Excerpt from HAT TRICK
by W.C. Mack
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The blast of my brand-new alarm clock sounded ten times
louder than the lunch bell at school. In fact, I was pretty
sure it could be heard from one end of Cutter Bay to the
other, and probably from every other town on Vancouver
Island.
I imagined the goalie from the Esquimalt Eagles squinting
in the dark and wondering what the racket was. And I
could practically see the whole starting lineup for the Sooke
Seagulls (who smoked us twice last season) scowling and
pulling their blankets over their heads.
Nobody loves the scream of an alarm clock at five in the
morning, not even the most diehard players in the island
league.
I groaned and reached out from under the warmest,
coziest blankets on earth and turned it off, ready to sink
back to sleep. But I'd barely closed my eyes when Mum
knocked on my door. It wasn't a gentle tap with the knuckles,
but more of a quick, powerful bang of her fist.
She meant business.
"Are you up?"
"Uh-huh," I grunted, opening one eye.
All I saw was pitch darkness, all I heard was rain splattering
against my window, and all I knew was that the wood
floor of my bedroom was going to be as cold as the arctic
ice floes we'd been studying in Mr. Marshall's class. Probably
colder.
My gut instinct was to huddle under the blankets for just
five more minutes. Mum knew it, so she banged on the
door again.
"You can't be late on the first day, hon."
My eyes popped open as I realized she wasn't talking
about school. It was something much, much better than
that.
Finally.
The first day of practice!
I smiled in the darkness, picturing the Zamboni slowly
circling the rink, leaving a slick, shiny trail I couldn't wait to
carve up with my skates. The image was what Dad would
call "a kick in the pants," but the good kind. The kind that
made me throw off the covers and leap out of bed, excited
and ready to go.
I showered and dressed as fast as I could, smiling the
whole time. When I met Mum in the kitchen, I was ready
for action in warm track pants and my favourite Canucks
hoodie (the one with the old-school logo).
"Have you got your gear ready?" Mum asked, buttoning
her raincoat.
I nodded. It was my responsibility to keep my equipment
organized. Before I went to bed the night before, I'd
packed my pads, uniform and all the stuff I'd need after
practice for school.
I may not have grown much taller over the summer, but
my feet were a full size bigger than last year, so I'd also
packed the sweet new Bauers I'd been dying to break in.
Mum handed me her keys and I went to the mudroom
to grab my bag.
I'm strong for my size, but lifting the gear onto my back
and carrying it outside took almost everything I had. With a
grunt like a rabid animal (or my sister before nine in the
morning), I heaved it into Mum's minivan.
I climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up just as
Mum got in with a travel mug of tea for herself and a hot
chocolate for me. She started the van, cranked up the heat
and turned the radio to CBC news.
Boring.
"There's a bagel in the bag," she said, nodding toward
her purse while the weather report told us it would be raining
all week.
Rain in B.C.?
Surprise, surprise.
"I'm not hungry," I told her. I was too excited about
practice to think about food.
"Well, you've got to eat something," she said, pulling
onto Evergreen Drive and squinting against the headlights
of another car.
"But—"
"Nugget," she said, shooting me a look that could probably
wound, if not kill, "you're eating the bagel."
"J.T.," I reminded her.
"Fine. Jonathan, J.T., whoever you are today, you're eating
the bagel."
It was no use arguing with a professional nutritionist.
She'd probably make me wear one of her yellow food
pyramid t-shirts to school if I didn't give in, so I unwrapped
the bagel and took a big bite. It was excellent – lightly toasted
and smeared with crunchy peanut butter. Maybe I was
hungry, after all.
"Thanks, Mum."
"You're welcome," she said, with a smile. "Have you got
everything you need for school?"
She was the queen of double-checking.
"Yup. My clothes are in the bag," I told her, once I'd
swallowed my mouthful.
"And your Math homework?"
"It's in there," I told her, taking another bite.
"Complete?"
Uh oh.
"Completely in there," I told her, as my tongue stuck to
the roof of my mouth with peanut butter.
She glanced at me. "I meant is it complete?"
"Almost."
"Almost?" she asked, slowly pulling over to the gravel
shoulder, as if the rink could wait.
"What are you doing?" I gasped. It was the first day of
practice! We didn't have time to waste yakking on the side
of the road.
"Getting to the bottom of this." She turned to face me
and I hoped her eyes wouldn't drill holes through my forehead.
"Why isn't it done?"
"It will be," I promised. "I'll finish it in Mrs. Cavanaugh's
car on the way to school." After all, Kenny's mum drove so
slowly, I could probably do a year's worth of homework in
one trip.
"Nugget."
"J.T.".
"J.T.," she sighed. "We've already discussed that the car
is not the place for homework."
