Reality Check in Detroit (8 page)

Travis shuddered. They don’t know I kiss the Screech Owls crest from the inside, do they?

“Okay, Screech Owls,” a nasal voice commanded. Travis didn’t need to look to know it was Inez. “Everybody take a seat, please. We want to go over a few matters before the actual competition.”

Travis could tell by the way Muck sagged into his chair – as if he’d put on a hundred pounds since the competition at the Joe – that Inez had lost him. He’d okayed the trip because of promises the producers had made but never kept. He was losing interest fast.

As the Owls took their seats, production assistants handed out “scripts” to the players. Each had the player’s name on it. Some were a single page, some several pages. Nish’s looked like a small book.

“
I’m the star! I’m the star! I’m the star
!” Nish practically sang as he flipped through it.

Inez heard him. “You will be. We want you to improvise. Can you do that? Can you just sort of make it up as you go?”

“Why not?” Muck said dryly from the back of the trailer. “It’s how he plays the game.”

Inez sent Muck a clipped-off smile. Its meaning was clear:
I’ll do the talking, thanks.

Muck just shrugged and stepped out the door without a word. Travis knew from experience that Muck didn’t always have to speak to get his meaning across. The Screech Owls’ coach was clearly not impressed with the way this whole thing was going.

“What you have there are individual scripts,” Inez said, smiling now that she had the Owls to herself. “They’re not law, but sort of a guide for you in certain situations. We want to see you engaged with the Motors. We want you to have some back-and-forth, you know, take a few shots at each other, trash-talk the other side – what is it they call it in hockey?”

“Chirping,” Nish shouted. “And I’m the master chirper.”

“We’re wiring you for sound, Money,” Inez said. “And several of you will carry personal microphones. Those who aren’t wired will also be heard, though, as we will have a couple of production assistants holding special mikes – parabolic microphones, they’re called – in different spots around the rink to pick up every word you say. They’ll be following the same action as the cameras. We want you to be yourselves, and we want some chirping – but please don’t swear. We’d have to bleep it out if you do.”

“I’d like to bleep Nish right off the face of the earth,” Sam whispered. Sarah and Travis giggled. Nish turned around and gave her a raspberry.

“Okay, then,” Inez said. “Have a quick study of the scripts we’ve prepared for you, and then we’ll get you all over to the Screech Owls’ dressing room at the side of the rink.”

Travis didn’t need to spend much time on his script. He was going to be involved in a couple of the events – none of them sounded particularly “hockey” to him – and he was encouraged to banter with Alex, the captain of the Motors, the girl he’d met over in the hair and makeup corner at the Green Dot the night before, the girl he’d noted was one of the Detroit team’s strongest skaters.

He was just heading out of the war-room trailer when Sarah grabbed his sleeve and pulled him to the side.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Sarah was blushing. She shook her script in Travis’s face. “Have a look at this.”

Travis had a quick read: “At the end of one of the events, Sarah is to skate over and engage with Hollywood. They’ve already struck up a friendship and viewer response has been exceptional. Money sees Sarah and Hollywood flirting and skates over to steal her back …”

Travis burst out laughing so quickly he almost choked. “What the –?”

“I’d rather die!” Sarah said.

“I thought you
liked
Cody,” Travis teased.

Sarah shrugged. “So what if he’s … nice. It’s the second part of it that makes me want to die! Nish is supposed to be my white knight?
Puh-leez!
You’ve got to save me from that, Trav.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Just do something. I can’t have them make a fool of me just for their stupid television show.”

“Okay,” Travis said. “I’ll think of something.”

But he had no idea what that might be.

N
ish was out of control. Or rather, his mouth was out of control. The worst thing the producers could have done was encourage him. He was making an ass of himself.

During the warm-up, Nish scanned the Motors’ lineup and discovered one of the Detroit defensemen, a big kid with an open, friendly face, was named Stuart Jennings.

