Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Noah
What is Icing?
“Dude, you, okay?” Tanner asks as soon as I get to my cubby and start changing into my gear.
“Sorry I’m late,” I apologize, though the clock in the corner says 5:50. I’ll be on the ice by six, which isn’t technically late, but I like to be warmed up and to have checked in with everyone before we start.
“You’re good, bro,” Owen assures me. “We were just worried when no one could reach you.”
“Won’t happen again,” I promise, then hustle to get on the ice and skate a few laps before Coach joins us.
I look up to catch Izzie’s eyes, and as stressful as the past hour has been, her smile, both this afternoon and now, watching me skate like she hasn’t since I graduated high school, makes it worth it. Mostly.
I’m distracted during Coach’s speech, and during the first few drills, questioning my decision to leave my sister with a woman I’ve never met before, even if she looked incapable of hurting a fly, let alone kidnapping an eight-year-old.
But Izzie is tougher than she looks, and usually a good judge of character.
She can be quiet when you first meet her, but she’s engrossed in an animated conversation with Savannah, looking so happy.
“Nice move, Callahan,” Coach Benson shouts after I score on Steele, who glares at me.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” he asks when I skate back to him.
“It’s the Corey feint. Think I should try it on RPI this week?”
“I think I’d be a lot more impressed if it wasn’t used against me,” he agrees. “Who the fuck is Corey?”
“One of the kids in Izzie’s class this afternoon.”
“An eight-year-old taught you that?”
“He might have accidentally discovered it, but he’s going places.” I grin, because Corey finished the move by sliding his entire body into the net when he couldn’t figure out how to stop, but he gave it his all, and I admire that.
“How come you don’t ask me to help with that anymore?” Tanner asks. A few of the guys came once or twice, mostly to fulfill our community service requirement.
“I haven’t been doing it lately.” I shrug, but I haven’t included Tanner in the group text when I need volunteers in years. Which he knows, as he eyes me expectantly. “I’d rather not have to explain to parents why their kids keep dropping F bombs,” I point out.
“That was one time.”
“It was a five-minute string of expletives.”
“Who brought the chick?” Spring asks, looking into the stands.
“Wait, is that Izzie with her?” Tanner eyes me suspiciously. “She got big.”
For a while, my screensaver was her as a four-year-old on my shoulders, because we both looked so damn happy, and goofy, that I smiled every time I saw it.
“Just turned eight,” I agree.
“Is that your mom?” Spring is straining his eyes, but while Savannah hasn’t taken off her coat, or the scarf she’s bundled up in, she doesn’t look old enough to be anyone’s mother. Though she does have a very ‘girl-next-door’ quality about her.
“Just a girl who’s watching Izzie for me during practice,” I admit before getting them back to their drills, ignoring their questions until they get the message and pay attention.
By the time we get to the scrimmage, Izzie is cheering for me in the otherwise empty arena so I can see how my doing it this afternoon might have been a bit much. But it also pushes me to skate faster, better, and harder than I probably would have during a normal practice.
I don’t talk to anyone in the locker room, just shower and put on sweats before going back to the stands, where it looks very much like Savannah is helping Izzie with her math homework.
“Hey,” I say, knowing I shouldn’t smile when Savannah jumps and puts her hand on her heart.
She reminds me of Lacey, not in looks, but the shy smile she gives me is exactly like the ones Lacey used to give Darren freshman year.
My chest grows tight because yeah, sometimes it sounds like that would be nice, to have someone in the stands for you, both literally and figuratively, but I don’t have the time or energy for that shit.
“You were so good!” Izzie jumps into my arms. “Way faster than this afternoon. You’re holding back with us,” she calls me on it.
“I don’t need to skate fast with you, I just need to demonstrate,” I argue. “Were you good for Savannah?”
“She was excellent company,” Savannah assures me while Izzie nods, repeatedly.
“I like her,” Izzie adds while I help her pack up her things. I hide a smile when Savannah’s cheeks turn red.
