Reality Check in Detroit (2 page)

“What’s
that
mean?” asked Fahd Noorizadeh.

“Where’s the toilet,” Data said, giggling. “Because
I think I’m gonna hurl
!”

“The tie’s not
that
bad –” Nish started, more offended that Data had stolen his famous line, but then he realized his teammates weren’t even looking at his bow tie. They were staring above it, at one of the bus’s small
TV
screens. On the screen, Nish the hockey superstar, soon to be Hollywood icon, was beaming back at them, in full Screech Owls uniform, from a photo on his mother’s piano.

Roger, the cameraman – a short little fellow with curling white hair and a likable smile – was using Mr. D’s homemade
TV
system to show them some raw footage of what the producers had assembled so far in the series.

“
Turn it up
!” Nish shouted. He bowled past Travis to get farther onto the bus, his bow tie bouncing enthusiastically just below his chin.

“He’s always been very musical – from piano, to violin…,” Mrs. Nishikawa was saying as the camera cut to a shot of Nish adjusting his shin pads in the Screech Owls’ dressing room. In the background, Travis and Andy Higgins were re-taping their blades. Wilson Kelly was going over a defense drill with Muck.

“Winning is all about finesse,” Nish was saying directly to the camera. “And I’m a finesse player, a finesse defenseman – there aren’t many of us. I come out, I play my best, and my best just happens to be really, really awesome. Right now, I’m working on my version of the shootout spin-o-rama – very controversial …”

On the bus, Travis and Sarah turned and stared at each other in horror. Data rolled his eyes and groaned loudly.

Nish paid no attention. “Ha!” he shouted over the sound track on the
TV
. “Do you see that? I’m going to be huge.
Huge!
”

Neither Travis nor Sarah said a word. They just stared at each other, their thoughts perfectly in tune.

They were witnessing the birth of a monster.

A monster called Wayne Nishikawa.

The whole trip had seemed improbable right from the start. Muck agreed to it only because there would be no cost to the team and they’d be promoting skills development. Muck believed in practice, much to Nish’s regret. He believed that the two most important elements of good hockey were skill and speed. Muck said minor hockey teams in Canada played far too many games and tournaments and held far too few practices. He liked the European model of hockey, where players practiced two or three times more than they played. Creativity is a simple process, Muck liked to say. You repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat again – and when it works, people will think you made it up on the spot.

Mr. D was all for the trip. He liked nothing better than to take the old bus out on a road trip and include one of his treasured Stupid Stops. The parents were in favor, too, because it wasn’t going to cost them anything. And Nish, of course, was in, because, well,
Goals & Dreams
would help jump-start his Hollywood career.

Travis had dozed off before they reached Windsor, on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. Mr. D woke him up when they came to the border crossing and the Owls’ manager had to produce the team’s passports. As usual, Lars Johanssen, who carried a Swedish passport, was asked a few questions, but soon enough they were all cleared to go and Mr. D directed the bus down into the brightly lit tunnel that took them under the river to the American side.

Travis rested his head against the window as the yellow lights along the tunnel wall flashed by. He felt like he was in a spaceship, and he might just as well have been – he was about to enter a world so distant from the one he had left it could have been light years away.

Before they went to the hotel to check in, Mr. D gave them a quick tour of the downtown. Travis knew this would have been Muck’s suggestion. He had noticed Muck moving to the front of the bus and leaning down to whisper something to Mr. D.

No trip, Muck always said, should ever be just about hockey. You should learn something, too. Something of value. And there was certainly something to learn in their brief look at downtown Detroit. Travis had once seen a movie,
War of the Worlds
, in which it appeared that all humanity had been destroyed. Streets were empty, cars abandoned, storefronts shattered or closed down. It wasn’t that bad in downtown Detroit, but it sure wasn’t good. Hardly anyone was in the streets, few vehicles were parked, and even fewer were going anywhere. Store after store had “
FOR RENT
” or “
FOR LEASE
” signs, or were simply shuttered up with plywood that had faded in the weather.

When they turned onto a particularly bleak street, Muck indicated to Mr. D that he should pull over and park. He stood up in the middle of the aisle and asked Roger not to record him. He then turned and faced the Owls.

“I want you all to remember what you are seeing here,” he said. His voice was quiet, but every single word was heard and understood by the players. “Detroit is what they call a ghost city. When the bottom fell out of the North American automobile industry, the bottom fell out of this city. Today, Detroit has less than half the population it had as far back as 1950. It has a hundred thousand abandoned buildings and houses. It has the highest unemployment and poverty rates of any large city in the United States.”

He paused while the Owls took all that in.

“I wanted you to see this,” he said, “because I want you to think hard about something …” He paused again.

Fahd, of course, asked the obvious. “What?”

Muck looked over all the Owls. None of them dared even to breathe.

“To think about how lucky you are.”

“S
WAG! We got swag! Swag! Swag! Swag!
Swag!
” Nish had screamed at the top of his voice, his face a swollen tomato about to burst.

Travis had never thought he might one day say he felt like he had died and gone to … Detroit. But this, he had to admit, was Hockey Heaven. Or as close to it as any Screech Owl had ever come.

