Strangers don't smile at me. Even though I'm only seventeen, I'm too big to get smiles. I'm too wide. My nose is too squashed from being broken too many times. I give myself my own crew cut with hair clippers once a week because it saves me money at the barbershop. In other words, I'm about as pretty as my nickname: Hog -- as in Hog Burnell, junior hockey player, hoping to make the big step from the Western Hockey League into the National Hockey League.

Since strangers never smile at me, I had no idea what to do as I walked down the aisle toward the back of the airplane. There were rows and rows of passengers. Each row faced the front of the airplane, so all the passengers faced me as I made my way past them. Row by row, everyone who was awake smiled at me.

I knew all those smiles weren't something I was imagining. I don't have an imagination. That's not my job.

My job is to skate as hard and fast as anyone in the WHL. My job is to pound all opposing forwards and defensemen into the boards whenever possible. My job is to score goals on those few times I have the puck and the net is so wide open that even an elephant in handcuffs couldn't miss.

So if it wasn't my imagination, why were all these people smiling at me as I headed for the restroom at the back of the airplane?

Maybe my zipper . . . I had been in the air -- along with the rest of the guys on the team -- for six hours, on the way to Moscow. I had managed to lay my head back in the cramped seat and sleep some. I had only woken up because I needed to go to the bathroom. Maybe after rising to stretch in the aisle, I had broken my zipper.

I checked. Nope. My zipper was fine.

I kept moving. People were still smiling, and the aisle of the airplane seemed to stretch forever. What was I supposed to do? Smile back at them?

Not a chance, I decided. Smiling was not part of my job either.

I walked faster -- not only because I didn't like the smiles, but also because I had important business at the back of the plane. The very important business that had woken me.

Walking faster only brought me quickly to a blond flight attendant in a blue uniform. She was serving coffee from a cart that blocked the aisle. I had to stand and wait behind her.

On the other side of the flight attendant, I saw an old lady in a black dress lift her head and stare at me. She elbowed her husband in the ribs and said something to him in a language I couldn't understand. Probably Russian. The raisin-faced man turned his eyes in my direction -- and smiled.

What was going on?

The aisle seemed like a tunnel in a dream, where you're running like crazy but not getting anywhere.

It didn't help that I needed to reach the back of the plane so bad that I was ready to tap dance in the aisle. Two other passengers, headed the same direction as I was, jammed the aisle behind me.

The flight attendant probably heard me grunt as I tried not to tap dance. She turned, still holding a pot of coffee. Her eyes were about level with my chest. She had to tilt her head back to get a look at my face. She smiled too.

"I can see you obviously need to get past me," she said. Was it the tears of pain running down my face?

"That would be very nice, ma'am. Thank you."

Her eyes widened a bit, like she was surprised someone as big as me could be polite. Poor, but proud and polite -- that was the way my family had raised me on our prairie farm.

The flight attendant pushed the serving cart toward the back of the airplane. I followed close behind.

Every single person who looked up smiled at me.

I just gritted my teeth and pushed on. I finally got past the flight attendant and reached the restrooms at the back of the airplane.

Naturally, both were occupied.

I moaned a quiet moan. I tapped my foot.

"I see you're a hockey player," a man said from somewhere near my shoulder.

If I'm not good at smiling at strangers, I'm even worse at talking to them. He must have guessed from the hockey jacket I was wearing.

"Yes," I said, turning to see a middle-aged guy in blue jeans and an expensive sweater. I know how much good clothes cost. Someday, if I made it into the NHL, I would have a closet full myself. Nothing but the best money could buy.

"Part of a team?" he asked.

I could see the top of his head. One of the things I don't like about being tall is having to see the tops of people's heads. Especially those of middle-aged men. You can always tell when they're slicking their hair forward to hide baldness. Or worse, you see their dandruff like sugar sprinkles on a cake.

"Yes," I said, "part of a team."

But I was thinking, If you play hockey, you play on a team. That's what hockey is. A team sport. How obvious could it be? I didn't say it though.

"The team's going to Moscow?"

"Yes." Where else was this plane headed? Timbuktu?

"But this is summer," he said. "Hockey in the summer?"

"It's an all-star tour," I said. "Seven games in ten days against the Russian all-star team."

"Great! Go U.S.A!" he cheered.

"This all-star team has U.S. and Canadian players," I explained.

"I see." The guy was staring up at my crew cut as he talked, and it seemed like he was doing his best not to smile. I nearly told him if I could afford a real haircut, I would get one. It was none of his business, though, why I worked so hard to save every penny I made.

"Well," he said a few seconds later, "part of a hockey team. That explains it, doesn't it?"

One of the restroom doors opened. A little girl walked out. Her head banged my knee, but she shook it off and walked up the aisle to find her mother.

"Yes, sir," I said to the guy as I turned to walk in. "I guess that explains it." Even though I had agreed with him, I was wondering what it explained. I thought the guy was crazy . . . until I walked into the restroom.

Then I saw why everybody had been smiling. Then I understood why the flight attendant had said it was obvious I needed to get past her. Then I realized why the middle-aged man had stared at my crew cut and said being on a hockey team explained it.

In the mirror, I stared at a pile of white shaving cream perched on my head. A big pile of white shaving cream. A big, quivering pile of white shaving cream. I looked like a human ice cream cone. A human ice cream cone who had just walked past every single person on the airplane with a stupid pile of light and fluffy shaving cream on top of his head.