“I can’t thank you enough for this. I usually have my shi—my schedule together, but they moved practice up an hour, and I—”
“Don’t worry, it really wasn’t a problem. Izzie was a pleasure, and I appreciate not getting kicked out of the arena.”
“Ted wouldn’t have kicked you out, he just would have grilled you more and made you sign in immediately,” I assure her, noticing those same nerves from before. “What sport do you play?”
The athletic complex, which houses our arena, is open to all the school’s athletes, since it has the best weight rooms, along with a pool and saunas.
“I might have followed someone else in,” she says like an admission of wrongdoing, but I get the feeling she’s lying.
Which would make sense if her boyfriend gave her his fob, since we’re neither allowed to bring guests to the training rooms nor lend out our fobs.
I think our names pop up when we swipe them though, which would explain her earlier fear of Ted’s tablet. But I could be wrong.
“How very sneaky of you.” I try not to sound accusing, which makes it sound flirty. I realize this mostly because her cheeks turn a deeper shade of pink and she clumsily picks up the rest of her things.
I shouldn’t be flirting with her, because I don’t date, and she doesn’t look like a girl who has one-night stands.
She looks like the girl you take home to meet your parents when you’re ready to settle down, which she probably has with whoever lent her their fob.
But she did just do me a huge solid, and I promised Izzie ice cream or hot chocolate, so it wouldn’t mean anything if we asked her to come along. As a thank you.
“Can I maybe—” I start to invite her, but my phone buzzes in my pocket, so I reach in to see if it’s my mom.
“No, I really can’t.” She doesn’t let me finish but sounds nervous. “It was my pleasure. And I promise not to sneak in anymore.”
I have an urge to tell her she can sneak in anytime, but thankfully, she turns to my sister and beams at her. “Good luck on your test, Izzie, I’m sure you’ll ace it.”
Savannah hurries down the stairs and I can’t help but sigh as I watch her go.
“I like her,” Izzie says, handing me my coat.
“So you’ve said.”
“I mean I really like her,” she says as we head to my old Jeep.
It was my dad’s, and for the longest time I let it sit in the driveway, afraid it would stop feeling like his, but then I heard that I Drive Your Truck song and other than me losing my shit and being blinded by tears a few times, Izzie decided the Jeep was one of her favorite places to be.
It’s the main reason I work at Eddie’s Garage every summer; to keep it running for as long as possible.
“She gets me,” Izzie continues. “And she smells like vanilla, which reminds me of cake, so…win-win.”
I laugh and shake my head at how her mind works, but I’d also noticed how Savannah smelled like honey and vanilla and…home. The way it used to be, when mom baked and lit candles and smiled.
“Was she helping you with math homework?”
“Yeah, she’s smart, but not so much in math. I brought it for you, in case we had time, but now we can just hang out,” she says brightly. “Unless it’s too late, and you have to get home? Which is fine too.”
Even if I had a million things to do, I wouldn’t dare bail on her now.
“Hot chocolate or ice cream?” I ask, getting a smile from the backseat.
“Mama Joy’s,” she chooses, because Mama Joy will give her a bowl filled with both, plus marshmallows, sprinkles, and whipped cream.
“Mom will kill me, but it’s not like I can say no to you.
” I make a show of sighing, like she’s impossible to deal with, then wink, so she knows I’m joking.
It’s exceedingly hard to say no to her, but it’s a me problem, based on not wanting to disappoint her, nothing at all to do with her being difficult, because she’s the coolest kid I know.
At the local diner, we split the hot chocolate and ice cream combo, which makes me feel slightly better about Izzie’s sugar intake, but way worse about mine.
Mom texted to make sure Izzie finished her homework before she agreed to the extended curfew, so we quickly go over what she did with Savannah.
I wouldn’t have bothered, only Izzie said her new friend wasn’t good at math, and if a third grader can tell, I can only imagine what her homework looks like.
For a second, I’m confused, but then I let out a grateful sigh when I see that instead of just correcting Izzie’s practice questions, Savannah added Post-its with the different techniques she used to remember her multiplication tables. She went above and beyond what even I would have done.