They had just checked in to a hotel fancier and more luxurious than anything they had ever experienced. The Marriott Renaissance – “Five stars, 72 floors, 1,298 rooms,” Data had read from his phone as Mr. Dillinger pulled the bus up in front of the blackest, tallest building on the Detroit waterfront.

At the reception desk in the marble-floored lobby, room keys had already been laid out waiting for the Owls to check in, along with a card telling who would be rooming with whom.
Two to a room!
Travis had never imagined such luxury – usually the Owls were four to a room, sometimes six. Travis’s only possible cause for complaint came when he found his card and key. On the card was written, in flowery script: “
ROOM
4715:
TRAVIS LINDSAY AND WAYNE NISHIKAWA
.”

Just his luck, Travis had thought, to draw the stinkiest, loudest, dumbest, craziest, silliest, quirkiest, most troublesome, bothersome, and irritating Owl of them all: his sometimes-best-friend-sometimes-worst-enemy, Nish.

Travis forgot his bad luck, however, the moment he slid the key into the lock and their door swung open on a large bright room with two queen-size beds. Each bed had brand-new hockey gear laid out on it.

Nish tossed his suitcase and raced to the nearest bed, then flew through the air as if he were diving into a pool. He screamed as he hit the bed – “
SWAG!
” – and began rolling around with as much hockey equipment as he could hold in his arms.

“Wrong bed,” Travis said.

Nish stopped rolling and blinked, not following. “Whaddya mean, wrong bed? You ‘n’ me’s roomies, pal.”

“Wrong bed,” Travis repeated. He went to the other bed and pulled a hockey jacket off the end and held it up. He had never seen such a beautiful jacket. It was baby blue with black leather arms and it had the Screech Owls’ beloved logo over the heart. On the left arm was “
PEEWEE AA
” and on the right arm was “
NO
.
44” – and right below that, “
NISH
.”

“
They know me
!” Nish shouted, leaping from Travis’s bed to his own and rolling about with the jacket in his arms as if he had just given birth to it.

The “swag” – as Nish called it – was unbelievable. The television producers were providing brand-new equipment to every player on the team. And not just new equipment, but the
best
new equipment.

Travis picked up his own jacket – “
NO
. 7,
TRAVIS
” – and tried it on. It fitted perfectly. Nish had put his on, too, and it also fitted perfectly. How could they know our sizes? Travis wondered. They must have gone through Mr. D – Mr. D knew everyone’s size, their sticks, and even how they liked their skates sharpened.

Travis checked his stick: a Bauer Vapor, just like he’d dreamed of having one day, but it had been too expensive to ask for. The stick was exactly the lie and curve he liked. He went over the rest of the equipment: top-of-the-line Bauer shoulder pads, shin pads, elbow pads, socks, jock, helmet, face shield, neck guard, pants – even new skates exactly the right size. As well as the team jacket, there was also a Screech Owls tuque, a tracksuit with his name and number on it, and a new
NHL
-quality Screech Owls jersey. It even had the captain’s
C
stitched over the heart.

Nish was still rolling around on his bed in all the new equipment. At one point, he even squealed, which Travis thought appropriate: his friend looked like a happy pig in a trough.

There was a knock at the door.

When Travis pulled it open, he was almost run over by a cameraman and soundman, who both hurried to the bed where Nish was
bathing
in his new hockey swag. Nish, of course, ramped up his foolishness, wiggling as he tried to drown in the equipment, screeching as he hugged and kissed his new gloves and the new black Bauer helmet with “44” stenciled in bright white stick-on numbers on the back.

A familiar voice sounded from the doorway.
“These young hockey hopefuls could one day become legends, heroes of the NHL!”

Squeezed into the door frame were Samantha Bennett and Sarah, both of them outfitted head to toe in the new equipment. They waltzed in, giggling and laughing, and high-fived Nish, who was still flopping around on his bed as if he had fallen into one of his beloved Dairy Queen Blizzards.

The girls were repeating a line from the
Goals & Dreams
video that the cameraman had played on the bus, the “Voice of God” announcer making it sound like these peewee hockey players were but a slap shot from
NHL
superstardom.

“
The
Screech Owls may hail from the small Canadian town of Tamarack
,” Sam continued, hamming it up for the camera, which was almost in her face, “
but their dreams live here!
”

Daniel, the soundman, who had hung the microphone right over her head to capture every word, now dropped it to his waist. Almost anything the players said could make it onto the show – just not any comments that made fun of it.

“Stop copying our voice-over,” snapped Inez, one of the producers, who had appeared in the hallway behind Sarah and Sam. “Roger never should have shown you that rough cut. Say something real. This is reality
TV
. Tell us how you
feel.
”

Travis knew Sam and Sarah well enough to know when they were just poking fun at themselves and Nish. He could also tell that Inez, who wore a smart-looking dress and high heels, and was impatiently tapping her fingernails on a clipboard, had no sense of humor at all.

“What do you think of all this great stuff?” Inez prompted as she put her phone to her ear to take a call and moved farther down the hall.

“There’s … there’s a lot of … stuff here,” said Travis, trying to offer something more than mockery to the camera. “It’s pretty incredible.”

“You know who’s incredible?” said Nish, still digging through his loot. “Me. And I deserve all of this gear! Star power, baby.”