Winter Hawk Star (4 page)

For that split second, we stared at each other. I wondered if my face had the same expression of horror that his face did. Because we both knew the puck was headed for an area a few inches below his belt buckle.

Coach Estleman made a big mistake. He should have tried to block the puck by pulling his hands out of his pockets. Instead he jumped up, hoping the puck would go between his legs.

It didn't.

The puck drilled him solid. Right where his legs joined together.

His face showed instant disbelief. The
kind of disbelief that comes when you know that you've been hit there, but you don't feel the pain yet because it is still traveling up your body. But you know how bad it's going to be and any second the pain's going to reach your brain.

It reached his brain. His face puckered as he tried to get air. He doubled over, sagging to the ice like a deflating beach ball.

Coach Estleman curled up on the ice and moaned in agony.

Riley skated up to me and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Nice shot, Watson,” he said. “But shooting drills ended a half hour ago.”

It took Coach Estleman fifteen minutes to get to his feet again. The first thing he did was suspend me for three games.

So much for trying to stay invisible and out of trouble.

Two of my suspended games later, Riley and I made another visit to Youth Works.

During those two games I had watched from the stands as Riley managed to collect five goals, four assists and what seemed like a file a couple of inches thick of newspaper clippings.

Me? I had managed to collect a cold from a lady who sneezed on me in the first game and popcorn in my hair from
a kid who had spilled his bucket during the second game.

I thought about this as I parked the Jeep near the old, brick, church building. I was not in a good mood to be babysitting Riley Judd through another visit to Youth Works.

I was in a worse mood after an hour and a half with the little monsters in our assigned group.

“Are they always like this?” I asked Samantha. She had just walked into the room to check on our group. Youth Works was big enough that she supervised volunteers working with kids in five different age groups. Today, Riley and I were stuck with just the eight- and nine-year-olds.

Although my stomach still danced with nervousness around her, I was finally able to speak to Sam without my teeth getting in the way of my tongue. It must have helped that I remembered how she had spent ten minutes hugging me for helping to save her brother from the guys with switchblades.

Samantha surveyed the room with me. It was the size of a regular classroom, tucked in
a back hall of the church building. It had old couches, posters of rock stars on the wall and fifteen kids jumping, screaming and spitting paper wads at each other.

“You can speak!” she said with mock surprise.

“Last week I had, um, a dentist appointment,” I said. I decided the floor would be interesting to stare at. Maybe I really could speak to her, but I couldn't quite look her right in those beautiful eyes. “My mouth was frozen when we got here. That's why I didn't say much. Really.”

She grinned, like she knew that I knew that she knew that I was making it up.

“Anyway,” she said, “these kids are on good behavior today. They think it's cool you guys are hockey players.”

“Well,” I said, “at least one of us is.”

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Hockey was a depressing subject to me. So I changed it. “Your brother okay after last week?”

She nodded. A pillow flew over our heads.

“Any idea why those guys took him?” I hadn't had a chance to talk to her. After the police had shown up—interrupting the hug that I was enjoying so much—we had become too busy answering their questions to speak to each other.

“No idea,” she said. She raised her voice to a couple of grimy-faced kids. “Johnny, take your hands off Bobby's neck!”

Johnny grinned. Bobby grinned. Johnny let go of Bobby's neck. Bobby promptly grabbed Johnny's neck.

“These kids are something,” she said. “This group is full of kids who have real trouble in school.”

She shook her head in sympathy for them. “But they really don't have a chance. Their parents hit them or yell at them all the time. Some don't get a decent meal for days. Others are even left alone for days, while their parents wander the bars. And a lot of them have serious medical problems. How can they really fit into an organized classroom?”

“Yeah,” I said, not sure if I meant it. To me, they looked like brats. Three of them
had jumped on Riley, and he was staggering around with them hanging from his waist and shoulders.

“No idea why those guys kidnapped your brother?” I repeated. “How about the van? Did you find out who it belonged to?”

“Joey!” she yelled. “I know it's a Nerf bat, but it can still hurt.”

The kid grinned and kept whacking another boy over the head with the soft foam bat.

“The police told me it belonged to some pharmaceutical company,” she answered as if we hadn't been interrupted.

“Pharmaceutical companies are into kidnapping?”

She laughed. “No, silly. The van had been stolen from the company.”

“Oh.”

Her face suddenly showed alarm, and she looked around the room wildly. “Ben! Where's Ben?”

Her little brother was not among the kids jumping around the room.

I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled. Loud.

It froze most of the kids as if I had shot a gun. The three kids on Riley dropped to the ground. Joey gave his little buddy one final whack with the Nerf bat.

“Listen up,” I said. “Where's Ben?”

“Here.”

Samantha and I looked around, but we couldn't spot where the voice had come from.

“Where?”

“Here!” He crawled out from behind the couch. Dust balls clung to his hair and his clothes. “I was looking for a marble.”

Samantha grabbed my hand with her cool fingers. She let out a deep breath. I hadn't realized how scared she was until then. She let go of my hand, probably not even knowing she'd grabbed it. I knew though.

The little monsters began to bounce around the room again, screaming and yelling. I began to feel like the “before” part of a headache commercial.

“This is nuts,” I muttered. I doubt anyone heard me. Not even Samantha, who was still close beside me.

I put my fingers to my mouth and whistled again.

It froze them all again. Except for Joey, who continued to hammer his friend with the Nerf bat. I walked over and yanked it from him. He glared at me but didn't say a thing.

“Listen up,” I barked. I waved the bat in a general circle. “You are going to learn to do something with your energy. And it won't have anything to do with this chaos.”

“Oh yeah?” some kid asked.

At the back of the room, another volunteer wheeled in a cart with a giant Kool-Aid container and plates of cookies. I knew I wouldn't have the attention of these kids much longer.