“Hey, Stu!” Nish yelled across the center line to the big defenseman. “Is it true that
Stu
is short for
Stuuu-pid
?”

Nish skated away giggling like a tickled baby. A cameraman ran alongside him, slipping and sliding in his work boots but capturing every word, every look, every moment of “Money” Nishikawa’s chirping glory.

Travis couldn’t help noticing that the more
Goals & Dreams
went along, the further it got from hockey. The skills events at the Joe had at least
felt
like hockey. What was being filmed on the outdoor rink looked more like a winter carnival.

In the Owls’ trailer, while the crew had been setting up the cameras and the team was actually alone for a change, getting ready to play, Muck had made some effort to bring the players back to the game – to keep their focus on hockey rather than the bright lights and the “stage” on which they’d be skating.

“As many of you Owls have been told, Joe Louis was poor,” Muck had said, and the Owls had all bowed their heads to listen. Then, only Data had been filming. “Joe Louis did very, very well, but he never forgot where he came from. He always tried to fight fair. It’s said that he never, ever engaged in a fixed fight.

“Remember that when you’re out on the rink. Remember where you came from. Hockey is like any sport: you’re only as good as the player you’re
trying
to be. If you fight fair, if you play hard, and honestly, you’ll already have won something. The lights, the cameras … none of that really means anything.”

It had been good to see the old inspired Muck again – even just for a few minutes. Travis was sure he had never heard Muck make such a long speech to the team. It had to be something he felt strongly about.

The Owls had then stood in a circle, banged gloves, elbowed each other, and tapped their sticks on the floor of the trailer. They were ready to compete.

But despite Muck’s talk, Travis had to admit that the “stage” where they were competing was going to look great on television. The sun was bright and the setting magnificent. The air was so crisp and clean it felt like someone had freshly washed it. The outdoor rink was gorgeous. It looked timeless, as if the Owls had stepped into a scene that existed a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago, and right this minute – all at once.

This was going to be fun.

Brian, the producer who was deeply in love with his own beard, went over the first event with the players. “It’s called Pig in the Middle,” he told them.

“
Nish
in the Middle,” Sam cracked. All the Owls laughed – and so did all the Motors. Nish’s reputation had spread.

“The idea,” Brian went on, reading from a piece of paper, “is to divide up on the ice into groups of four, with two Owls and two Motors in each group. You can use the circles in the ice for four of the groups, and two more groups can form in the center ice area. One player in each group is the checker. The checker has to stop the other three from passing to each other. Once the checker intercepts a puck, he or she becomes a passer, and the one who coughed up the puck becomes the checker. We’ll pick one winning checker from each group.”

They called out the names for each group. Travis found himself at the far left face-off circle with Sarah and the Motors’ captain, Alex, who smiled at him, and Smitty, who didn’t. They began passing while the cameras swirled about them. Sarah was first to check the others, and she deftly knocked a saucer pass from Smitty to Alex out of the air and gobbled it up with her feet. Smitty scowled. Now he was the checker, and the puck flew around the circle as he attempted to intercept. Travis was impressed at what a terrific passer Alex was.

Eventually, Smitty caught a pass from Travis by going down and extending his stick along the ice. He finally smiled – or perhaps it was more a sneer.

Travis was now the checker. It was harder than it looked. He would go toward one of the three, and just when he thought he had them covered, they would slip a pass to someone who was open. And the three passers kept circling around the face-off circle so that they were always finding new positions. Travis went down to block passes and failed. He tried poke-checking and failed. He went down on his stomach and stabbed, and failed. In the end, he clipped a puck out of the air and it was Alex’s turn.

Alex stuck out her bottom lip in a hurt expression. Travis felt bad.… No, he felt
great.

Soon the whistle blew and they all stopped. Men wearing tracksuits and skates tagged winners from the various Pig in the Middle groups. From Travis’s group they chose Alex. He thought she deserved it.

