Where to begin? Travis wondered. He had already telephoned home to talk to his mother and father, and even though they’d been sympathetic and supportive, Travis couldn’t shake the feeling that they didn’t believe him either. And who could blame them? If his best friend Nish had come up with this story, Travis would have aimed his index finger at his right temple and spun it around and around and around. It was absolutely insane.
The Screech Owls hockey team had flown to Calgary, Alberta, on a sparkling-clear and bitterly cold March day. They had stuffed their thick winter coats into the overhead containers and settled down with their books, and portable CD players and iPods, and hockey magazines for what was sure to be one of the greatest Screech Owls escapades of all time.
They were headed for the town of Drumheller, where the Owls were going to combine a hockey tournament with a tour of the famous Badlands and a visit to the world-famous Royal Tyrrell Museum. At the Royal Tyrrell, they were going to learn all about prehistoric life in North America. They were headed, claimed Data, who always seemed to know about such things, to “The Dinosaur Capital of Canada.”
They would be seeing prehistoric fossils and models of the giant reptiles that had lived in the Badlands nearly a hundred million years ago–a time so far in the past that Travis and the rest of the Owls couldn’t even comprehend its distance. Data said to think of it this way: at twelve years of age, they had each been alive 4,380 days, or 105,120 hours, or 6,307,200 minutes. If every minute of their lives had really taken twenty years to live, that’s how long ago the dinosaurs lived in Alberta.
“Every minute does last twenty years!” Nish had roared. “At least when you’re in Mr. Schultz’s math class!”
The Owls were so excited about the trip they had all but forgotten about the hockey. Muck Munro hadn’t been able to get off work and so they were without a coach. One of the assistants, Ty Barrett, had managed to get time off, but Ty wasn’t that much older than the Owls themselves. Control of the team had pretty much fallen to Mr. Higgins, Andy’s father, and good old Mr. Dillinger, who had actually taken an extra week off work so he could drive the Screech Owls’ bus to Calgary, meet them there, and then drive them around Drumheller and the surrounding area while the tournament was on. Once it was over, Mr. Dillinger was going to drive all the way back home while everyone else flew.
They could never have afforded the trip if Mr. Higgins hadn’t become involved. Before Andy’s family had moved to Ontario so Mr. Higgins could supervise a huge gas-pipeline project, he had been an executive with one of the biggest oil companies in Alberta. Through years of travel, he had built up enough air-travel points, Andy once said, to fly the family five times around the world. When Mr. Higgins then won a special airline draw that gave him a million bonus points on his air-travel program, he had generously donated all his points to the Owls. The entire team was able to fly out and back–at no cost at all to the players!
Once Mr. Higgins got involved, there was no holding him back. A big man with a salesman’s gift for persuasion, he had easily talked Mr. Dillinger into taking the old bus across country so the Owls would have cheap transportation once they got to Calgary. He also arranged accommodation on the outskirts of Drumheller where an old friend of his, Kelly Block, had a sports camp that specialized in motivation and teamwork. They might not win the hockey tournament, Mr. Higgins had said at a meeting of all the players and their parents, but they’d come back a better team!
Most of the parents had seemed quite pleased with the arrangement, and were even excited about the idea of a motivational sports camp. Travis had noticed, however, that Muck, who had earlier said he might not even come to the meeting, slipped out of the hall before it was over. From his seat by the window, Travis could see Muck walking in the freezing parking lot, his breath lingering in heavy clouds as he moved slowly back and forth on his bad leg. He knew Muck well enough to know that the coach was unhappy about something.
Now that they had arrived, Travis thought he knew what had disturbed his old coach. Following supper that first night in Drumheller, he had overheard Mr. Higgins and Kelly Block talking, and he hadn’t liked the tone Kelly Block was using. The camp owner–an athletic-looking man with his blond hair strangely combed over the bald spots–seemed to be dumping on Muck, whom he didn’t even know, for being old-fashioned and out of touch with modern coaching techniques. At one point Block had even said it was “time for the Screech Owls to move on, get a new coach who understands the way the game is played today.” Travis had felt his cheeks burn with anger. Already he didn’t like Kelly Block.
