Winter Hawk Star (6 page)

“I won't say anything. But why are you thinking about—”

“Dying?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, we're hockey players. We're not supposed to think.”

“We're also not supposed to suddenly go blind for an hour for no reason at all.”

“I agree,” I said. “That was weird.”

It had been weird. Although a few days had passed, the doctors were still no closer to figuring out what had happened to Riley during practice.

“Tyler, I'll admit I was scared when everything went gray. You know that.”

For the next few seconds we both thought about him losing his sight as I slowed the Jeep in front of the Youth Works building. I pulled on the parking brake and half opened my door.

Riley's voice stopped me.

“Nothing like that ever happened to me before,” Riley said. “I've never felt helpless like that. I was blind for an hour, but I didn't know if my vision would ever come back. Now I keep wondering if I'll suddenly go blind again. And what if I stay blind?”

“Well, you could always get a job as a referee.”

“This is not the time to be funny,” he said.

I snapped my mouth shut.

“So I started thinking about my heart,” Riley continued. “I mean, there it is, pumping blood all by itself without me telling it to. What if it stopped all of a sudden, for no reason—just like I went blind for no reason. For that matter, why does my heart keep beating? Every night since then, I haven't been able to fall asleep because
when I think about my heart stopping, I think about dying and what happens after that.”

The Jeep door was still half open. I closed it. “Don't get me wrong,” I said, “but is that why you've played the last two games so badly?”

Riley had managed only one assist in two games. Both games had been against the visiting Lethbridge Hurricanes. We'd won 8–2 and 10–4, and Riley had only scored one point out of the combined eighteen goals. Even the newspaper articles had begun to question his slump.

“My confidence is gone,” he said. “Can you blame me? If my eyes can go, anything else can go. I half expect to go blind during a shift. Or keel over from a heart attack as I rush up the ice.”

“It was a freak thing,” I said. “Like getting hit by lightning.”

He snorted. “Let me ask you this. If you got hit by lighting once and survived, wouldn't you be nervous to be outside in a thunderstorm again?”

I was beginning to understand his fear.

“You didn't get any warning about losing your sight, did you?”

“No,” he said, “and I'd give almost anything to know why it happened.”

“Listen up, guys,” I shouted to get the kids' attention. “Weather looks good out there today. Anyone want to play some street hockey?”

As expected, they cheered. I didn't blame them. The Youth Works playroom was small and crowded. Normal kids would go crazy in here. And as Riley and I had learned during our visits here, this bunch was definitely so hyperactive they were beyond normal.

“Riley's got the sticks,” I shouted. “Let's not tear down the hallways as we go outside. Zip your lips and line up in single file.”

I couldn't believe what happened next.

The kids stopped shouting and laughing and screaming and began to line up in single file.

Riley gave me a surprised look.

“They must like hockey,” I said.

I stayed at the door, and Riley led them out.

I watched Ben, Samantha's brother. He was in the middle of the line. When he passed me, I patted his shoulder.

“How you doing?” I said. What I really wanted to ask him was if anyone had tried to kidnap him for the second time. I really wanted to ask him if he knew why the director of Youth Works was threatening his sister.

“I'm doing good,” he said. “Can I be a goalie today?”

“Sure,” I said. “Hey, what's with the cotton ball?”

He was wearing a T-shirt, and a cotton ball was taped to the inside bend of his elbow.
I'd had the same thing myself after donating blood to the Red Cross.

“Blood tests,” he said, like it was no big deal. “We all get them. Samantha says I have to leave it on until after dinner.”

“Oh.”

He marched onward. I followed him out of the room and down the hallway. I kept my eyes open for Samantha. She was always running around and doing different things around the building. If I was lucky, I would run into her and find an excuse to ask her to the dance. There was only a week left. I didn't have the courage to call her on the phone.

But I didn't see her.

Fifteen minutes later, I had bigger things to worry about.