I slapped the shaving cream off and toweled my hair dry. I slammed the door open and stomped down the aisle back toward my seat.

I'd heard enough about his practical jokes to know that no one but the Portland Winter Hawks' star center, Chandler Harris, would have put the shaving cream on my head while I was sleeping. I didn't care that he was a veteran of this all-star team. I didn't care that I was a rookie.

Chandler Harris needed to find a parachute and a quick exit. Or we were going to have a very uncivilized discussion, very soon.

Because I have a temper and know I need to control it, I forced myself to take ten deep breaths. It gave me a chance to decide not to very publicly kill Chandler Harris. Our coach, Mel Jorgensen, was only two seats ahead of him. I hardly knew the coach, since all of the players had just been thrown together from different WHL teams for this tour. I didn't want his first impression of me to be a bad one.

Instead, when I got back to the front of the air plane, I squatted in the aisle beside Harris. I looked straight into his green eyes. His sandy hair was slicked back, almost dark with hair gel. He wore a denim shirt, along with a tie. Team rules: Wear ties in public.

"Harris," I said.

He was laughing. So were most of the other guys in the seats nearby.

"Harris," I said again. Still squatting, I grabbed the front of his shirt and twisted it in my right hand. I didn't think I could lift him with just one arm, so I pulled him toward me and got my left hand on his shirt too.

"Hey, rookie, back off."

Rookie or not, I had pride. "I don't like losing my temper," I said.

"Rookie, I just told you to back off."

"People 6'7" and 250 pounds should never lose their tempers," I explained with a calm voice. "It can be unhealthy for everyone involved."

He didn't have much laugh left. I had no idea what the other guys on the team were thinking or doing. Chandler Harris had my total concentration.

I straightened from my squat. As I straightened, I began to lift him from his seat. He is a big hockey player; I'm just a lot bigger.

Harris brought his hands up and grabbed my forearms. It didn't help him. I lifted him higher.

I stopped halfway up. No sense pulling him entirely out of his seat and letting everybody on the airplane see this. I held him there, with a lot of clear space between him and the seat below.

It took effort. But I pretended it didn't as I smiled into his green, wide-opened eyes.

"Save your jokes and pranks for other people," I said.

I set him down gently and went back to my seat.

No one bothered me during the rest of the flight to Moscow.

We arrived at 10:00 A.M. local time, which gave us most of the day to rest before our first game that evening. We were greeted in Moscow by scowling gray clouds outside the airplane window, then by scowling gray men in dark suits who checked our passports, and finally by one pretty girl with a clipboard in her hands.

"Good morning to all," she said. Her accent made it sound like she was chopping her words.

The team listened; we had lined up near the conveyer belt that was spitting out our suitcases and duffel bags.

Coach Jorgensen was with us too. He was tall, with a sagging tired face and strands of hair combed sideways across his nearly bald head. He wasn't really paying attention to our translator.

The rest of us listened without moving. It had been a long flight on a cramped airplane. We were eleven time zones away from the western Canadian provinces and western United States. Our bodies said it was nighttime, but the clocks said we should get ready for a long day. Only a few of us mumbled greetings back.

"I am your tour assistant," she said. "My name is Nadia. Here in Moscow I work for the world's greatest museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, where I interpret for English tourists. My job is to escort your team over the next ten days of your tour."

Chandler Harris shuffled close beside me and nudged my ribs. "She won't be hard to look at, will she?"

I wondered why Chandler was trying to be friendly. I just grunted in reply because I sure didn't feel like being friendly to him. But in my mind, I had to agree. Nadia had hair as black as a raven that fanned out on the shoulders of her long raincoat. She had high cheekbones and a wide smile. She actually made me wish I had the kind of face that would give her an excuse to smile at me.

"There are some very simple rules," she was saying with her nice, wide smile. "As you probably know, our country has been going through many changes. While we do welcome visitors, our laws are stricter than those of your home country. You must stay in your hotels after 9:00 P.M. Away from the hotel, you must at all times stay together with the other members of your team. And you must keep with the schedule we have set for you."

She waited to see if we had any questions. We didn't. We were too tired.

"Good then," she said. "In the event you need a translator, you may ask me for help."

She pointed beyond us to the doors that led outside. "Please collect your luggage. You will follow me to the bus outside."

This didn't sound like the summer vacation I had hoped it would be, and I must have been frowning.

"Don't sweat it," Chandler Harris said to me. "Think of all the money you'll make."

"If we win our series," I replied. That was how this exhibition tour had been set up: winner take all, with the prize money to be split among the players.

"That's right. If we win the series." Chandler winked at me as he picked up his duffel bag with his left hand and got ready to step into the line ahead of me. "But that's not what I meant, Hog. There are other ways to make money here. Tons more money."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Chandler reached into his pocket with his right hand. Then he pulled his hand loose and extended it to me. "Shake hands, bud," he told me.

Reluctantly, I put my hand out. I didn't trust this guy.

He put his hand into mine. Then he pulled his hand away, leaving folded paper in the palm of my hand.

"It's five hundred dollars, my friend," he said with another wink. "It's only a start. Trust me. It's only a start."

He walked away before I could say another word.