The Boston Breakout (7 page)

“We were worried about you!” Sarah said, giving Sam a big hug. “You never said where you were going.”

“I just slipped out for a bit,” said Sam a bit nervously. “I was just heading back.”

“We’ll go with you,” said Travis.

“And who do we have here?” the woman asked. Her voice sounded like someone acting. Travis looked at her. Her mouth was smiling, but not her eyes.

Sam sputtered introductions. “Sarah and Travis, this is Frances Assisi.”

“Nice to meet you,” the woman said. “Sam here might be the brightest young woman I have ever met. She understands the cause.”

Travis couldn’t keep from wincing. The
cause
? What sort of talk was that?

Sarah’s face remained expressionless. “What cause?” she asked.

The woman gave a dismissive little laugh. “The great fight for animal rights,” she said, as if it were obvious.

“I’m against the aquarium,” Sam suddenly stated.

“Why?” said Sarah. “You liked it well enough yesterday. You had a good time. We all did.”

“She didn’t understand then,” said the woman. Sam just nodded in agreement. “Samantha knows now that we humans have no right to imprison animals. Many people in this country are against the death penalty, yet we carry it out every day on innocent cattle and pigs and chickens. We are destroying our oceans by dragging nets that scoop up every living creature, and we kill and throw away the ones that are caught accidentally. We humans are the single most destructive force the world has ever known. We are killers, until we decide, as Sam has decided, to stop the killing – isn’t that right, Samantha?”

Sam seemed embarrassed. “Y-yes,” she said.

Frances smiled the same emotionless smile as before, her eyes all the while looking at them sharply. Travis felt as if he were being scanned with a laser. There was something so strangely intense about her stare that he could not bear it.

When Frances looked back at Sam, they could see the dark mark on her neck. It was, as Travis had guessed, a tattoo. A penguin in flight.

Travis’s first reaction was to note that penguins
couldn’t fly. He wondered if the woman really didn’t know that. But then he got the message:
freedom
. A penguin flying away.

“We’d better get back before Muck and Mr. D find you’re missing,” he said to Sam.

Sam nodded.

“We’ll take her back,” Sarah said firmly to the woman. She quickly took Sam’s free hand and pulled her, just enough that the woman’s grip on Sam loosened.

“I guess,” said Sam.

“Stay in touch,” Frances said. She raised her right hand to show another tattoo – a blurred mark in the center of her palm.

“Y
ou’re sure that’s the name?” Data asked. “Pretty sure,” said Travis. “Frances A-see-see, or something like that. She didn’t spell it out for us.”

Data had been fiddling with his tablet. He was supposed to be looking for a new invention for Nish, but Travis had interrupted his research.

Later in the morning, the Owls would be heading for the rink and Game 3 of the Paul Revere Peewee Invitational, but right now Travis wanted
to know what was up with this strange woman who seemed to have put a spell on Sam.

Data was taking quite a long time, his fingers dancing as he jumped from one website to the next.

“Very, very strange,” Data finally said.

“What? What have you found?”

“There are a couple of news stories here concerning a ‘Frances Assisi,’ who was arrested for throwing paint over fur coats at a fashion show.”

Data began reading. “Isobel Twining, a.k.a. Frances Assisi, forty-three, was detained and later released by Boston police …”

“What’s a.k.a.?”

Data looked at Travis as if he couldn’t believe he wouldn’t know. “It means ‘also known as.’ It means Frances Assisi isn’t her real name – she’s really Isobel Twining.”

“Why would she do that?” Travis asked. “Such a strange name.”

Data’s fingers moved over the tablet and a new website popped up.

“I think this is your answer,” he said, spinning the tablet so Travis could see.

It was an encyclopedia entry on St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis was born in 1181 or 1182 and died in 1226 –
nearly 800 years ago
. He was Italian, and his real name was Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone. His “a.k.a.,” Travis noted, was Francesco, or Francis – and Data pointed out that “Frances,” with an
e
, was the feminine version of the name. St. Francis had been a Catholic preacher and was renowned for his love of all creatures. A couple of years after his death he was named a saint and was still known as the patron saint of animals.

Travis nodded. Now he understood.

He read more on the patron saint of animals. He found that the real Francis Assisi claimed to have seen visions and was the first person known to have the signs of the crucifixion appear on his hands and feet – signs taken at the time to be nothing short of a holy miracle.

So, Travis thought, that would explain the tattoo in the palm of the woman’s hand. He didn’t need to see the other palm or her feet to know what he might find there. This was getting really weird.

“Do you think she’s crazy?” Travis asked Data.

“I have no idea,” said Data. “You met her, not me. But obviously Sam doesn’t think she’s crazy. And they aren’t the only two people in the world who believe you shouldn’t eat animals. There are millions who hold that view. So it’s pretty hard to call her crazy based on a fake name.”

Travis couldn’t argue with Data’s logic.

“Don’t you have a game to get ready for?” Data asked.