Joey, my favorite little, redheaded, monster kid, stopped in his tracks in the middle of the courtyard. He toppled to his side as one of the other kids fired him a pass.

His head made a horrible sound as it hit the pavement. His body began to flop around. I got there just as his face was turning blue. Riley arrived a half second later.

“Ambulance?” Riley asked.

“Yes, hurry!” I said. This was no time to ask any other questions or think about anything else.

Riley dashed toward the Youth Work offices.

I dropped to my knees and leaned over Joey. He was wheezing.

I whipped off my jacket and folded it as a pillow beneath his neck. I pinched his nostrils together with the thumb and forefinger of my right hand. I pulled his chin down with my other hand. His face was cold and clammy.

“You'll be all right, little buddy,” I said with a lot more calm than I felt. “Let's just get you breathing right again.”

I began to blow air into his lungs.

Sunday afternoon, as the referee skated into the face-off circle deep in our end, I looked at the scoreboard. Seven to six. We were leading this home game against the Kamloops Blazers. Ten minutes, twenty-seven seconds left in the game. A full house of screaming fans.

The players had lined up, waiting for the
puck to drop. I didn't feel my usual nervousness. In the second period, I had scored a goal. I had tipped in a slap shot from one of our defensemen at the point. By scoring that goal, I knew Coach Estleman couldn't say I hadn't contributed to this game.

I turned my attention away from the score clock and back to the game.

The referee slapped the puck down between the sticks of the centers. They fought for the puck. Our center spun his body around, blocking the other center. Our center kicked the puck back with his skate, sending it to our defenseman who was waiting behind the net.

By then, I was already moving toward the boards. As winger, that was my position. If we lost the puck and it squirted up to their defenseman on the blue line, I was close enough to keep him from shooting at our goalie. If we kept the puck, I was in position to take a pass.

This time our defenseman fired the puck along the boards.

It began to bounce, and I knew I would have trouble trapping it with my stick. I backed
up against the boards and turned my skates to trap the puck.

Unfortunately this gave their defenseman time to rush down the boards toward me. He reached me just as the puck did. He hit me with a full body check and spun me around.

I should have thanked him. He slid off me and fell to his knees. I ended up facing their net. And the puck was straight ahead, waiting like a plum for me to pick off a branch.

I sprinted forward. The crowd's roar grew. They could see what I saw.

Two Winter Hawks forwards. Only one defenseman left to protect the net at the far end. We had a two-on-one breakaway!

I flipped the pass over to Steve Harper, the other winger, who had cruised into the open ice at center. He busted ahead at an angle, drawing the defenseman over to the side. I was skating at full speed too.

Harper and I had at least a ten-step head start on the next closest Blazer.

Wind filled my face; the roar of the crowd shook my whole body.

I kept to the middle of the ice, and when Steve and I crossed their blue line, I began to slow down. Just a bit. That forced the defenseman into making a move. He had to go wide to stay with Steve, or slow down to stay with me. If he stayed with me, Steve could go in alone on the goalie. If he moved to Steve, I would be free for a wide-open pass.

The defenseman decided to gamble. He stayed with Steve as long as he could, and as Steve went to backhand me a pass, the defenseman dove, hoping to block it.

The puck slid beneath him. Onto my stick.

I was at the top of their face-off circle. Just me and the goalie. And thousands of fans screaming for me to bury the puck in the net.

It was the big chance to be a hero, and I didn't want it.

What if I tripped? What if I missed the net? I'd be a bum.

I faked my head and shoulders to the left, dragged the puck to the right and went to fire a cannon of a wrist shot. Except the
puck hopped over my stick and rolled back into my skates.

Desperate to take a shot, I kicked it ahead. I took a feeble slap at the puck and managed to hit a slow looping shot that the goalie gloved easily.

Not only had I missed scoring, but I had also missed in the ugliest way possible. And in front of nearly every person in Portland who cared about hockey.

The ref blew the whistle to stop the play. I hung my head in the sudden silence of the disappointed crowd and got off the ice as soon as I could.