"I know, but I had to pack my bag last night and —"
"And that's not a valid excuse. Hockey is never going to
come before school at our house. You know that."
I nodded.
"I can't hear you."
"I know," I told her.
"This isn't happening again. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"Good," she said, pulling back onto the road. "Listen, I
know you love to play, but school is your priority." She shook
her head. "Look at your Dad. Ending his hockey career took
one bad judgment call and less than five seconds."
She was right, of course. Dad played right wing (just like
me) for a junior team in Saskatchewan before he met her.
Everyone says he would have become an NHL All-Star, for
sure. But just before the scouts for none other than the
Calgary Flames came to check him out, he got hit in the
cheekbone with a puck going about a thousand kilometres
an hour, and he wasn't wearing a face mask.
The puck shattered the bone and damaged his left eye
so he couldn't play anymore. He was a ref for a little while
after that, but his vision was messed up and it just didn't
work. So that was the end of that. Of course, I knew Dad
liked working at the insurance company, but not as much as
he would have loved playing for the Flames.
And since his career was cut short, the McDonald family
hockey legacy was resting on my shoulders. It was up to
me to play hard and fast, skating circles around the competition
as a right winger. It was up to me to lead the secondplace
Cougars to the championship.
And I wanted to!
But my puny size had always stood in the way of ending
our second-place streak. My size and Coach O'Neal, that is.
Our season always came down to one big game, and I
never, ever got to play in it.
The Shoreline Sharks were not only the top-ranked team
on the island, but the biggest. And when I say big, I mean
they were a bunch of bruisers who looked like professional
body builders. (Okay, they might have looked more like, say,
average sized fourteen-year-olds, but the rest of us were
eleven).
Because I was extra small, Coach didn't think I could
handle myself on the ice against those goons. Every single
year, I spent the Shoreline game watching my team lose
from a front row seat on the bench.
The best seat in the house, for the worst moments of the
season.
But what Coach didn't know was that while I may not
have grown, after a summer of working as hard as I possibly
could to prepare for the season, I was tougher and faster
than I'd ever been. And I was going to play against the
Sharks, no matter what.
Mum didn't seem to notice I'd stopped listening to her,
and luckily, I'd heard it all before, so it wasn't hard to catch
up as she was finishing. "So, if your Dad didn't have an education,
he would have been out of luck. School is more
important than anything else."
"I get it, Mum. But seriously, I'm never going to use
Math."
She laughed. "Of course you are."
"Nope. I want to play for the Canucks and all hockey
players have to do is skate and score."
"Is that right?" she laughed again. "How do you plan to
handle your NHL salary and bonuses without Math?"
Hmm.
I hated to admit it, but she had me there.
When we got to the rink, I kissed Mum goodbye and
carried my bag inside, where my buddy Kenny Cavanaugh
was just ahead of me on the way to the locker room.
"Hey, Nugget," he said, glancing over his shoulder.
I took a deep breath. It was time to get the ball rolling.
"J.T."
"Huh?"
"I go by J.T. now."
"Since when?"
"Since now."
Kenny paused for a second, then shrugged under the
weight of his gear. "Whatever you say."
I followed him to the locker room, which smelled the
way it always did: like burnt popcorn and sweat. Kind of
gross, but kind of nice too.
We started pulling gear from our bags, piling helmets,
gloves, pads and practice jerseys onto one of the benches.
We wouldn't be allowed to use the lockers until we were in
high school, and I couldn't wait.
"So?" Kenny asked, licking his palm and trying to squish
one of his cowlicks. It was going to take a lot more than spit
to tame that thing. It stuck up like the antenna on Mum's
minivan and all it needed was a happy face bobble at the tip.
"So what?" I asked.
"So, why J.T.?"
I didn't want to tell him I thought it sounded cool and
mysterious. "Those are my initials," I said.
"Gotcha," he nodded. "Jonathan."
"Yeah, Jonathan Thomas."
"J.T." He shrugged. "It works for me."
"I mean, they only call me Nugget because —"
"You're small," he finished for me.
I gritted my teeth. "Right, but it's mostly because my
sister's Wendy McDonald. You know, the double fast food
thing. They've been calling her Big Mac for as long as I can
remember, but obviously instead of Hamburger or Quarter
Pounder, I got stuck with . . . Nugget."
"Oh," Kenny said, nodding his head. "I always thought
it was like a gold nugget or something, but it's actually — "
"Chicken," I told him quietly.
He shrugged. "Well, they're good with sweet and sour
sauce."
Like that was going to make me feel better.
"I've spent two years being called a chicken nugget,
Kenny."
He nodded, like he understood. "And you didn't like it."
I stared at him. "Would you?"
Kenny shrugged. "My brother calls me Turd, so I'm
probably not the best person to ask."
I cringed. Apparently, things could have been worse.
