muck took two canoes, Andy paddling stern in the second, and headed across to the south bay to look around. And Travis took charge of the two canoes that remained, Nish and Fahd travelling with him, and Jesse, Rachel, and Simon in the other.
No one knew exactly what to look for. Smoke, perhaps. Or trees clipped by the plane. But all the downed plane had to do was clear the trees nearest shore, perhaps even the far hills, and they would have no hope of finding it. Still, as Muck said, they had to look. Just in case.
They still hadn’t eaten any breakfast, but Travis had no appetite anyway. He was sickened by the thought of Jake Tyson being in that plane and knowing he was in trouble. He wondered how helpless the hockey star had felt. He wondered if Jake expected to die or survive. He wondered if Jake had died or survived.
The lake was like glass this early in the morning. There were still wisps of fog on the water and it snaked ahead of them as the canoes cut through. At one point, they scared up a huge bird. It took off from a log with a hideous croak, its wings sighing in the silent air as it passed over the two canoes and beyond the trees.
“Great blue heron,” announced Jesse.
It all seemed so incredibly peaceful. Travis could hear songbirds in the trees, watched as one small blue bird with a huge head dipped from branch to branch along the shore as if it were stringing Christmas lights.
“Kingfisher,” said Jesse.
The tranquillity disturbed Travis. What if the plane had gone down here near the rocks? What if Jake Tyson, NHL star, had drowned right at this point? What if the plane had crashed into the trees and Jake Tyson and the pilot had been burned alive, screaming as they fought to free themselves from their seatbelts? What if the plane had gone gently into the trees and not burst into flame and they were unconscious, strapped into their seats and still alive?
Travis tried to calm himself down, but he couldn’t. He watched Nish paddling up ahead, barely bothering to exert himself – “lily pad dipping,” Sarah had called it – and wondered if Nish’s imagination was also running away with him.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 5 Page 2
