There were only two minutes left. Sarah was buckled over in pain at the bench, the blisters all broken and the stiff new skates unforgiving. Muck didn’t want to send her out again–didn’t want to have to send her out.

He re-jigged his lines and put out his best checkers, Travis included. He told them to dump the puck when they got it and hold the line when they didn’t have it. He was going for the 3–2 win.

The Panthers took out their goaltender. They sent out five forwards, including Yantha, and the little blond defenceman as the sixth player.

Travis had never in his life seen such effort. The little defenceman, Billings, led more than half a dozen rushes over those final two minutes. His last was an end-to-end race in which, with Travis almost hanging onto him, the little defenceman still managed to slip the puck through Nish’s legs, danced to catch it, and rang a backhander off the crossbar and out of play before crashing into the boards with Travis.

The referee’s whistle shrieked to call a break in the play. Travis could see that the referee did not have his hand raised for a penalty. He had been checking cleanly. He could hear the breathing of the little defenceman lying beside him, the little player’s lungs seeming desperate for air.

Slowly they rose from the boards. The little defenceman looked at Travis, grinning, and Travis tapped him quickly on the shin pad. No one knew better than the two of them how close Billings had come to tying up the championship game.

There were only fifteen seconds to go. Muck signalled from the bench that he wanted Travis to take the face-off again, and Travis moved over and Gordie Griffith moved out. Travis could feel the fury rising from number 5, the big centre, and when the puck dropped, Travis instinctively ducked, barely missing a vicious elbow.

Number 5 hadn’t even considered the puck. His intention was solely to take out Travis, and then deal with the puck. But Travis, down low, was able to snake the puck out of the big centre’s skates. He rifled it off the boards back into his own end, where Nish was already back, circling.

All six Panthers rushed Nish in desperation, and he held the puck as long as he dared before looping a high backhander out that fell flat at centre ice and died immediately. Gordie Griffith picked it up and he and Travis had a two-on-one, the little defenceman instantly back, with the net empty.

Gordie tried a quick pass to Travis, but the little defenceman again anticipated perfectly, the pass intended for Travis hitting him on the shin pad and instantly up to his stick where he charged again.

But it was too late. The buzzer went. Time had run out on the Panthers.

Final score: Screech Owls 3, Panthers 2.

Sarah Cuthbertson was first over the boards, barefoot. Her feet covered in Band-aids from Mr. Dillinger’s first-aid kit–and Mr. Dillinger vainly trying to stop her from jumping–she came over the boards and hit the ice and slipped and skidded and fell and whooped all the way to Guy Boucher, who was already throwing his stick and gloves into the crowd.

The rest of the Screech Owls piled on, Muck grabbing Sarah around the waist and hoisting her high off the ice so none of the skates would cut her already injured feet. They piled on Guy, who had kept the goals out. They piled on Derek, who had scored the tying and winning goals. They piled on Travis, who had set up the winner. They piled on Dmitri, who had scored the first goal. They tried to pile on Muck and Sarah, but Muck kept turning and swinging Sarah so they couldn’t get them, and so they piled instead on Nish because Nish was, well, Nish. And he deserved it.

Mr. Dillinger was on the ice now and he was hugging the players as if they’d just survived a plane crash. He was dancing, shouting, slapping, hugging. Travis saw him stop when he came to Derek and Derek, still deeply troubled, gave a weak smile and took his father’s offered hand. A hug would have to come over time.

Muck was Muck. He carried Sarah back to the bench and set her down until the madness stopped, and he walked around shaking the hands of his assistants and players like he had to get going somewhere. It was as if he had expected this. And he had.

They lined up for “O Canada” and the awards ceremony. The tournament officials gave out gold and silver medals–just like in the Olympics–and the Screech Owls got to do their victory lap, Nish and Gordie carrying the skateless, sore-footed Sarah, and then they lined up to shake hands with the Panthers.

