The Ice Chips and the Stolen Cup

by Roy MacGregor

  Lucas was chosen to be the shiny award’s very first babysitter.

  “This thing isn’t old, you know,” he said as he turned the bowl around in his hands. “Well, it’s old, like, history old, but it looks brand new. It’s shiny and perfect, and there are barely even any finger smudges on it.”

  “Any clue who the girl was? Or how to find her? That is your plan, right?” asked Swift, sounding a little jealous.

  “No, not yet,” said Lucas sadly. “But we have to find her. We should be able—”

  BUZZZ-SHEEEP-ZZZZZZZ!

  It was Edge on the other channel. Lucas pushed the face of his comm-band and patched him into his conversation with Swift.

  “Crunch says he’s figured it out—how to fix Scratch!” said Edge, sounding like he’d just run all the way from Crunch’s house. “We’ve got our practice tomorrow, but on Thursday we’ll sneak back into the rink. That’s when we’ll leap.”

  “Bond has singing lessons with her sisters on Thursdays,” said Lucas. “She can’t come.”

  “Well, I’m in,” said Swift. “Quiet Dave will be at the Blitz rink with my dad, setting up for the final on Saturday. We’ll have all the time we need.”

  “You think the fix will work?” asked Lucas.

  “It has to,” said Edge.

  “Fine, then. Let’s do it!” said Lucas with determination in his voice. Without even thinking, he breathed fog on the cup and polished it with the edge of his sheet.

  “Oh, Lucas?” Edge said excitedly. “Don’t forget to bring the bowl with you.”

  * * *

  “Wow, that is the HUGEST bowl in the whole entire UNIVERSE!” Connor’s voice was echoing through the house just as the Finnigans’ doorbell rang. It was still early in the morning, but Lucas knew exactly who it was: Edge and Swift.

  The three of them had decided that the only way to protect the silver bowl was to keep their eyes on it. Today, that meant taking it to school and then to their half-ice practice.

  “Connor, shhhh,” Lucas said, scolding his brother. “Why is your face always so loud? Don’t say anything to Mom and Dad, okay?”

  “Don’t say about the GIANTEST bowl on the planet?” Connor asked, still at full volume.

  Lucas whispered something in his brother’s ear just as their dad came up from the basement carrying a laundry basket. He was answering the front door.

  The Chips’ centre had snuck down from his bedroom that morning to stuff the bowl into his backpack, but it hadn’t fit. Now he was looking under the kitchen sink to see if there was a shopping bag that could carry it—that is, hide it. Connor, of course, had gone bananas the moment he’d seen the shiny object from his high chair.

  “LU-CAAS? What’s ‘quiet as a ninja’?” Connor asked loudly, not understanding what his older brother had said in his ear.

  Lucas just rolled his eyes and kept searching. He had to move fast. He was about to get caught.

  “Cheeeeeerio-eeeeoooo-eeeOH!”

  Connor, the kid who would never make a good ninja sidekick, had started singing. It was his way of asking his brother to shoot Cheerios into his mouth like mini hockey pucks. And luckily, this gave Lucas an idea.

  “I didn’t realize Lucas had something you needed for school,” Mr. Finnigan told Swift and Edge as Lucas’s friends followed him toward the kitchen.

  “It’s, uh, for a play,” Swift said nervously. “It’s a prop.”

  “She means a costume,” said Edge using his talking-to-parents voice. “It’s for a . . . knight. You know, one of those horse guys with the jabby-jaberoo things. It’s a helmet.”

  Edge was acting out a jousting match (terribly) as he, Swift, and Mr. Finnigan walked into the kitchen to see Lucas, his chin dripping with milk, raising a spoonful of Cheerios to his mouth.

  “Is that your helmet?” Mr. Finnigan asked, looking at his son’s shiny new cereal bowl.

  “It . . . is,” said Edge, not knowing what else to say.

  Swift wrinkled her nose in disgust, and Mr. Finnigan narrowed his eyes.

  “Didn’t your mom say no more Cheerios for a week, Lucas?” his dad said, shaking his head but smiling. During the Finnigan brothers’ last game of cereal hockey, Lucas’s elbow had knocked over a vase that had smashed and spilled all over some important papers—inventory for the Whatsit Shop.

