“Maybe you should sit this one out.”

Travis heard what Muck said but couldn’t understand why his coach was saying this. Mr. Dillinger had taken one look at Travis’s face at breakfast, shaken his big beard from side to side, and hurried off to consult with the coaches. Muck and his assistants had come back, stared, touched everywhere on Travis’s face but where the stitches were, and looked concerned.

“If the decision were up to me,” said Mr. Dillinger, “I’d say no.”

Muck wasn’t sure: “We’ll check again just before game time.”

By four o’clock the swelling had gone down considerably. Mr. Dillinger checked Travis before the rest of the players arrived and figured he’d be playing. “Couple of days from now, you won’t even be able to find it,” he teased.

“I want to play,” Travis said.

“We need you,” Mr. Dillinger said. He seemed pleased that Travis had come back so fast.

“I gotta go work on some skates,” Mr. Dillinger said. “You may as well start getting dressed.”

Travis was happily pulling on his underwear when Muck came in, took one long look at him and decided that Travis had better sit out the game against Duluth.

“I’m fine,” Travis said. “Mr. Dillinger says the swelling will be gone in two days.”

“And in two days I might need you. I won’t need you tonight. But if we get into the final, I’m going to want you there. You get hit again today, even with your mask, that cut could open up again. Besides, you can barely see out of that eye.”

“I can see.”

“You can see well enough to watch.”

Mr. Dillinger came whistling back into the room, carrying pairs of sharpened skates in each hand and under each arm. He stopped whistling when he saw Muck and Travis in deep conversation.

“Travis won’t be dressing,” Muck told him.

“He won’t?”

“Maybe next game,” Muck said, and wheeled away.

Mr. Dillinger caught Travis’s eye. He shook his beard in quick disagreement. “I thought for sure you’d play, son,” he said.

He seemed genuinely unhappy with the decision. Travis felt good that someone, at least, was as sure as he was that he needed to be out there if the Screech Owls were going to win.

Travis sat with the Screech Owl families and hated every second of it. When the teams came out for the warm-up he wanted to be out there ringing his good-luck shot off the crossbar. When they lined up for the opening face-off, he wanted to be out there with everyone in the building, aware that he, Travis Lindsay, number 7, was in the Screech Owls’ starting line-up.

But now his place was taken by Derek Dillinger, with Sarah back at centre and Dmitri on right wing. Derek was a good winger but a better centre, and Travis wondered how he would fit in. He found himself half hoping he wouldn’t, but then realized what he was thinking and shook off the thought. Travis’s not playing had nothing to do with Derek, who was merely filling in where the coach told him to. And Derek, Travis knew, would be far happier knowing Travis was on the wing and he was back at centre, even if it was second-line centre.

Sarah was obviously much better rested. On the first shift, against the slower but bigger Duluth team, she picked up the puck behind her own net and skated out so fast she caught two Duluth forwards back on their heels and beat them cleanly. The Screech Owls had a four-on-three at their own blueline.

Then, in a move Travis had seen her try only in practice, Sarah did a spinnerama move past the opposing centre, turning around in a full circle at full speed as the checker went for the puck and found himself skating helplessly toward his wingers who were, like him, caught badly out of position. It was now a four-on-two, with big Nish steamrolling right up centre to join the play.

Sarah handed off to Dmitri, who dropped back to Nish, who hit Derek perfectly coming in from the side with the goaltender guarding against the other side, where Sarah was coming in backwards, looking for a tipped shot. Derek had the whole empty side to shoot at and he roofed the puck in off the crossbar, the ring announcing the Screech Owls’ first goal and, by the reaction in the stands, the sweetest goal of the tournament.

Travis was caught between cheering wildly and burning with envy. If he hadn’t fallen–been tripped?–it would have been him, not Derek, putting it in off the crossbar. Just as he always scored in his imagination. It would have been him, not Derek, they were all high-fiving, his number, not Derek’s, that the scorers–and the scouts!–would be writing down on the sheets, his name, not Derek’s, that would be bouncing around the arena walls from the public address system, his name, not Derek’s, that they would be tying to this spectacular goal for the rest of the tournament.

Sarah Cuthbertson did not take the next shift of this line. Either Muck was juggling–and why would he juggle when the Screech Owls were so obviously superior?–or else something was wrong. Muck shifted Derek over to centre and moved Matt Brown up onto the first line.

Travis was on the opposite side of the rink, but he could see Sarah bending down, working on her skates. He saw Sarah handing her skates back to Mr. Dillinger, who left the box with them, jumped over the sideboards and hurried down the side of the rink with the dressing-room key in his mouth and entered the dressing room. Sarah, her head down, expression hidden by her helmet and face-mask, still looked forlorn as she sat and waited.

Another shift later, Mr. Dillinger returned with the skates. They had probably just needed sharpening. Sarah missed a good part of her next shift tying them up, but made it out in time to see Derek pot his second goal, a beautiful slapshot from the point set up when Nish pinched in and Derek dropped back and Nish magically tucked the puck back between his own legs to where Derek was turning at the blueline.