Travis felt funny going through the line. These players had been regarded as the Screech Owls’ mortal enemies all week, but he hardly felt any anger toward them. With their helmets off and their hair soaked with sweat and their faces so red with exertion, they no longer looked quite so big or quite so menacing. They looked like the Screech Owls. Not big, not old, but normal. And Travis wondered if perhaps, to some of them, he looked bigger than he was. He doubted it.

He came to Stu Yantha and the big dark centre stuck out his hand as if they were meeting for the first time. Not the first time since he’d tried to remove Travis’s teeth with a butt end, but the first time ever. Travis didn’t even feel that Yantha knew who he was. Why would he? They shook hands and said nothing.

At the end of the line, he came to Billings, who was grinning with his hand out and another hand to put on Travis’s arm. They paused and, for a moment, Travis felt as if he had won the Stanley Cup and the television cameras were watching him and Billings, like Messier and Bure, as they met at centre ice. Billings knew exactly who Travis was and he knew Billings, and they had respect and admiration for each other.

“Nice game,” said Billings.

“You, too,” Travis said. It felt inadequate.

“Nice hit on Yantha, too.”

Travis smiled, remembering.

Billings smiled back. “Clean, too.”

 

Travis had never felt so wonderful. Mr. Dillinger had bought pop and chocolate bars for everyone. Muck had shaken each player’s hand again in the dressing room. They had stared at and felt their medals–Nish said they were real gold–and tried on their Lake Placid tuques. Nish was wearing his pulled completely over his face, more like he was robbing a bank than taking off his hockey equipment.

And the Lake Placid tournament officials had come in and handed out trading cards, a pack for each player. Only they weren’t the usual type of trading cards. No Gretzkys here, but Bouchers, Goupas, Nishikawas, Ulmars, Philpotts, Grangers, Kellys, Adelmans, Cuthbertsons, Yakushevs, Lindsays, Dillingers, Griffiths, Browns, Noorizadehs, Terzianos, and Highboys. That was why they had taken the players’ photographs that first day. They were having trading cards printed up for each of them.

Travis spread his cards in his hand and stared at them. It was like he had opened a fresh pack of Topps and he himself had come spilling out in high gloss. There were two cards for his grandmothers. One for his parents. One for Nish, who insisted on a trade. And one for himself, forever.

Exhausted, delighted, he pulled off his skates and felt pain sear up through his leg. He looked down, baffled, and could see blood through his left sock. Not a lot, like Sarah had, but blood all the same.

He pulled off the sock, wondering. And then he saw it: his own blister, red and broken.

A blister–in old, broken-in skates?

There was only one answer: Travis Lindsay was growing out of them.

Limping slightly from the welcome blister, Travis left with Nish, the two of them examining the cards they had just traded with each other. Some of the others had already left for the hotel to check out for the long, happy ride home. Travis figured he would sleep–and dream–all the way. And the way things were going, perhaps he’d have outgrown all his clothes by the time he got back home.

“Lindsay!”

Travis turned, recognizing his name but not the voice.

It was Jeremy Billings, the Panthers’ little defenceman–in Travis’s opinion, the true star of this tournament. He waited. Billings walked up and pulled out his own cards.

“Neat, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“You want to swap one?”

Travis looked up. Did he ever. But he had only one for himself, one forever.

He looked at his new friend, smiling, that same blond face in miniature on the card he was holding out face first. Travis looked at the card and realized, perhaps for the first time, the true value of a hockey card.

“You bet,” he said.

“Sign it, too?” Billings asked.

Travis couldn’t believe it. Someone was asking for his autograph!

“Yeah, sure. You got a pen?”

Billings shook his head.

“I got one,” Nish said.

Nish reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the pen from his “Stupid Stop”–the one with the disappearing bathing suit. Billings took it and signed his name on the card he was giving Travis. He paused halfway, turning the pen so he could see if what he had thought was right. Yes, the bathing suit was peeling off the bathing beauty.

He looked at Nish, who was beet-red and shrugging. No explanation required.

Billings handed the pen and his signed card over to Travis, who pocketed the card and then signed his own: Travis Lindsay.

Big, with an exaggerated “T,” a looping “L.”

And the number “7” tagged on at the end.

 

THE END