Travis wondered how airplanes could fly. Not how they actually did it, but how they could land and take off in a wind like this. The tour guide said it was usually like this at the top of the CN Tower. It felt as if the wind was whipping the tower like the aerial on a car going through a car wash.

Nish had come up in the elevator, but he wasn’t going back down that way. Halfway up the outside of the thin structure, he had made an announcement that almost panicked everyone packed into the glassed-in elevator.

“I think I’m going to hurl!”

But he didn’t. He just turned a bit green and closed his eyes behind his stolen sunglasses and held his breath. When the elevator reached the top he went to the washroom and sat for a long time. Not sick, just gathering his courage.

Travis couldn’t understand Nish’s fear of heights. He remembered the time they went up White Mountain at Lake Placid and Nish had reacted the same way. Nish would block a shot with his teeth if he thought it would win the Screech Owls a hockey game, but he wouldn’t climb up on a garage roof even if he thought it would get him drafted into the NHL. He’d only stepped into the elevator because he couldn’t stand the idea of them calling him a chicken.

Travis loved it. He loved the way he could look down and see the SkyDome and the way he could look out over Lake Ontario all the way to the United States. A small commuter plane was coming in to land at the Island Airport, and already it was well below where Travis stood.

It had been Derek and Lars who’d come running from the far side of the circular observation deck to tell the rest of them about the wind. Standing where they were, they had been protected and hadn’t felt the full force of the blow. But Lars–“Cherry”–had walked around and come upon it, gone back for his new friend Derek, and now the two of them had already mastered one of the greatest sensations Travis had ever felt: they could stand facing the wind, hold their arms out like an airplane, and fall forward–but never hit the ground.

The wind was cold this high up, but it didn’t seem to bother them. It held them at a forty-five-degree angle, floating in outer space but for the contact of their shoes on the deck. It was fantastic: the wind pushing and falling, their bodies moving with the flow like weeds in a river. Only in their case, the flow was pushing them back up instead of ahead and down. It felt as if they had beaten gravity.

“Amazing!” Fahd shouted. They could barely hear him.

“Get Nish!” Gordie Griffth shouted.

Travis found Nish staring out through one of the coin-operated binoculars. It seemed he was more interested in having something to hang on to than to look through. Though it was cold up here, Nish was sweating heavily.

“You gotta see this,” Travis said.

“I’ve seen enough,” Nish answered. “I’m going back down.”

“But you said you’d never get back on the elevator.”

Nish looked desperate. “I’m going down the stairs.”

“Stairs?”

“Yeah–over there.”

Travis looked over toward an exit.

“I asked,” Nish said. “People do it all the time. Willie says there’s 1,760 steps, 138 separate landings.”

“We haven’t got time.”

“Sure we do. Game’s not till five-thirty.”

Travis looked at his good friend. He could sense the terror in Nish’s eyes. This was no time to push him further. If Nish saw what the wind was doing to his teammates on the other side of the deck, he’d pass out. He needed Travis now, and this was one time the captain wasn’t going to let a teammate down.

“I’ll see if anyone else wants to go.”

They all thought it was a great idea. Travis presented the suggestion as a team project, something that would bring them all together. They’d “floated” together; now they could all say they’d walked down every step of the CN Tower together, all 1,760 of them. It would be like a souvenir.

They found Nish waiting at the stairway. He, too, was pretending there was more to this than merely giving him a way to avoid the glass elevator. He had his watch off and was holding it in his hand. He was setting up the stopwatch to time them.

“Everybody throws in a couple of bucks,” said Nish. “First one to hit the bottom gets it all. No jumping allowed.”

Everyone laughed at Nish’s little joke. Nish seemed relieved. Relieved to be leaving the tower. Relieved not to be on the elevator. Relieved to have the company.

Travis had a sudden thought that, as captain, he probably should have told Muck or his father that they were walking down. But what would it matter? They were all supposed to meet at the entrance at one o’clock and then go for lunch. Everyone had to get down somehow.

