Chapter Six #3
Matvei’s first stories had taught him to expect the worst.
Joona’s had given him something he wanted to send home.
That difference sat uncomfortably in Matvei’s chest.
Viktor entered the lounge and reached across the table for a piece of toast from Matvei’s plate.
“Did you ask?”
Matvei slapped his hand away. “Ask what?”
“If you could join the Tessa Brantley fan club.”
Joona looked between them. “Fan club?”
“No,” Matvei said.
Viktor took the toast anyway. “Belly’s been reading all her work.”
“I read one story.”
“Two.”
“Two is not all.”
“Do you know how many stories she’s written?”
Matvei glared at him.
Viktor grinned and took a bite as he walked away.
Joona watched him leave. “He is annoying.”
“Yes.”
“But good captain.”
Matvei looked down at the remaining food on his plate. “Sometimes.”
The first round of roster cuts was announced after practice.
The list went up on the board outside the coaches’ office while the players were still changing. Several junior prospects were returned to their teams. A group of older players was assigned to the minor-league camp beginning the following week.
Joona’s name was not included.
He stood in front of the board longer than necessary, reading the list twice to make sure he had not missed it.
“You survive,” Matvei said from behind him.
Joona turned. “For now.”
“For now is enough.”
A smile crossed the winger’s face before he attempted to suppress it. “Maybe bad coffee works.”
They returned to the locker room, where the mood had split between relief and disappointment. The players remaining in camp tried not to celebrate too openly while those leaving packed equipment into team-issued bags.
Joona approached each of the cut players and shook their hands.
His English limited what he could say, but the words mattered less than the effort.
Matvei watched him spend several minutes with a Finnish defenseman returning to junior, the two of them speaking quickly in a language no one else around them understood.
The media entered shortly afterward.
Reporters spread through the room looking for reactions to the cuts. Several approached Joona again, asking what it meant to survive another round and whether he now believed he had a better chance of making the team.
His answers were cautious.
“I am still here.”
“I keep working.”
“Many good players.”
He had learned quickly.
Matvei answered questions about the remaining goaltenders, then spoke about one of the defensemen who had been assigned to the minors. He was midway through explaining the player’s strength around the net when he noticed Tessa waiting beyond the group.
She did not interrupt. She stood with her recorder lowered, listening while another reporter asked the same question in a slightly different way.
When the scrum ended, the others moved toward Joona.
Tessa remained.
Matvei reached for the laces of his skate.
“I wanted to ask about Joona,” she said.
Matvei glanced toward the young winger, who was surrounded by another group of cameras.
“You already wrote.”
“I’m following up on the cuts.”
She turned on the recorder. “What do you think he’s shown the team since camp started?”
Matvei could have given her the usual answer. He works hard. He has skill. He deserves to be here.
Instead, he thought about Joona standing beside his stall trying to understand a message from the equipment staff. He thought about the way the young winger watched the coaches after every shift and practiced answers before the media entered.
“He is brave,” Matvei said.
Tessa’s pen paused.
“On the ice?”
“Everywhere.” Matvei leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “He comes here, new rink, new league. He does not know people. English is hard. Still, he wants puck. Some young players hide because they are afraid mistake sends them away. Joona does not hide.”
“What do teammates do to help someone through that adjustment?”
“Talk slower.”
She smiled this time. “Does everyone do that?”
“No.”
“Do you?”
Matvei considered lying.
“Sometimes.”
“Is there anything you wish people had understood when you were in that position?”
The question shifted something inside him.
He looked toward the recorder.
Tessa noticed. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Most reporters treated hesitation as an opportunity. They waited, hoping the silence would become uncomfortable enough that the player filled it. Tessa had offered him a way out.
Matvei looked toward Joona again. The young winger was explaining one of his goals with animated movements, pointing toward an imaginary net near the center of the room.
“That not knowing words does not mean you don’t know answer,” Matvei said.
Tessa held his gaze for a second.
“That makes sense.”
“You used what he meant yesterday.”
He had not intended to say it. The observation had been circling his mind since breakfast, refusing to disappear. Now that it was spoken, he could not take it back.
Tessa lowered the recorder slightly. “The minor-league quote?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t what he meant.”
“He said it.”
“I know.”
“You could use.”
“I could have.”
“Why not?”
The question sounded sharper than he intended, but she did not retreat from it.
“Because accuracy isn’t only typing out the exact words that came out of someone’s mouth.” Tessa glanced toward Joona. “He realized right away that he had said it wrong. He clarified it. Using the first version would have made the story less accurate, not more.”
Matvei thought of the word lazy beneath his photograph. He thought of reporters insisting that quotation marks removed any responsibility they had for how the words were understood.
“You changed quote?”
“No. I used a different quote, and I paraphrased the point he was trying to make.” Her expression tightened slightly. “I’m not going to clean up someone’s words and pretend they said something they didn’t. But I’m also not going to embarrass him because he chose the wrong English phrase.”
Matvei studied her.
She looked more certain than she had during their first conversation. There was no nervous adjustment of the recorder or hopeful expression waiting for his approval. She did not seem to believe the explanation should impress him.
To her, it was simply the job.
“Thank you,” he said.
The words felt unfamiliar.
Tessa’s eyebrows lifted.
“For answering?”
“For Joona.”
Her expression softened before she caught it. “He made it easy. He had a good story.”
Matvei nodded toward the recorder. “Now you have another.”
“I do.”
She switched it off. For a moment, neither of them moved.
“I should go,” she said.
Matvei nodded.
She took one step away, then turned back. “For what it’s worth, the answer you gave me was better than anything I would’ve gotten by asking whether he deserved a roster spot.”
“You ask better question.”
Tessa looked surprised again.
This time, Matvei picked up his skate before he could say anything else.
She thanked him and crossed the room toward Rick.
Matvei stared down at the laces in his hands.
He still did not trust her.
Trust was built over years and destroyed in a sentence. One story about Joona did not erase what had happened to Matvei when he was nineteen. It did not guarantee that she would make the same choice when the bad quote belonged to him or when the easier headline promised more attention.
But she had understood something the others had not.
Words could be true and still tell a lie.
Matvei wondered whether Tessa Brantley knew the difference.