Panic in Pittsburgh

Text copyright © 2013 by Roy MacGregor

Published in Canada by Tundra Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, One Toronto Street, Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M5C 2V6

Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012947612

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

MacGregor, Roy, 1948-

Panic in Pittsburgh / Roy MacGregor.

(Screech Owls)

eISBN: 978-1-77049-424-4

I. Title. II. Series: MacGregor, Roy, 1948- Screech Owls series.

PS8575.G84P36 2013            jC813′.54             C2012-905833-5

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

Designed by Jennifer Lum

www.tundrabooks.com

v3.1

They were laughing at him, and Travis Lindsay knew it, and he knew why. He’d been
“creamed.”

But no way was he going to give them any satisfaction from their stupid little trick. He simply sat there, staring straight ahead, pretending not to notice the snickers. Inside, he was laughing right back at them.

Travis had dozed off almost as soon as their bus pulled out of the airport. There had been a delay before the airplane carrying the Screech Owls took
off. Another delay when it landed and they had to wait for a ground crew and a gate. Then there was a long wait for the luggage carousel to start coughing up the team’s backpacks and hockey equipment. Travis was tired by the time they got on the highway, and the heat on the bus had been turned up too high.

But now Mr. Dillinger, the Screech Owls’ manager, was calling for them all to pay attention. He was standing up near the driver, with two fingers stuck in the sides of his mouth as if they were necessary to hold up his big mustache. He blew sharply – loud as a referee’s whistle – and everyone on the bus stopped giggling at Travis.

“Listen up, now!” Mr. D shouted over the roar of the tires. “You are about to see a sight that no one should miss. We’re going into the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and what you see when we get to the other side is going to take your breath away. Okay? Everyone ready for a treat?”

“
YES!
” several of the Owls shouted at once.

It was dusk on a cold evening in early January. In the brief moment of darkness after they entered the tunnel before the bus’ interior lights came on,
Travis deftly cuffed the top of his head to remove the high “ice cream cone” of shaving cream that some smart aleck –
Nish would be a good guess
– had sprayed on him while he slept. He wouldn’t give the others the pleasure of seeing him discover he was walking around with a second head. It was hardly the first time Travis had been “creamed.” Sadly, he knew it wouldn’t be the last. Not so long as Wayne Nishikawa was a member of the Screech Owls.

Travis would bide his time, and then he’d get even with Nish. He had lost count of the number of times a teammate, never Nish, had woken up to find a mound of shaving cream riding light as air on his or her head. How Nish kept thinking this was funny was beyond Travis. Much about Nish was beyond Travis – and beyond most of the Screech Owls, for that matter.

The long tunnel glowed yellow with lights along the ceiling and wall. There were cars ahead, their rear lights flaring red, and cars behind, their sun-bright headlights running along the wall as the tunnel slowly turned. Up ahead, Travis could see an opening, but nothing beyond it.

“Ready?” Mr. D called out, his big mustache bouncing with anticipated delight.

“
READY
!”

They shot out of the Fort Pitt Tunnel with night falling, their surroundings suddenly pitch-black after the bright yellow lights of the tunnel they had just come through.

It was snowing lightly, and the headlights of the bus reflected off the large white flakes, surprising and partially blinding those looking through the windshield.

Travis felt as if they were floating on air through the falling snow. It reminded him of “The Magic Carpets of Aladdin” ride at Disney World, a feeling of rising and then falling slowly, effortlessly, silently. And spread out before the Owls through the wide, clear windshield was a city of lights – lights colored blue and red in some of the skyscrapers, lights on the bridges heading over the river, lights from the cars snaking through the streets. It was beautiful.

“Welcome to Pittsburgh!” Mr. D announced, as if he himself had built the city and lit the bridges.

The Screech Owls cheered and shouted out their approval. They were here for the Peewee Winter Classic, the biggest hockey tournament ever to be played on outdoor ice. They would be playing at Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers football club, in front of more than sixty-five thousand seats, if not quite as many fans. But no matter how many empty seats there might be at the final, it was certain that the championship game would be seen by more fans than any peewee hockey game in history.

