Chapter 19 Ellie
ELLIE
“Wow, overtime! Go team!” I scream as the huge men speed a hundred miles an hour across the ice. I can barely follow the puck.
The Orcas want to win. They want to win at all costs.
The Seattle coach is giving me the evil eye through the glass. He thought this was going to be an easy win, thought they were going to go home ten to one. And we had them on the ropes the whole time. Now the game’s in overtime.
Fletcher screams my name as he zooms by with the puck. One of the Orcas defenders smashes him against the boards. I wince, and Cookie covers his eyes.
“Put Cookie in!” Fletcher yells as he races past the bench after the Orcas player.
The Finn has the puck and is heading to the net.
“You have to put him in!” Fletcher roars, the words fading as he flies through the neutral zone. He’s tired, though.
I chew on my lip. He’s played the most minutes, and he never stopped. The Orcas’ roster is more balanced than ours, and while they’re not well rested per se, they are slightly more rested than Fletcher, and that kind of edge is all you need in hockey to make a break.
I suck in a breath as the puck bounces off the post and Ren pounces on it, tossing it to the Finn.
“Make it happen!” Fletcher bellows.
“Cookie.” I rub the eighteen-year-old’s shoulder. “Cookie,” I singsong to him. “Don’t you want to go play with your friends? Look, everyone’s having fun.”
“I’m going to make us lose,” he says in a small voice. “I can’t play.”
“Cookie, you can play. You’re amazing.”
Cookie covers his face with his towel.
I steady myself and prepare to keep my tone neutral but positive, trying not to look at the clock as it ticks down, down. We cannot go to a shoot-out, because we will lose. The Orcas shooters are stacked. I resist the urge to shake Cookie and scream at him. That won’t help.
He’s having a hard time; he’s not giving you a hard time.
“I really want to see you play, Cookie.” I pet his helmet. “Just try. You don’t have to score, just try.”
“I can’t,” he says in a small voice. “I messed up the last time, and everyone was mad at me. I can’t do it.”
“Mistakes happen. We try, try again.”
“I can’t.” He looks like he’s about to cry.
Fletcher whizzes by. I can hear him gasping for breath.
Cookie wants to play. I see it in his eyes. When he’s on the ice, he loves hockey. He just needs a final push.
I dig through my proverbial bag of tricks from my time in the daycare trenches. “If you play…” I begin.
Cookie starts to perk up.
What to give him?
Fletcher whizzes by. “Put him in, fucking—oof!”
Fletcher gets creamed, goes sliding across the ice to crash into the boards as an Orcas player speed-runs the puck to the net. Ren barely keeps the puck out of the goal using his skate.
We can’t lose. My whole family is here. There are twenty-five thousand people watching me, plus another what, million on TV? I’m wearing a pink suit. They played the Barbie song and threw tampons at my players.
“I’ll give you… a surprise, Cookie, if you get me a goal.”
“What kind of a surprise?” I’ve got his attention now.
“A surprise…” I roll my hands, grasping for straws as on the ice, my team collapses. “A surprise you pick from the surprise bag!”
“The surprise bag! Okay!” Cookie hops over the boards as Fletcher drags his bruised body toward us. I grab the back of his jersey, hauling him into the box before we get a penalty for having too many players on the ice.
“Holy shit.” He half rests against me. His lip is split, and he’s holding his side. He’s sweaty and panting, but there’s wonder in his eyes as Cookie flies across the ice. “Fuck.” He coughs. “I can’t believe you did it.”
“We have thirty seconds. It’s too late.” Eddie points to the clock.
I’m biting my nails. But I hide my hands when I see myself on the jumbotron.
Thirty seconds is all we need. All Zayne Murphy needs, anyway.
As if he’s got a sixth sense, the veteran player crashes into Emil, knocking him off the puck just enough for Zayne to send a blind backhand pass hurtling to our net.
“What the hell is he doing?” Eddie yells. “He’s gonna score an own goal!”
I don’t even have to hear Ren to know he’s cursing as the puck hurtles towards him, the Orcas forwards too startled by Zayne’s hit to react. Zayne has a knowing smirk on his face.
“Oh my god,” Fletcher breathes. “He’s the god of fucking hockey.”
Because Zayne knows that it’s not a pass to nowhere.
Cookie zips around the net and darts in front of Ren, the puck glued to his stick.
The Orcas forwards seem shocked to see him, but then he’s gone, dancing across the ice like one of those cartoon mice in a Disney movie. He crosses the blue line, dodging defenders like they’re skating in slow motion.
The crowd is counting down the seconds as Cookie races through the players and darts around one final defender who crashes, tripping over his feet trying to keep up with Cookie. He leaps over him with the puck, does a pirouette, pops the puck up, and passes it to himself.
“Four… three…”
The goal horn blares as Cookie flicks the puck off his stick and it slams into the net, sending the Orcas goalie’s water bottle that had been resting on the net flying, spraying water everywhere.
“Cookie!” I scream, throwing up my hands as the Barbie song blares from the speakers.
“They had that cued up because they thought we were gonna lose!” Fletcher’s laughing, coughing around his bruised lungs.
“I fucking love this song!” I wrap him in a hug.
“Of course you do.” He stares down at me. “Of course you love this horrible song.”
I cup his bruised face.
“We won. Goddamn, we won, Ellie.” He looks like he wants to kiss me for a moment.
I choke on the smell of him—the sweat and the ice—then he’s gone to join Cookie, who’s dancing alone to the Barbie song at center ice before the players all rush him, singing the lyrics at the top of their lungs as they jump around and hug Cookie.
