Breakaway

by W. C. Mack

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You guys are on a different team.”

  “What do you mean, you guys?” I asked, then realized there was a more important question. “Wait a second. What other team?”

  He shrugged. “They had a lot of kids sign up for hockey camp. Like, kids from Port Alberni and here.”

  “So?” I asked, not sure what that had to do with me.

  “So, they brought in another coach.”

  “Another Canuck?” I asked. What if it was someone more famous than Holbrook, like Stan Smyl or Courtnall? I’d have a heart attack, for sure.

  Kenny shook his head. “I’ve never heard of the guy. It’s Gunnar.”

  “Gunnar?” I repeated, totally confused.

  “K. Gunnar,” he said.

  “Who the heck is K. Gunnar?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I just say I’d never heard of the guy?” Kenny asked.

  I pulled him into the house and shut the door behind him.

  “Follow me,” I said, heading for the den.

  “Whoa,” Mum said from the doorway. “Where’s the fire?”

  I told her about Gunnar, the total unknown.

  She shrugged, then patted my shoulder. “Nugget, it’s the same rink and the same camp. The only thing that’s different is the coach.”

  “But that’s the most important part of it!” I practically choked. “Danny Holbrook was a Canuck, for crying out loud. I’ve never even heard of K. Gunnar.”

  Who was K. Gunnar?

  “Relax,” she said, giving the shoulder a squeeze that was supposed to make me feel better. “You’re getting too wound up about this. It’s going to be fine.”

  “Maybe it’s Gunnar Grimmel,” Kenny said, hopefully. “From the Blackhawks.”

  Not what I wanted to hear. At all.

  “I hate the Blackhawks,” I groaned. “And Gunnar is the last name, not the first. We’ve got to check online.”

  I logged on, typed the name and the words “hockey player,” then leaned back in Dad’s chair to wait.

  It didn’t take long for an answer, and when it popped up, I couldn’t believe what I read.

  Judging by the gasp from Kenny, he was as shocked as I was.

  My hockey camp coach wasn’t an NHL player.

  She was a girl.

  Chapter Two

  “Katie Gunnar?” I asked Mum as she started the dishwasher. “I can’t believe you signed me up for a hockey camp with Katie Gunnar!”

  “I can’t, either, Jonathan,” Mum sighed, obviously tired of the conversation that had been going around in circles for about ten minutes.

  Kenny had given up after five. Instead of backing me up, he left to have hot chocolate and sing Christmas carols at his place.

  I had nothing to sing about. The rest of my teammates were about to start their dream camp while I was headed straight into a nightmare. The whole point of camp was to hang out with a pro!

  “Honey,” Mum said. “As I’ve mentioned four or five times now, I am very, very sorry about this. You know that it was a mistake and I wish it hadn’t happened.” She found room for the milk in our packed fridge.

  “I know,” I sighed. “It’s just —”

  “You had your heart set on playing with a Canuck. Believe me, I understand how disappointed and upset you are.”

  I could tell she meant what she was saying, and I knew she felt bad. But Mum feeling bad wasn’t going to fix the problem.

  “Katie Gunnar,” I moaned again.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, honey. We could cancel, but I’m sure it’s too late for a refund. And this camp wasn’t cheap.”

  “I don’t want to cancel,” I groaned. “I just want to play with Danny Holbrook.”

  “So I hear,” Mum said, reaching for a cloth to wipe the counter. “Over and over again.”

  “What’s going on?” Dad asked.

  I explained the situation and waited for him to come up with the ultimate solution.

  But that didn’t happen.

  “That’s a tough break, Nugget,” he said, patting me on the back and giving me a sympathetic smile. “I know how excited you were about camp.”

  “Not just camp, Dad. Danny Holbrook! He was a —”

  “Canuck,” he finished for me. “Your number one team. But I’m sure this Katie Gunnar is qualified,” he added.

  “Qualified?” I choked. “Is she an NHL superstar, Dad?”