On her next shift, Sarah barely made it down the ice before she was hustling back to the bench clutching her sweater out from her back and screaming something through her face-mask. Again, Mr. Dillinger went to work. There now seemed to be something wrong with her shoulder pads.

She missed another shift as Mr. Dillinger worked frantically with tape to put the pads back together again. He finished, pulled her jersey down tight, and Muck sent her back out–just as the buzzer went to end the first period. The game was half over, and Sarah had one assist and, at the most, thirty seconds of ice time.

How could something so dreadful happen again to Sarah? Travis couldn’t understand it. Some of the fathers were saying somebody must have cut her equipment. Mr. Brown, moving restlessly down in front of the glass, was unusually silent, studying the Screech Owls’ bench for some indication of which line his son was going to be playing on for the rest of the game.

The idea that someone might have doctored Sarah’s equipment seemed impossible to Travis, right up until her second shift of the second, and final, period, when Sarah came racing out from the corner, slamming her stick furiously on the ice as she headed for the bench, and Matt Brown, the sweat of double-shifting turning his sweater a different colour from Sarah’s, jumped over to take the left wing while Derek moved quickly to centre again.

This time it was her pants. Mr. Dillinger tried tape, but tape wouldn’t adjust, so he had to race, again, for the dressing room and come up with replacement braces.

Fortunately, the Screech Owls didn’t seem to need her–or Travis, for that matter. Derek set Matt Brown up for a one-timer and, ten seconds later, sent Dmitri in on a break to put the Owls up 4–0. Derek Dillinger was well on his way to being chosen, for the second time in a row, the most valuable player of the game.

And all Travis could think was: It could have been me.

But no one else was moping for him. Travis looked around and could see that Sarah’s parents were furious. The men along the back wall were angry and talking and shaking their heads. They hardly looked like parents of the winning side.

Down along the glass toward the other side, Travis could see several members of the Panthers standing watching. The little blond defenceman was there, as well as the big dark centre. The Panthers were on the ice next. The big dark centre was pointing at Mr. Dillinger struggling with Sarah’s braces, and he was laughing.

Travis couldn’t help but think that these laughing Panthers had something to do with what was happening. But what? And how?

“Someone cut it. You can see for yourself.”

Mr. Dillinger was surrounded by a large crowd of parents, tournament officials, other coaches, and Screech Owl players. He had the laces he had replaced, the shoulder pads, and the braces for the pants, all cleanly sheared for a bit, then torn.

“Whoever did it knew what they were doing,” Mr. Dillinger continued. “Nothing broke while she was dressing, but as soon as enough stress was put on it on the ice, everything started snapping.”

“Who had access to the equipment?” a man in a suit asked.

Muck answered. “Coaches and manager. Players if they wanted, but no players came around.”

“You kept all your equipment at the rink?” the man asked.

“Everything,” Muck said. “We were assigned one of the figure-skating rooms across from the dressing rooms.”

“Locked?”

“Of course locked.”

“And no idea who?”

“No idea at all.”

 

Travis wondered if perhaps he should talk with Muck about the Panthers, but what would he say? That one of them had winked at him during the first game when Sarah couldn’t play? That some of them were laughing during the second game when Sarah couldn’t play? That one of them had made a crack about Sarah during the scuffle last night?

When Travis tried to make sense of it, he could make little, but he could see why the Panthers might want Sarah out of the way. If they had got her out of the first game then they would have had a chance to grab first place right from the start and could probably have hung onto it for the rest of the tournament. On the final day, first and second place would play in the final, with the gold medal going to the winner and silver to the loser. Teams coming third and fourth in the standings would play off for the bronze, just like in the Olympics.

It made some twisted sense for the Panthers to get Sarah out of the Screech Owls’ second game as well. If the Screech Owls had somehow lost, with only one point from their first-game tie, the Owls might well have been eliminated at that point from playing in the final. This would have meant the Panthers would end up playing one of the weaker teams for the championship. Crazy, but possible.

Travis decided he would talk to Mr. Dillinger. He had a chance when everyone else was still showering and dressing and Muck had gone off with the tournament officials to discuss what they should do about the situation.

Mr. Dillinger listened carefully while Travis stumbled through his confusing explanation about the cut equipment. He was no longer the laughing, kidding guy Travis had come to expect. Mr. Dillinger was dead serious.

“You’re talking sabotage,” he said when Travis was finished.

“What’s that?”

“Deliberate. They’d sabotage in order to win the tournament.”

“I guess.”

Mr. Dillinger considered this for a long moment. “Makes some sense, Travis,” he said, finally. “Makes some sense.”

“What can we do about it?”

“Well,” Mr. Dillinger said thoughtfully. “We’ve obviously got no proof and we’d need proof. Why don’t you and some of the guys keep an eye out on the Panthers, particularly that guy who dumped you last night, and see if maybe they say something or do something that gives us a lead.”

“Spy on them?”

Mr. Dillinger laughed, the old Mr. Dillinger back. “Not ‘spy’–watch. Just watch them if you see them around the rink. And tell me or Muck if you see anything suspicious.”

“Okay.”

“Good.”