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You are reading from:
THE QUEBEC CITY CRISIS
(BOOK 7)
by Roy MacGregor
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"ICI!"
"Travis - une pour moi!"
"Moi, s'il vous plaît!"
"Moi!"
It was cold enough to see their breath, yet Travis Lindsay was sweating
as he stumbled and stuttered and tried to answer the shouts of the crowd
gathered around him. How he wished he'd paid more attention in French
class. If only they'd speak slower. If only he were standing closer to
Sarah Cuthbertson, who was in French immersion, and who was yakking away
happily as she signed her name, again and again and again.
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Travis was helpless. He could do nothing but nod and smile and sign his
name to the hockey cards they kept shoving into his hand.
He wished he understood better. He did not, however, wish that any of
this would stop. As far as he was concerned - as far as any of the
Screech Owls was concerned - this moment could go on forever.
"Travis! Ici!"
"Moi!"
This was what he had dreamed about all those long winter evenings when
he'd sat at the kitchen table practicing his signature. This was why
he'd worked on that fancy, swirling loop on the L of "Lindsay," very
carefully putting "#7" inside the loop to indicate his sweater number,
just like the real NHLers did. He knew that his mother and father had
been smiling to each other as they watched him work on signing his name,
and he wished they could see him now. Travis Lindsay - Number 7, with a
loop - signing autograph after autograph outside the renowned Quebec
Colisée.
There was no end to the surprises on this trip to Quebec City. The Owls
had come for the special fortieth anniversary of the Quebec
International Peewee Tournament, the biggest and most special peewee
hockey tournament on earth. The Screech Owls were just one of nearly 150
teams entered, and Travis just one of 2,500 players, but every single
player felt as if the Quebec Peewee could be his or her tournament, the
moment where he or she would make their mark and be noted by all who saw
them play.
Like everyone else here, Travis knew the history of the Quebec Peewee.
He knew that it was here that Guy Lafleur and Wayne Gretzky and Mario
Lemieux had all come to national attention.
More than fourteen thousand fans showed up in the Colisée to cheer the
great Lafleur the night he scored seven goals in a single game. The
following day, they sewed seven velvet pucks onto his sweater and his
photograph was splashed across the country's sports pages - a national
superstar at the age of twelve!
Wayne Gretzky's team had come here from Brantford two years after
Gretzky scored an amazing 378 goals in a single season. Mario Lemieux
had first demonstrated his amazing puck-handling here. Brett Hull, Steve
Yzerman, Denis Savard, Pat LaFontaine, they had all starred here. And so
had a young peewee goaltender named Patrick Roy, who was stopping pucks
with a strange new style they were calling "the butterfly."
In the forty-year history of the Quebec City tournament, nearly five
hundred of the young players who had come here had gone on to NHL
careers - a record unmatched by any other minor-hockey gathering in the
entire world.
The time might even come when people would talk about this tournament as
the one where young Travis Lindsay served notice that he was NHL-bound.
They might say this was where Sarah Cuthbertson, captain of the Olympic
gold-medal-winning Canadian women's hockey team, first came to national
attention. Or that this was where the scouts first began talking about
Wayne Nishikawa, the best defenseman in the entire National Hockey
League. Travis or Sarah or Nish - or Jeremy, Jesse, Derek, Dmitri,
Jennie, Lars, Simon, Andy, Fahd, Wilson, Liz - the Screech Owls were all
here, each one with his or her own special dream for Quebec City.
They already had their own hockey cards. And their own fans. Just like
in the NHL.
Sure, the autograph collectors were kids, almost all of them younger
than the Owls themselves, but the cards were real. Upper Deck, the best
card manufacturer there was, had contacted every team headed for the
Quebec Peewee, and team managers, like Mr. Dillinger, had handed out
forms for the players to fill out, telling how tall they were and how
much they weighed, what position they played, and how many goals and
assists they had last season. There was even a question about which NHL
player they modeled their play after, and another about what they
enjoyed off the ice. Upper Deck had also asked for action shots of each
player, and Data's father had taken photos of all of them in turn:
Travis stopping in a spray of snow, Sarah stickhandling the puck, Jeremy
making a stretch glove save, Nish taking a slapper from the point.
As each team arrived in Quebec City, someone from Upper Deck had met
them with a large box of hockey cards for their team manager to hand
out. The players were overwhelmed. The cards were of the best stock,
complete with a glossy photograph of each player on the front, and a
head shot, showing just his or her face, on the back. Each player's
statistics and personal information were printed in fine gold lettering,
and the team captains - like Travis - skated over a small hologram of
the tournament logo.
Upper Deck also distributed the cards - by the thousands, it seemed -
among the young fans of Quebec City. The free cards almost caused a riot
outside the Colisée, where some of the teams, including the Owls, were
lucky enough to book their first practice. The young fans seemed to know
what the cards might one day mean. If they somehow had a card signed by
Guy Lafleur the night he scored his seven goals, or by Wayne Gretzky
when he played here, what would it be worth today?