  “Was Holbrook?” he asked, doubtfully.

  He had me there. “Not a superstar, but at least he was a player.”

  “Katie Gunnar must be a player too,” he said.

  “Well, considering there are no girls in the NHL, I’m pretty sure she isn’t,” I told him.

  “Good grief,” Mum said. “There’s more to hockey than the NHL.”

  “True,” Dad said.

  “What?” I choked. There was no way on earth he actually agreed with that.

  “What do you know about her?” Dad asked.

  “That she’s a girl who plays hockey.” And ruins the lives of eleven-year-old boys who were counting the seconds until hockey camp.

  “That’s all you and Kenny found online?” Mum asked.

  “As soon as I saw what the K stood for, I stopped reading,” I explained.

  “Very impressive,” Mum said. I could tell she was being sarcastic. Years of living with my sister had made me an expert.

  “Well,” Dad said, “She wouldn’t be running a camp if she didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “Exactly,” Mum said, like that solved everything.

  “This is totally nuts,” I sighed. “I can’t even believe it’s happening.”

  “What?” Wendy asked, from the doorway. “I thought we were playing Scrabble.”

  “Mum signed me up for hockey camp with a girl coach instead of Danny Holbrook.”

  “Who’s Danny Holbrook?”

  “A former Canuck.”

  “And?” she asked, checking for chips in her green nail polish.

  “He was supposed to be my coach,” I told her, crossing my arms. “And now I have a girl coach instead.”

  My sister snorted and stared at me. “And we’re supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  I nodded.

  “At least you get to go to a hockey camp, Nugget. Think of all the kids who don’t have the chance to do something like that.”

  “Good point, honey,” Mum said, smiling.

  Ever since Wendy’s volleyball team served an early Christmas meal at a homeless shelter in Victoria, she’d been acting like she was the most charitable person on the planet. And I knew for a fact that she wasn’t. I’d played Monopoly with her.

  She looked down her nose at me and said, “You don’t know how good you have it. That camp is a total luxury. I mean, do you understand that there are starving kids all over the world?”

  Why was she trying to make me feel bad?

  “Yeah, I do. And I doubt starving kids care about going to hockey camp,” I reasoned.

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back.

  “Jonathan,” Mum gasped.

  “What did you just say?” Dad asked, frowning.

  “You know, sometimes I can’t even believe I’m related to you,” Wendy sneered as she walked out of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” I told my parents. And I was. I cared about starving people. A lot. But the truth was, I also cared about hockey. “I’m just upset about camp.” My Christmas vacation had been totally destroyed. Couldn’t they understand that?

  “Look, Nugget,” Dad said. “You can do one of two things. You can show up for camp tomorrow, ready to learn, or you can sit at home for the rest of your vacation while everyone else is out having fun on the ice.”

  “With Danny Holbrook,” I sighed.

  “That’s enough,” Dad said, his tone letting me know that the conversation was over.

  So was game night, it turned out. I’d ruined the moo
d. On Christmas. We stayed up for a couple more hours, reading and watching TV, but it wasn’t the same.

  When I got to the point when I couldn’t stop yawning, I said goodnight to everyone and left the room. On the way upstairs, I heard Mum say something about selfish children.

  Great.

  The thing is, I wasn’t trying to be selfish. I knew that other kids had way bigger problems than me. I knew I was lucky to have parents who took good care of me and were willing to pay for hockey camp.

  I just wished they’d paid for the right one.

  I flopped on my bed and stared at my Ducette jersey, wishing everything had worked out the way it was supposed to.

  Danny Holbrook might not have been the most awesome player in history but he’d made it all the way to the NHL. He’d lived my dream, and I wanted to know what it felt like.

  But instead? I had Katie Gunnar.

  Of course, I knew that girls could play sports. I mean, my sister was the star of her high school volleyball team. A bunch of the girls in my grade played soccer, too, and I saw how good they were during gym class. And one of the girls who graduated from Cutter Bay High School last year won a big basketball scholarship for some university in the States.