“Where did she get the Post-its from?” I don’t remember her having more than a small purse with her, but she clearly came prepared.
“She had a bunch of them in her bag. And pens and highlighters. She says it’s for research.”
“She must really love hockey,” I decide, based on the effort she put into our trade. Or she’s just a nice, helpful person, but that puts the burden on me, doesn’t it?
“I don’t think she knows anything about hockey.”
“Why would she be in the arena then?”
Izzie shrugs before putting her math books back into her pink bag.
“This isn’t mine,” she says, handing me a leather notebook.
It’s Savannah’s. She was holding it when I first found Izzie talking to her, but I open it and pretend I’m trying to figure out who it belongs to.
Instead of the first page, which might have her name, I use the ribbon to get to her current one, noting the many-colored Post-its along the edge.
It reads ‘Hockey?’ and includes a rough drawing of the rink and a list of notes like:
What is icing?
Offside=Aside?
Is biscuit a bad thing?
Do the coaches ever smile?
I grin at the last one, because Coach Benson only smiles if his wife or granddaughter can see him. I shut the book, feeling the slightest tinge of guilt for invading her privacy. But I would’ve stopped if it was a diary.
“We must have thrown it in without looking when we were packing up,” I say when I find my sister’s eyes still on me.
“Yeah, we must have.” Izzie shrugs her shoulders like she has no idea how that happened, but she looks guilty as fuck. “She’s researching hockey?” she looks over my shoulder and asks before I can comment.
“Looks like,” I agree, slipping the notebook into my hoodie’s front pocket so I can hopefully get it back to Savannah.
If the way Donovan gets about the notebook he carries around everywhere – that I know contains song lyrics, even if he won’t tell us – is any indication, Savannah will be stressing out until she finds it.
Which means I’ll have to actively look for her, not just hope I’ll run into her on campus.
Izzie’s face lights up like it’s Christmas morning. “You know everything about hockey! You can help her.”
“I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want my help,” I argue, based on the way she ran out tonight. Not to mention, I blackmailed her into babysitting when she was clearly trying to observe our practice.
I have no idea what the research is for. Wynchester doesn’t have classes on hockey, or I know a lot of non-academically inclined guys on the team who would be all over it.
“You can’t know that unless you ask her,” Izzie points out.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Savannah again, which is exactly why I shouldn’t.
“I’ll bring it up when I return her book,” I say instead.
“You can blame that on me if you want,” she assures me, then eats a spoonful of ice cream, whipped cream, and marshmallows.
By the time I pull into the driveway of my childhood home, Izzie is passed out in the back seat, so I put her backpack over my shoulder and carry her inside to her bedroom.
Mom is asleep in front of the TV when I walk by, so I make a mental note to turn it off and throw a blanket over her before leaving.
“Do you think we can do that again?” Izzie asks sleepily, her head still pressed to my shoulder.
“I don’t think anyone should ever consume that much sugar.” I tease.
“I meant watching you play.” She yawns. “Maybe I could come to a real game sometime?”
My heart sinks.
“I’m not sure, Iz. I can ask Mom and see what her schedule looks like…
” Her face drops, because we both know Mom isn’t stepping into that arena, no matter her schedule.
She couldn’t even face the parking lot to bring Izzie to practice.
“A lot of our games end too late for you anyway.” I’m not sure if this softens the blow, or if I just don’t want her to be mad at our mother.
I can maybe ask Darren if his mom can bring her next time she comes.
Izzie doesn’t say anything, so for a minute, I think she went back to sleep, which is probably better than the ‘it’s okay, don’t worry about it,’ I usually get, because it’s not okay that Mom will never bring her, and I do fucking worry, because I don’t know how many things Izzie is giving up to make Mom’s life easier and so she doesn’t feel like a burden.
I don’t want her pretending it doesn’t matter, because that’s what I did, and I promised I wouldn’t let her grow up like that, because it does fucking matter.
“Please?”
My heart breaks. Iz wasn’t asleep, she just had to work up the courage to ask me not to shut her down like everyone else does.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say, but it’s as good as a promise.