23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Percy
She answered a few days later. It gave nothing away. One word — something like, yeah. Like she was just being polite. I know better now. I texted first, and I got days of silence. So I’m back to not texting her first.
That was August.
It’s October now.
Hutch is the starter. It’s his senior year, so it’s his net.
He’s good enough to keep it, and I’m the backup.
Which means I dress. Every game. I’m not in the stands anymore in the tie Josh bought me at a Kohl’s.
I’m on the bench in full pads with my mask on my knee, six feet off the ice, one bad hit away from the game.
Behind me, there’s the freshman. Tyler Forleo.
Fourth round, Nashville, third string right now, the way I was third string a year ago.
Except nobody in this building thinks Tyler stays third string.
The net that’s coming isn’t coming for me.
Everybody knows it. So I’m the backup, for a year, maybe.
I climbed from the bad end of the ice to a spot on the bench, and the spot has a ticking clock on it.
He’s eighteen years old, drafted, and better than any other goalie I’ve ever played with.
There are men in suits in the stands with laptops. They’re here for Stanley Ermington and Benson Reeve. Everybody knows it. Stanley’s gone quiet about it, which is new, and Benson won’t talk about it at all, which is how you know it’s real.
There are many players that went pro after playing for the Camden Wolves.
So the fact that I’m sitting on a scholarship here blows my mind.
Last year I didn’t take it very seriously, but when I’m on that bench, I watch the scouts take notes on Stanley.
Now, I’m close enough to feel the heat coming off that world.
I’ve never been this close to it. And I want it.
I want the net. I want whatever thing the drafted kid has — I want to be the guy they put scouts in the stands for.
It comes up in me at practice, hot and sudden, watching Tyler take reps in the good net, and I don’t call it jealousy because it isn’t.
It’s the other thing, the wanting it so bad you feel it rushing in your blood.
I put it to work. I beat every odd there was against me, and there’s no rule that says I have to stop here.
I watch Tyler Forleo closely. He does everything better, cleaner, like it was built into him.
I take what I can off the end of his stick, and I don’t say a word about the fact that I’m learning from someone younger than me.
This is the only way I’ve ever known how to learn anything.
You watch the person who has the thing you want, and you take it, and you say nothing.
This weekend it’s a home game, a conference game, a ranked team in town, and the barn is full.
The suits are here for the guys I moved in with a year ago.
Benson. Stanley. Blue’s got a fourth-round tag on him too.
Three of the men I eat breakfast with have teams that want them, and I’ve got a scholarship and a spot on the bench.
There’s a real crowd tonight. I take my spot at the bench. Hutch goes in the net, and I put my mask on my knee and get ready to watch a game I’m dressed for and won’t play.
I look at the stands. I shouldn’t. There’s no reason to.
But my eyes go up over the glass and along the seats behind the bench the way they went at the door of every party last year, before I can tell them not to, looking for one person who was never going to be there.
She doesn’t come to these things. She doesn’t ask about hockey, and I don’t invite her.
She’s not here, and I knew she wouldn’t be.
I put it away. I’m the backup. I’m not playing.
It doesn’t matter who’s in the stands when you’re not playing.
Second period, the game is tied, and Hutch goes down.
A guy drives the net, there’s a scramble, and Hutch’s leg goes one way while the rest of him goes another.
He’s down in the crease with the trainer over him, and Coach Fuller turns and looks down the bench, and there’s only one place to look. Me.
“Deveroux. Go.”
I’m on my feet with my mask coming down.
I skate to the net past Hutch getting helped off with an arm around each of two guys.
I stop in the crease that isn’t mine and bang my stick on both posts, left then right.
My hands are cold, and it’s a tie game in the second period of a game that means everything.
Last year, I went in for a period that meant nothing, and my heart went anyway. This year, it means everything, and I have to make my hands work. There’s nobody to tell me anything. Cole’s gone. It’s just me, a net, my team, and theirs. Don’t chase it, Cole says, a year ago, in my head.
I set my depth. I hold it.
For a while, I’m good.
First one comes off the rush. I read it clean and take it in the chest and swallow it.
The whistle goes, and the arena gets loud in a way that’s for me.
Second one’s a scramble in tight, so I stay big.
It hits me somewhere and stays out. Golding clears it.
Third one’s a two-on-one and everything in me wants to slide early.
I don’t, I stay, I let it get there, and the pass never comes, and the shot’s right at me, and I’ve got it.
Four minutes. Five. The game’s still tied, and I’m holding it live.
The goal is high glove side. It comes off a defenseman’s stick at the top of the circle, and it’s rising the whole way.
The same height that Mike used to use, and Josh taught me to lean into.
I don’t move away from it. That anger, this stance, it’s what got me here.
I do everything right. I track it off the blade, I stay square, I get my glove up into the path of it — I go for it, clean, the way you’re supposed to.
And it beats me. It clips off the heel of the glove where the pocket isn’t, a half-inch less, and it’s in.
The crowd doesn’t go quiet. A goal is a goal, and the game keeps moving.
The other bench is celebrating, and the puck’s already coming back to center.
There’s no time for anyone in the building to feel it but me.
I fish it out of the net and hand it to the ref, skate back to my crease and set my feet, because there’s a game to play.
I do everything I did before, and none of it matters the same way now.
We lose four to three.
The room after is feeling the loss. The room is quiet, and guys are peeling tape off their sticks with their heads down, and nobody’s cruel.
Hutch is on crutches by his stall. He leans over and says it wasn’t on me, that I went in cold and did fine.
Benson stops by on his way to the shower and puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “That’s on us, Pers.
The D turned it over.” Plain. Kind. He means it.
That’s the worst part. The kindness. Because Benson knows, and I know, and everybody in this room knows, that the freshman would have had it. Instead they tell me that it’s not on me, but every soft word is the same fact underneath: not yet. Not you. Not good enough yet.
I take my gear off in the quiet room and feel the four walls caving in.
When I’m lying in bed that night, I think about how I reached for two things this year so far.
I reached for her, once, at three in the morning, with a word that meant everything, and I got a day of silence.
And I reached for the net, tonight, with everything on it, and the puck went in off the heel of my glove.
Those two things just sit there, next to each other — the text I shouldn’t have sent, and the puck I shouldn’t have let in.
I run a hand down my face, and I don’t sleep.