Reality Check in Detroit (7 page)

“Exactly, just keep talking,” smiled Inez, only half-listening as she checked something off on her clipboard and started to type a message into her smartphone.

The Owls and Motors stuck mostly to their own tables as the sliders arrived and were passed around. Lars had ordered the fried bologna slider, Sarah the grilled cheese, and Nish had pigged out by ordering four: two catfish sliders, a Korean one (covered in peanut butter and kimchee), and one very mysterious looking “mystery meat” slider. Meanwhile, one by one, they went over to the camera in the corner and did as they were told.

Alex Dalle: “
I’ve been captain of the Motors for two years now. I wasn’t even sure we were going to have a team this year
–
hardly any players had the money to come out. But everything seems okay. A bunch of players kind of came out of nowhere and joined the team around the same time we got approached to be in the TV show. But that was good. I mean, they’re really good
–
some of them. It’s kind of scary, actually. But that’s how our team came together this year. Lucky, I guess. I’m just really glad we’ve been able to play. We almost didn’t have enough players.”

Sarah Cuthbertson: “
All of this hair spray and makeup isn’t really me at all. I don’t know what I’m really supposed to talk about here. Hockey? Then why am I all made up? Nish, the ignoramus, is more built for this flashy, fame-seeking kind of stuff. I just care about the game. I love the game. When I’m on my game, that’s beauty to me. That’s reality. The rest of this … well, this is just kind of fake, isn’t it?
”

Cody “Hollywood” Kelly: “I
think we’ve got a great team this year. I’m new to the team, so are a lot of the guys, but we’re going to kick those Screech Owls’ butts. You know, we’re going to come out of nowhere. We’re going to do it. We had trouble with the first comp, but this second one will be better. You just wait. By the time the actual game rolls around, the heroes – that’s us, of course – are going to take over, like in every great American sports movie. Ha! I guess that’s why they call me Hollywood. We’re going to rise up and take over … it’s coming.
”

Jerome “Smitty” Smith: “
I
grew up in Detroit. This is my city. My mom was a musician – a backup singer, like her mom, who was part of the original Motown. My dad worked in the car industry. I love it here – but this city’s in bad trouble. I joined the Motors this year because I heard there might be some bantam AAA scouts around, and that’s where the junior teams draft their prospects from … I heard they might be checking out this show. I had to get in. I want to make a career of my hockey. My dad’s out of work now, and my mom’s not really working either. I want to make things better for them. I’ve gotta make it to the NHL. Can you imagine? Mom, Dad, here’s a million bucks for you – bam! Go pay some bills! Buy yourselves a new home! I have to do it. That’s why I’m so determined. That’s why I don’t play around.
”

Wayne “Money” Nishikawa: “I
play defense for the Screech Owls. I’m the star player … I think I told you that. And stylish
–
the glasses, the look. Once I get my spin-o-rama move down perfectly
–
which I’ll get tomorrow, for sure
–
no one will be able to keep me out of the NHL. I’m young, yeah, but once the scouts see that move on TV, they’ll see that I’m a hockey genius. You have to scout geniuses early. That’s how it works. Scoop them up before someone else does. I’m not full of myself like Sarah thinks
–
I just tell it like it is. That’s what you’re supposed to do on these reality shows, right?
”

“This is kind of weird, don’t you think?” said Alex Dalle, the Motors’ captain, laughing a little as she and Travis arrived at hair and makeup for their touch-ups at the same time. Inez had asked the players to make sure they got re-powdered – “to take the shine off your faces.”

“So weird,” giggled Travis. He sat down, and one of the makeup assistants began twirling a fluffy powdered brush on the tip of his nose.

Travis still hadn’t introduced himself to the camera in the corner, but he’d gone over and hung out
beside
the camera, careful not to get caught in the background of anyone’s clip.

Cody’s diary entry had been intriguing, but not really surprising. Travis guessed that maybe the producers had made him say it. It just hadn’t sounded real.
The Motors were going to come out of nowhere? They were the underdogs?
Sure, the Screech Owls had won the first skills competition – by a lot – but some of the Motors really knew how to play. If Hollywood was really behind his team, Travis thought, he should have been asking what the heck was happening out there on the ice.