  He’d been grounded . . . from eating cereal.

  “Wooo! Cheerios!” yelled Connor, whose chest was covered in jam. “Daddy, Lucas winned the big hockey bowl!”

  “Ah, and it’s an award, too!” said Mr. Finnigan, laughing as he walked back toward the basement stairs. “That bowl looks like it could be a lot of things. Maybe you could give Connor a bath in it when you’re done with your play!”

  “Ha! Poopy baby bum!” Connor said, cheering for the bath idea.

  “But really, guys, that’s thoughtful of you to gather up props for your play,” said Mr. Finnigan, lifting his laundry basket. “I’m sure Mr. Small appreciates the help. You know, you three are turning into some nice human beings.”

  “Wait—we’re human?” asked Edge, flattening his hands on his stomach as if he were Pinocchio becoming a real boy. “Human! Finally!”

  “Wow, your acting is . . .” Lucas said with a chuckle, not daring to finish his sentence.

  “A distraction,” Swift said as Mr. Finnigan went down the stairs. “Put the bowl in here.” She quickly handed Lucas her bright purple track equipment bag.

  “You know, it does kind of look like a trophy,” Edge said as he watched the zipper close.

  “It’s a fake—probably just a sentimental thing,” said Lucas, grabbing the rest of his stuff to go. He then yelled up the stairs: “Mom, I’m leaving! Come watch Connor!”

  “Well, the real trophy we want is the one that we’ll win on Saturday, right?” Edge said, feeling pumped.

  “Yeah, but we’ll have to get through that horrible half-ice practice first,” said Lucas as they filed out the door.

  They could still hear Connor yelling as they walked down the driveway: “Poopy, pooooopy baby bum!”

  Chapter 5

  The teenage girl seated in the lobby of the Riverton Community Arena, selling tickets for Saturday’s league final, gasped.

  She’d never seen anything quite like it.

  There wasn’t even a game—the arena was being used for a simple half-ice practice—but the turnstile by the rink doors was spinning like a top. Parents of both the Ice Chips and the Stars were arriving all at once to cheer on their players.

  At a practice!

  Edge’s family members, of course, were there, too. They were always there. They’d come out in India to watch Edge’s father play professional field hockey, and now they came out in Riverton to watch Edge play ice hockey.

  Edge’s mother was speaking in English with his sister, Noor, but his grandmother was speaking Punjabi with his dad, who already had his fancy camera out. The grandmother—Edge’s beloved dadi—was wearing her usual loose, pastel-coloured salwar pants and had a white scarf wrapped around her hair, but she also had on her lucky oversized hockey jersey. It had the Riverton Ice Chips’ logo on the front and the number 17 under the name “Singh” on the back.

  Edge might not be superstitious, but Dadi definitely was. She would do laundry only on Tuesdays (even Edge’s stinky hockey underclothes had to wait!), and she made her grandson drink an extra-strong almond milkshake for breakfast on game days, just as his father had when he was in the field hockey pros. Edge’s grandfather—Dada—wasn’t always able to make it out to games since he’d broken his knee, but the Chips’ forward didn’t mind. There’d be plenty of videos for Dada to watch when the family got home to the house they all shared.

  One by one, the players’ family members filed through the turnstile, talking excitedly. Slapper’s dad, who spoke French but often didn’t say anything at all, was wearing his Montreal Canadiens hat. Lars’s mom had come out, and Crunch’s brainiac parents had turned up with their three other bra
iniac kids (each one with his or her nose in a book).

  When Dadi moved past the ticket seller, she suddenly stopped, put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, and said: “Mahriaa shot, keeta goal.”

  The teenage girl stared at the grey-haired woman, utterly baffled.

  Mr. Singh, who was walking behind his mother, leaned over to the ticket seller and smiled.

  “She thinks the Chips are going to win,” he said cheerily.

  “It’s not a game,” the girl whispered, as if sharing a secret. “It’s just a practice.”

  Mr. Singh smiled again. “Don’t tell her lucky jersey that. My mother’s convinced there will be a game tonight.”