“I’m in!” shouted Data.

“Me too,” agreed Liz.

“And me.”

“Travis’ll hold the money,” Nish said.

Travis found his hand filling with loonies and two-dollar bills. He took it all, counted it, and announced: “Thirty-four bucks.” A lot of money to the winner. His first hope was that he would win himself, but that didn’t seem fair since he was holding it. He was captain: he shouldn’t win.

“Okay,” Nish announced. “Wait’ll I count down!”

They waited, pushing toward the door, each one jockeying for a better position.

“Three!…Two!…One!…Go!” Nish yelled.

They took off in a scramble, pushing, jostling, almost as if they were all atoms again, fighting for the puck in the same corner of the rink. Travis’s first thought was that they’d made a mistake; someone was going to get hurt. But by the fourth turn in the staircase they had spread out, and all he could hear from above and below was shrieks of pleasure. What a great idea!

For a long time Travis kept count. By the mid-fifties, however, he was beginning to lose track of how many flights of stairs they had pounded down, whirling around each time to begin another. Fifty-three? Or was this fifty-four? What did it matter?

Somewhere in the eighties–he thought–Travis began to feel it. He had passed a number of players–Fahd, Liz, Willie–who had started fast but were now walking. Their legs were killing them. So were his. He felt as if his legs were another part of him, a borrowed part that might buckle any minute.

But he kept going. By the time he had passed maybe the hundredth flight, it had been some time since he had heard any shrieks of joy. There was the odd moan and yelp of pain, but no longer any sign of fun.

He knew he was nearing the bottom and kept going. He could hear voices–then a scream!

“Ooowwwwwwwwwwwww!!”

He could hear more voices–all filled with concern. Travis hurried down three more flights and turned to find several of his teammates gathered around Nish, who was lying crumpled in the corner of the stairwell. Nish was moaning.

“What happened?” Travis called.

“He fell from the top step,” Andy said. “I was right behind him.”

Travis’s first thought was: Did Andy push Nish? Were they racing? Of course they were racing–and Travis had the prize-money in his pocket to prove it!

He pushed through and knelt by Nish, who had tears in his eyes and was holding his leg.

“You okay?”

“I–think–I–broke–my–ankle,” Nish answered through gritted teeth. He was in real pain.

“We’re only four flights from the bottom,” Wilson said.

“You better go down and tell somebody,” Travis said. “We’ll wait here–we better not move him.”

“What’re you going to do?” Nish asked nervously.

“They’ll bring a stretcher up,” said Travis. “You’ll have to go to the hospital.”

Nish’s face seemed to take on a new agony.

“I can’t!”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’? You’ll have to if that’s what they decide.”

“But I can’t, Trav,” Nish said, looking around, lowering his voice to a whisper, “I haven’t got any underwear on!”

Travis stared into the terrified face of his best friend. No underwear? He’d come with only the one pair and given up on them after the freezer incident. And he still hadn’t gone shopping for some new ones.

“Nothing I can do about it,” said Travis. Except, he felt like adding, laugh.

Nish’s ankle wasn’t broken, but it was twisted and swollen. They had taken him over to the Sick Children’s Hospital on University Avenue. The X-Rays showed nothing was broken, but they’d wrapped the foot and outfitted him with crutches and given him instructions about icing. No one said anything to him about his lack of underwear.

Nish took it all very well. At least he was off the dreaded Tower. No one claimed the prize money, and Travis made sure everyone got their two dollars back. It now seemed like a dumb idea for them to have raced down.

Travis had watched while Barry, the assistant coach, broke the news to Muck, and he had noted how the coach listened and nodded and bounced on the balls of his feet as he did so–always a sure sign to the Screech Owls that Muck was upset. The quieter Muck went, the more it bothered them. Muck’s silence was worse than if he’d lined them up at centre ice and screamed at them. Muck’s silences didn’t bother the ears–but they sure hurt.