Reality Check in Detroit

T
ravis Lindsay’s eyes had finally fixed on the perfect postcard – a moody black-and-white photo of a boxer slouched in the corner of a ring, holding two shiny black boxing gloves up in front of his chest – when Wayne Nishikawa poked his head around the postcard rack, slid a pair of bejeweled butterfly sunglasses down his nose, and announced his new life plan.

“From now on, you can call me Hollywood!”

“Um … Nish, that’s not going to happen,” Travis laughed.

Travis picked up the postcard of Joe Louis, the boxer the Detroit Red Wings’ hockey rink had been named after, flipped it over, and then put it back.

“You know those are girl glasses, right?”

“
Girl glasses?
Not once I make them famous!” Nish said loudly, shifting his eyes back and forth as if the paparazzi might be after him.

“
Nish?
A teen heartthrob? Um … no thanks!” Sarah Cuthbertson called from the line of Screech Owls waiting to pay for their Stupid Stop purchases. She had found a windup flashlight keychain that fitted in the palm of her hand. “You can slow down, egomaniac. The
TV
crew hasn’t even shown any footage of us yet,” she added.

“Way before there was Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson, there was Elvis,” Nish called back, pushing his sunglasses up his nose again. “Elvis was made fun of … and then he was
huge!
– just like that. Just like I’ll be!”

Nish shot Sarah his best Elvis-style hip wiggle before holding out his hand to show Travis his other purchase option: a big, ancient-looking tube of hair gel with a dusty orange discount sticker.

“Not that again,” Travis groaned, grabbing the tube and slipping it onto a shelf between a dozen Motor City snow globes and mugs. “Your hair gel experiments always smell like egg farts. Go find something else to buy with your money.”

“Fine,” Nish shrugged.

“Five minutes!” Mr. Dillinger, the Screech Owls’ manager, called from the glass doors at the front of the store. “The bus
and
the cameras start rolling again in
five minutes
! If you aren’t outside, we’re leaving you behind!”

Nish swaggered down one of the narrow souvenir shop aisles and reached out to a rack of skinny black-satin ties and bow ties with “
THE TEMPTATIONS
” written across them in glittery block letters. “I’ve just gotta have something to set me apart, Trav – you know, other than my good looks and charm. When we get to Detroit – Motown, baby! – you
know
I’m going to have to be the star.”

“
Have to
?” Travis chuckled under his breath as he grabbed the Joe Louis postcard for the collection he’d started up after the Owls went to Boston. He also picked out one of a regular-looking, white-and-blue house with the words “
HITSVILLE
,
U
.
S
.
A
.” on it for Muck, the Owls’ coach.

Nish, however insufferable, had been working toward his Hollywood goal for the last six weeks, and to Travis’s surprise, it seemed to be paying off.

Stardom, or at least a bit of it, seemed finally within reach for Nish.

Back in November, Nish had heard about a reality
TV
show called
Hit the Ice.
The show featured Aboriginal players from across the country and let them show off their skills, and Nish, seeing an opportunity, had taken Jesse Highboy under his “creative” wing. Jesse, after all, was from James Bay and his family was Cree. And he was a pretty good little hockey player.

As Jesse’s “agent,” Nish had coaxed Travis and Larry Ulmar – a.k.a. Data – out onto the Lord Stanley Public School rink to film Jesse’s audition tape. Data brought his new camera; Travis was to be the playing partner; Nish would be the director, the agent, and, if he could figure out how to do it, the real star.

First, they did some fancy stickhandling around tiny orange pylons, then a little open-ice, puck-chasing hustle (to show off Jesse’s best feature: the fact that he always tried so hard), and then, for good measure, Jesse took shot after shot on a near-empty net – near-empty because Travis was awful in goal. Data had even been able to add in some cool tracking shots by rolling his wheelchair along the outside of the boards while he filmed.

Nish had packaged the audition tape with a quick, comical “between periods interview” with the right-winger, in which Nish got more “face time” than Jesse. Nish then added his own Screech Owls hockey card in place of a business card and dropped the package in the mail.

Two weeks later, they got a reply. The producers didn’t just want Jesse Highboy, they wanted
all
of the Screech Owls to appear in their own reality show they planned to call
Goals & Dreams.
And it wouldn’t be on the small Aboriginal network in Canada. It would air on national networks all over North America – and the producers had plans to sell the show to Europe and the rest of the world.

For the first time anyone could remember, one of Nish’s mad-crazy schemes was actually working out.

He might even end up a true star.

M
uck, not surprisingly, hadn’t been big on the idea of his team being part of a reality television series, but he’d let the parents put it to a vote. Since the Screech Owls had only a four-day skills competition in Detroit between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and because the show had promised to put the players up and feed them, it was hard for any of the parents to say no – even the ones who were a bit unsure about being in the spotlight as part of the players’ “lives back home.”

What won Muck over were the skills sessions the show had promised. The producers said they would bring together several of the most forward-thinking hockey coaches in the world – one from Sweden, one from Russia, and college coaches from the United States and Canada – to devise a skills competition the likes of which had never been seen on a hockey rink.

There was also the not-so-insignificant matter that Muck, the history buff, would also get to take a closer look at the origins of Detroit’s famous Motown recording industry. The great music made in Detroit had been a big part of his youth.

So, in the end, he relented, and to great cheering in the Owls’ dressing room back in little Tamarack, he had given the go-ahead with a curt nod of his chin.

The Screech Owls were headed for Detroit … and the world of lights, cameras, and action!

“Got it!” Nish said, having snapped one of the black-satin bow ties around his neck. He slid his glittery sunglasses back down his nose. “I look Motown famous, right?
Elvis
famous?”

“You look ridiculous,” said Travis, shaking his head at the bow tie and laughing. “Not one of those people ever wore a bow tie over a T-shirt that said, ‘
PULL MY FINGER
.’ ”

Nish looked down at his shirt – the words over a picture of a giant blue-and-white Toronto Maple Leafs foam finger – and smiled.

“We’re
on
!” yelled Mr. D. “
Everyone! Bus! NOW!
”

Travis and Nish finished paying for their Stupid Stop treasures – “Only one rule,” Mr. D always told them as he handed them a little pocket money. “You have to buy something absolutely unnecessary and useless” – and together climbed onto the team’s old renovated school bus. They were expecting to see a
Goals & Dreams
cameraman with his tripod in the aisle of the bus again, ready to film more of the segment they called “The Screech Owls: Life on the Road.” Instead, he was standing next to the driver’s seat, holding a
TV
remote.

“I can’t believe it!” Sarah said as Nish straightened his ludicrous bow tie and gave the cameraman his best crooner’s smile.

“I don’t even know the Klingon phrase for this one,” Data sighed. “Maybe ‘
nuqDaq ’oH puchpa”e
?’ ”