The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 2 by Roy Macgregor

Author:Roy Macgregor
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781551992389
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2006-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Travis was secretly glad they wouldn’t be staying in this fancy hotel. He had never been inside a lobby quite so lovely as the one in the Château Frontenac, but he also felt that to feel comfortable here he’d need to be a member of royalty, not the captain of a peewee hockey team. It was too fancy, too special. Even the doorman intimidated the Owls, shooing them away from the entrance, where they had stopped to watch the hotel guests come and go in everything from stretch limousines to horse-drawn calèches.

The Owls gathered in a large ballroom with two other teams. The players were all given pins and a warm welcome by one of the organizers, who told them they were very lucky this year, because their time in Quebec City would overlap with the Quebec Winter Carnival.

They then met their billets. Travis, Nish, and Lars would all be guests of the Duponts, a family in which the parents spoke no English at all, but the children–Jean-Paul, a bantam player more than a year older than the three Owls, and Nicole, who was their age–were perfectly bilingual.

“You can call me J-P,” Jean-Paul said as he shook Travis’s hand.

“Thanks,” Travis said.

“Bienvenue à Québec, Travis,” Nicole said to Travis, smiling and reaching out to shake his hand.

“Merci,” he said, and felt a fool. He could say nothing else. Partly it was his lack of French. Partly it was Nicole. She was slim and pretty, with dark, shiny hair that fell over one cheek and had to be tossed back every so often.

Nicole offered the same greeting to Nish, who blushed, and then to Lars, who bowed elegantly, causing Nicole to giggle.

“Merci bien,” said Lars in a near-perfect French accent. “C’est une très belle ville, mademoiselle.”

When Nicole had moved on, Nish and Travis pressed close to Lars.

“Where did you learn to speak French?” Nish hissed.

“I don’t know,” Lars answered, looking surprised at his friends’ reaction. “School when I was still in Sweden, I guess. It’s no big deal.”

“How many languages do you speak, anyway?” Travis demanded.

Lars laughed. “I never counted. But let me see: Swedish, German, a little Danish, a little Norwegian, English, of course, a bit of French…”

“Et-gay a-ay ife-lay,” Nish said.

Lars looked at him, dumbfounded. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Pig Latin,” Nish said, triumphantly.

“What’s it mean?”

“Get a life!” Nish almost shouted.

Travis couldn’t stop giggling. He hadn’t heard anyone use Pig Latin since grade school, but, if anyone would remember, it would be Nish.

Travis was still laughing when Mr. Dillinger took his arm and pulled him aside.

“Travis,” Mr. Dillinger said in a quiet voice. “The organizers are asking some of the team captains to keep a short daily diary for one of the newspapers. Muck and I thought you might do a good job. What do you say?”

Travis didn’t know what to say. A diary?

“In French?” Travis asked, feeling relief all of a sudden that his French was so weak.

“No,” Mr. Dillinger said. “It’s an English paper from Montreal. Look, the reporter who’s putting the whole thing together is here.

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