Rebel Glory (2 page)

I shook my head in sympathy.

“Even though I knew the game was ready to start, I couldn’t help myself,” he finished. “I felt things moving all around under my equipment, and I went crazy. Ever since I was a kid I’ve hated bugs. This was like my worst nightmare.”

“You all right now?” I asked him.

Around us the players were pulling off shoulder pads, elbow pads and shin pads. They were banging the equipment against the floor and benches. Not a single cockroach fell into sight. Jason had been the only one attacked by cockroaches.

“All right?” he repeated. “All right? The only thing that will make this all right is if we win the game.”

chapter three

We didn’t win the game. Worse, the score wasn’t even close. Mr. Palmer, my high school English teacher, was only too happy to remind me about this on Monday morning back in Red Deer.

“What happened in Lethbridge against the Hurricanes, McElhaney?” Mr. Palmer smirked at me from the front of the classroom. “Did you find out you can’t count on being a hockey hero all your life?”

Mr. Palmer was completely bald with caterpillar eyebrows. He had a nose so long you could land an airplane on it. His teeth and fingers were stained yellow from smoking cigarettes all the time.

Mr. Palmer didn’t like me much, mainly because on my first day in class I had made the mistake of arguing with him. I can easily remember that morning.

Cheryl Holbrook, the girl sitting in the desk beside mine, had dropped a book from her backpack. Mr. Palmer had glared at her for interrupting him, and then he had noticed the book on the floor was a Bible.

“You don’t believe in those fairy tales, do you?” Mr. Palmer had asked with a mean laugh.

“They’re not fairy—” She tried to finish, but Mr. Palmer didn’t give her a chance.

“Only fools buy into that stuff,” he said, “especially when history shows what terrible things churches have done. And look at some of today’s television preachers. Pretty tough to believe when faced with people like that, wouldn’t you say?”

I could see Cheryl’s face turn red. I guessed it was from anger, not embarrassment. She didn’t seem like a wallflower. Mr. Palmer glared at her, daring her to speak. Stupidly, I opened my mouth before Cheryl could say anything.

“Actually, sir,” I said, “logically, that is a very dumb argument.”

Mr. Palmer’s caterpillar eyebrows swung in my direction. “What?!” He sounded like he couldn’t believe someone would disagree with him. Especially someone on his first day in class.

It was too late to shut my mouth now. My dad had been a lawyer before he died. He had always tried to get me to use logic.

“Wouldn’t you say the church and the preachers are just delivering a message?” I asked. “That they are messengers?”

“So?” Mr. Palmer said.

“A messenger is not the message. The message and the messenger are two different things, whether it’s a newspaper story or a speech from a politician or from a preacher. What’s true about the messenger doesn’t also have to be true about the message. Just
because some television preachers are idiots doesn’t mean their message is stupid.”

I think Dad would have been proud of how I’d argued my point. I was also rewarded with a big smile from Cheryl Holbrook. It was a smile worth working for.

Mr. Palmer wasn’t proud at all. Or happy. Mr. Palmer’s eyeballs bulged out like a constipated frog’s.

“Your name?” he finally demanded.

“Craig McElhaney.”

He stared at me for a few moments. “The new hockey player? Are you too stupid to know that all hockey players are stupid?”

“That is another dumb argument,” I said. On the outside I may have seemed calm, but inside I was boiling. “All I have to do is find one smart hockey player to prove your argument wrong.” I paused and smiled. “Sir.”

“Good luck finding one smart hockey player,” he said. “Unless you’re going to call yourself smart.”

I couldn’t understand why he had such an attitude. Most teachers did their best to help hockey players because most of the players
wanted education and hockey, and doing both was tough without support from the teachers. Anyway, my first two years in junior hockey had shown me there were better things to be afraid of than someone like this, attitude or not.

“Is that how you win arguments, sir?” I asked. “By being a bully to students who can’t really fight back?”

“That’s enough out of you,” he yelled. “You can leave the classroom!”

I smiled at him again. “I guess you just proved my point,” I said as I gathered my books.

