The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4

by Roy MacGregor

  But he still had the overhand fake.

  Travis checked the clock.

  Ninety seconds.

  “Sarah!” Muck called out.

  Sarah’s line spilled over the boards. Travis punched his stick pocket a couple of times and lined up while Sarah took the draw.

  “Get a real stick!” the winger opposite him called out.

  Travis said nothing. It was to his advantage if the other side dismissed his Logan. The more he and his stick were underestimated, the better chance they’d have.

  Sarah won the draw cleanly. She fired the ball back to Sam, who ran behind Nish’s net and stood, using the goal as a guard.

  The clock behind her was running down.

  Sarah broke cross-floor and Sam hit her perfectly with a pass. Sarah passed – backhand – to Dmitri, who broke up the far boards and then cut for centre floor, slowing down the play.

  Travis was coming up his wing. Dmitri backed into his check, protecting the ball, and looked for Travis. He flicked the ball quickly, straight into Travis’s pocket.

  The second defender rushed at Travis. He faked overhand as hard as he could.

  It looked like a panic shot. The defender moved to block it. But Travis held the shot, turning his stick as it swung so it seemed impossible that the ball had stayed.

  The Mini-Rock goaltender, convinced he’d missed it, looked quickly behind him to see if the shot had been so fast it was already in the net.

  Travis held the arc and turned his stick just as it swung past his knee.

  The ball was still in the pocket.

  Quick as his wrists would reverse, Travis fired the ball underhand, the shot rising as it passed the surprised defenceman and came in on the even more surprised goaltender.

  Ping!

  In off the crossbar!

  Mini-Rock 13, Owls 13.

  Travis had tied the championship game with old man Fontaine’s overhand fake!

  23

  There was no time for celebration. Thirty-three seconds remained on the clock with a draw at centre floor.

  Again, Sarah took the draw and flipped it back to Sam, who began another retreat behind Nish’s net. The Mini-Rock, however, had other ideas. They put a two-player press on Sam, the two closest forwards rushing her in the hopes of causing a turnover or a panic throw.

  Both forwards hit Sam at once. She buckled under their cross-checks, but just as she went down she managed to direct the ball towards Nish’s crease.

  Nish raced forward, scooping up the ball. He was in full stride, his leg pads clicking as he ran and his sneakers leaving faint damp spots on the floor.

  Up over centre floor Nish ran.

  Travis was alarmed. Nish had never come out this far before. If he lost the ball now, they were sunk.

  Sarah and Dmitri were both calling for passes. One Mini-Rock defender broke off, covering Sarah, the Owls’ most dangerous playmaker.

  That left Travis free.

  He saw that Nish could see him. He raised his stick, expecting the pass. He barely saw Nish’s hand move. The thick goalie glove went up into the pocket and jammed the ball down hard into the crotch of the stick.

  Nish faked to Travis, then turned on the only player back. He faked a bounce shot through the player’s legs. The defenceman went down to block. Nish threw his goalie stick high in the air, so high it came within a whisker of rattling off the overhead lights that hung from the rafters.

  It was as if all time had come to a stop.

  Travis could sense the crowd, every eye in the place raised to the heavens as Nish’s huge floating, spinning stick went up and over and began to come down.

  Nish crashed right through the crouching defender, sending him flying. He reached up with one hand and caught his stick perfectly, placed his other hand up the shaft, and in one motion he shot.

  A perfect “Muck Munro”!

  The ball bounced once, rattled between the leg pads of the Mini-Rock goaltender, and into the net.

  Screech Owls 14, Mini-Rock 13.

  Travis’s first instinct was to look at the clock.

  Nothing left, the buzzer already going.

  His second instinct was to pile on Nish, who was already down in an accommodating heap.

  The Screech Owls had won the championship.

  Travis was in the pile. Dmitri was on top of him. Sam, then Fahd, then Sarah.

  “You stink!” Sarah shouted.

  “Ain’t it beautiful?” shouted Nish.