  But hockey was something totally different.

  Hockey was the game that guys loved the most. Me and my dad both played, but Mum and Wendy never did. Hockey was fast, exciting, and sometimes it got a little rough.

  How was a girl supposed to teach me how to play against guys?

  And what could I possibly learn from Katie Gunnar that I didn’t already know?

  * * *

  The sound of my blaring alarm clock yanked me out of an awesome Stanley Cup dream at six the next morning. I hit the “off” button and closed my eyes, trying to finish the dream with a game-winning goal, but the details had already faded away.

  I groaned and rolled out of bed. For a split second, I thought it was a school day. Then I started to smile when I realized it was the first day of hockey camp.

  But the smile didn’t make it all the way onto my face before I remembered that camp was ruined.

  In the shower, the only shampoo we had left was the special strawberry stuff Wendy used. I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch it, but I had no choice. As I washed the bubbles out of my hair, I realized that I wasn’t only going to be coached by a girl, I was going to smell like one.

  Great.

  When I’d dried off, I put on my sweatpants and my Canucks hoodie. I’d packed my usual practice jersey in my bag the night before, figuring if there was a Gunnar jersey waiting for me at the rink, I might not want to wear it.

  After all, it would probably be pink.

  The truth was, I wasn’t only disappointed because my coach was a girl instead of a Canuck. It also stunk that while the Cougars played together, I was going to be stuck with a bunch of guys from Port Alberni. Guys we’d played against forever.

  The enemy.

  I shook my head, wondering how everything had gotten so messed up.

  When I made it to the kitchen, Mum handed me a plate of blueberry waffles and told me to go light on the syrup.

  As if I could.

  “Have we made an attitude adjustment since yesterday?” she asked, slicing chunks of banana onto her cereal.

  “Mmmhmm,” I lied, through a mouthful of deliciousness.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I bet you’ll be surprised at how much you enjoy camp.”

  I nodded. She was right. If I enjoyed it, I would definitely be surprised.

  “I think you need to get over this anti-girl nonsense,” she said. “In case you’ve forgotten, I used to be a girl.”

  “I know,” I said, reaching for more syrup.

  Mum grabbed the bottle before I could. “And you probably don’t believe it, but in a couple of years you’ll be looking at girls in a totally new way.”

  “You’re right,” I said, then waited until she smiled before I added, “I don’t believe it.”

  Her smile turned into the one she always flashed at me when she thought she knew something that I didn’t. “We’ll see about that.”

  We finished our breakfast and I loaded my gear into the van. Mum had made me a “to-go” cup of hot chocolate for the drive to the rink, complete with five tiny melting marshmallows, which made me feel a little better.

  Just a little, though.

  I sipped while we listened to CBC news, which Mum always liked in the morning. I wouldn’t have minded some music to help get me pumped up, but it was driver’s choice.

  When we got to the rink, I swung my bag onto my back, almost knocking the wind out of myself, and gave Mum a wave goodbye.

  “I’ll see you later,” she said, then called after me, “Have fun!”

  I walked across the rink’s parking lot, almost crushed by the weight of my bag. When I pulled open the front door I took a big sniff. That place smelled more like home to me than my own bedroom.

  I thought about all the practice hours I’d spent on the ice and all of the games the Cougars had won and lost under that roof. I remembered how divided the team had been when my dad filled in for Coach O’Neal when he had surgery.

  A lot of stuff had happened in that building, good and bad, but the Cougars had made it through together. We were a solid team, for sure.

  It was going to feel pretty weird to be on a different team for the next week.

  And even more weird to be surrounded by guys from Port Alberni on my own home turf.

  I looked around the snack bar, then walked over to the rink, but didn’t see any guys I didn’t recognize. I figured they were probably all in the Visitors locker room or something. I sure didn’t want them in ours.

