Center Ice (20 page)

She raised an eyebrow. “I have his cell number, Chris. I speak to him fairly regularly. I’ve never found him hard to get hold of.”

“Huh. Well…he must really like you. That’s nice, isn’t it? He answers your calls when he won’t pick up for his own players.”

“So he’ll be happy to hear from me, even if I’m giving him some bad news.”

This wasn’t going well at all. “Wait. Bad news? Just that I’m late for practice today. That’s all. You’re not going to tell him something
else
, are you?”

“Well, I should possibly talk to him about your marks, too.”

This conversation was going in a lot of different directions, none of which seemed good. “Uh, wait. You said you’d set up a tutor.” I’d asked her if I could just drop functions and chemistry, but the school’s so small there isn’t a lot of choice in any given period. She couldn’t find a way to make my schedule work without those courses, not if I still wanted to get the credits I needed to go to university. Which I still kind of did, even if I
was
pretty sure I’d end up flunking out in my first year.

“That’s right, you
did
ask for a tutor—that was very responsible of you. And I think I have someone in mind. But I don’t want to waste her time if you aren’t committed. So, Chris, I need to know you’re going to follow through with it.”

Well, she knew me pretty well. “I plan to,” I told her honestly.

She smiled, but her eyes were sharp. “I think I’d like a little more than that, Chris. Tell you what. These cows get home safely and get washed,
and
I get good reports from your tutor that you’re making a genuine effort? And I’ll hold off on calling the coach. But any problems with the cows,
or
with the tutoring? I’ll not only call him, I’ll ask him to bench you until your attitude improves. Clear?”

“But—the cows—you don’t—that could have been anybody!”

“I am cruel and unfair. If you want to complain about it, give your parents a call; I’d be pleased to discuss the situation with them. Or with the coach.” She waited just long enough to make it clear that she’d called my bluff and I had no more arguments to make. Then she smiled. “Okay. So I’ll hear good things about clean cows and tutoring. And if I don’t….”

She didn’t really need to finish the threat, and we both knew it. So she turned and walked away, and I stared glumly at the cows.

“Git along, lil’ doggie,” Tyler told me.

“Doggies are cows, not cowboys.”

“Okay, then, giddyup. Whatever. Get the cows home and start washing them. I’ll round up the guys and we’ll come help. Maybe we can get it done fast and you won’t miss practice.”

“Yeah?”

Tyler shrugged. “You’re an idiot, but you’re
our
idiot. We’ll help.”

So I started rounding up the cattle; they’d finished licking up the sugar-water we’d sprayed all over the grass so they weren’t as hard to move as they might have been a bit earlier. And there were quite a few farm kids in the crowd who were happy to show off skills that usually didn’t get a whole lot of attention at school. So we had a nice little parade heading across the lawn, over the driveway, and into the forest on the far side. The cattle didn’t seem to care too much about staying on the path, so it got a bit hard to keep track of them, but we finally made it back to the fence we’d cut and carefully re-wired to make sure no extra cows escaped while these ones were on vacation. I noticed that the other guys who had helped me with the prank weren’t helping with the clean-up; maybe they were collecting the video evidence, or maybe they were just goofing off. I was the only one of us who had hockey to be taken away, so I was the only one who really cared about staying out of trouble.

Besides, I didn’t want the cows to get hurt,
or
the farmer to get pissed off. It had always been the plan to return them.

It was the washing that I hadn’t really counted on.

But as I looked toward the barn, I saw a group of kids waiting for us. There must have been fifty people, way more than were on the hockey team. That was the thing about Tyler: people just wanted to follow him, even if he was doing something as stupid as washing food coloring off cows.

I wasn’t going to complain about the help, that was for sure. We divided up the rags and the buckets and set up a sort of conveyer-belt of cows, each animal being led along past a gang of kids scrubbing different parts, then rinsed off by the guys with the hoses at the end.

It was October, but a pretty warm day, so it really wasn’t that bad to be out there in the sun with my friends. And the farmer was a Raiders fan, just like practically everyone else in town, so he thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Overall, I was in a pretty good mood as we finished off with the cows and trooped back through the woods toward the school, only a few minutes late for our after-lunch classes. A bit stinky, because wet cows smell about as good as wet dogs, but that was kind of a badge of honor.

Of course, Tyler couldn’t just let me enjoy the moment. “You need to do the tutoring,” he said as he walked along beside me. “The cows were easy, but Mrs. Davidson isn’t going to forget about the rest of it. And you know how Coach will react if she calls him.”

Yeah, I knew. Coach cared about hockey, sure, but it wasn’t
all
he cared about. Unfortunately. I’d seen him bench guys before, not letting them play until they got their marks up, and I was hoping that this would be my final season in the league. I needed to be on the ice if I was going to get the scouts to notice me. “I’ll do it,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, you will,” Tyler said. He sounded almost threatening. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Sometimes he took the team captain job a bit too seriously. But, still, I guess it was nice to have him on my side. Nice that he cared enough to nag. I guess.

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