Two Minutes for Roughing [NOOK Book]

Chapter 1
It all started with Mickey Tanaka. If it hadn't been for Mickey, I would have spent the whole season as an afternoon rink rat: a guy who hangs around the park, shovels the ice, and gets to play hockey when there aren't enough "real players" to make up teams. With Mickey, it was all different. It was fast and furious. It was my first year as a Metro Cat.
It was the year I learned a lot about my parents, and they learned a lot about me. In the spring they had separated, just after my twelfth birthday, and by Christmas things were looking a lot different. It was also the year I learned to control my mouth. If it hadn't been for Mickey, I'd still be sounding off at people and paying the price. That winter, when the price for smart remarks went through the ceiling, I had to learn that it just wasn't worth it. Because of Mickey and the Metro Cats, I learned to control my temper.
It began on a cold Sunday morning. My mother picked me up at my dad's place on Saturday night. I was getting pretty tired of being shuffled back and forth between Dad's apartment downtown and the new house we were renting in the east end of Toronto. I don't know why they had to move so far away from each other. When I stayed at my dad's place, he'd bring me to school at eight o'clock. In the spring it wouldn't be bad, but in the winter it gets pretty cold hanging around the school yard waiting for the bell. Anyway, I only had to do that on Thursdays and Fridays. On Saturday night, my mom came to get me and I'd get to sleep in my own bed.
That first week of December, the city started flooding the rink in the park. They were flooding it on Saturday night when my mom and I drove past, but when I got there in the morning, it was covered by ten centimetres of fresh snow. I had my skates on and a light plastic snow shovel under my arm. Whizzing end to end with the snow shovel was fun, but it was still a lot of work to get all the white stuff off the ice.
I was about halfway done when a girl from my class came by. She didn't say anything, she just stood watching me zipping from end to end, pushing the snow along to the edge of the rink and packing it up against the edge of the ice. I figured that when they flooded the rink next time, there would be a hard crust around the edge and it would act as an end board.
I didn't really know Michelle Tanaka. I knew her name and I knew that she was smart in class, but that was all. I didn't really know many of the kids well. I'd only been at Sir Henry Pellatt Public School since we moved here in late October, and I hadn't made many friends. I had half the rink cleared when Michelle came over and spoke to me.
"Hey, you're doing a pretty good job. Can you use a stick as well as you move that shovel?" She had a sort of husky voice, like a boy's.
"Yeah, well, I'm not exactly Sidney Crosby," I said. I wondered if she knew who Sidney Crosby was. "You're Michelle, right?" I asked.
"Well, I'm not exactly Michelle Pfeiffer?" she said. I wondered who Michelle Pfeiffer was. "My friends call me Mickey. What about you? Do you like being called Lester or Les?"
"Les. I hate Lester!" I was used to being teased about my name. Who would name a kid Lester Lewchuck?
"It'd be worse if you were called Michelle!" She was laughing. She had big teeth, like they were too big for the rest of her. She had short black hair, a small, sort of flat nose, and in her parka and big boots, she looked like an arctic explorer.
"I'm a goalie," she said, walking through the snow and stepping over the bank. "I'll help you clear if you want, and I'll bring my gear." She checked out the surface of the ice with her boot.
"Sure," I said, "but forget the shovel. I'll be done before you get back." I figured it was all right. She was a girl, but she seemed OK. Besides, a goalie is a goalie.
Mickey went home for her equipment, and I picked up the pace on the shoveling. I was nearly done when I heard them come up behind me.
"Hey," said a familiar voice. "Some sucker has done the hard work for us." It was Lenny Smith.
If you look up Neanderthal Man in the encyclopedia, you can see a picture of Lenny Smith. The Neanderthal Man has a large forehead and a very big mouth, but he has a very small brain. That's Lenny. Big and stupid. Everybody was afraid of him.
Roddy is Lenny's kid brother. He's more like Peking Man. He's not so ugly, and he's a little smarter. With his glasses, he almost looks intelligent. He's not exactly rocket scientist material?this is his second year in grade seven?but he's closer to human than ape.
I blew into my hands, traded the shovel for my hockey stick, and threw a puck out onto the ice. I could see them coming across the park, laughing and throwing snowballs at each other. Their dog was snuffling around by the swings, doing his business. I circled the rink, pushing the puck along in front of me, trying not to lose it under my skates and look like an idiot. The Smiths thought everyone was an idiot, and I didn't want to give them any ammunition.