“Yeah,” I said. “You guys know Riley Judd is the best hockey player in the WHL?”

“Maybe,” the same kid said.

“You'd better believe it,” I said, pointing the end of the baseball bat at the kid and looking him right in the eyes. “So you should consider yourselves pretty lucky.”

“Um, why?” the kid asked in a quieter voice.

“Because he's going to teach you to play roller hockey.”

The kids erupted in big cheers.

Samantha, standing beside me, leaned over to make sure no one overheard her. “Don't make promises you can't keep, Tyler Watson. You don't know how good you have it compared to some of these kids. I don't want to see you hurting them.”

Riley pushed his way through them and put his face right up to mine.

“No way in the world I'm going to teach them anything,” he said. “You've lost your mind.”

“Got any better ideas for passing time around here?”

He frowned.

The kids continued cheering. This was a big deal to them.

“Besides,” I said, “do you really have the heart to tell them you won't?”

“I'll get you for this,” he said.

“You already did ,” I told him . “Remember? I've still got one game left in my suspension.”

“He shoots! He scores!” Riley yelled, a big grin on his face.

Except this was one of the few times Riley himself wasn't scoring. Instead it was Joey, the little kid who loved to whack his friends with a Nerf bat. Joey had just hit a wobbly slap shot three inches high. The only reason he had scored was because the goalie—an eight-year-old—had thick glasses and could hardly see.

The spectators at this street hockey game
consisted of two people—Riley and me. We were both in sneakers and Winter Hawks sweats, standing at the side of a paved courtyard in the shadow of the church building, watching the kids bump a ball around with cut-down hockey sticks.

Joey ran up to us and grinned back at Riley and then he licked his upper lip because his nose was runny.

“Great goal,” Riley said. “I sincerely mean it.”

“Don't lick that stuff,” I told Joey. “Wipe it with your sleeve. Real hockey players always wipe with their sleeves.”

“No, they don't,” Riley said. “They do this.”

Riley pinched one nostril shut by pressing a finger against it. Then he pointed his face away from us and blew an explosive snort to spray his other nostril clear. “See?”

“Cool,” Joey said. He grinned again and nodded, and then he ran back to join the others in the street hockey game.

“Good example, Riley,” I said. We had a gym bag filled with water bottles and towels
near our feet. I reached down, grabbed a bottle and squirted some water into my mouth.

He leaned on his hockey stick. “Someone's got to teach these poor kids some manners.”

“If I didn't know better,” I said, “I'd think you almost cared.”

“Don't tell anyone,” he replied, “but I do. These kids can grow on you.”

I nodded in agreement as the two of us kept our eyes on the kids.

It was late September; Riley and I were still volunteering at Youth Works. In the last two weeks, Riley Judd had firmly established himself as the league's top scorer. No surprise, I had firmly established myself as the team's fourth-line right winger. For the third year in a row.

And in these two weeks, Riley and I had firmly established ourselves as heroes among these kids—even though I'd made a mistake by promising them roller hockey without first realizing how much it would cost to get them all into in-line skates. So we had told
them it would be safer to first learn the basics of stickhandling by playing street hockey in sneakers.

Fortunately they were just as happy with a bunch of old hockey sticks and the rules of street hockey, which we made simple for them. Rule one—hit the ball, not someone else. Rule two—try to knock the ball between the big rocks we set up as goalposts at each end of the courtyard. Rule three—no other rules.

What I found sad was how little it had taken to become heroes to these kids. They had such terrible family lives away from Youth Works that these street hockey games became the highlight of their week.

“What do you say, Tyler?” Riley asked, interrupting my thoughts. “Should we show these kids how the pros play?”

“Yup.” I dropped the water bottle back into the gym bag.

Among cheers from the kids, Riley jogged to one end of the courtyard, and I jogged to the other end. I realized something else had happened in the last two weeks. Riley and I had drifted into a friendship. He was still a
showboat, and I was still invisible, but when it was just the two of us—like here or driving in my Jeep—the differences didn't seem as great. If you ignored Riley's cockiness, he was almost likable.

“Okay, guys,” Riley shouted as he got the ball, “pour it on!”

A gang of kids moved on him like ants on honey. We not only had the eight- and nine-year-olds but also a good group of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds today. Our task wouldn't be easy.

Riley's arms and legs flashed as he danced around, slapping the ball back and forth with his stick. Somehow—and I doubt a slow motion replay could have showed how—Riley made it through the maze of players with the ball. He shouted and screamed as their sticks hit his shins but he made it through. He kept the ball for five minutes, running in circles as the kids on both teams chased him and yipped in glee.

Finally, Riley stopped running in circles and headed toward where I guarded the goal at the open end of the courtyard.

I got ready to stop him.

Riley stopped, grinned and flipped me the ball.

“I'm tired. Your turn.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The horde of kids moved on me.

I don't have the stickhandling skills that Riley does.

I decided instead to rely on keeping my distance from them.

Instead of heading toward Riley's net, I backed up, keeping the ball with me.

The paved courtyard was U-shaped. At Riley's end were some church offices. On both sides, two-story walls. On my side, the opening led into an empty parking lot.

They were coming at me like a pack of insane wolves.

I turned and bolted toward the empty parking lot, keeping the ball in front of me.

“Hey!” a couple of kids shouted.

“Get him!” a couple more shouted.

They all screamed and began to chase me.

This was fun.

I outran them easily, building my lead to at least twenty-five steps. When I reached the far end of the parking lot, I turned and faced them.

They were a wave of street warriors, yelling and grinning and waving their sticks, ready to pounce.

I waited until they were almost on me. Then I flipped the ball over their heads and ran around them, chasing down the ball toward my own net and the courtyard.