Chapter 12
ZARIAH
TAKE THAT RISK
The party bike tried to come to a stop, but they didn’t need to. I ran up and grabbed the silver railing, hauling myself into the seat. Avoiding Denali’s gaze, I leaned over the counter. “Where are the beers?”
Bobbing to the music, Nick pointed to the overhead cabinets, hidden by the trolley-structure. “How’d it go?”
I had to hold on to the railing to fish a beer out before I popped the top. “My professor hated my short film so much, she failed me, and so now I have to write a script that somehow tugs on her heartstrings. Which I’m pretty sure is impossible. Cheers, boys!”
The guys cheered and I slammed my bottle against theirs before downing a third of the cheap, shitty beer.
Nick leaned forward. “No offense, Zeeriah—”
“It’s Zariah,” Denali stopped him with a tic of his jaw. “Zuh-rye-uh.”
“How do you fail a class like that?" Nick stroked his chin, contemplating it. "How bad was that film?”
“Asshole, that’s my sister,” Elijah retorted before he paused. “Zariah, how bad was the film?”
“She said she didn’t feel anything and that’s why my script failed.
” I took a moment to chug the beer. “I don’t understand.
I’m fun! I love to party. I love my friends.
I’m not a frigid person. But I guess when I write, I’m like—” I made a drawing-back motion with my fist, frustrated.
“Holding back or something when it comes to emotion? So she wants me to write something with romance.” I thumped my beer on the counter.
“I’m a horror writer, how the hell am I supposed to do that?
How am I supposed to write about feelings? ”
Elijah threw an arm around my shoulders in solidarity. “Fuck feelings!”
“Fuck feelings!” the boys agreed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Denali rub his temples. “Can I get a beer?”
A ripple of surprise passed through the party bike. His teammates asked him if this was a joke, but Denali didn’t hesitate when someone passed him one. He cracked it open and raised it up, pounding through it in one smooth motion.
“Holy shit!” Elijah laughed.
Fridge tossed his empty beer in the garbage. “Write with emotion, Zariah. Have them do a tearful love confession, a kiss in the rain, and some sort of breakup to solidify what they mean to each other. That’s a proven way to invoke emotion.”
Nick frowned. “That sounds boring as shit.”
“It’s not boring," Fridge argued. "There’s evidence behind it, that makes money.”
“You’re the best goalie I know, Fridge, but I’m telling you, the way you’re saying that sounds boring as shit.”
“I think that’s the way I’ve been saying it,” I sighed. “Maybe ‘I don’t feel anything’ means ‘it’s boring as shit’ and my professor’s being nice.”
“Have you experienced any of that, Z?” Elijah pressed. “Tearful confessions?”
“No sloppy kisses in the rain yet.” I shrugged.
“No wonder it sounds bad." Elijah nudged me with his shoulder. "You don’t know what you’re talking about. I bet your professor knows it too.”
Denali leaned over until he caught my eye. He was quiet for a moment, passing the beer between his hands. “Why don’t you start small?”
“What could be smaller than sobbing love confessions?” Nick said, mock-serious.
“Start with personal things that make you feel something and work your way up,” Denali suggested. “What’s something that just makes you feel good?”
I didn’t know how to answer that. My brother staying out of trouble? Finally acing this class? Getting Professor Wright’s approval on a project? All of those things would make me feel fabulous, but I couldn’t exactly put them in the movie.
“You know what makes me feel good?” Elijah said. “When you hear the arena music in the locker room.” He glanced my way. “That hypes me up like nothing else. You can feel that shit.”
“I love when the other team’s crowd boos us after a goal.” Nick grinned. “If someone could bottle that, I’d buy every batch.”
“Puck bouncing off the net,” Fridge agreed. “Nothing better.”
“You don’t have to stick with hockey,” Denali said. “When you order something through a vending machine and two things fall down? Or when you ace a project you thought you were going to fail? Everybody feels good about that.”
Elijah shot me a look. “Why aren’t you writing this down?”