Next up was the Longest Slide. Each player was to skate to the first blue line as fast as he or she could and then go down. The one who slid the farthest was the winner. Sarah and Dmitri, the Owls’ two fastest skaters, made it all the way to the icing line before they stopped. Nish, the heaviest skater, made it to the far face-off circle. But Smitty, who dived straight to his stomach rather than falling first to his knees, was still moving fast when he knocked into the far boards. He was immediately declared the winner.

Soon after, Travis saw the Owls’ coach walk away from his post leaning on the rink boards. Even from a distance, Travis could tell that Muck was shaking his head. This wasn’t hockey. But it sure was fun.

Next was the Bouncing Puck competition. The organizers selected six players – three Owls, Fahd, Sam, Wilson, and three Motors, including the one called Wi-Fi – to dress in bizarre “puck” outfits. They looked like spacemen, but with huge inner tubes around their middles that were supposed to look like pucks. They were told to race once around the entire rink and were free to “bump” at will.

Travis had never seen anything quite so funny in his life. When the bouncing puck that was Fahd tried to bounce into one of the Motors, it looked like he’d just bounced off a trampoline. Poor Fahd went flying in the opposite direction and hit the ice, where he struggled like an upside-down turtle to get back on his skates.

Down the ice the other contestants went, the “pucks” bouncing off each other like pinballs. At the far net, they got into a traffic jam, and only Wilson and one of the Motors got out of it without wiping out. It ended with a race to the finish. Wilson thought he’d try Smitty’s trick and he dived as he approached the blue line, only his inner tube acted like a brake and stalled him a good six feet from the finish. The Motors’ “puck” won easily.

Then they competed for the Ice Break Dancing crown. Loud rap music pumped through the speakers, echoing off the Ford mansion and the nearby trees, while all the players tried the wildest dance moves ever seen on a hockey rink.

Nish was center stage, surrounded by cameras. But so, too, was Smitty, who really could breakdance and was showing some amazingly athletic moves. The organizers went around the rink tapping various players, taking them out of the contest, until they had cleared the ice of all but two competitors, Nish and Smitty.

They cranked up the music even louder, the bass notes crashing off the Ford mansion like cannon fire. Nish was sweating like a pig, but he was dancing as if his life depended on it, even pulling off a pretty fair moonwalk on his skates.

Smitty, however, had his own moves. Down on his back and writhing to the music, he somehow executed an acrobatic “kip up” that shot him to his feet in one snakelike move, whereupon he began moving his legs in a way that made them look like they had turned to rubber, all the while keeping perfect time with the music.

The Motors – and many of the Owls – began cheering. The fans in the stands around the outdoor rink – fans who had seemed to come out of nowhere – went wild.

In the first skills competitions, Travis had been surprised at which Motors players the producers picked for some of the matchups. Now it seemed their choices were dead-on. The dance-off seemed to have been created for Smitty – he was that good.

An organizer went over and tapped Nish on the shoulder. It was like a storm had broken on Nish’s face. Beet red, he cuffed away the organizer’s hand and shouted, “
No fair! I was clearly the best
!”

Travis cringed and looked at Sarah, whose mouth twisted into a deep frown. They both noted how several cameras had moved in to capture the moment. Nish would come across as a poor loser.

A spoiled brat.

T
he final event was to be British Bulldog on Ice. Both teams were told to fill the nets with their sticks and come out to center ice, where the game would be explained.

Producer Brian came out again, slipping and almost falling as he made his way over. “This is a simple game,” he said. “We select a ‘bulldog,’ and everyone else goes back to the goal line. When Terry here” – he pointed at a young man in a coach’s outfit – “blows the whistle, all the skaters but the bulldog head for the opposite end. The bulldog’s job is to tag you. The moment you are tagged, you become another bulldog for when the players skate back in the other direction. The game ends when there’s only one untagged player still skating – and that’s our winner.”