  * * *

  Edge, Lucas, Swift, and Crunch were all nervous as they dressed, and it wasn’t just because the Stars were in their arena. An hour earlier, right after school, Swift and Lucas had snuck into the rink in broad daylight with the goalie’s purple track bag in tow.

  Ever since the silver bowl had leapt ahead in time, the members of the Chips’ “secret club” had been terrified that someone would see it and take it away from them—either because they’d think it was stolen or because they’d want to steal it for themselves.

  “What do I do with it now?” Lucas had whispered after they’d made it through the rink doors. “We can bring the bowl into the dressing room while we dress, but then what?”

  “We need to see the bag—or at least the spot where we hide it—to make sure it’s safe,” Swift said as her mind raced.

  Suddenly, she clapped her hands as if an idea had exploded between them.

  “That’s it!” she said. “What is it that bank robbers and jewel thieves do in movies? They hide what they’ve stolen in plain sight, right?”

  “What does that mean?” asked Lucas. “We’re not in a movie!”

  “You know, they wear the jewels or hide a stolen painting by hanging it on a wall,” she said, struggling to keep her voice down.

  “You want me to hide the bowl . . . in the trophy case?” asked Lucas, still confused.

  “Oh, no way!” she said. “But I think you should bring it to practice. Put it somewhere where people can see it but won’t notice it—and won’t touch it. Put it where no player wants to go.”

  “The penalty box?” asked Lucas, scrunching up his nose.

  * * *

  The half-ice practice was indeed just a practice—at least, that’s how it started out.

  Quiet Dave had brought in a series of portable boards, long enough to separate the ice at the Riverton Community Arena into two parts: the Ice Chips on one half, the Stars on the other.

  And Coach Small had worked out a half-dozen new drills for the Chips to use on their half of the rink. He had the Chips skate while stepping over sticks he’d laid out in front of them, almost like playing hopscotch. It was a drill to work on foot balance. Then he had them stickhandle a puck through a traffic jam of other pucks. This was a difficult drill, but one that helped improve their control. Next, they had to work across the blue line, criss-crossing their skates as they “danced the line”—a drill to teach quick movements to the side and also balance.

  Up in the stands, Edge’s dad was filming every drill, and Dadi cheered whenever Edge moved up in the line to take his turn.

  “MAHRIAA SHOT, KEETA GOAL!!!” she shouted whenever the drill involved shots on net.

  Lucas’s parents hadn’t come out because they were busy working on some new Fix-it Club project at their store—finally putting some of his dad’s mechanic skills to use. So Lucas instead watched Slapper’s dad every time he looked up into the stands. Mr. Boudreau had seated himself in the corner and was keeping his head down, but Lucas could tell he was eager to see his son score some goals.

  Slapper was waiting in line to do exactly that when, without warning, he turned and stared at Lucas with a look somewhere between anger and hurt on his face.

  “How’s your underwear?” the Chips’ big defenceman asked. “Is that why you came to the rink early today?”

  Lucas gulped. How did he know? WHAT did he know?

  “Uh, no—I left for the rink early in case the chain fell off my bike again. To be sure I’d make it.”

  “The ticket seller said you and Swift were here before everyone else,” Lars grunted from behind. “You guys are up to something. Why don’t you let us in on it?”

  “Or are we not good enough for your club?” Slapper asked, his face begging to be taken on by Lucas and his friends.

  Luckily, it was now Slapper’s turn for the stop-and-start shooting drill. Looking genuinely hurt, he took off after the puck. He did a few starts and stops, made a power turn, and then took his shot. The puck looked like it was going to ding off the crossbar, but somehow it turned in mid-air, like a curveball pitch in baseball, and was soon slamming clean into the back of the net.

  Lucas looked up at Slapper’s dad just in time to see a small smile cross his lips.

  Edge, who was waiting in a different line, was watching the Stars practise on the other side of the portable boards. What Swift and Lucas had done with the strange British girl’s bowl was making his hands sweat. If this was just a practice, the penalty box wouldn’t be used. But if it turned into more than that, as Edge’s grandmother kept insisting it would, then they’d really be in trouble.