That’s how my first day in his English class had ended. Since then, Mr. Palmer had been doing his best to make my life tough. So the morning after losing the cockroach game to the Hurricanes was not a good time to be sitting in Mr. Palmer’s class.

He repeated his question.”Hey, McElhaney? Did you find out you can’t count on being a hockey hero all your life?”

It wouldn’t do any good to say that I had scored both of our team’s goals. “There’s always next game, sir.”

He hated it when I called him sir.

“Next game? You guys don’t have a chance. The Winter Hawks are in first place. They’ll kill you.”

For someone who hated hockey so much, he sure kept close track of what happened in the Western Hockey League. I knew why too. I’d heard he once wanted to play pro, and he’d been good enough to do it. But he was afraid of getting hurt, so he never made it. Maybe it was easier to be mad at me instead of himself.

“We have a chance,” I said.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you guys win, the entire class gets a free day. No English lesson. But if you lose,” he added, “you...” He thought for a few seconds, his caterpillar eyebrows moving up and down.

Then he smiled a nasty smile that showed too many yellow teeth. “If the Rebels lose, McElhaney, you sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ over the intercom to the entire school.”

“You have a deal,” I said. “And we won’t lose.”

chapter four

When we stepped onto the ice to play the Portland Winter Hawks, I had more to worry about than singing a stupid nursery rhyme over the high school intercom. We really needed to win this game to keep the Hurricanes from getting too far ahead of us in the standings. Not only that, but we had heard there would be a Boston Bruins scout in the stands. This close to making it to the National Hockey League, you hated to make mistakes.

The first two and a half periods went better than we could have hoped. We were actually up 3—2. All we had to do was hang on to the lead for the final nine minutes of the game.

The Red Deer crowd really got into the game, which made it more fun for us. The Centrium was one of the newest arenas in the league, and when it had a full house, a close game seemed like a Stanley Cup playoff final.

Rowdy, the Rebels’ mascot, was a guy in a deer costume with dark glasses and big brown antlers. Rowdy was having fun too. Little kids followed him from section to section in the stands. He had the fans cheering and clapping and hollering.

Then I heard a different yell from behind me.

“Scum-sucking hosebags!” It takes a lot to snap me away from the game, but this guy sounded like a shot moose.

I turned my head slightly to look. Yes, it was stupid. Coach Blair says never let the fans get to you. If they notice that you’re noticing them, they’ll keep yelling all the way into next year.

But this guy was as bad as a foghorn. A fat foghorn with a round face and a wart on the end of his nose. He yelled so loudly that most of us on the bench turned around and looked up—just in time to see him dump cola on me from a huge plastic cup. The cola splashed across my helmet and shoulders.

The crowd noise grew as some nearby fans noticed. Our assistant coach yelled for security. The guys down the bench screamed. And above all of this noise, I heard it.

“Mac!”

Jewels Larken, our backup goalie, yelled again. “Mac! Incoming!”

Incoming meant a shift change without waiting for the whistle to stop play.

With cola dripping down the visor of my helmet, I hopped over the boards. My skates were moving even before I touched the ice. As I cut to cover my position at the far side of the ice, I tried to catch the flow of the play. Unfortunately, ducking the cola had taken my eyes from the game. It took me several seconds to figure out what was happening.

I went into my mental checklist of all the players on the ice. It was a way for me to make time seem slower. It was also a way to keep me from feeling panic, something that was always much closer to me than anyone knew.

Their right defenseman had the puck behind their net. Check. Their other defenseman was in front of their net. Check. Their center was swooping in from my left to go behind their net and pick up the puck. Check. Hog, our left winger, was chasing their center and going deep as the single forechecker. Check. So far so good. Their right winger was already in motion at the blue line and straddling it as he cut straight across toward me. Check. We needed our center to fill the gap at the top of their face-off circle and block the up-ice pass. No center! Where was Mancini at center? And where was Shertzer to cover the winger ahead of me?

My checklist was blown to shreds.

Maybe it had happened because of the cola thrown at me—Mancini and Shertzer had
tangled while trying to get onto the ice. For the few seconds it took them to unscramble, we were on the wrong end of a five-on-three.