Coach Estleman didn't say a word as I reached the players' bench. He didn't have to. I had a good idea of what was going through his mind.

After the game, Coach Estleman took me aside in the hallway and spoke with me briefly. What he told me did not put me in a great mood. He wanted to meet with me on Wednesday. I doubted he wanted to move me up to the first or second line, even if Riley was still playing badly.

Unfortunately, when I left the coach I had to hide my sour mood because Joey and his mother were waiting for me in the lobby of the ice arena. I had told Joey I'd
meet them after the game for burgers and milkshakes.

It had taken the team awhile to shower and then to listen to the coach's post-game talk, so the lobby was nearly deserted. Joey and his mother saw me right away and walked in my direction. Joey looked fine, which was amazing considering that earlier in the week he had spent a night in the hospital hooked up to a machine that breathed for him.

“Hey, Tyler,” Joey said. He gave me a high five, which I returned. I had visited him at the hospital, and when I found out they were releasing him, I had given him a pair of tickets to today's game.

His mother stood beside him. She was short and wore an old jacket. Her hair was blond and stringy, her face pale and splotchy. I smelled cigarette smoke on her clothes.

“I'm Judith Scranton,” she said. She bit her lower lip. “Joey's mother, but you probably guessed that.”

“Hello,” I told her. “I'm glad you were able to bring Joey to the game.”

She shrugged. “You got us the tickets.”

Her attitude threw me. Chances were good, the doctor had said, that I had saved her kid's life by giving him mouth-to-mouth. I'd given him hockey tickets. But it was like she didn't care. She looked every direction but in my eyes. She didn't smile. She fidgeted.

“Let's go,” Joey said. “Tyler said we could get burgers and shakes.”

“I told you,” she hissed at him. “We can't afford it.”

“My treat,” I told them.

“No,” she said. “You already done plenty. I'm not going to owe you more.”

“But—”

“Nope. We may be poor, but we don't need charity.”

“Mom...,” Joey said. He was squirming.

“But Mrs. Scranton—”

“Ms., if you don't mind. And if Joey and I don't hurry, we'll miss our bus.”

Bus? This wasn't an easy place to reach by bus, not from the part of Portland where they lived. By giving them the tickets, I'd forced her to spend hours on a bus?

“I can give you a ride,” I said.

She shook her head no. “We'll be fine.”

“But—”

“We'll be fine,” she said. It began to dawn on me that she was very uncomfortable around me. It also began to dawn on me that I felt uncomfortable around her.

Here I was, in nice new dress pants, polished dress shoes, a leather jacket and with a haircut that might have cost more than the old coat she wore. Joey's dirty clothes were little more than rags, his fingernails and hair were grubby and there were holes in his running shoes.

Was her life so tough that she didn't want to be reminded of another world, where teenaged kids had Jeeps to drive and she was forced to take the bus?

“It was nice meeting you,” I finally said.

“You too,” she said, her lips tight. I wondered how much begging Joey had done just to get her to the game.

“See you later, Joey,” I said. “Down at Youth Works, right? Get ready for some big-time street hockey.”

“No,” Ms. Scranton said. “You won't see him there.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You won't see him there.” Her voice became angry. “First they pay me to get Joey in the program. And right when it seems things are finally right with him, they kick him out.”

I looked at Joey. He nodded, with a miserable look on his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “First Nathan and Drew and Jamie. Now me. It ain't fair.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “Nathan and Drew and Jamie. Who are they?”

“Kids,” he said. “Youth Works kids. They got sent to the hospital too. Just like me.”

“Just like you?”

He nodded gravely. “Yup. Seizures.”

Ms. Scranton glared at me like it was my fault Joey was out of Youth Works. She pulled Joey away and headed for the exit, leaving me to stare at them with an open mouth.

Four kids with seizures?

They were almost to the outer doors by the time I caught up to them.

“Ms. Scranton,” I said, “would you mind if Joey told me the last names of those other three kids?”