  I turned the corner and saw Patrick Chen down the hall. His bag looked even heavier than mine, but he was way taller than me (just like everybody else) and outweighed me by at least twenty pounds.

  “Hey Nugget,” he said, when he heard me behind him and turned.

  “Hey,” I grunted, counting the steps until I could put the bag down.

  “Are you pretty excited?” he asked, slowing down so I could catch up.

  I laughed and shook my head. “I’m not sure excited is the word.”

  He squinted at me, like he was confused. “It’s hockey camp.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “So why aren’t you —”

  “I’m on Gunnar’s team.”

  I waited for him to either laugh or look sorry for me, but he grinned instead. “Me too.”

  “You are?” I asked, surprised.

  “Yeah. We’re teammates, Nugget.”

  I couldn’t help smiling, just a little. I wouldn’t be the only Cougar on Gunnar’s team, after all. For the first time since I’d found out she was my coach, I started to relax.

  “Cool,” I told him. “Your mum signed you up late too, eh?”

  Patrick’s confused look was back. “Late? No, I was registered before they even advertised it.”

  It was my turn to be confused. “But you’re on Gunnar’s team?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But I thought they only put a second team together when Holbrook’s got filled up.”

  “They did,” he said. “And when I heard about it, my mum called them and they let me switch.”

  What?

  “You switched to the girl?” I asked, stunned.

  He laughed. “I switched to the gold medalist.”

  “What?”

  “Katie Gunnar,” he said. “Two-time gold medalist for women’s hockey.”

  “But —”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he added, “The Olympics, Nugget.”

  “Gold medals?” I frowned. Olympics? Maybe I should have kept reading about Gunnar online.

  “Yeah, and you know, Danny Holbrook may have been an NHL player, but he was never MVP.”

  “MVP?”

  “Yup,” he said, as we entered the locker room. “Katie Gunnar was MVP.” />
  I barely had a chance for the words to sink in before all of the noise and action in the locker room took over my brain.

  Most of the Cougars were already there, half-dressed in their gear and joking around. Almost everybody was wearing a Holbrook’s Heroes jersey, which didn’t feel quite as bad as it could have, now that I knew Patrick was on my team.

  I could smell Jeff’s beef jerky breakfast before I even saw it hanging out of his mouth. Bedhead was living up to his nickname, with hair sticking up in every possible direction. When we nodded at each other, it looked like exploding fireworks.

  Tim was standing in front of the bench, bouncing a tennis ball on his stick. It was kind of like something I’d seen my grandpa Charlie do with a golf club and ball, but way, way easier.

  I high-fived Kenny, Chris Fullerton, Colin and one of the Watson triplets (I’m not sure which one), then spotted Bosko in the corner. He was silent, concentrating on lacing his skates. Most of the guys were still scared of him, but I wasn’t (most of the time, anyway), so I dropped my gear on the floor with a thud and sat down next to him.

  “Nugget,” he said, in a voice that sounded older than my dad.

  “How’s it going, Bosko?”

  “Good,” he said, finishing with his laces and pulling his Holbrook jersey out of his bag. He glanced at me. “Have you done your Math homework yet?”

  The only things my tutor and I had in common were hockey and Math, and I would have rather stuck to hockey right then. I mean, who really wants to talk about Math homework?

  “It’s Christmas break,” I reminded him, unzipping my bag.

  “I know,” he grunted. “It was a Christmas break assignment.”

  “I still have a whole week left,” I said, pulling on my shoulder pads.

  He raised one eyebrow at me. “And you’re going to wait until the end?”

  “Well … yeah.” I adjusted the pads so they fit right.

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to be able to help you the night before school starts, Nugget.”

  “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “Yet,” he said, with a smirk.

  He strapped on his helmet and told me he’d see me on the ice.

  “From a distance, anyway,” I muttered.

  As I bent over to pull on my skates and tie the laces, I watched all of my buddies laughing and goofing off in their matching jerseys. They were way more excited about camp than I was.