"Thanks, loser. We didn't even need the shovel!" Lenny said, sticking his shovel into the snowbank.
The third member of the Smith gang was Delgatto. He was probably smarter than either of the Smiths, but he hardly ever said anything, so you couldn't be sure. He just laughed all the time?squeaky and high-pitched. His family were Catholics from somewhere in Africa. He probably had a first name, but nobody ever used it. He was just Delgatto. He always wore a leather All Star jacket and kept his hands in the pockets.
"It's Lester Loser!" Roddy cackled. "Ya wanna play hockey, loser?" The three of them were skating in a circle around me.
"No, thanks." I tried to skate clear of them. I didn't want anything to do with these guys, but I didn't want to look like a wimp, either.
"Sure you do," Roddy said, taking the puck. Roddy is in my class, but I never speak to him outside of school. If he goes one way, I always make a point of going the other. He's not really big, but he sticks close to his brother and talks like he's tough.
"So the teams are us and you," he sneered, pushing the puck over to Delgatto. Delgatto had one hand in his pocket and his stick in the other hand. He didn't seem to have any trouble stickhandling that way. He skated toward me and slipped the puck between my skate blades over to Lenny.
"Yeah!" Lenny said, setting his blades firmly in front of me, flipping the puck quickly from side to side. I wasn't about to muscle the puck away from him. I glided toward him and he slipped it across to Roddy. I turned to go after Roddy, and he passed me the puck. "Here you go, loser," he jeered.
Great, I had the puck. Not great. Delgatto and Lenny Smith came slamming in from either side of me, and I went sprawling down to the ice.
When I sat up, they were skating in circles around me, slapping the puck across the ice, coming closer to my head than I thought was funny. "Why don't you guys buzz off!" I said.
"Hey!" I heard Mickey call from across the park. "What are you jerks doing?" I watched her waddle through the snow with her pads on her legs, waving her stick over her head. She looked like a giant penguin protecting her nest. "Get lost, Smith!"
"If it ain't Miss Puckstopper, the Great Girl Goalie," Lenny sneered at Delgatto. "We could use a target, eh?"
"OK, we can use Lester the Loser as the puck," Roddy added.
I stood up and got my shovel. I didn't need this. Guys like the Smiths are the reason I've never played much sports. It always seems that the meanest and the loudest guys get the best of things. I'd rather do homework than waste my time on these creeps.
"So where are you going?" Mickey called over to me.
I didn't have a smart answer for her. I shrugged.
"He's goin' home to play some checkers. He looks like he's ready for milk and cookies to me. All this hard work, ya know," Lenny said.
"Give him a nickel for all his hard work, Delgatto," Roddy smirked. Delgatto flipped a coin onto the rink.
I didn't know whether it was a nickel, a quarter, or a dime, but I kicked it across the ice. "I hope you break your leg on it, Smith," I said.
Delgatto laughed at me. I guess he figured the Smiths would come over and punch me out and he thought that would be funny. But they didn't. Lenny flipped my puck out toward the swings where his dog was sniffing. He suggested that I could take the puck and do some uncomfortable things with it.
"Hey, Les," Mickey glided across the ice toward me. "You going to play checkers all by yourself or can I come along?"
"Sure," I said, without even thinking about it. I forgot she was a girl. Since I was about six or seven, I hadn't had a friend who was a girl. At school, there were girls who you'd play with at recess, but you wouldn't have them to your house. They were girls.
But I didn't think about it just then. I needed a friend, and I liked Mickey. So we went back to my house to play checkers and drink hot chocolate.
I wasn't sure how I was supposed to act, having a girl come over. But Mickey wasn't any different from anybody else. We clacked along the sidewalk in our skate guards, and she told me what jerks the Smiths were, how they were on her hockey team and thought they were hot stuff. My house was only a block and a half from the park.
Mickey was into music. She was into Canadian rock, like Avril Lavigne and Neil Young. "My dad went to school with Neil Young," I said. "He used to come to our old house for dinner and for parties." She flipped out when I told her that. She slung her helmet over the blade of her stick and laughed.
"Have you heard him play 'Harvest Moon,' like, live?"
