The group left the woods soon after, having come to no final conclusions about the matter. Garry returned to his cabin and lay down on his bunk feeling completely dejected.
Well, at least one good thing came out of this, he thought sourly. Now that I’ve confessed, I won’t have to help Michael get that top scorer award.
Then he sat up, thinking. A slow smile crossed his lips.
If I don’t feed him the ball the next game, he’ll rat me out! “And to do that,” he whispered triumphantly, “he’ll have to show the coach the matches!”
Convinced that his plan would work, he jumped down from his bunk and set off to talk to his teammates — not to urge them to feed Michael the ball, as Michael had ordered him to do, but to ask them to do just the opposite!
The Rockets were scheduled to play the Bears right after lunch. Garry managed to explain the situation to Jeff and Todd and a few other teammates by then. He asked them to keep quiet to Michael’s loyal supporters, however — particularly Evan. They all agreed to help out.
Garry came to the field determined to play the best game of his life. But he put on a morose face so that Michael wouldn’t suspect anything. He spotted Scottie in the bleachers and hurried over to tell him what was happening too.
“Good luck, man, I’ll be rooting for you!” Scottie said.
Garry did his warm-up exercises with the rest of the team and then, when the referee blew a blast on his whistle, ran to his place in the wing area for the start of the game. Michael sauntered past him, shot him with a finger gun, and continued on to the center X.
“In your dreams, Donofrio,” Garry muttered.
The referee placed the ball between the Bears center attacker and Michael. He trotted back out of the way and blew another whistle blast. The game was on!
Michael usually had a quick stick on the face-off but this Bear was quicker. He raked the ball away before Michael could even flip his stick. Then, when Michael tried to poke it away, the Bear sent it rocketing through the grass to his teammate.
Garry charged out of the wing area, leveled his stick at the Bears ball carrier, and jabbed it at the shaft of his opponent’s stick. But the Bear twisted away and slashed his stick downward in an attempted pass back to his center. Unfortunately for him, he released the ball too late. Instead of flying through the air it struck the grass with a loud thud and bounced up and away, free to anyone who could get a stick on it.
That “anyone” wound up being Jeff. He caught it in his pocket on midbounce, darted around the Bears frustrated attacker, and fired a pass to Conor.
“Here!” Michael screamed. “Pass it here!”
Conor squared off as if to send it in Michael’s direction. Michael took off, holding up his stick to make an over-the-shoulder catch. But the pass never came, for after squaring off, Conor pivoted on one foot and lobbed the ball back to Jeff.
Michael, meanwhile, continued to run, holding his stick aloft like a standard-bearer holding a flag. When the ball didn’t come, he looked back and nearly collided with a Bears defender.
“Watch it, buddy, will ya?” the Bear growled just as Jeff flipped the ball over to Garry.
“Give it here, Wallis — or else!” Michael yelled.
Garry ignored him. He looked to Conor. Conor wasn’t open. Samuel was covered too, and Jeff was too far behind to send the ball there. That left Garry with three choices: keep the ball and hope he could get a shot off on goal; pass to Evan, who was coming up behind him; or pass to Michael, who was still yelling at him.
The decision was taken out of his hands when a Bears defender ran forward and stuck himself to Garry like glue. Since Garry refused to pass to Michael, he sent the ball back to Evan.
“It’ll reach Michael anyhow,” he muttered.
But to his surprise, Evan didn’t automatically toss the ball to Michael. Rather, he twisted away from a Bears midfielder and fired the ball to Jeff, who was so surprised he nearly missed the catch.
But he managed to control it and get it to Conor. Conor’s stick whistled through the air as he slashed it sideways and rocketed the ball past the goalkeeper into the net. Goal!
“Yee-haa!” Conor leaped and twirled in midair, drawing laughs from the sidelines and his teammates. Only the Bears were silent.
They didn’t stay quiet for long, however, for once again the Bears center attacker took possession on the face-off. This time, he carried the ball halfway down the field before the Rockets midfielders could catch up to him. Jeff and Samuel double-teamed him but the Bear outfoxed them both, twisting away to feed the ball over to the attacker on his right.
Brandon was caught napping. The Bear barreled past him and confronted Christopher. The two mirrored one another for a moment before the Bear faked a throw that sent Christopher moving in the wrong direction. From there, it was just one swift, accurate throw and the Bears had tied it up 1–1.
As Garry headed back to the wing area for the face-off, he fully expected Michael to threaten him once again. He wasn’t disappointed.
“I’m warning you, Wallis,” the center attacker hissed. “Get me the ball or —”
“Lay off, Donofrio, will you?”
Garry’s jaw dropped in amazement. The retort hadn’t come from Jeff, or Conor, or even Carl.
It had come from Evan!