  The floor was filling with players and coaches and managers and officials. Muck was running towards the Mini-Rock net, where the official was just pulling the winning goal out from the netting. Travis saw him speak to the official, who nodded and handed over the ball. Muck took it in both hands, gently kissed it, and then walked over to meet Zeke Fontaine, still heading towards the pile from the bench.

  Muck held out the ball for his assistant coach.

  The old man looked at it. Travis could see he was weeping.

  Muck shook the ball. He, too, was in tears.

  The old man took the game ball as if it were the most precious, fragile thing in the world.

  In a way, it was. More than thirty years after it should have happened, Muck Munro and Zeke Fontaine had their provincial championship.

  24

  Two days later, the Screech Owls all went to the cemetery, where little Liam Fontaine would finally be laid to rest.

  The Owls wore their team sweaters and acted as an honour guard. Muck and Mr. Dillinger acted as pallbearers.

  A priest spoke, but Travis wasn’t listening to what he said. He stood, staring at the freshly dug grave and the small white coffin, the air heavy with the scent of flowers, and he wept. He didn’t even bother to wipe away the tears.

  He had never known the boy. Liam Fontaine had been dead for decades before Travis was even born. And yet Travis couldn’t get it out of his head that they were burying the same boy he had seen that night as he came home from the movie.

  He knew it wasn’t possible. He knew it made no sense at all. But that was how he felt.

  After the priest stopped speaking, they lowered the coffin, and old Mr. Fontaine leaned over, placing something down into the grave.

  Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Nishikawa came along with armfuls of roses, handing one each to the Screech Owls for them to place in the grave.

  This was what old Mr. Fontaine had done, thought Travis, maybe leaving an orange lily, and he stood behind Nish and Sarah to take his turn.

  Sarah dropped her rose and moved on. She, too, was weeping openly.

  Nish dropped his. His face was red, his cheeks burning with tears.

  Travis bent to drop his rose on the coffin and realized that it was not a flower at all that Liam Fontaine’s father had sent to be buried with the boy.

  It was the ball from the championship game.

  THE END

  Death Down Under

  1

  “Is it still flushing backwards?”

  “Drop dead!”

  The first voice belonged to Fahd; the second, coming from inside the toilet bowl, belonged to Nish. The first was laughing, and the second sounded, understandably, near tears.

  Nish was throwing up in the bathroom. Not pretend hurling for once, but really being sick.

  Travis felt like he might be next. A few minutes earlier he had even scurried into the little hotel bathroom himself, the same bathroom where most of the Screech Owls had gathered earlier in the day while Nish – using the vitamin pills his mother always packed – had given a demonstration how toilets here flushed in the opposite direction.

  “Only Nish would know which way they go down back home,” sneered Sarah, who’d come in with Sam to watch.

  It had been hilarious, with Nish red-faced and grunting as he climbed up on the sink and reached over to let the little brown pills plop loudly into the toilet bowl before he pressed the flush lever with his toes to send them swirling in what he explained was the reverse of normal, clockwise
rather than counter-clockwise, down, down through the hotel waste system.

  But no one was laughing now. Travis had been sure he, too, would be sick to his stomach, but all he could do was retch a couple of times and wish, more than anything else in the world, that Nish had been right.

  That everything here did run backwards.

  Including time.

  Travis’s stomach hurt. His temples hurt. The back of his neck hurt like he’d been cross-checked headfirst into the boards.

  And yet the Owls still hadn’t played a single hockey game in Australia. They’d been so excited about that first game Down Under, but now it was impossible even to think about playing hockey. Who could, after what had happened?

  The team had never been so up for a trip. They had visited some exciting places before, but this trip was special, because it had come to them completely out of the blue and involved probably the last place on earth any of them ever thought they’d be playing their favourite game.

  It all began with a letter that had arrived one day in the downtown office of Mr. Lindsay, Travis’s father:

  The Australian Ice Hockey Federation, in an effort to promote minor hockey development in Australia, would like to extend an invitation to the Tamarack Screech Owls to come to Sydney, Australia, for the first-ever “Oz Peewee Invitational.”