  Coach Blitz, who’d been skating around his section of ice, barking at his players, suddenly came to a stop near the Stars’ bench and leaned an elbow on the boards. Soon, Jared was skating over to his father and whispering something.

  A play? A complaint about half ice? Or . . . worse?

  Lucas shot Edge a look.

  Are we about to get caught? Edge wondered, just as Beatrice, on the other side of the line, thumped the boards in front of him and stuck out her tongue.

  “We’re going to have a game of shinny, bozo!” she shouted with a mean competitive smile.

  Chapter 6

  Coach Blitz had been furious about the half-ice practice. He liked to imagine himself as a big-time, big-league coach on big ice. And his kids, Beatrice and Jared—who seemed to think they were already halfway to the NHL—had been fuming, too. But they’d all known that with a final coming up, a practice on half ice was better than no practice at all.

  So they’d said yes to Coach Small’s idea.

  And then, when the Blitzes had asked if they could turn that practice into a game, Coach Small had said yes, too. Why not? The teams could work on plays better playing four-on-four or three-on-three, rather than worrying about a crowd of ten full-ice skaters buzzing around the puck like bees in a rose garden. There would be more shots, more saves, more goals, more fun. To both coaches, it was a no-brainer—finally, something they could agree on.

  On one side of the rink, a small game would be played; the other side would remain a practice and be handled by the teams’ assistant coaches.

  Coach Small quickly set some lines for the four-on-four scrimmage. He put Swift in net, of course, and named four skaters for the first shift: Lucas, Edge, Bond, and Slapper. They’d play against Jared, Beatrice, Shayna, and Shayna’s brother, Nolan. The Stars were missing a goalie, however, so the Face was drafted to their shinny team for the evening.

  “You look good as a Star,” Slapper joked as the Face swapped his Chips’ jersey for a Stars’ one.

  Playing around in his full-of-himself way, the Face was posing and grinning as if there were a photographer in front of him. This was the kind of behaviour that had earned him his nickname.

  “You want my dad to take a photo?” Edge added, laughing.

  “Only if your grandma promises not to yell ‘Mahriaa shot, keeta goal!’ when the puck’s down in my end!” the goalie answered with a smirk.

  The Face, whose parents were also new Canadians—but from Argentina, in South America—had always giggled when Edge’s dadi shouted her cheer. Edge was never sure if the Face was laughing at her or was just uncomfortable with himself, but it had always got on his nerves.

&nbs
p; Once all the chosen players were on the Chips’ half of the ice, Lucas skated over to Swift with his eyebrows raised in alarm. Nothing needed to be said. Swift knew exactly what Lucas was thinking.

  If this is now a game, what happens when a penalty’s called?

  The only good news was that Coach Blitz was the one with the whistle in his mouth. If someone went to the penalty box where the two Chips had hidden the silver bowl, it certainly wouldn’t be Jared or Beatrice. The Stars’ coach would never call a penalty on his darlings.

  For the faceoff, Coach Blitz seemed to deliberately drop the puck so that his son had an advantage over Edge. Jared was able to turn so that he blocked the Chips’ forward and then send the puck back to Shayna.

  Shayna, who had once been a forward but was on the Stars’ defensive line this season, took off on the half ice, stickhandling neatly. Edge moved to check her, and she used a tuck play—his tuck play—to slip by him as if he were a reflection in the glass, not a real player.

  Shayna came in fast on Swift, dropped the puck from her stick blade to her right skate, and then kicked the puck back to her stick, causing the Chips’ goalie to move with the puck. Swift was sliding hard along her crease when, without looking, Shayna dropped the puck back to where her brother was waiting.

  Nolan had a completely empty net in which to tap the puck, making it 1–0 for the Stars.

  Coach Blitz blew his whistle as if he were leading a parade, not refereeing a hockey game. Nolan made a sign to his sister, and they both started laughing.

  “P, then K,” Shayna said, explaining the letter signs as she glided past Lucas on the ice. “For penalty kill.”

  “But there’s no penalty kill here,” Lucas said, confused. “It’s always four-on-four.”

  Coach Small had told them that for their half-ice game, any player who got a penalty would simply be replaced. No one would ever be down a player, which meant there would be no player advantage.