"Sure," I said. I couldn't honestly remember if he had ever played that song at our house, but he probably had.
"Cool. Anyway, do you really want to play checkers? Like, my grandfather plays checkers. He always wants us to play with him."
"Yeah, sure. I haven't played checkers since I was a kid. My dad used to play with me. He's not living with us right now?"
When Mickey and I came in the side door my mom was in the kitchen, listening to the radio and drinking coffee. She was pretty surprised when she saw us. She didn't say anything, but I could see her raise her eyebrows when Mickey took off her parka. It was obvious that Mickey wasn't one of the boys.
I introduced Mickey and we went into the dining room and I got out the game. When I went into the kitchen to microwave some milk and get some cookies, my mom said, "So, who's your girlfriend?"
"She's not my girlfriend, Mom, she's a goalie!" I insisted, even though it sounded stupid. "We're going to play checkers until the ice is clear of human debris." I didn't explain about the Smiths and Delgatto. I figured she'd say something stupid like I should stand my ground, or I should make friends with them.
"You're going to play checkers?" she asked, as if she suspected we were up to something.
"Yeah, Mickey plays all the time with her grand-father."
"Oh, fine. Great. Checkers. What do I know? I didn't think checkers were cool?"
"Gimme a break, eh?" I said, wagging my head and swinging the kitchen door open with my foot.
"What do you mean about human debris?" she called after me.
"Never mind!" I yelled back. "My mother is the nosiest person alive," I said to Mickey. "You want to be red or black?"
"Red," Mickey said without hesitation. "And she's not the nosiest person alive. My mother got the award last year when my sister started going out with boys. Now my mother wants to know everything that happens every day. 'Where are you going? How long will you be there? What's the phone number? Don't talk to strangers?' She is the nosiest person on earth."
"I guess it's weird being a girl, eh?" I said. I was embarrassed as soon as I said it. I mean, Mickey was a girl, but neither of us had mentioned it. Now I was calling her weird. I didn't mean she was weird, I only thought it was different. Maybe it was normal for her to hang around with boys, but for me it was a bit strange.
"Yeah, it's weird all right. And a drag. My brothers get to do anything they want, but if my sister, Suzie, or I want to do anything, we have to play twenty questions. I mean, I know it's different for girls, but it's not fair." Mickey took one of my checkers and was closing in on my front row.
"I wouldn't know," I admitted. "The only girl I know is my mother, and she doesn't really count. My dad didn't like her very much?"
"Divorced?" Mickey asked.
"No, separated. They split up this spring. I mostly live with her. She's all right. My dad's cool, too."
I moved my checker in for the kill. Next turn I would take it. "Your move," I snickered.
"I've got one of those television families," Mickey laughed. "Two boys, two girls, two parents, Sunday dinners and all that. It's OK, but these days it seems kind of strange. I even like my family. But don't tell anybody," she whispered. "You're supposed to, like, think they're all creeps."
"Crown me." She had one of her red checkers in my last row. "Haven't you ever played checkers before?"
It was stupid. I just hadn't seen it. Mickey won that game and the next one, too. We were on our third game when she asked, out of the blue, "Why don't you try out for the Metro Cats?"
"You mean your hockey team?" I thought about it. "I can skate, and sort of push a puck around, but I've never played on an organized team?Besides, aren't the Smiths on the Metro Cats?"
"Yeah, so?" she said. "And so is Delgatto. They're pretty good players."
"Thanks for the invite, but it's probably a bad idea. I wouldn't make the team anyway."
"They have a tryout, but really all you need is the equipment and a hundred dollars. We've got four or five empty spots on the bench. You could join. I'll practise with you. I'm pretty good."
"Well, besides,"?I was thinking fast, I wasn't sure I wanted to join a hockey team?"I don't have the gear. I've got a stick, a helmet and a couple of pucks, but I don't have pants, or shin guards, or any of that stuff?"
"No problem. I've got brothers. They're bigger than you, but that's good, 'cause they won't notice when I borrow their old stuff. So it's on." She didn't leave me much of an excuse. "Saturday morning you come to the practice. Between now and then, I'll make a hockey player out of you."
And that's how I met Mickey Tanaka, and how I changed from the invisible new kid to a rookie right winger for the Metro Cats Hockey Club.