Travis woke before the morning bell. It was going to be a glorious day. He lay in bed, staring out the window and listening to the birds. He wished he knew birds better. He wished he could say things like “white-throated sparrow” instead of just “bird.” He decided he would become an expert on birds some day. He’d even find out what an osprey was.

Data was sitting up in bed. He was rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, but still hadn’t noticed the dried shaving cream all over his face. He hadn’t even noticed it on his hand. Perhaps it was too early in the morning for him.

“You feeling okay?” Nish asked with utmost sincerity.

Data blinked. “Yeah…why?”

“You don’t look so good, you better go look in the mirror.”

Data still hadn’t caught on. Puzzled, he slipped out of his sleeping bag and peered into the mirror over the sink.

“What the–?” Data shouted.

“You’re foaming at the mouth, pal,” Nish told him. “Looks like rabies to me.”

“In-your-face hockey!

“You understand me–you, Fat Boy? You understand what I’m getting at here?”

They were at the arena in the tourist town just down the road from the camp. Buddy O’Reilly was standing at centre ice, sweat pouring off his face. Nish lay flat on his back in front of Buddy, moaning as he gasped and twisted on the ice.

Buddy had just flattened Nish with one of the hardest and meanest checks Travis had ever seen, and the hardest, by far, he had ever seen at a “practice.” The hit had caught everyone off guard, but none more so than Nish himself, who had had his head down as he moved up toward centre on a simple five-on-four power-play drill. Nish knew his job: pick up the puck behind the net, then lug the puck up past the blueline and hit Sarah as she cut across centre ice. He’d timed it perfectly, slipping a nifty little pass in under Buddy’s outstretched stick and sending Sarah and Travis and Dmitri in toward the opposition blueline.

Then Buddy had struck. He hit Nish full on, his hands and stick coming up hard into Nish’s helmet, and Nish had dropped instantly.

Buddy stepped back to demonstrate.

“You see what I mean by in-your-face hockey? This is what I want to see from you guys–I don’t give a damn whether it’s for the Stanley Cup or summer-camp practice. You take your man out. Understand? You okay, Fat Boy?”

Buddy was laughing–that strange, front-of-teeth, chewing-gum snicker–as he reached down and helped Nish get to his feet. Travis couldn’t help noticing that Buddy seemed a little concerned; perhaps he realized he had hit Nish just a bit too hard. Nish skated away, trying to get the air back in his lungs. He was bent over, his face almost on his knees. His skates wobbled and he almost went down again.

Nish’s face was twisted up and red. He was hurting, fighting back tears.

“You hit, you follow through. Understand? Hit high, follow through like I showed you, with your forearms–it’s perfectly legal. You take him out, okay? You saw what happened. They came out on a power play, I hit Tubby here, and suddenly it’s even-up again, four-on-four, with Fat Boy wobbling off to the bench. Understand now? Huh?”

Buddy looked around, pulling nods of agreement out of some of the shocked Owls and Aeros. Others just stared, waiting to see what Buddy would do next. He had been screaming since the on-ice drills began, and he had skated them until Nish, predictably, had called out, “I’m gonna hurl!”

“Then hurl!” Buddy screamed back at him.

It seemed to Travis that Buddy was particularly hard on Nish. Calling him “Fat Boy” and “Tubby,” and now almost knocking him cold. What had Nish done to deserve this?

Muck had waited until the warm-ups were through before coming out. He had put on his skates and had his stick and gloves–his plain windbreaker a sharp contrast to Buddy’s neon-red tracksuit–and he had stayed out of it, at first. This was Buddy’s hockey camp, after all.

But after the hit on Nish, Muck came forward, pushing through the shocked players and speaking, very softly, to Buddy.

“Can I see you for a moment?”

Buddy looked irritated, as if his train of thought had been broken.

“How’s after practice?” Buddy asked.

“Only if it ends right now.”

Reluctantly, Buddy skated away with Muck. They left the ice entirely, leaving the remaining drills up to the two young junior players, Simon and Jason, who were helping out for the summer.

“I’m gonna get that guy!”

Travis turned quickly. It was Nish. He had skated up behind Travis and was still bent over as he worked on getting his breath back.

“I’ll get him–I promise you that.”

 

With Buddy out of the way, practice became fun again. Simon and Jason ran a couple of passing drills and then decided to turn the last ten minutes over to a game of shinny–A-to-Ls versus M-to-Zs. That put Sarah and Travis on the same team, just like the old days, and against Nish, who slapped the blade of his stick on the ice and announced for all to hear that neither Sarah nor Travis would score while he was on the ice.

Travis hadn’t played with Sarah since the Lake Placid tournament. And he hadn’t played left wing since he’d replaced her at centre. Derek Dillinger joined them on the right wing for the opening face-off.

Sarah faced off against Liz Moscovitz, who’d joined the Owls after Sarah had left for the Aeros. Liz, who usually played wing, had no idea what kind of tricks Sarah could pull in a hockey game. Simon dropped the puck, but it never even hit the ice: Sarah plucked it out of midair, knocking it baseball-style over to Travis.

“That’s illegal!” Liz shouted. No one paid her the slightest attention.

Travis had the puck, and he turned back quickly, skating behind his own defencemen and dropping the puck to Beth, a member of the Aeros, as he moved back across the blueline. She read the give-and-go perfectly, waiting until Travis had beaten Liz before flipping the puck ahead to him. He hit Derek across ice, and Sarah broke fast toward the opposing blueline.

Derek sent the pass to her–hard and accurate.

But it never got there. A big blur slid across the ice and snared the breakaway pass before it could snap onto Sarah’s tape. It was Nish! He knew Sarah’s renowned speed, and he had guessed–correctly.

Travis could hear Nish’s giggle as he passed while still down on one knee. Nish hit Liz, who was coming back across centre, and Liz, without seeming to look, fired a hard backhand pass up to Dmitri, who was breaking down the right-wing boards. Dmitri was in alone on net, did his shoulder fake, and fired the puck high in off the crossbar.

Nish, the hero, lay flat on his back, pumping arms and legs into the air as if he’d just won the Stanley Cup, in overtime.

“He’s never going to grow up, is he?” Sarah said to Travis as she looped past him.

“Not if he can help it,” said Travis.

He could see Sarah smiling through her mask. She didn’t seem in the least upset that Nish had outsmarted them. “Watch this,” she said.

Sarah won a second face-off from Liz and moved the puck back fast to Beth, who waited just long enough to trap the wingers before flipping the puck high and over centre ice. It was obviously a play they’d worked on with the Aeros. So long as the puck went across centre before Sarah, she wouldn’t be offside, and she was so fast she could follow the lobbing puck and almost catch it on her stick when it fell.

The play worked perfectly. Sarah snared the puck on her stick and skated toward the net as Nish backed up, ready.

Sarah skated toward Nish, then cut sharply in a quick circle that let her drop her left shoulder. Nish went for the shoulder drop and lunged with a poke check–but Sarah’s stick and the puck were gone. She had scooped the puck onto the end of her stick blade as if it were a small pizza she was about to place in a hot oven.

Sarah flipped the puck high over Nish’s head and flailing glove as he lost his balance and fell. Then she skipped over him and walked in on net, pulling Jeremy Weathers far to the right before sending a remarkable pass back through her own skates and straight onto Travis’s stick. Travis merely tapped it in.

Travis rode his stick like a horse to the blueline. He yanked the stick from between his legs and turned it on its end, pretending to sheathe it at his side, as if it were a sword and he a triumphant knight returning from the battlefield.

Then he heard Sarah scream.