The pink spotlights wash the stadium in pink while lots of drunk people in the crowd sing along off-key. I join in, dancing on top of the bench.
“Shots!” Granny Murray hollers, handing me the bottle of tequila. The camera pans to me, and I’m on the jumbotron right as I take a swig from the bottle of tequila.
Whoops.
The Orcas players glower as they file into their tunnel while their coach screams obscenities and throws his clipboard at them.
“That’s the power of pussy!” Granny Murray has a bottle of rum in one hand and a bottle of Jack in the other as she yells at one of the cameras focused on our box.
“These guys won game seven after a brutal slog with the Direwolves, only to get their balls handed to them by a girl! Who’s on her period now, motherfuckers! ”
We can’t even make it to the locker room with the crush of media swarming us. The players are giddy as the sports reporters pepper them with questions.
A reporter sticks a microphone in my face. “Ellie, Ellie!” The sports media are grabbing at me. “Was that a planned strategy, to save Cookie for the very end?”
“Zayne Murphy’s playing better than he has in a year. How did you do it?”
“What made you call a time-out?”
“Is that your new lucky suit?”
“I’m from Vogue!” a young woman screams at me. “Is that suit Givenchy?”
“Uh, actually, my mom made it.”
“Slay!”
“Your equipment manager made a statement that made it sound like you’re sleeping with your players.” One man is right up in my face.
A big hand shoves him away. “Back off.” Fletcher’s there behind me. I can feel the heat from the exertion during the game steaming off him in the cold air of the stadium.
“Fletcher, that tie-breaking goal—how did you feel when your shot went wide but happened to hit Alexei Vidic’s helmet and go in the net?”
Fletcher huffs out a laugh. “I wasn’t aiming at the goal. I was aiming at his fucking head.”
The reporters clamber. “Was this a revenge play for the Orcas players throwing tampons? Did it get under your guys’ skin?” a smarmy reporter asks.
I just laugh at him. “Are you kidding me? No one’s offended by that. I almost went out there and picked them up myself. These things are expensive! I put them in my bag. They bought the nice ones too.”
Fletcher smirks. “Guess the Orcas players should have spent less time shopping and more time practicing. They might have won.”
Fletcher’s worn out and happy, his dark hair plastered to his forehead as he escorts me through the throng back to the locker rooms and sits down at his berth.
The cameras are turned on us. It’s weird having to pretend that they aren’t there.
The rookies keep staring at them until Jonesy snaps his fingers in front of their faces.
Usually, the media don’t want to be in the Rhode Islanders’ locker room. The captain just gives a generic statement about losing and pucks in net and “we’ll get ’em next time.” Then the players rush to get out of the stadium and the stench of their loss as quickly as possible.
Now? We’re the stars.
“Cookie! Cookie!” the players chant when he shyly comes into the room. Bramms and Carlsson hoist him up, almost banging his head on the ceiling.
“Are those Lunchables?” one reporter asks as I pop open the cooler.
“The players get an after-game snack,” I explain.
“The pizza ones?” the rookies beg. “We won, so we get pizza Lunchables, right?”
“The after-game snack isn’t about winning or losing,” I remind them. “It’s about how well you did at practice. And I warned you.”
“But we fucking creamed them!”
“Do well at practice this week, you get the pizza Lunchables.” I grab the juice box from Cookie before he can stick the straw in and fold up the top.
“What the hell,” Fletcher says as he unwraps his own straw.
“You’re wearing white uniforms. I’m not cleaning stains out of those,” I warn, reaching for his juice box. “This is a preschool-teacher hack.”
“I think I can manage.” He stabs it with a straw. Red juice spurts out all over his shirt.
“Goddamn it.”
“It’s a fucking good juice box.” Jovi leans back, downing the whole thing with no straw, just crushing it into his mouth, while I take a Tide pen to Fletcher’s jersey.
“Oh man, I’m going to chill in the hot tub after this.” Bramms pulls off his skates.
“Hot tubs? Room service? What kind of hockey players are you?” Granny Murray rages. “You just won your first NHL game. Go out and get lit and laid! I’m buying hookers, booze, and coke. I just made a half a million dollars betting on my granddaughter. We’re all getting shit-faced tonight!”
“There’s my winner!”
“The team did all the work, Mom!” I complain as my mom wraps me in a big hug.
“Crazy!”
“The most insane thing I’ve ever seen!” my cousins chatter excitedly.
“Yeah, that’s right!” Uncle Bic drunkenly whoops at the passing Orcas fans. “We owned you out there!” He whips his jersey around his head, bare belly out.
“Didn’t she do a good job, Nate?” My mom beams at my dad.
“That was…” He pats my shoulder. “Well, you guys got a few lucky shots off. You should have lost.”
“But we didn’t.”
“Don’t make a habit of letting Fletcher bounce pucks off people’s heads,” Dad warns. “The NHL is not going to like it if he makes a habit of it. Concussion protocols, you know.”
I nod.
“Good news though,” Dad adds. “With the team on the upswing, it will be easier for them to hire a real coach.”
“She is a real coach, Nate.” His sister socks him in the arm. “You were amazing out there, Ellie.”
“And in the interviews.”
“You know what I mean,” my dad backtracks. “Like, a professional coach. Ellie, you saw how rabid the spectators were. I saw how the other players were treating your team. It’s not fair for them to have to deal with that every game.”
“Yeah, okay, Dad. I know.”
“Don’t listen to him. Go get laid! You earned it!” Granny Murray slaps me on the back.
“Not with a player,” my dad begs.