Reality Check in Detroit (9 page)

Brian scanned the line of players, looking for a perfect bulldog to start. He stopped, no surprise, at Nish, pointed, and smiled. “You’re our bulldog, Money!”

“More like
hot dog
!” one of the Motors players shouted.

Travis saw that a cameraman had been standing right beside the Motors player when he chirped at Nish. Brian the producer rubbed his hands together happily. The chirping instructions were working.

“Okay, players,” Brian shouted, “off to the far boards and wait for Terry’s whistle.”

Travis and Sarah skated back together. “Sure didn’t look like a random pick of the bulldog, did it?” Sarah said.

“They’re trying to make Nish the star,” Travis said.

“Or maybe the villain. Don’t forget,
TV
is all about drama, and dramas need bad guys so the good guys will look good.”

Travis hadn’t thought of that. He had figured the producers were pumping Nish’s tires because they liked him. It had never occurred to him that it might be because they liked what Nish represented: the perfect villain for Hollywood to defeat. Maybe that’s what the crazy “script” had been all about.

The players all lined up, several of them chirping their opponents good-naturedly. Travis was looking forward to this game. He was one of the best Owls at eluding checks. He’d just pretend he had a puck and the bulldog was trying to check him.

The whistle blew. With screams and laughter, the Owls and Motors took off down the ice. But Nish had a trick up his sleeve. He took one look at all the advancing skaters and charged right at them, falling onto his back, stretching out, and spinning like the hands of a clock as he tried to take out as many as possible.

“
No fair
!” several of the Motors shouted. “
That’s cheating
!”

But Nish just laughed and stuck his tongue out at his critics as he lifted himself off the ice to count the number of new bulldogs he had just created. He now had six dogs to help him out.

Data hurriedly tweeted his update: “Nish, the human windmill, takes out six players.”

Sarah and Travis had escaped. In fact, Travis thought Nish had deliberately taken out as many of the Motors as he could. He wanted an Owl to win. So, too, did Travis. He had no idea of the count, but it seemed to him the Motors were having a pretty good afternoon.

The whistle blew again and now there were seven bulldogs to avoid, not just Nish. Travis got through all right, but Sarah didn’t.

Travis huddled with Dmitri at the far end. “This could be over fast,” Travis said.

Terry, the whistle blower, gave them a moment to catch their breath before the next run, and Travis skated to the boards, his hands on his knees, gulping air. While he gathered himself, he heard someone talking – not in a normal voice, but like an announcer speaking to a
TV
audience. Travis straightened up and looked over the boards.

A camera crew had set up with the rink and the British Bulldog game as a backdrop, and an attractive woman reporter was doing a take while the cameras rolled.

“And so, here at the Henry Ford estate on this beautiful winter afternoon,” she was saying, “the Detroit Motors have mounted a comeback to go down in history on
Goals & Dreams.
Up against the powerful Screech Owls peewee hockey team, and down 5–2 in Saturday’s competition at the Joe, the plucky Motors have now pulled even in this remarkable competition featuring teams from two different countries – really, two different worlds …”

The whistle blew. It was time to charge back. Travis had no time to digest what he had heard.

The bulldogs now outnumbered the skaters. Travis slipped through, and he saw that Cody Kelly, with his amazing ability to turn on a dime, had made it, too. So had little Simon Milliken and two of the Motors. But that was it.

The whistle blew again. Travis didn’t have time to catch his breath this time. The five survivors dashed for center ice, but an entire wall of bulldogs was awaiting them. It seemed hopeless.

Travis looked back. He saw that Cody had slipped in right behind him, hoping to use him as a shield. Why not? Travis thought. Smart move.

Travis went straight at the area where Nish and multiple bulldogs were waiting. At the last moment, he deked right and dived, hoping to slide through the wall of taggers. It didn’t work.

Cody went the other way, jumping right over one of the bulldogs who had tried to tackle him, and in an instant he was away. Cody Kelly was the last skater standing – the king of British Bulldog.

All the Motors raced to pile onto their hero.

Nish, sweating heavily and beet red, was muttering. “No fair
again.
If I hadn’t been picked to be the first bulldog, that would be me!”

Sarah had been impressed by Cody’s agility. She thought she should go down and congratulate him and skated in his direction. As she did so, she was suddenly aware that virtually every camera was on her, moving with her.

Cody smiled when he saw her coming.

“Nice skate,” she said, and stuck out her hand to congratulate him.

“
Closer!
” Brian shouted from the boards.

Now Nish, who’d seen his beloved cameras racing away to film someone else, remembered his script instructions and decided he’d join in. He skated hard toward where all the other players were making room for Sarah and Cody.

Sarah saw him coming. Her eyes widened in shock.

Travis was between Sarah and Nish. He knew he had to act, and fast.

Moving quickly to block Nish, Travis reached up and slapped Cody affectionately on the helmet. “Good run!” he said. “You deserved the win.” And then, grabbing Sarah’s hand, Travis skated her away as though they were a couple in a movie, on an outdoor rink on Valentine’s Day, knowing that his face was glowing brighter than the bright lights they’d set up for the
TV
reporter.

What had she said? “
Plucky Motors? Two different worlds?
”

What was going on?

“I
’m gonna hurl!”

For once, Travis didn’t doubt for a moment that this was exactly what his sometimes-best-friend, sometimes-worst-enemy, Nish, was going to do.

