Travis was secretly glad they wouldn’t be staying in this fancy hotel. He had never been inside a lobby quite so lovely as the one in the Château Frontenac, but he also felt that to feel comfortable here he’d need to be a member of royalty, not the captain of a peewee hockey team. It was too fancy, too special. Even the doorman intimidated the Owls, shooing them away from the entrance, where they had stopped to watch the hotel guests come and go in everything from stretch limousines to horse-drawn calèches.

The Owls gathered in a large ballroom with two other teams. The players were all given pins and a warm welcome by one of the organizers, who told them they were very lucky this year, because their time in Quebec City would overlap with the Quebec Winter Carnival.

They then met their billets. Travis, Nish, and Lars would all be guests of the Duponts, a family in which the parents spoke no English at all, but the children–Jean-Paul, a bantam player more than a year older than the three Owls, and Nicole, who was their age–were perfectly bilingual.

“You can call me J-P,” Jean-Paul said as he shook Travis’s hand.

“Thanks,” Travis said.

“Bienvenue à Québec, Travis,” Nicole said to Travis, smiling and reaching out to shake his hand.

“Merci,” he said, and felt a fool. He could say nothing else. Partly it was his lack of French. Partly it was Nicole. She was slim and pretty, with dark, shiny hair that fell over one cheek and had to be tossed back every so often.

Nicole offered the same greeting to Nish, who blushed, and then to Lars, who bowed elegantly, causing Nicole to giggle.

“Merci bien,” said Lars in a near-perfect French accent. “C’est une très belle ville, mademoiselle.”

When Nicole had moved on, Nish and Travis pressed close to Lars.

“Where did you learn to speak French?” Nish hissed.

“I don’t know,” Lars answered, looking surprised at his friends’ reaction. “School when I was still in Sweden, I guess. It’s no big deal.”

“How many languages do you speak, anyway?” Travis demanded.

Lars laughed. “I never counted. But let me see: Swedish, German, a little Danish, a little Norwegian, English, of course, a bit of French…”

“Et-gay a-ay ife-lay,” Nish said.

Lars looked at him, dumbfounded. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Pig Latin,” Nish said, triumphantly.

“What’s it mean?”

“Get a life!” Nish almost shouted.

Travis couldn’t stop giggling. He hadn’t heard anyone use Pig Latin since grade school, but, if anyone would remember, it would be Nish.

Travis was still laughing when Mr. Dillinger took his arm and pulled him aside.

“Travis,” Mr. Dillinger said in a quiet voice. “The organizers are asking some of the team captains to keep a short daily diary for one of the newspapers. Muck and I thought you might do a good job. What do you say?”

Travis didn’t know what to say. A diary?

“In French?” Travis asked, feeling relief all of a sudden that his French was so weak.

“No,” Mr. Dillinger said. “It’s an English paper from Montreal. Look, the reporter who’s putting the whole thing together is here. You meet with him, you can decide for yourself. Whatdya say?”

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Sure.”

But he didn’t feel sure. He knew it was the responsible Screech Owls captain answering Mr. Dillinger, not Travis Lindsay, who had never even written a letter in his entire life.

 

“I’m Bart Lundrigan, Travis. Great to meet you.”

Much to his surprise, Travis felt instantly at ease with the reporter. Bart Lundrigan was young, and he had a shock of dark curly hair that danced down into his eyes. He was wearing jeans and looked more like a movie star than a reporter.

“I’m with the Montreal Inquirer, Travis. We’re not a very big paper, but we’re owned by one of the big chains, which means the stories I write could, conceivably, appear right across Canada.

“The idea is this: a half-dozen of the team captains–players like yourself–are going to record their impressions each day in one of these pocket diaries”–the reporter held up a small red booklet–“and that is going to give fans a real insight into what it’s like to play in this tournament.

“I want to know about the games, but I also want you to talk about coming here to Quebec to play. You know, what it’s like to play where Lafleur and Gretzky once played. What’s it mean to you? What do you think about the city? The people? Your billets? What kinds of things you do at the Carnival? You get the idea.”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Good. Are you game, then?”

Travis was still wary. “How much do I have to write?”

The reporter laughed. “Not much. A page a day, if you can. I’ll drop around every now and then and read through whatever you’ve done. Deal?”

Travis couldn’t resist the smile, couldn’t avoid the hand reaching out to shake his.

“Deal,” he said.

“Super,” Bart Lundrigan said. “I was sure hoping I’d get you; the Owls are one of the favourites in the C division, did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s what they’re saying, anyway. Lot of excitement about this Wayne Nishikawa kid–Paul Kariya’s cousin, eh?”

Travis swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to say. Was the reporter suspicious about Nish, or was he only making small talk?

“Nish is a good defenceman,” Travis said, avoiding the actual question.

The reporter nodded. He seemed satisfied.

They talked a while longer. The reporter explained how he’d split up the diaries so everyone was represented: the West, Quebec, the Maritimes, an American team.

They talked hockey as well. Bart Lundrigan’s dream was to cover an NHL team, preferably the Montreal Canadiens. He was, he said, not much different from Travis himself: both of them dreaming of the NHL, one to play and one to report. They had lots in common, even if the reporter was a good ten years older than Travis.

“I think this is going to be a great, great experience for you,” Lundrigan said.

“I do, too,” said Travis.

Travis was surprised he said this. But it was true. Fifteen minutes earlier, he had been dreading the idea of keeping a diary for everyone to read. Now he was looking forward to it.

In a small way, he was going to be a reporter, too.