Chapter 2 #2
“You’re cute. Once we get rid of all this gear and clean you up a bit, the camera’s gonna love you.”
“Sure,” I reply not sure at all what to say back to that. Personally, I hate having my picture taken. I’m not my brother. And I don’t particularly appreciate being ambushed the minute I arrive at my new team. Correction, my one shot in a lifetime team.
“Listen…” I point at the door behind her. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m running late. I need to get in there.”
She steps out of my way. “Right,” she says. “I’ll grab some shots of you on the ice for an introductory post. Have a good practice!”
“Thanks.” I rush past her and push through the doors, then run down the hall heading for the locker room.
I can hear what I assume is Coach Chris’s voice coming from the other side of the door.
It sounds like he’s finishing up a pre-practice speech that I should have been listening to.
All I can think is, I hope he’s not pissed, or worse, disappointed, as I burst through the door like a boulder made out of synthetic fabric and hockey gear.
I stumble in, breathless and promptly trip over my own feet. I feel all eyes land on me as I fall to the floor in a heap.
“Baby Bouchard!” The old familiar sound of Ryan’s voice shouting my childhood nickname carries over the locker room. “What an entrance.”
GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN—EIGHT YEARS AGO
Brandon
“Rise and shine, little brother. Let’s go!”
That’s all the warning I get before Ander smacks me in the head with a pillow.
I sit up and said pillow falls to the floor, revealing the sight of my brother’s goofy face grinning back at me.
He’s bright-eyed and ready for one-on-one practice in the driveway before the sun has even managed to rise over the tree line.
This is typical Ander. Unlike me, I think he loves it when summer’s over and we have to share a bedroom again. It’s the only part of us housing a new junior hockey player every year that I hate. Our house is pretty small, and our new billet, Ryan Christianson, was given my room as usual.
“Come on!” Ander says, tossing my gloves at me. He’s already got his old beat-up and too-small blocker pads strapped to his legs. His new kit for this season, his first year playing junior hockey for our local USHL team, the Green Bay Hodags, is too nice for playing on the driveway.
“I’m up! Stop throwing shit at me!” I yell, and toss one of my gloves in his direction, aiming for his head. Infuriatingly, he catches it. Fucking goalie reflexes.
“Let’s go!” he says, awkwardly walking out of the bedroom because he’s dressed in half of his gear making him look like a six-foot-tall misshapen marshmallow man. “It’s game day. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know,” I say as I change into a pair of shorts and my brand-new Green Bay Hodags tee shirt.
The team gives us new swag every year we house one of their players.
It’s one of the many perks of being a billet family.
Gear, ice time, free tickets to games, much-needed extra money, and exposure to scouts looking for promising players.
All five things are important, but especially the last one.
Ander, who recently turned sixteen, was selected by those scouts to play in the USHL.
I still have to wait another two years for the opportunity.
“Finally,” Ander says once I step outside onto the driveway. He’s pulling our tattered goal out of the garage and placing it in the makeshift crease Dad painted onto the concrete years ago.
“I’m surprised you don’t want to wake Ryan up for your pregame driveway ritual,” I say to Ander as I stifle a yawn. After all, Ryan is his new teammate, not me.
Ander looks at me aghast from over his net. “What if part of his pregame ritual is to sleep in? I don’t want to be what jinxes him. Besides, you’re my lucky charm.”
“Lucky me,” I say as I roll my eyes at him and turn around to enter the garage.
I pull out my crappy outside stick and a few black rubber balls before I hit the button to shut the door.
Then, I set myself up halfway down the driveway, a good fifteen feet away from him, to start taking shots. “Are you ready?”
“I’m always ready,” Ander says, flipping his mask down and crouching into position. “Now, give me your best shot.”
Using the blade of my stick, I set one of the rubber balls up where I like it.
Then, with no warning, I send a lightning-quick wrist shot right at him.
He hits it back at me with the blocker on his right forearm and I stop it from rolling all the way down the long driveway into the street with my foot.
“Gotta be quicker than that to beat me,” Ander taunts and pounds his right fist into the glove on his left hand.
I take the challenge while he’s being cocky and send one right over his left shoulder.
“Hey!” he protests. “I wasn’t ready!”
“I thought you were always ready.” I use his words against him as I send another screamer in his direction.
He catches this one in his glove with ease, then grins and flings it back towards me.
I stop it in the air with my stick and control it back to the ground before I immediately slap-shot it back in his direction.
This time, the ball goes higher and wider than I’d like and sails over the net, slamming into the closed garage door, leaving a new dent.
“Whoops,” Ander laughs, turning to see the damage. It’s not that bad, and besides, the garage door is already covered in dents and black rubber marks from my missed shots slamming into it every chance Ander and I get.
He turns back around to face me and readies himself.
This time, I slow things down and use his anticipation against him.
I make a few fakes, acting like I’m about to send one at him.
Then, just as he’s reaching to his left, expecting my latest fake-out to soar towards his glove, I crack my shot and aim it over his blocker. It swishes into the back of the net.
“Goal!” I scream out and run around the driveway, waving my stick in the air as I celebrate.
“Showoff,” Ander says, but even through his face mask I can see his grin as he rolls the balls all back towards me to shoot at him again.
Ryan
The Bouchards are nice, but they never stop.
Or maybe they start too early. I don’t know.