Nish might finally get into the
Guinness World Records
. Not by mooning the most people in history, or by stuffing more straws into his big yap than anyone had ever done – but as part of a
team
, if the Owls made it to the final.

“
Hey!
” a voice growled from behind Travis.

He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“
Our boy Travis lost his head!
” Nish squealed.

Everyone laughed but Travis. He stared blankly at Nish – the defenseman’s face bright enough to light a dozen Pittsburgh bridges – and shrugged as if to say he hadn’t a clue what everyone was talking about.

Little did Travis know that before the Screech Owls were back on a bus heading through the Fort Pitt Tunnel to the airport and home, he would dearly wish he did have a second head.

A spare head, sort of, that he could use to replace the one that no longer worked right.

“
P
erfect!
” Sam and Sarah said simultaneously, their voices dripping with sarcasm.

“Whaddyamean by that?” a familiar voice squealed.

Travis turned around – not to identify the voice, which obviously belonged to Nish, but to see exactly
what
it was that Samantha Bennett and Sarah Cuthbertson were ridiculing. The Screech Owls were waiting to head out for their first practice, most of them sitting around the coffee shop in their hotel.

Travis first saw the two girls shaking their heads in disgust. Then he saw Nish.

Or, at least he presumed it was Nish. Whatever it was, it was wearing an ice-blue mask, which covered the eyes but couldn’t disguise two puffy cheeks that were growing redder by the second.

Nish was not only wearing a mask, he had on this tight T-shirt, whitish blue, with a huge icicle forming the letter
I
splitting his chest in two.

“What could be better than a big
I
on you, Big Boy?” Sam shot.

The other Owls were giggling.

Nish looked about to burst. He tore his mask off and tossed it onto the nearest table, almost causing Fahd Noorizadeh’s cherry Coke to tip into his lap. Fahd, who had never been known for his good hands in hockey, caught the drink just in time.

Nish’s mouth moved as if it were trying to trap a bumblebee. “The
I
,” he said, speaking very carefully and very loudly, “stands for
ICEMAN
! I am the new Iceman! And if you don’t smarten up and shut up, I’ll freeze you both solid!”

“Deal, Big Boy,” laughed Sam, using an elastic to put her red hair into a ponytail. “We’ve been trying to freeze you out for years now.”

The rest of the Owls roared. Nish slammed his thick fist down on the table – this time causing Fahd’s cherry Coke to jump completely off the table and onto the floor. Nish grabbed his mask and stomped back toward the elevator.

“I’m going to get my equipment,” he said in a defeated tone.

Sam took one last shot: “
Don’t forget to thaw out your underwear, Mr. Iceman!
”

Travis hadn’t seen this coming. Maybe Fahd might do it. Maybe Simon Milliken. But Wayne Nishikawa?
The Iceman?

Though when he thought about it, there had been some signs. In the past few months, Nish had become obsessed with superheroes. He had all the X-Men videos, and had even taken up reading – mind you, comic books rather than real books, but reading all the same. This was a huge change for Nish, who had once told Travis that the only
possible use he could see for books was to use them as goalposts while playing mini-stick hockey in the basement.

Nish had convinced his poor suffering mother to buy every superhero movie at Walmart and now considered himself the world expert on Superman and Batman and the Flash and Green Lantern and Spider-Man and Wolverine and even Wonder Woman. He knew about special powers, magic rings, and bracelets. He knew all about the various enemies – the Joker, Scorpion, Sabretooth. He knew so much about the X-Men he could give Data a run for his money. Larry Ulmar was called Data by the Screech Owls because he seemed to know everything about everything, so it was pretty impressive to Travis that Nish could equal him.

Travis had never known his friend to show such interest in new knowledge. It might be a little weird, but at least Nish was finally learning something. His tiny little brain, it turned out, was actually capable of thinking about something other than hockey and funny body sounds.