Everyone wanted the captains' signatures. Travis knew it was because the
captains' cards had the beautiful hologram, and he was trapped by eager
autograph-seekers as he tried to plough his way through to the team bus
after practice.
"Travis!"
"Moi!"
"Une carte seule, s'il vous plaît!"
He felt like a fool, unable to speak to them properly. He signed, and
muttered stupidly: "Merci . . . Oui . . . Merci . . . Bonjour . . . Oui
. . . Merci . . ." He knew they could tell he understood about as much
French as a kindergarten student. Why couldn't he be like Sarah, who was
talking as much as she was signing? Why couldn't he be like . . . like
Nish, standing over there in a huge circle of young fans, signing his
name as if he was greeting his adoring public outside Maple Leaf Gardens
on a Saturday night.
Travis looked over, puzzled, as he signed another card. Why was his best
friend drawing such a big crowd?
By the time he finally made it to the old school bus, and Mr. Dillinger
had closed the door on the remaining fans who were still holding up
cards and calling out their names, Travis was certain that they were
calling out "Nishikawa!" far more than "Lindsay!" He decided to
investigate.
Travis finally found Nish, last seat on the bus, flat on his back and
holding his right wrist up as if he'd just been slashed.
"I've got writer's cramp, man," Nish moaned when he saw Travis. "Real
bad - I don't know whether I can play or not."
"Very funny," Travis said. "Where's your card?"
Nish suddenly blinked, surprised. "You want my autograph?"
"I just want to see it."
Nish made a big thing out of checking his jacket pockets. There was
nothing wrong with his wrist now. He patted and probed and seemed happy
to come up empty.
"Sorry, pal - all out. Can't keep up with the public demand, it seems."
Lars turned to help. "I traded him for one," Lars said to Travis,
reaching back with a card. "Here you go."
"Thanks," Travis said. He caught Lars's eye. There was a message in the
look Lars was giving him. He wanted Travis to see something.
Travis returned to his seat and compared Nish's card with his own.
Data's father had taken a wonderful shot of Nish firing the puck from
the point, and the head shot on the back was fine, but those were the
only similarities. Travis had listed his statistics from last year - 37
goals, 39 assists, 14 minutes in penalties - and had said he tries to
play like NHL superstar Paul Kariya. He had added that he played
baseball and soccer and lacrosse in the off-season and liked any movie
with Jim Carrey in it. Nish's card had his statistics right - 14 goals,
53 assists, 42 minutes in penalties - but there truth came to an abrupt
end.
Nish had said he'd already been scouted by the Toronto Maple Leafs and
the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim.
He had said Brian Leetch, Norris Trophy winner as the NHL's best
defenseman, played a lot like him - not that he tried to play like Brian
Leetch.
He had said Paul Kariya was his cousin.
Nish had his eyes closed when Travis made his way back to the last seat.
Travis slapped Nish's knee, causing the choirboy eyes to flutter open.
Nish obviously knew what was coming.
"You can't do this!" Travis said, holding out Nish's card.
"Can't do what?" Nish asked, blinking innocently.
"This!" Travis almost shouted. "How can you say you've already been
scouted?"
"Because I have. And you have, too, or don't you remember Lake Placid?"
Travis shook his head. "That was nothing. They weren't NHL scouts."
"They were scouts, weren't they? And everything ends up in the NHL
eventually, doesn't it?"
"But they had nothing to do with the Leafs or the Ducks."
"Well, I like to think they did. Those are the teams I'd want to have
scouting me, okay?"
"And what do you mean you're Paul Kariya's cousin?"
Nish shrugged. "Don't get your shorts in a knot. He's part Japanese,
isn't he?"
"So?"
"So, what do you think 'Nishikawa' is? French?"
"And that makes you cousins?"
"Sort of."
"'Sort of'? You can't say that."
"I just filled it out as a joke," Nish said. "How was I supposed to know
what they were going to use those forms for? No one said anything about
hockey cards that I remember."
"You can't lie like that," Travis insisted.
Nish took a deep breath, gathering his thoughts. "I just exaggerated,
that's all. No one gets hurt by an exaggeration. Paul Kariya? He doesn't
even know, and he won't know."
Travis stared out the window all the way back to the drop-off point
where the Screech Owls were to meet the families they would be staying
with for the tournament. Soon the bus began its slow, twisting climb up
into the narrow streets of the Old City. They passed horse-drawn
carriages, statues, old churches, and drew up to a hotel that looked
more like a palace standing over the frozen river. Sarah and Jennie were
at the windows taking pictures of it all, but Travis hardly even
noticed.
What if Nish was right? What if there was no harm in a little
exaggeration? Maybe Nish did just mean it as a joke and Travis was
letting his job as captain spoil his sense of humor.
Or perhaps he was jealous that Nish's card was attracting so much attention.
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