Travis and Sarah had to jump out of the way when Nish turned toward them, his face white as the toilet bowl he was racing for, and let out his familiar yell. Only this time, it was no joke. It was no silly grab for attention. It was real – Nish was going to throw up.

The producers were engineering more “scenes” for the show. For a “time with the team” shoot, they had brought the Screech Owls to Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum out in nearby Farmington Hills.

“Great visuals,” Brian had said, petting his stupid beard.

“Something different,” Inez had smiled.

And nothing whatsoever to do with hockey.

Muck had decided not to come, preferring to sit in the hotel lounge, reading one of his thick history books. He had given up entirely on the idea that
Goals & Dreams
had anything to do with playing hockey. But he also felt he couldn’t pull the plug on it. Not when the Screech Owls actually seemed to be enjoying themselves. He had made a commitment, and it wasn’t right to bail out of something he’d committed to doing.

Muck sitting in a hotel lobby with a book in his lap was hardly a visual worth capturing for television, so the film crew was happy to let him be, and they boarded the bus taking the Owls to Marvin’s.

And the producers had been right: Marvin’s was incredible. When the bus let them off at a small mall and they saw the museum, Sarah and Travis couldn’t believe their eyes.

The first thing they noticed was a giant clock – running backward. “If we stand here long enough,” Sarah giggled, “it’ll soon be yesterday.” They went inside and knew at once why the production company wanted to film this bizarre place. It was like a child’s most insane dream. Carnival music so loud they could barely talk. Ceilings so high planes could – and
did
– fly under it, though they were all huge model planes, many with moving parts. There must have been fifty or more small aircraft hanging from the ceiling.

Everywhere they looked were pinball machines and music makers and strange mechanical creations from long, long, long before any of the Owls were born. There were even children’s rides. One machine, when you put some coins in, popped out a Crankenstein monster, a ghoulish puppetlike terror that caused Sam and Sarah to shriek madly when he surprised them.

Nish had immediately sought out the scariest and grossest of all the attractions at Marvin’s. Everywhere he stepped, a camera crew and soundman moved with him. He was being treated like a star and was happily acting like a star.

He came to one exhibit called
Dr. Binge and Purge
, which showed an animated old man sitting in a glass-fronted cabinet. Nish put money in, pushed a button, and instantly the strange figure in the cabinet began pumping bottle after bottle of liquid into his mouth.

And then, Dr. Binge and Purge began … vomiting. Back up came all the revolting liquid as if a horse had just kicked him in the gut.

The camera moved in tight to Nish’s face as the blood drained out of it.

“I’m gonna hurl!”

Ten minutes later, Nish was back, his face returned to its normal flush, and he was again the ridiculous “money” player the producers so loved to follow. Whatever had happened in the washroom, Travis did not want any details. Nish was back to being Nish, and that was all that mattered.

The Owls played pinball machines and toured the museum. Travis liked best of all the mechanical bowler, a creation so lifelike it looked like a man carved out of wood was actually picking up the ball, aiming, and throwing strikes.

Sarah and Sam watched a re-creation of a group of sailors cutting up the last dodo bird. The sailors were little wooden puppets, and the dodo was wooden, too, but Sam started tearing up.

With the cameras busy following Money around, the other Screech Owls were able to talk freely.

“Have you asked Wi-Fi about him?” Travis asked Data, once he and Sarah and Data were alone. He was trying to keep his voice low so he didn’t attract the attention of Roger the cameraman or Daniel the sound guy.

“No, I haven’t had the chance,” Data said. “I only talked to him at the Green Dot, and the tweets weren’t nearly as … interesting then.”

During the second competition, VintageEngine’s tweets had become more and more puzzling. It was as though he were trying to send the Owls in a certain direction – his hints were all “warm” and “cold,” like they were on a treasure hunt. But where was he sending them? And why?

When Data had tweeted about how much better the Motors were doing in the second round of competitions, VintageEngine had confirmed some of Travis’s suspicions.

“Were the Motors worse before or did they just appear that way? Getting even warmer …” had been the mystery tweeter’s reply.

And then, when Data had tweeted that he’d never seen a twelve-year-old player handle a stick like Smitty before, VintageEngine had returned with “So warm you’re sweating!”

“Who
is
this guy, anyway?” Sarah asked, gulping down a giggle as Travis jumped. She’d forgotten to lower her voice. “Why don’t we know more about him?” she whispered to Data.

Data shrugged. “I don’t think he wants to be found. But he definitely knows something.”

“That’s why we should find out if Wi-Fi does, too,” Travis whispered hurriedly. “He’s tweeting for the Motors. Maybe VintageEngine has been communicating with him, too.” His eyes darted around to make sure there wasn’t a camera on him.

The Motors had been taken on a very chilly boat cruise on the Detroit River for their “time with the team” shoot. Unless the two teams were on the ice, Brian and Inez seemed determined to keep them apart. Even at the Green Dot Stables restaurant, Travis had felt that fraternizing with the enemy was discouraged.

Data began typing a private message to Wi-Fi, asking him if he’d heard anything from VintageEngine. But Travis cut him off.

“Just ask Wi-Fi and Alex to meet us somewhere in the hotel,” Travis suggested. “VintageEngine … Detroit Motors … there’s got to be a connection. We might need both of them to figure it out.”