All I do know is that it’s six in the morning on a Saturday and Ander and Brandon are already outside my bedroom window having a shootout in the driveway.
I was hoping to sleep in today after my first week of practices with my new team, in my new temporary home away from the life I’ve always known.
Forget the fact that that life was eager to get rid of me.
It does sound like Ander and Brandon are having fun, though.
I’m not surprised. All week at practice, Ander has been having the time of his life.
He wears a permanent ear-to-ear grin and has already organized a team group chat and a few outings where he can show everyone around who’s new to Green Bay.
He even drags Brandon, who the team has dubbed Baby Bouchard, everywhere with him like he’s a puppy he wants to show all his new friends.
Ander has quickly become the team’s best locker room guy.
The heart of the Hodags. I’m only a little bit annoyed by his enthusiasm.
A feeling I think I share with Brandon, who I catch rolling his eyes often at his brother when he’s not blushing from embarrassment at being called Baby Bouchard by all the older boys he looks up to.
But at least being here in Green Bay and away from home, I am starting to have some fun. A feeling I haven’t had in, well, pretty much ever. Even though I miss my sisters, having some distance from my family, my father in particular, is exactly what I need to revitalize my love for the game.
That’s not accurate. I love hockey. Hockey has always been my one true escape in life.
It’s everything else that I was going through back in Dallas I wasn’t thrilled with.
My parents and I have always had issues, but after I got caught by them making out with the only male figure skater in town who trains at our local ice rink, things between us became even more complicated.
There was a collective sigh of relief when the Hodags selected me for their roster.
Needless to say, some space will do everyone some good.
Sighing and stretching, I get out of bed and start to get dressed into a set of Hodag warmups, accompanied by the sound of the Bouchard brothers bickering on the other side of my window.
A loud thunk startles me.
“Whoops,” I hear Ander say. My guess is Brandon hit the garage.
That poor back building is dinged up more than the boards at our practice rink.
It’s nice, though, that the Bouchards don’t seem to care.
My parents would have lost their minds if I left even one dent or black rubber skid mark anywhere on the gleaming white siding of their pristine McMansion.
It’s interesting. For as much as my mom and dad invested in me playing hockey—though my suspicion is that they just wanted me out of the house—they’ve never been what I would call a hockey family.
Not like the Bouchards. These four live, eat, sleep, and drink hockey.
Every corner of their house is covered in gear.
Memorabilia hangs on the walls. The sheets that I sleep on are decorated with tiny renderings of my new team’s mascot. This family is obsessed with hockey.
When the team’s front office called me with my housing assignment, I was informed that I was the luckiest new member of the Hodags for getting the Bouchards as my billet family.
Momma B and Big Mike have been doing this for a decade, ever since both of their boys were old enough to put on skates.
So far, they’ve had six of their former billets get drafted into the NHL.
I know this because of course the Bouchards have pictures of them with all the players they’ve ever hosted displayed on their walls.
Some of the faces are very recognizable.
I take a quick peek at the photos again as I exit my bedroom and make my way outside to the sound of Brandon celebrating scoring a goal. I hope I can live up to this family’s expectations.
Brandon
“Hey.” Ryan’s voice startles me. I skid my celebration to a stop. My stomach drops and embarrassment rises in me, causing my skin to feel hot.
“Hey,” I say back, feeling twice as embarrassed as I had felt celebratory a second ago.
“Finally!” Ander yells across the driveway. “Someone to really test my skills.”
“Hey!” It’s a protest this time. But who am I kidding. Obviously, Ryan’s shots will be harder to stop.
Ryan holds his hand out for my stick, and I pass it to him. “I don’t know,” he says, and shrugs at me wearing a conspiratorial smirk. “Sounded to me like Brandon got a few over on you.”
“Only because he’s a cheater,” Ander says and pounds his shoulders with his fists before crouching, ready to block a shot.
“I don’t cheat!” I shoot back at my brother.
Ryan laughs and pulls a ball to him with the blade of the stick, then wallops one into the net with an impressive backhanded shot. He looks at me, with that damn smirk I can’t look away from still planted on his face. “Do you think he’ll accuse me of cheating?”
“Nah.” I shake my head at the same time Ander says, “Dude! That was a nice one. You have to teach Brandon how to do that.”
Ryan gestures for me to come over and for some reason, my heart rate picks up. I’m nervous and want nothing more than to impress him. Or, at least, not embarrass myself more than I already did being caught mid-celly in my driveway.
“Hold it like this,” he says as he demonstrates how to place my hands on the stick to tighten up my grip for flinging the puck in backhanded. He hands me back my stick.
My palms are sweaty as I grab it, making it hard for me to get a good grip.
It’s an unfortunate occurrence that’s been happening ever since Ryan showed up at our house.
I hate it, and the way it coincides with a new fluttering in my stomach whenever a flash of Ryan enters my mind.
I swallow. Not ready to think too much on what all of this means.
“Yeah, like that,” he says. With his foot, he slides a ball over. He looks at me with serious gray eyes. “Now just twist and flick the stick at the same time.”
Suddenly losing my ability to speak, I nod my head instead. Then, focusing on the ball resting against the back edge of my stick blade, I follow his instructions and fling it with all my might. It shoots way wide, missing the goal by at least ten feet and landing in the neighbor’s yard.
“Next time,” Ryan says, reaching over to ruffle my hair.
I have never felt more stupid.