Their left defenseman busted straight up the ice toward me. Their right defenseman took advantage of the confusion by stepping out from behind the net and firing a long pass up the middle. He hit their right winger, who was already in full stride and suddenly a step ahead of my partner, Jason.

And just like that, in the flip of a heartbeat, they had the three-on-one, leaving Jason and Hog behind, with Mancini and Shertzer still trying to clear the players’ bench.

It was only me against their two wingers and left defenseman.

Their right winger cut up the ice toward me with the puck. Their left winger hugged the boards to draw me toward him. Their defenseman trailed the play.

I skated backward as they moved on me like a trio of sharks. A part of me felt the roar of the crowd. Another part saw Mancini and Shertzer finally on their feet and skating hard to catch up. But I knew I’d be alone. In this
league, you can’t give anyone a head start, least of all the Winter Hawks.

Now I was inside our blue line. I had my hockey stick in my left hand and pointed at one guy. I held my right hand at chest level, pointing at another, to remind myself of their positions.

Stay even with me guys, I silently pleaded to them. Make the mistake of letting me keep the middle.

Only in my wildest dreams. They made no mistakes. The puck handler cut wide, the other winger dropped and their trailing defenseman crisscrossed.

Now I had to make a choice. Should I guard against the pass and let the puck handler go in alone? Or lose a half step to stay with the puck handler and set him up for a wide-open drop pass, with another guy busting in to pull our goalie in two directions?

I hesitated and that made my choice. The guy with the puck somehow found another burst of speed and pumped past me. That mistake left me with only one choice. I had to go for the puck, not cover a pass.

I spun and dove.

All my eyes registered was the puck. If I could sweep it first, I could follow through and no ref would call it tripping. But if I missed the puck and tangled with the winger’s skates—penalty shot.

My breath bounced from my lungs as I strained and—bingo!

Even above the roar of the crowd, I heard the thunk of my stick blade against hard rubber, and the puck slid harmlessly into the corner. Then his skates bit into the shaft of my stick, and he fell down on top of me. We both tumbled into the goalie and net. The sweet shrillness of the whistle reached my ears to end the play.

When something like that happens, you don’t feel the bruises until the next day. Especially when your teammates help you to your feet and pound your back in glee.

I’d stopped a crucial three-on-one late in the game. The Boston Bruins’ scout had to have noticed.

But my herohood only lasted another seven minutes and sixteen seconds of electronic
scoreboard time. Because that’s how much time passed before I was last man back at our blue line, backpedaling and stickhandling the puck as I got ready to pass it by their center and ahead to Hog Burnell.

It was a play I could make a thousand times blindfolded. Only this time, as I made a backward turn, I lost my balance and slammed onto my backside. It was such a hard and unexpected fall that my helmet crashed against the ice.

Their center scooped up the puck and blew past me. I didn’t even have time to try to trip him. There I was, alone and flat on my back as the Winter Hawk center scored the game-tying goal in front of 6,200 fans.

The only good thing was that we didn’t lose in overtime. But we didn’t win either. The score remained tied, 3–3. We only earned a single point in the race to make the playoffs.

I knew my mistake had taken the win away from us. I had also played horribly in overtime, falling at least once every shift on the ice. After the game I showered in miserable silence, alone in a crowded dressing room.

When I left the dressing room, I was still alone. Instead of heading for the parking lot and my old pickup truck, I walked into the stands. My steps echoed in the emptiness of the arena.

Barely an hour earlier, our team had lived and died with each shot on the net. Now the lights were dim, the scoreboard dark, the ice shiny and quiet.

Anyone watching might have decided I was trying to figure out how I had managed to trip over my own skates. Unfortunately, I already had the answer to that.

On my left skate, one of the rivets that held the blade to the boot had been removed. Another rivet had loosened itself during the game. It hadn’t loosened enough to move the blade much. But it was enough to wobble me when I least expected it—enough to make me fall when I made a sharp turn.

I wasn’t sitting alone in the stands trying to figure out why I had fallen. I was wondering who would have removed the rivet. And why.