But Hollywood’s little speech wasn’t the most interesting. Travis had been standing behind the curtain when Smitty made his diary entry. It was the first time Travis had really heard Smitty speak more than a one-word sentence. And the things he said! Even the producers couldn’t have made that up. Underneath Smitty’s gruff exterior … well, there was a good guy in there somewhere. That was the first thing that shocked Travis. The second was how deep Smitty’s voice sounded.

“Your guy Smitty sure doesn’t talk much,” offered Travis, not quite sure how to make conversation with a player on a rival team while the cameras were roaming around.

“I think he’s –” Alex started as the hair assistant teased the back of her hair into a subtle, sloping bump. “I think he’s trying to hide his voice, honestly. I don’t know him that well. He wasn’t with us last year.”

“Trying to hide it because it goes up and down like a yo-yo?” Travis giggled. His own voice hadn’t started to change yet. Although, during Smitty’s diary entry, Travis hadn’t heard the player’s deep voice skip a beat.

“Like I said, he wasn’t on the team last year.” Alex looked like she wanted to say more, but she just shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I think he tries to hide it because his voice has already changed.”

Data and the Detroit Motors player they called Wi-Fi were also tagged out by Inez for some touch-ups.

“They don’t like that I keep wearing the helmet cam – but it’s mine; they just gave me the idea,” Wi-Fi said as he reached Travis, Data, and Alex. “They say they want to do their own filming.”

“But you’re still keeping it, right?” Data smiled, motioning to the miniature camera now attached to the baseball cap that never seemed to leave Wi-Fi’s head.

Wi-Fi nodded in agreement.

“What are you doing with the footage?” Data asked, fascinated.

“I worked it so I can stream online through my phone. Just a matter of hooking up to the wireless signal.”

Data was impressed. “Nicely done,” he said, nodding in enthusiastic agreement. “Really cool.”

Wi-Fi smiled at Data. “Yeah, no sound – my mike isn’t good enough – but still cool. And it gives me something to tweet about. We don’t have fancy equipment to brag about like your team.” He shrugged, still smiling.

Data just nodded. Travis could tell he was fighting back the urge to tell Wi-Fi about how the Motors’ new equipment had been delayed but was on its way. He knew what Wi-Fi was getting at – Data had tweeted photos of the Owls in their new jackets. The producers had been pressuring the two teams to talk about the series online, saying it would create more viewers for the program. Data, who had taken the lead for the Owls’ online presence, just as Wi-Fi had for the Motors, had posted the picture when he was low on ideas, and had instantly regretted it.

“I didn’t really know what to write,” confessed Data. “I just thought some of the new equipment was cool. We weren’t supposed to talk to you guys about it, but I thought that online … it would be okay.”

Over at the tables, Hollywood burst out laughing, and then Nish, not to be outdone, did the same. “Ha, ha, ha! Then maybe we’ll have to
moon them
is all I’m saying,” Nish boomed, talking through the french fries he was chewing. Travis didn’t really want to know what the conversation was about. Nish took a big, sloppy bite of his Korean slider – one that left a shiny blob of peanut butter on his bow tie – and kept babbling.

“What do you mean, you weren’t supposed to talk to us about it?” Alex said, standing up so Wi-Fi could sit down for his powder application. “You don’t think we can take some chirping from a bunch of rich kids?”

“We’re not rich,” started Travis, realizing for the first time that Nish’s new nickname could have more than one meaning.

Alex crossed her arms defiantly, but she looked curious, confused. Wi-Fi squinted. His shine-reducing powder was so caked on that he looked like a hockey player caught in a sandstorm.

“They just
gave
us all this stuff,” whispered Travis. “They told us that your equipment, stuff like ours, had been lost. They said that’s why you still had your mismatched socks and all that. They said we shouldn’t say anything, ’cause you’d feel bad about it.”

Wi-Fi and Alex looked at each other, wide-eyed, and then both turned back to Travis.

“They’re the ones who gave us those mismatched socks,” said Alex, her glittery, mascaraed eyes now full of suspicion.

T
ravis had to admit it was pretty funny – even if it was also sick, violent, stupid, over the top, ridiculous, and … 
wrong.

Nish thought it was hilarious. He was laughing so hard beside Travis on the team bus it was a wonder he hadn’t peed his pants.