Travis snapped out of his confused thoughts. A game, yes, they had a game to play. That’s why the Screech Owls were in Boston, after all.

“Thanks for this,” Travis said. “See you at the rink.”

“Get your head back in the game, too,” Data said. “Okay?”

Travis nodded. “I will.”

I
t turned out to be easier said than done. Travis had his head back on hockey – he thought. He had checked the schedule. The Owls would be up against the Detroit Wheels, another peewee team they had previously met, and beaten. But only barely. The two teams had met at the Big Apple International in New York City, and the Owls had won 6–5 in the opener and then 5–4 in overtime for the championship. Nish had been the hero in both games, and naturally he
would want to be the hero again today in Boston.

As they got their equipment together for the bus out to Wilmington, Travis and Nish talked about the previous games against the Wheels. Nish had been going on and on about the spectacular goal that had won the championship. He had tried a move made famous years earlier by Hall of Famer Pavel Bure. Nish had carried the puck up ice and ended up back of the Wheels’ net. From there, he had flipped the puck high into the air, over the goal and the Detroit goaltender, then slipped out around front to take his own pass and rip a shot past the goalie for the winning point.

From the way Nish told it, he’d been the only Owl on the ice against six hundred Detroit Wheels and had single-handedly won the game. He was conveniently forgetting the Owls’ four other goals, which had taken them into overtime. But what could Travis expect from his goofy buddy? Nish was never going to change. He claimed he’d matured since “quitting” school, but Travis couldn’t see it.

Nish was still boasting when Mr. D came up the steps of the bus, closed the door, and stepped
to the front of the aisle with a quick announcement.

“We’re going to be short a player this afternoon, boys and girls. Sam isn’t feeling well and will stay back in her room. So let’s win one for her, okay?”

Several of the Owls shouted back.

“Okay!”

“This one’s for Sam!”

But not Travis Lindsay. He spun in his seat away from Nish the Braggart and looked for Sarah. He found her back a few seats on the other side of the aisle.

Sarah shrugged and held up her hands.

She had no answer for him.

The Detroit Wheels were every bit the team they had been in New York: fast, smart, well-coached, strong, and determined. But the Owls were no longer the Owls who had arrived in Boston with their “hockey muscles” weak and their timing as off as a broken clock.

Travis felt right from the moment he stepped onto the fresh ice, his newly sharpened skates – thank you, Mr. D! – cutting in hard as he sizzled through the first corner. He skipped a puck off the crossbar on his second try. He felt good and strong and fast.

Sarah was also rounding into game shape. She won the opening face-off by plucking the puck out of midair, and with a backhand slap she sent it instantly up ice, where Dmitri picked it up and flew in fast. Forehand, backhand, puck high into the roof of the net. The Owls were up 1–0 and the game had barely started.

Soon, however, it was apparent that the Owls could have used Sam back on defense. The Wheels’ coaching staff had realized that, without Sam’s speed and smarts, the Owls were weak on that side, and their players kept using the advantage to hound less-skilled defensemen like Fahd to cough up the puck. If either Nish or Lars wasn’t there, the Owls were in trouble.

The Wheels tied the game at 1–1 on a deflection, then went ahead 2–1 just before the period
ended, when Jenny misplayed a long shot that bounced twice and changed direction.

Midway through the second, with the score tied 2–2, after a nifty bit of stickhandling by Derek, Nish sent a long pass that bounced off the boards and slid fast down the ice between a hard-skating Travis and Dmitri.

Dmitri used his skate blade to kick the puck up to his stick. But the Detroit goaltender was ready for him this time. He read Dmitri’s forehand-backhand fake perfectly this time and had the near side sealed off when Dmitri was ready to shoot.

Dmitri was also ready, however. He had played it the same way on purpose to pull the goaltender as tight to the post as possible. Instead of shooting, Dmitri sent a quick, short pass to Travis, who popped the puck into the net. The Owls had the lead again.

But the Wheels were not to be so easily beaten. Their top center scored on a booming slap shot early in the third, and with only a minute to go, a shot from the point ricocheted in past Jenny to give the Wheels a 4–3 lead.

Muck sent Lars and Nish out together. All game he had split them up to help cover for the loss of Sam, but now he needed his best on the ice if the Owls were to have a chance.

He sent out Sarah’s line. And then, once Lars had dumped the puck up over center and into the Wheels’ end, he called Jenny off for the extra attacker, sending out Derek.

It was a gut call by Muck. Mr. D’s son wouldn’t usually be the choice as an extra attacker, but he had played probably his best game of the year. Muck was playing a hunch. And Muck’s hunches had a way of working out.

Nish and Lars worked a give-and-go up the ice, and Lars fired a puck in around the boards. Travis, anticipating the dump-in, hurried along tight to the left boards. Instead of taking the puck on his stick as it rounded the boards, he let it tick off his skate blade out to the top of the left circle, where Derek was waiting.