Even so, I hoped J.T. would catch on. It suited me, and I
didn't even care that my sister had already said it stood for
"Just Tiny."
You know what I thought?
I thought the dumbest thing about nicknames like
"Nugget" or "Minor League Midget" was that they were so
obvious. I knew I was short. Everyone knew I was short. All
they had to do was look at me to see the evidence stacked
up and staring back at them.
"J.T.," Kenny said, interrupting my thoughts. "Earth to J.T."
"What?"
"You zoned out. I was saying I can't believe how cold it
is out there." He pulled on his shin guards.
I thought so too, but told him, "This is nothing compared
to where my dad grew up in Saskatchewan."
"Oh yeah?" Kenny asked, as he reached for his red and
black hockey socks.
"One winter the snow got so high, Dad and my Aunt
Judy could jump off the roof onto it."
"Huh," Kenny said, not as impressed as he should have
been. "Well, my brother in Calgary tripped on his way to a
movie last winter. Know what he tripped over?"
"What?"
"The light on the top of a taxi."
Big deal. "It fell off a cab?"
"No, dummy. The whole car was buried. The whole road
was buried. He was walking on top of the taxi and didn't
even know it."
I stopped and stared at him. "No joke?"
"No joke."
"Whew. Now that's snow."
I wished I lived somewhere back east, like Quebec,
where instead of rain, it snowed like crazy and the lakes
froze solid enough to skate on. No one even had to worry
about paying for ice time. I wished that all I had to do was
play hockey. That way, I could forget about Math, and forget
school altogether.
Just play hockey.
"So, what do you think about the new guy?" Kenny
asked, as he sat on the bench and started taping his stick.
I'd already taped mine the night before, since it was my
favourite part of getting ready for the new season. "What
new guy?" I asked, adjusting my shoulder pads.
Jeff McDaniel walked into the locker room and dumped
his bag on the other bench. His sweatshirt was inside-out
and there was a piece of beef jerky hanging from his
mouth. Mum would have flipped if she saw that was how he
started his day.
"Nice breakfast." Kenny laughed.
"What new guy?" I asked again.
"Eddie Bosko," Jeff said.
His breath smelled like the inside of Dad's slippers. After
a long weekend. During a heat wave.
"Eddie Bosko?" The name sounded super familiar.
"So, now we're swimming with the Sharks, eh guys?"
Colin Bechter said, joining us and dropping his overflowing
bag on the floor.
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"Did you guys hear about Eddie Bosko?" Patrick Chen
asked, from the doorway.
"I know," Kenny said, rolling his eyes.
"How's it going?" David McCafferty mumbled, nodding
to everyone as he came in. His hair was flat on one side, like
he'd slept against the car window on the way over. He
always looked half asleep.
"We're taking about Eddie Bosko," Colin told him.
"I heard," David said. "What a burn."
"What are you guys talking about?" I practically shouted,
mad that I was the only one who didn't know.
"Geez! Cool your jets, Nugget," Colin said.
"J.T." Kenny told him.
"What?"
"Never mind," I growled. "Can somebody just tell me
what's going on?"
"Our new player," Colin explained, "is Eddie Bosko."
"Okay," I said, still not sure what the big deal was.
Colin rolled his eyes. "Eddie Bosko from the Shoreline
Sharks."
Oh, nuts.
That Eddie Bosko.
"What?" I croaked.
"That dude is a killer stickhandler," Jeff said, shaking his
head in awe.
It couldn't be happening. It didn't make sense. "Yeah,
but . . . he's a Shark," I said, quietly.
"Not anymore. His family just moved here," Kenny said.
"So he'll be going to school with us too."
"The kid is massive," Jeff said, still shaking his head.
"And have you felt his shoulder-checks?"
All the guys silently nodded, remembering the jolt of
bodies slammed against the boards. Everybody but me,
anyway. I just remembered watching him pound on us
while I sat on the bench, itching to get out on the ice.
"You know, I've been thinking about it, and with him on
our side now, this could end up being our best season ever,"
Patrick said.
"Dude," Kenny said, "he's the enemy."
Most of us nodded and got back to dressing for practice.
That is, until Eddie Bosko entered the locker room. I didn't
see him or hear him right away, but I felt his presence, like
ice cream melting down my spine.
When I turned to face him, he looked about seven feet tall.
His hair was dark and shaggy and I swear the kid had a
mustache. His bag, loaded with just as much stuff as mine,
dangled from one of his monster paws like it weighed nothing.
Like a bag of marshmallows.
I wished he didn't look so big and tough. I wished guys
like Jeff and Patrick weren't happy about him joining our
team.
But more than anything, I wished he wasn't a right
winger too.
From Hat Trick. Copyright © 2010 by W.C. Mack. All rights reserved.
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