Timberwolf Tracks Page 2

  After the last dad passed him, Johnny let the tablecloth fall back down to the floor. A few seconds later, he reached the end of the buffet table, near Tom and Stu. He crawled out.

  “Is it safe to stand?” Johnny asked.

  “No one is looking,” Stu answered.

  “Good.” Johnny stood up and joined Stu and Tom. They passed through the buffet line and filled their plates. Stu filled two plates.

  “Good work,” Stu said. “You just made history. You got ketchup on everybody’s shoes.”

  “He means everybody,” Tom said. “You got a few of the other people in line too.”

  “Oops,” Johnny said. “All I could see was the size of the shoes. Not the people in them.”

  They walked back to their table. Stu finished both his plates before Johnny and Tom could finish one plate each. Stu went back for thirds.

  Finally the meal was over.

  Johnny and Tom and Stu walked to the table with all the dads.

  “Wassabee point,” Johnny said to the dads. He threw a photo on the table. It was the photo of Stu’s dad asleep. With the sign that said: I’M THE BOSS. MY WIFE SAID I COULD BE!

  All the dads began to laugh. Especially Stu’s dad. He laughed the loudest.

  “All right, all right,” Johnny’s dad said. “That is worth one point. Your team is now up one to nothing.”

  All the boys on the Timberwolves team clapped.

  The other people in the restaurant stared at them. After the clapping stopped, it was quiet. Then someone from another table said really loudly, “Hey! Why is there ketchup on my shoes?”

  “Pretty funny,” Johnny’s dad said. “I guess other people play the shoe-check trick on each other too.”

  “Maybe all you dads should do a shoe check,” Johnny said. “For the first time in Wassabee history, we were able to shoe-check everybody at the table.”

  “Impossible!” his dad said. “We looked under the table to make sure no one was there.”

  “Impossible?” Johnny repeated. “Then I guess you won’t mind doing a shoe check. If I’m wrong, your team gets two Wassabee points. If I’m right, we get two points.”

  All the dads pushed back their chairs. All the dads looked down at their shoes. All the dads groaned.

  “Three to nothing for us,” Johnny said. All the Howling Timberwolves clapped again. “Good luck with the rest of your weekend!”

  Chapter Six

  Nightmares!

  In his sleeping bag, in the dark, Johnny dreamed of exploding marshmallows.

  There was a reason for this. Before going to bed, the fathers had built a fire for a marshmallow roast. The boys had thought this was great. Until the marshmallows had begun to explode, sending them running.

  The fathers had laughed and laughed. They had put popcorn kernels in the marshmallows. It had given them a Wassabee point. But the boys were still winning three to one, and Johnny had fallen asleep with a smile on his face.

  His dreams changed from exploding marshmallows to dreams about mice crawling on his body. He did not enjoy these dreams. He woke up.

  There was a problem though. He was still dreaming about mice crawling on his body.

  Johnny wondered how he could still be dreaming if he was awake.

  Maybe he was dreaming that he was awake. He blinked his eyes a few times to see if he was awake or asleep. He was in a cabin with bunk beds and a woodstove. The stove was burning firewood to heat the cabin. He could see the glow of the fire inside the stove.

  He could also hear Stu snoring on the bunk bed below him. Johnny knew he was awake.

  Except it still felt like mice were crawling along his body.

  Then Johnny realized something. Mice were crawling along his body! Inside his sleeping bag!

  He wanted to scream. But he was afraid if he moved, the mice would bite him. So he stayed as still as he could.

  Then Stu’s snoring stopped.

  “Are you awake?” Johnny whispered.

  “Yes,” Stu said, “but I wish I wasn’t. It feels like there are mice in my sleeping bag.”

  “Me too,” Johnny said. “But I’m afraid if I move they will bite me.”

  “Me too,” Stu said. “This is horrible.”

  “What do we do?” Johnny asked.

  “First I have to tell you something,” Stu said.

  “What?”

  Before Stu could answer, loud school bells surprised them. Very loud school bells. It was as if there were hundreds of them.