Mr. D had been up to his old tricks. The team was heading out to nearby Dearborn and the Henry Ford estate for a session the producers had set up on an outdoor rink, and the Owls’ manager had loaded a cartoon into the bus’s video system that would last just about the whole length of the short trip.

Mr. D claimed the cartoon they were watching had been made twenty years before he’d even been born. It was called
Hockey Homicide
, and it starred Walt Disney’s Goofy. It also starred Goofy, and Goofy, and Goofy – and, oh yes, Goofy. In fact, every single character was played by Goofy. He played Ice Box Bertino and Fearless Ferguson, the two stars of the Moose and the Pelicans. He played the referee, “Clean Game” Kinney, who Travis figured had to have the most wrongheaded nickname he’d ever heard of – maybe even worse than “Money” Nishikawa.

It was supposed to be a cartoon about hockey. All the Goofys wore skates and carried sticks, and there were pucks, but all they did for seven minutes or so was clobber each other over the head with their sticks and see stars when they were knocked silly.

Nish was howling with laughter, but it made Travis cringe. This wasn’t hockey; this was someone’s idea of hockey who had never played the game. Where was the beauty? Where was the fun? This was just head-bashing and laughing at people who got knocked out. Travis knew all about getting hit in the head. It had happened to him in Pittsburgh, and it had once almost ended Sidney Crosby’s brilliant
NHL
career. Nothing funny in that, Travis thought.

Muck sometimes talked to the Owls about shots to the head. He said he began playing back when players didn’t have to wear helmets, so most didn’t. He told them his old teammate Paul Henderson had been laughed at for wearing a helmet, but today Paul Henderson is one of the most honored and loved hockey players in history. He told them they used to laugh off a hit to the head back then, and say a player had “had his bell rung.” But now they know that concussions are no joke, and head shots have become hockey’s ultimate no-no.

The cartoon got more and more ridiculous. Jet fighters dive-bombed over the rink. A whale burst up through the ice and dived back down again. And still players clobbered each other left and right until most of them had been knocked silly.

When it was over, Nish stood, clapping and cheering, and several of the others – Fahd, Andy, Wilson – stood as well. It was only a cartoon, thought Travis, but still; it was crazy what some people would do for entertainment. At least the producers of
Goals & Dreams
weren’t asking them to throw in extra fights for ratings. So far, the Owls had only been asked to wear makeup and to sometimes redo a shot if the camera had missed it, but that was it.

Muck stood up, clicked off the television, and simply stared at Nish until he melted back into his seat, red-faced and quiet.

Muck sat back down without a word.

None necessary.

Travis had never seen anything like the Henry Ford estate. It was
huge
– larger than any farm he had ever visited. The house was like a castle, with heavy limestone walls – “Fifty-six rooms, including its own bowling alley,” Data called out as he read from his ever-present smartphone – and it overlooked a river that had been dammed to power the estate’s very own hydroelectric plant.

At the back of the large, snow-covered gardens, an outdoor rink had been erected, with real boards, lines in the ice, face-off circles, and two new regulation goal nets. Some of the boards around the sides had holes carved in them, covered in Plexiglas, so that the production crew could film the action as if they were right in the middle of it. There seemed to be cameras everywhere. For the next segment of
Goals & Dreams
, they had really pulled out all the stops.

Trailers were set up haphazardly in the parking lot – nothing like the perfect straight line of portables outside Tamarack Public School – and there was a lot of activity. A buffet food station had even been set up to feed all the camera and sound workers who would be filming the afternoon events.

The producers wanted the Owls to come into the largest trailer, which they called their war room. Inside were a couple of dozen chairs and, pasted up all over the walls, charts showing the story line of the episodes they had already shot and aired, and the episode that would be shot today.

“What’s with all the Nish?” Sarah whispered in Travis’s ear as they entered the room.

Travis had noticed, too. There were photos taped up everywhere as well, and it was surprising how many of them involved Money, the big, loudmouthed defenseman of the Owls.

But Nish wasn’t the only one featured. There was a photo of Sarah pasted right next to one of Hollywood, Cody Kelly. And there was even one shot of Travis putting on his jersey, his head just bumping out an impression as he was pulling it on.