Ice Magic Read Free

ice, Terry said to Pie, “We’re going on the ice one more time. Hope you don’t do anything
     to get yourself in the sin bin.”
    “You think I
want
to get in there?” Pie snorted.
    “Well — you
play
as if you do,” Terry answered, bluntly.
    Neither Line 2 nor Line 3 could break the tie, and Line 1 returned to the ice for its last chance. Pie remembered Terry’s
     curt warning and tried his best not to commit a foul. He realized, though, that being careful didn’t help either. Once, instead
     of charging toward a Bear to intercept a puck, Pie slowed down and let the man receive the pellet without trouble. Maybe,
     he thought—just maybe — the man might miss the puck.
    He didn’t. He hooked it neatly with his stick, passed it to a teammate, and a score followed.
    “Pie!” Terry shouted at him. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
    Ignoring him, Pie skated to his position, sullen and dead tired.
Man, I just can’t do a thing right,
he thought dismally.
    It was Line 2 that tied up the score again, and then Line 3 that broke it, winning the game for the Penguins 7 to 6.
    They shouted joyously over their victory, and their fans cheered, too. Pie hoped that the win would make Terry forget how
     he had performed today. But he was sure it wouldn’t. Even though Terry ignored him completely as they headed for the locker
     room, Pie knew that Terry never forgot someone else’s mistakes — only his own.
    Pie put on his shoes, slung the skates over his shoulder, and walked out to the snow-packed street. The bright sun dazzled
     like a diamond through the bare trees. The frigid air nipped at his cheeks like sharp teeth.
    “Hi, Pie!”
    Jody and Joliette Byrd sprang from behind a bush to surprise him and laughed when he jumped.
    “You crazy kids,” he said. He remembered the strange comment they had made to him in the locker room immediately after thefirst period of the hockey game, and asked, “What were you guys saying about a game?”
    “Our toy hockey game!” Jody replied, getting on Pie’s left side while Joliette got on Pie’s right. They both were at least
     a foot shorter than he, and it embarrassed him every time they greeted him this way. Some guys had kidded him about having
     these little kids as friends.
    But they had one thing in common with Pie which made him care less what anybody thought. It was their mutual interest in magic.
     Since the twins had found an old book on magic in their attic and had let Pie read it, all three of them had become so interested
     in the subject that they had purchased new books. Jody even said that he would become a magician when he grew up.
    “And I’ll be his assistant,” Joliette had promised with that teeth-flashing smile of hers.
    “What about the toy hockey game?” Pie asked curiously
    “Well, Jolie and I played a game last night,” Jody explained. “We named the teams the Bears and the Penguins, and I had the
     Penguins. I also named each of the players after each of the guys on the Penguins’ team.”
    “So?”
    Jody looked at him seriously. “We played and my team won 7 to 6.”
    “What a coincidence,” said Pie. “That was our score!”
    “Right,” Jody said. “But that isn’t all. The guys who had scored on my team were the same ones who had scored on yours — it’s
     like magic!”

3
    P ie stared, his mouth a small round o. He had read a lot about magic. There was the entertaining kind in which a magician pulled
     doves out of his coat pockets or made a person disappear in a puff of smoke.
    There were also magical spells which believers thought could make rain when crops were poor.
    And there was black magic, too — in which believers thought they could hurt a victim by sticking darts into a doll that they
     pretended was the victim.
    But this thing with the toy hockey gamewas different. This was a kind of magic Pie had never read about before.
    “Are you sure that all that stuff in our game really happened in yours?” he asked the