  Chapter Seven

  Trapped in a Sleeping Bag

  It was so loud Johnny jumped inside his sleeping bag. The mice scurried up his body and into his armpits. He screamed and jumped some more. But the school bells were louder than his screaming.

  The mice jumped onto his face.

  Johnny screamed again. He fought the sleeping bag, trying to get out. But he was stuck inside the sleeping bag.

  He rolled and fought and screamed.

  He rolled right out of the top bunk!

  He screamed again.

  He landed on something soft. It was Stu.

  Johnny rolled onto the floor. He was still in his sleeping bag. The good news was it seemed like all the mice had left his sleeping bag. The bad news was the school bells were still ringing really loudly.

  The other boys in the cabin had found their flashlights. They were looking for the school bells.

  They finally found what was making the noise. Alarm clocks.

  There were alarm clocks everywhere in the cabin. And all of the alarm clocks were ringing.

  Tom had an alarm clock in his hand. He threw it into the fire in the stove in the middle of the cabin. The alarm clock stopped ringing.

  Then big flashlight beams suddenly filled the cabin.

  The fathers had arrived. They shone their flashlights on all the boys.

  The fathers were laughing very hard.

  “Wassabee! Wassabee!” Tom’s dad said. “How’s that for a trick? Better than squirting water in your eyes?”

  The other alarm clocks had finally stopped ringing.

  One of the fathers pointed a flashlight at Johnny. He was still stuck in his sleeping bag. On the floor. Where he had fallen after rolling off of Stu.

  “Did the birdseed trick work?” Johnny’s dad asked.

  “Birdseed?” Johnny said.

  “In your sleeping bag. Did mice go inside your sleeping bag to look for the birdseed?”

  “Yes,” Johnny had to admit.

  “Wassabee!” his dad shouted. “Wassabee! More points for us!”

  Johnny tried to get out of his sleeping bag. That’s when he noticed a safety pin. It had pinned his T-shirt to the inside of the sleeping bag.

  “I suppose you did this too?” he asked his dad.

  “No,” his dad said. “But I wish I did.”

  “Who did it then?” Johnny asked.

  “Um,” Stu said, “remember a minute ago when I told you there was something you needed to know?”

  “You?” Johnny said. “I can’t believe you would play a trick on me.”

  “Why not?” Stu said. “Last year you put peanut butter on my face while I was sleeping.”

  Tom started laughing at Johnny.

  Johnny found a flashlight and shone it at Tom. There was a big brown blob on Tom’s face. Peanut butter. At least that trick had worked again this year.

  Chapter Eight

  The Big Game

  Johnny and Stu and Tom stood on the ice and shivered in their hockey equipment. They were watching the other players on the Howling Timberwolves play the fathers.

  Their shift was next. The score was still nothing to nothing. At least the hockey score was nothing to nothing. The Wassabee score was three to three.

  “This is crazy,” Tom said, stamping his skates.

  “Do you have any idea how cold it is?”

  “No,” Johnny said, “I’m not here.”

  “Huh?

  “You asked a dumb question,�
�� Johnny said. “I gave you a dumb answer. Of course I know how cold it is. I’m standing right beside you.”

  “On a lake,” Stu said sadly. “With wind blowing sideways. And snow in our faces. Worse, there’s no hot-dog stand nearby.”

  Stu was right about all four things. They were on Lake Wassabee. The fathers and the Howling Timberwolves had used snow shovels to clear an area on the ice to play. They had put nets on each end of the cleared area. Behind them was the camp with the cabins. The trucks and vans that the fathers had driven to Lake Wassabee were parked near the cabins.

  But the players could barely see the cabins because it had begun to snow so hard.

  Worse, one of the fathers just scored a goal.

  “Rats,” Johnny said. “Now it’s four to three for them.”

  “My toes are cold,” Tom said.

  “Don’t tell the dads,” Johnny said. “They’ll call you a sissy.”

  “I am a sissy,” Tom said. “At least when it comes to the cold. How can we play hockey in these conditions?”