I paused. “Write what down?”
“Writing down stuff that makes you feel good, dumbass. Make a list!”
It wasn’t like I had any other grand solution.
So I pulled out my notebook and jotted down ideas from the Gladiators and added some of my own.
The answers were easy to come by—my friends, football games, hugs, calls from my parents, salt and vinegar chips, my typewriter.
I loved the sound of it, the feel of the metal keys under my fingers, watching my words appear on a physical sheet of paper right then.
I scribbled down things until I had a paper full of items. It was like working with a stack of puzzle pieces. I knew I could do something with them, I just didn’t know how to do it.
“This is so dumb—in classic movies, the detective or the writer or whatever drinks whiskey.” I tapped the end of my pen against the notebook, thinking. “So when I was little and I wanted to write, I’d pour apple juice into a glass because—I don’t know—it made me feel more official.”
“Yeah.” Denali chuckled. “The short glasses. With the ice cubes.” It was quiet before he cleared his throat. “In the black-and-white movies when they drop the ice in the glass—I know what you’re talking about.”
I hadn’t done that in years. It was such a childish thing to do.
I could clearly remember Hersch’s gruff voice in the kitchen, warning Denali to not break anything.
Denali would shuffle across the carpet, carefully holding the glass tumblers that were unreasonably heavy to drink out of.
We’d clink them together because that was what grown-ups did.
Denali played on his Gameboy on the couch, and I tapped away at the keys, smiling at him over the typewriter.
Realizing I was staring at him for too long, I busied myself with my notebook again. I was out of space, but I could use my sticky notes to mix and match items. Pulling out a fresh one, I mulled it over.
I wanted to use that glass tumbler memory for something.
How could I do that? How do you break a memory down to its usable parts?
There were a couple of different things I could’ve used. The cold feeling of the glass in hand? Hersch’s smile in the kitchen? Pretending I was one of those sci-fi writers penning the latest novel full of mayhem, murder, and gooey-alien bits?
Mm…not quite.
I jotted down the last line, so small, nobody could read it over my shoulder. A shameful secret that did make me feel something.
when he remembers the little things about you
By the time we got back to the hotel, the hockey players were drunk and damn excited about the game. Everyone except for Elijah. He was still nervous for some reason but that didn’t temper the mood. The team hung around the lobby, reading off the sparse articles about the Gladiators.
“There’s one about you, Denali.” Nick looked over.
Denali had his head against the back of his chair, eyes closed. “Don’t send it to me.”
“Is that reverse-psychology and you want me to send it?" Nick shifted in his chair, holding his phone two inches from his face. "It won’t work. Find it yourself.”
Elijah dipped close to me. “Denali doesn’t read them.”
“In front of you?” I completed for him, raising my eyebrows.
“No, he doesn’t read them.”
“Okay. Yeah. Sure.”
There was no way that was true. Hockey players loved themselves too much to miss out on a chance at someone else fawning over them. And I went through Denali’s stats. There was plenty for them to fawn over.
“His old coaches try to link everything he’s ever done to them. Denali hates it,” Elijah said.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “He just left Michigan?”
“I mean everything, Zariah." He counted on his fingers. "When he won awards, they’d link it to the coaches. If he aced games, half of the article was about his head coach’s opinion. When he made the transfer, it was this huge thing, right? There were all of these articles about how a USAC champion was heading to Marrs. But his old head coach co-opted half of those pieces to talk about the Michigan training program.” Elijah shrugged, elbowing me to take up more room on the couch. “It’s shitty.”
I didn’t say anything, just watched Denali.
In the morning, the two hockey teams held a breakfast at the sculpture gardens of Selick Georgia University. Pieces of broken glass were fused together in stunning pieces that cast shadows over the gardens, an impressively beautiful and incredibly breakable place for huge hockey players.
Elijah and I arrived a couple of minutes before breakfast started. Hockey players were littered around the garden, clumped together, everyone in button-up shirts.
