Chapter 2 #2
I glance out at the ice. Russo is near the crease, alone, working through a technique with a determination that’s almost aggressive.
“And if he doesn’t?”
Calloway’s expression doesn’t change. “That’s why I hired someone good.” He raises his voice. “Russo. Bring them in.”
I watch him round them up. Even this - the way he moves through the team and brings the stragglers in without having to raise his voice - it’s good leadership. I’m not here to take that apart. I have no interest in diminishing what he is.
I’m here to make him better.
They gather at the boards again, loose and watching me with varying degrees of curiosity and skepticism. But I’ve performed in front of crowds. I’ve stood on ice in complete silence while four judges decided what I was worth. Twenty hockey players with their arms crossed is not a difficult room.
I let the moment sit for a second longer than is comfortable.
“I’m going to ask you to skate without the puck first,” I say. “No sticks. I know that sounds-” I pause, watching their faces, the slight collective wince. “Yes, exactly like that. Bear with me.”
A few of them exchange looks. Someone near the back - the one who muttered something earlier - shifts his weight.
Russo is looking at the ice. Not at me. His expression is neutral and he’s doing a very good impression of a man who is present and cooperative while making absolutely clear he is here under protest.
“We’re going to start with crossovers,” I say. “Full rink, both directions, your normal pace. I want to see you move.” I let my eyes move across the group. “Don’t perform it. Don’t show me your best version. Skate the way you skate when you’re not thinking about it.”
I step back and gesture to the ice.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
MATEO
No sticks.
I pick mine up anyway, out of habit, and then remember and set it back down against the boards and feel immediately like I’ve had a limb amputated.
We run the crossovers. Full rink, both directions, and I’ll give her this - she doesn’t hover, doesn’t bark instructions every ten seconds, just watches from the center with her arms folded and lets us go.
I settle into the rhythm of it, and after the first lap it’s almost - fine.
Normal. It’s skating without the point of skating, which is annoying but survivable.
Then she starts giving feedback.
She says something to Chen, touches his shoulder lightly to adjust him, and he does it and stumbles slightly and then it clicks, and whatever she said I can see the difference even from here.
Ward gets a word. Grant, now fully back from his injury.
A freshman whose name I still mix up. She moves through the group unhurriedly.
Every time she speaks it’s a few words, nothing elaborate, and then she moves on.
I keep waiting for her to get to me.
She doesn’t. She works around the whole group and then steps back to center again and I’m still waiting but she just - doesn’t.
“Again,” she says. “Other direction.”
We go again.
I push into it harder than I need to, which I know is a response to something, and I’m not particularly interested in examining what.
The crossovers feel the same as they always feel, which is fine, which is perfectly functional, and I dig in on the turns and keep my speed up and by the end of the second lap I’ve almost convinced myself I’ve made my point, whatever my point was.
She’s watching me now. I can feel it.
“Let me demonstrate,” she says.
She doesn’t wait for an answer, which I respect against my will. She skates out to the blue line, finds her position, and then she does the sequence - same crossover pattern, same rink, nothing fancy - except that watching it is a different experience from watching any of us do it.
The technique is obviously faultless, edges so clean they barely seem to disturb the ice.
But I can see the efficiency of it - nothing wasted, not a single fraction of energy going anywhere except exactly where she needs it to go.
She makes it look effortless – it’s almost irritating, because you can see it isn’t effortless, you can see the precision underneath and the years of practice.
The team has gone quiet.
She completes the sequence and comes to a stop in the way that figure skaters stop, which is completely different from the way hockey players stop - no spray or aggression. Instead, it’s a precise and infuriating deceleration.
“That’s what we’re working toward,” she says simply.
Nobody says anything.
“Show-off,” I mutter to Mercer, which I genuinely did not intend to be audible. I regret it the second I’ve said it. Stupid. I’m the captain, I should be setting the tone.
Her eyes come to me immediately.
So does everyone else’s.
“Sorry, that was nothing,” I say, already wishing I could stuff the words back into my mouth.
“No.” She tilts her head slightly. “You said something. You’re the captain, aren’t you?”
She knows exactly who I am.
“Yes,” I say, which is not a great comeback, and I know it.
“Perfect,” she says. “Come and show the group how it’s done.”
ELIDA
I don’t catch the word. But I catch everything around it - the angle of his head toward the player beside him, the timing of it, right on the heels of my demonstration, the muted laughs it draws - and I don’t need the word.
I’ve been in enough rinks, stood in front of enough panels of men with their arms folded and their minds already made up, to know what dismissal sounds like even when I can’t hear it clearly.
It riles me.
I don’t let it show, except in the most controlled way possible, which is to say - I use it.
“You’re the captain, aren’t you?”
He confirms it, and I say, “Perfect. Come and show the group how it’s done,” and I say it pleasantly, the way I say most things. I skate back to give him room.
He doesn’t hesitate or make a production of reluctance, I’ll give him that. He pushes off and runs the sequence, and I watch it, and I let him finish before I say anything.
“Good,” I say, which is true, and I watch his shoulders relax. “Can I show you one thing?”
I don’t wait for the yes. I skate to him and position myself behind his left side, close enough to demonstrate what I mean.
“Your outside edge here - on the crossover - you’re dropping your hip. It’s bleeding your momentum.” I gesture to the position. “If I could just-”
I put my hand on his hip to show him.
He goes completely rigid.
So, if I’m honest, do I - because I didn’t think about it before I did it. It’s how you correct a skater, it’s muscle memory from years of coaching juniors. But he is not a junior and my hand is on his hip and for one suspended, excruciating second, neither of us moves.
I remove my hand.
“There,” I say, as though nothing happened. “If you keep the weight centered through the turn, you’ll find it much easier. Less work for the same result.”
“Right,” he says. His voice is completely even.
“Try it again.”
He does.
And it’s better. Marginally, visibly better. That should be the end of it - a small correction made, a small improvement demonstrated, we move on.
Except.
“See how the hip sits differently now?” I say to the group, gesturing to him.
I know - I know as I’m doing it that I’m keeping him there longer than I need to.
“That’s what we’re looking for. The adjustments feel small, but over the course of a game they compound.
And if the captain is carrying that inefficiency through every shift, every game - so is the rest of the team.
They’re watching you,” I say, directly to him now.
“Which means your technique sets the standard. Right now, that standard isn’t high enough. ”
The fury in his look is so carefully contained it’s almost impressive. His eyes are steady. Everything about him is perfectly controlled except for the fact that I can see, very clearly, that he would like to say something he has decided not to say.
Good, says a small and not very professional part of me.
“That’s enough for today.” I pull my eyes away from him. “Good work. I’ll have a schedule for the next sessions for Coach Calloway by end of day.”
They disperse in the way people disperse when a room has had tension in it and the tension has been released - relieved, a little loud, the chirping starting up again before they’ve even reached the boards.
I skate back toward the gate. But as I go, the calm I was faking starts to slip.
I hadn’t planned that.
The correction was real - everything I said was true, technically - but the length of it, the way I held the moment, the almost deliberate publicness of it.
I think about his face. The fury in it.
I’ve made an enemy of the captain in my first session, which is so far from what I needed to do that it almost makes me want to laugh.
But I’ve met men like that before. Men who decide before you’ve opened your mouth. I know what it costs to underestimate that. To smile and soften and make yourself smaller to accommodate it, to tell yourself it isn’t worth the fight.
I did that once.
I won’t do it again.
I push open the door to the corridor and the cold rink air follows me out.
That doesn’t mean I handled this well, says a quieter, more honest part of me.
I pull my jacket tighter and keep walking.