  “If we don’t,” Johnny said, “we’ll lose the Wassabee trophy. So are you ready?”

  “No,” Tom said.

  “No,” Stu said.

  One of the other fathers scored another goal. Now the Timberwolves were down 5–3.

  “You better be ready,” Johnny said to Tom.

  “It’s snowing so hard I can barely see,” Tom said. “How are we supposed to play in these conditions?”

  Tom was right. It was hard to see. That gave Johnny an idea.

  “Grab an extra puck,” he told Tom. “I think we can score two points with one goal and tie the game.”

  “Impossible!” Tom said.

  “Not in the Wassabee,” Johnny answered with a grin. “Let me explain.”

  Chapter Nine

  An Impossible Comeback

  Johnny won the draw. The puck went back to Stu on defense. The puck did not move fast. The snow was falling so hard that the ice was sticky.

  Tom was on the wing. He skated forward. Johnny did something strange. He should have skated forward too. He should have gone to an open place on the ice to get a pass from Stu. Instead, Johnny skated back toward his own net.

  Stu did something strange too. As one of the fathers skated toward him, he should have passed the puck to the other defense. Or to an open forward. Instead, Stu passed the puck to the Timberwolves goalie.

  Johnny skated behind the net.

  The goalie used his stick to move the puck around behind the net to Johnny. It was snowing so hard that Johnny could barely see the other net.

  “Come and get me!” Johnny yelled to the fathers. “Unless you’re afraid I can deke all of you!”

  The fathers laughed and charged toward the net.

  Johnny dropped his right-hand hockey glove. He reached down for the puck. He made a throwing motion. He yelled, “Tom, long bomb!”

  Up ahead on the ice, Tom yelled back. “Got it!”

  Tom jumped in the air. He reached way up with one hand. He landed. He dropped his hand to the ice and dropped a puck from his glove.

  Breakaway!

  Tom raced toward the goalie. It was his dad in net.

  Tom lifted his stick to fire a slap shot. His dad jumped a little. His dad knew Tom had a hard slap shot.

  But Tom was faking.

  He brought his stick down. He pulled the puck to the left. Then to the right. He fired a low wrist shot into the bottom-right side of the net.

  Goal!

  “Unfair!” Johnny’s dad said.

  “Not unfair!” Johnny answered. “This is the Wassabee. Remember?”

  “Let them have the goal,” Stu’s dad said, skating to them. “It won’t matter. It’s snowing so hard, we’re going to have to stop the game.”

  “What?” Johnny said. “That’s unfair.”

  “No,” Stu’s dad said, “this is the Wassabee. Remember? Besides, we have to think about the drive home. If it keeps snowing like this, it will be unsafe. And we’ll have to go so slow we might not get back in time.”

  “So you’re sure the goal counts?” Johnny said.

  “Sure,” Johnny’s dad answered. “But that means you lose, five to four.”

  “Wassabee point!” Johnny yelled. He pulled a puck out of his hockey glove. “Wassabee point!”

  “What?” his dad said.

  “I didn’t throw a puck to Tom,” Johnny explained. “I only pretended to throw the puck. The whole time, Tom had a different puck in his own glove. He pretended to catch it, and used the puck he already had. You couldn’t see the trick because it was snowing so hard.”

  “Wassabee point!” Tom yelled.

  “Wassabee point!” Stu yelled.

  All together, the rest of the Timberwolves started yelling too. “Wassabee! Wassabee! Wassabee! Wassabee! Wassabee!”

  Finally the dads started laughing. Johnny’s dad waved his hands for silence.

  “Okay, okay. That was worth a Wassabee point. The game is tied. Nobody wins this year, right?”

  But it turned out Johnny’s dad was wrong.

  Chapter Ten

  Mystery Revenge

  Johnny was scraping snow off the windshield of the van as Tom’s dad sat behind the steering wheel. Tom’s dad started the van to warm up the engine as guys loaded gear into the back.

  When the engine started, Johnny saw something strange.