“Dearest brother,” I whispered. “I fear we’re in enemy territory.”
“You didn’t notice that already?" He snickered. "You’re getting slow, Z.”
“We’re both getting decrepit in our old age.”
Elijah grinned, directing me past the other sculptures. The players I’d seen yesterday downing beers, were now smiling with their hair parted for the camera. Nick even had a bow tie on. Hilarious.
And there was…Denali.
His white button-up was tucked into his jeans that fit just right. His huge arms looked perfect while he talked quietly with the other team’s captain. His teammates might have been goofing around with the syrup bottles at the table, but Denali was calm and unwavering.
His eyes met mine.
I shifted away, facing the sculptures.
“I have to meet-and-greet,” Elijah muttered, squeezing my arm. “Are you going to survive without me?”
“I don’t know, are you going to survive without me?” I retorted on instinct, the barbs we always threw at each other, but the question settled between us.
A sad smile crossed his face. “Damn, I hope so.”
Ugh, that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear but I released him anyway. I wandered among the sculptures. Cleo was deep in conversation with someone while Coach Sémajuste was surrounded by a crowd recalling one of his hockey stories. Without Elijah I was kind of floating in the water.
“Kid’s Toy,” someone crooned and I glanced over my shoulder to see a couple of the Selick hockey players walking to Montoya. Montoya hesitated. The nickname was a taunt, but he still went in for the handshake.
I strode to his side and held out my hand instead. “Oh my god! Shithead and Shithead Two. So good to finally meet you.”
The Selick boys paused, sharing looks.
“Fuckhead and Fuckhead Two?” I tried instead. “Is that better?”
One of the guys grinned, trying to share the joke. “I thought Kid’s Toy was a pretty well-used name on your team—”
“It’s fine, Zariah,” Montoya mumbled.
“Actually, I’d love to borrow you.” I dragged Montoya away and didn’t stop tugging until I grabbed little muffins from the buffet table and we were at the end of the sculpture garden. I handed him a muffin. “We need to do something about that goddamn nickname.”
He took a bite. “I mean, it’s a nickname. Nicknames help people remember you.”
“It’s not a good thing, Montoya.”
He sank to the grass with me, hidden behind a huge sculpture shaped like two dragonflies. “The guys already hate me because I can’t hit. I don’t want to push it.”
“You can’t hit?” I said before I could correct my tone.
“I can’t bump anyone, can’t check anyone, can’t punch anyone, I had this—this thing happened last year…”
Elijah mentioned what happened with Montoya a lifetime ago. I chewed my bottom lip, stretching my legs out in front of me.
Beyond the sculptures, I spotted Sémajuste taking Denali away from the others. He spoke in a low voice and put a hand on his shoulder, nodding along to what Denali replied with. Because that’s who Denali was, the team captain.
How things change.
Or maybe…
“Did you know I used to play hockey?” I asked Montoya.
“What? You?”
“Five years ago.”
“Why’d you quit?”
I shifted closer, mentally reminding myself not to say Denali’s name. “Five years ago, I went to this hockey camp in Colorado. We had weekly games where you could win prizes, fastest skates, best slapshot, puck control—I knew this hockey player who was bullied. The worst I’d ever seen.”
I purposely went slow with the story to prevent a slip-up.
“That boy put himself out there for the games, confronted his bully, fought him on the ice, and he was never bothered again.”
Montoya blinked. “Woah.”
“Tonight, put yourself out there,” I said firmly.
“In the game? Like…?”
“You’re a center. Can you make a goal?”
Slowly, he nodded. “That’s what I’m good at.”
“This game is outside of the season, so they’ll want to call everybody out, especially for something as easy as this,” I reassured him. “Tonight, give it everything you have. Force yourself to confront this, prove everyone wrong.”
“But Denali said—”
“Do you want to get over this?”
“I want to get over it,” Montoya confirmed, his voice small.
“Take yourself out of your comfort zone, rush towards glory. Okay? Take that risk.”