“Mental Block” was the nickname Nish had already given the head of the sports camp, and it seemed to be sticking–at least when the Owls talked to each other in private.
Travis had tried to imagine the trip west for weeks, but his daydreams had fallen very far short of reality. Three hours into their flight, they had flown straight into a chinook that had blown up across the Rocky Mountains from the United States. The plane had bounced into the rush of warm air from the south like a fishing bobber in a rough current. Poor Nish barely had time to scream “I’M GONNA HURL!” before he turned pure white and was reaching for a barf bag.
They landed in summer weather–an entire hockey team wearing three layers of clothing, including long underwear, and carrying their bulky Screech Owls parkas, scarves, tuques, and heavy winter mitts. It was as if they’d flown to Florida, not Calgary. The heat made them itchy and cranky. Mr. Dillinger, who was there to meet them, was having trouble with the bus overheating and twice had to stop to let the engine cool down while the Owls filed out along the shoulder of the road in their shirtsleeves and marvelled at the extraordinarily warm wind.
“It’s a chinook,” Andy said.
“We get sudden thaws back home in Tamarack sometimes,” said Fahd.
Andy shook his head sharply. “Not the same thing. You only get chinooks out here. I’ve seen them last for more than a week.”
They drove with the windows open, the tired travellers dozing, the road straight as a ruler, the landscape flat for the most part and sometimes rolling slightly. There were small lakes in the fields from the quickly melting snow.
They were passing through a small town–Beiseker, the sign said–when, up ahead in the bus, Sarah suddenly broke into wild laughter.
“We’re in Nish’s home town! They even put up a statue to him!”
Everyone sat up and looked outside. They were passing a baseball diamond, and then a park, and in the middle of the park was a large black-and-white statue of–a skunk!
The big statue even had a sign with the skunk’s name: SQUIRT.
Nish stood in the aisle, turning as he bowed in acceptance. “Thank you very much, thank you very much.”
Soon, however, the joking died down. Several of the Owls were asleep. Travis put his jacket against the window and leaned against it, one eye barely watching the rolling fields and the telephone poles pass by.
The next thing Travis knew, he was being jarred awake by a wildly honking horn. Travis sat up sharply, his chin on the seat in front. All the other Owls were also popping up wide awake. At the front, Mr. Dillinger’s bald head was turning rapidly back and forth as he leaned on the horn and tried to see if everyone was up and watching. He was laughing and excited.
“Get ready to drop o? the edge of the Earth!” Mr. Dillinger shouted, giggling at the end of his warning.
“THE ROAD’S WASHED OUT!” Nish screamed from the back of the bus.
Travis stared ahead through the patch in the windshield where the wipers had cleared the muddy spray from passing vehicles. To either side he could still see the wet brown fields of the flat Alberta countryside, but up ahead the ground–and the road they were following–had vanished!
“HERE WE GO!” shouted Mr. Dillinger. “HANG ONTO YOUR HATS!”
Travis could not even get his breath. The bus rumbled on, Mr. Dillinger seemingly unconcerned that up ahead there was no road whatsoever, just open space and fog!
“WE’RE GONNA DIE!” Nish shouted. “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”
The bus hurtled towards the edge, then dropped. Not like a stone, but like a glider, sailing down into thick fog.
Travis felt his ears pop as the bus seemed to float, down, down, down the steep slope of the highway into the fog.
It really did seem they had dropped off the edge of the Earth, just as the old explorers were warned would happen if they dared set out to sail around a world that everyone knew was flat as a board.
“WE’RE GONNA DIE!”
Travis didn’t have to see Nish’s face, or anyone else’s for that matter, to know that they were as delighted as he was by the thrilling ride. This was an added bonus.
A hockey tournament.
A visit to a fabulous dinosaur museum.
And a brand-new world to explore.
This was going to be an unbelievable Screech Owls adventure.