  Snow inside the van. Snow everywhere. It looked like a snow globe that someone had turned upside down and shaken.

  Johnny didn’t understand until Tom’s dad jumped out of the van. His clothes were covered in confetti. His hair was full of confetti. There was confetti stuck in his eyebrows.

  Tom’s dad tried to yell. He stopped. He spit confetti from his mouth.

  “Hey, who did that!” he finally yelled. “Who put confetti in the fans!”

  Johnny figured it out. One of the Timberwolves must have poured confetti in the vents of the van. When Tom’s dad turned on the fan to defrost the windows, the confetti had blown all over him.

  And all over the inside of the van.

  Johnny thought that was a great trick.

  “Wassabee point!” Johnny yelled. “Wassabee point!”

  Nearly all the Howling Timberwolves thought it was a great trick too. “Wassabee point! Wassabee point! Wassabee point!”

  The only Howling Timberwolf who did not think it was a great trick was Tom.

  “Tom,” his dad yelled. “You’re going to have to clean up the van as soon as we get home. If I find even one piece of confetti, you lose your allowance.”

  The other dads came over from their trucks and cars. They had confetti in their hair and eyebrows too.

  “Wassabee point! Wassabee point! Wassabee point!” yelled Johnny.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Johnny’s dad said. “You are up one point. But remember, it’s a long drive home. We still have time to get you back.”

  Everyone got into the vans and trucks and cars to drive away from the cabins at Camp Wassabee. But the tricks weren’t over.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Biggest Surprise

  Johnny and Stu and Tom were in the back of the van.

  “Great trick,” Tom said as he looked at all the confetti around him. It didn’t sound like he meant it. “I’ll never get this clean. There goes my allowance.”

  “It was great,” Johnny said. “When we get back to Howling, I’m going to find out which one of the guys on the team thought of it. As long as nothing happens at the restaurant on the way home, we have won the Wassabee.”

  “Rest-oh-rant,” Stu said, like he was kissing the word. Every year the fathers and sons stopped at the same restaurant on the way home. The food was never very good at Camp Wassabee.

  “Hey!” Tom’s dad said from the front. “What’s wrong?”

  Nobody answered. Tom’s dad was talking to himself. He was pushing hard on the gas pedal, but the van was not moving.

  “We must be stuck,”
he said. “All this snow.”

  But he was wrong.

  Everybody got out to push the van.

  Johnny noticed it first. “The tires aren’t touching the ground.”

  Tom dropped to his knees and looked underneath.

  “You’re right. Someone put blocks of wood underneath the axle.”

  “What a great trick!” Johnny said. “Wassabee point.”

  All the Howling Timberwolves yelled again. “Wassabee point! Wassabee point! Wassabee point!”

  It didn’t take them long to find out that all the cars and vans were on blocks of wood. But it took the dads a few minutes to jack up the cars and vans

  and pull out the blocks. Now they were covered in confetti and in more snow.

  Johnny thought this was funny. The dads did not think it was funny. In the two hours it took to drive to the restaurant in the snow, the dads did not talk much.

  But there was one more surprise. The biggest one of all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Final Shoe Check

  When the dads and the boys walked into the restaurant, they saw all the moms at a table in the back.

  “What are they doing here?” Johnny said.

  “They must have really missed us,” Johnny’s dad said.

  But Johnny’s dad was wrong.

  As soon as the moms saw the dads and the Howling Timberwolves, they all yelled, “Wassabee points! Wassabee points! Wassabee points!”

  They didn’t care that other people in the restaurant were staring at them.

  All the moms began to laugh.

  “Did you like the confetti?” Johnny’s mom asked.

  “That was my idea.”

  “Did you like the blocks of wood under the axles?” Tom’s mom asked. “That was my idea.”

  “You?” Johnny’s dad said. “You did that to us?”

  “It was a long drive, but it was worth it,” Stu’s mom said. “It was my idea to play Wassabee tricks on you. We had the spare keys to get into your cars and vans. We did it while you were on the ice playing the big game.”