  The trip would coincide almost exactly with the March school break.

  Travis’s father had been surprised there was even ice in Australia, let alone a national ice hockey organization. Australia, Mr. Lindsay said, was probably the top sporting country in the world, but the sports they played were soccer and cricket and swimming and track-and-field and basketball. When a country was mostly desert, when the temperature on a bright January day could reach forty-eight degrees Celsius, well on the way to making ice boil, hockey was hardly the game that came to mind.

  But Mr. Lindsay, as president of the Tamarack Minor Hockey Association, discovered that little in Australia is ever quite what it first seems. The Australians would pick up all costs, including airfare, for the Screech Owls peewee hockey team and their coach and manager. All that was requested in return was that in the future the Screech Owls invite an Australian team to take part in a minor hockey tournament put on by the town of Tamarack.

  But there was more. The Australians were convinced they could not really compete against the Screech Owls in the “Oz Invitational,” and so the games would be exhibition only. To add to the competitive edge, however, the City of Sydney would put on a “Mini-Olympics” at the same time, to be held at many of the same facilities that had been used for the Sydney Summer Olympics – the best Summer Games ever, many people thought.

  “Can I do synchronized swimming?” Nish had asked when Muck read the letter to them in the Owls dressing room after practice.

  “Better that than beach volleyball!” Sam had shouted from the other end of the room. “At least that big butt of yours would be under water.”

  “Imagine Nish in a thong!” Sarah had laughed, kicking off her skates.

  “People have seen me in less,” Nish shot back, his face reddening as he leaned over to loosen his laces.

  “Don’t remind me,” Travis said, wincing at the flood of memories: Nish in the Swedish sauna, Nish and the World’s Biggest Skinny Dip at summer hockey camp, Nish running nude on Vancouver’s Wreck Beach, Nish planning to “moon” the entire world at Times Square …

  From the moment Muck read that letter, the excitement had built. They were going to the land of kangaroos, koalas, platypus, crocodiles, and the deadly Great White Shark. They were going to Sydney, that magnificent city they’d all seen on television during the Olympics Games. And they were going to be in their own Mini-Olympics.

  Dmitri was talking about running the 100-metre dash. Travis wanted to try the mountain bike course. Liz, who was on a swim team, couldn’t believe she’d be getting a chance to try out the Olympic pool. Wilson, probably the Owls’ strongest player, wanted to try weightlifting. Little Simon Milliken said he knew how to wrestle. Derek and Jesse wanted to form a team for tennis doubles. Sarah and Sam said they were going to be the Owls’ official beach volleyball team, and Sarah, the team’s best athlete, also wanted to enter all the races and swimming events.

  “Rhythmic gymnastics,” Nish had said one day at practice. “I think that’s my new sport. You know, prancing about and throwing a ribbon up in the air and catching it.”

  “Get serious,” Travis had told him.

  “I’m also thinking about synchronized diving,” Nish said, leaning back in his stall, his eyes closed dreamily.

  “What?” Sam had yelled over. “You and a boulder!”

  “Nah. Me ’n’ you – how about it?”

  Nish had meant it as a joke. With his eyes still closed, he hadn’t seen Sam winking at Sarah.

  “You’re on, Big Boy – me ’n’ you!”

  Nish’s eyes had popped open, but it was too late. The whole team loved the idea.

  Sam was an excellent diver. There wasn’t a player on the team who didn’t remember her wild leap from the rocks high over the Ottawa River when they’d gone rafting. But neither was there an Owl who didn’t know that Wayne Nishikawa, the World’s Biggest Big Talker, was terrified, absolutely petrified, of heights.

  Travis had smiled to himself. This was going to be interesting.

  In the days that followed, Sarah Cuthbertson, more than any of the other Owls, had become consumed with the upcoming trip. She’d often said her greatest dream was to become a marine biologist, and she told them that Australia was like a dream come true. It was where the Great Barrier Reef was, and its waters offered the finest scuba diving and snorkelling in the world.

  “I plan to see lots of seahorses, and my first Great White Shark,” she said.

  It would happen quicker than any of them imagined.

  2

  It had taken twenty-two hours to fly to Australia, and after they’d been driven to the little hotel they’d be staying in down by Sydney’s famous Opera House and Nish had given his ridiculous demonstration of the way toilets flush “backwards” in Australia, the Screech Owls had set out to shake off the jet lag with a quick tour of the harbour and the famous Sydney Aquarium.

  A little green-and-yellow-and-red ferry boat – Travis was convinced it was identical to one he’d played with in the tub when he was much younger – had taken them out on a cruise around the magnificent, fin-shaped Opera House and then under the massive Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was a beautiful day, the water almost as blue as the clear sky.

  Their guide, Mr. Spears, had pointed way up above the water to the highest spans of the bridge, where it seemed ants were moving along slowly. But they weren’t ants – they were people. People climbing high over the top span of the enormous bridge.

  “We call ’er ‘The Coathanger,’ mates,” Mr. Spears had announced in his strong Australian accent. “Greatest view in all of Oz from up there.”

  Travis smiled. He liked the way Australians called their country “Oz.” They said it with such affection. Travis couldn’t think of a nickname that would work for Canada. “Can” sounded, well, stupid. People would think you were talking about a toilet, not a country.

  “You have to tie ropes around your middle to go up,” Mr. Spears told them. “And they charge a good fee – but it’s well worth it, mates, well worth it. You should consider it while you’re here.”

  “No way!” Nish had shouted.

  “We could practise our synchronized dives from there,” suggested Sam.

  “Practise yourself! I’m not climbing anywhere except outta this stupid boat.”

  Travis had looked at his old friend. Nish was a bit green. The jet lag, the rolling of the ferry, the sight of people climbing high over the water – it was all a bit much for Nish’s sensitive stomach. It was the only part of his friend, Travis thought, that had ever shown any sensitivity at all.

  Soon, the bridge was well behind them and the ferry had dropped them
off at Darling Harbour. They walked up along the wharf to the massive glass building that housed what Data claimed was the best aquarium anywhere.

  “The Sydney Aquarium has saltwater crocodiles,” Data said. “Grow more than twenty feet long and will attack and eat an entire cow – or a person, if they feel like it. Most dangerous animal on earth, I think.”

  “I thought the Great White Shark was,” said Fahd.

  “Earth, Fahd,” corrected Data. “I said earth – sharks don’t walk on land, do they?”

  “Actually,” Sarah said, interrupting, “you’re both wrong. The truly scary creatures of Australia you wouldn’t even notice.”

  “Sure,” Nish said sarcastically. “Like what? Killer hamsters? Vampire goldfish? Sabre-toothed bunny rabbits?”

  Sarah was smiling slightly. Travis noticed it even if Nish hadn’t. He knew that Sarah had Nish right where she wanted him.

  “Ever hear of the Box Jellyfish?” she asked.

  “Jell-O fish?” Nish howled. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “Jell-EEE fish, dummy, and I’m not kidding,” said Sarah. “You swim up against one of them and, if you live, you’ll wish you hadn’t. It’s kind of like being skinned alive and then spray-painted with acid, they say.”

  “No way I’m even going swimming!” shouted Lars.

  “There’s none in the waters around Sydney,” said Sarah.

  “Good!” said Lars. “There better not be.”

  “In Sydney you have to watch out for the funnel web spider,” Sarah said, her little smile returning. She was enjoying herself. “It’s the most poisonous spider in the world.”

  “Will it kill you?” Fahd asked.

  “Yes,” said Sarah, “but slowly. First you bounce off the walls for a few hours like you’re about to explode, then you start shaking, turn blue and shiver until you pass out. If they don’t get the antidote into you in time, you’re history.”

  Travis winced. Australia had seemed like such a warm and welcoming country, a bit like Canada, and a bit like the United States, and a bit like England, and a whole lot like itself. The last thing it seemed was dangerous. But now he wasn’t so sure.