2. CHAPTER TWO
ROWAN
My alarm goes off at five-forty, and I shut it off before the second buzz.
For a few seconds, I sit on the edge of my bed in the dark and listen.
Nothing. No cabinet shutting downstairs.
No TV. No Stanley walking down the hallway talking to himself at a volume that would be considered unreasonable at noon, let alone before six in the morning.
Hawthorne is dead silent.
Which is strange.
I pull on jeans and a hoodie, grab my bag, and open my bedroom door carefully. It sticks at the top like it always does, so I turn the handle and pull until I feel it give instead of letting the thing crack against the frame.
Benson’s door opens across the hall at almost the same time. He has his bag over one shoulder. He pulls his door shut with the handle still turned, lets it settle into the frame, then releases it. Lucy is sleeping in there.
We nod at each other.
Then Blue comes out a second later and shuts his door the exact same way. Melly.
Nobody ever made a rule about closing doors quietly.
It just started happening.
Stanley comes out last, which is impressive considering he complained for ten straight minutes after midnight about practice being “an institutional failure of compassion.” He tries to angle his bag through the hallway without making noise and catches the strap on one of the frames hanging on the wall.
The bottom of it knocks hard against the drywall.
Every head turns toward him.
Stanley freezes.
He catches the frame before it swings again and closes his eyes.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
Benson points down the stairs.
Stanley follows him.
A year ago, nobody in this house would have cared who we woke up. Stanley would have fallen down the stairs and blamed the stairs.
Now five of us make it through the kitchen without turning on a light.
We don’t start talking until the front door shuts behind us.
The cold goes straight through my hoodie.
Michigan in January makes me regret existing. My breath hangs in front of my face, and Benson’s truck is coated in frost thick enough that somebody has already drawn a dick into the passenger-side window.
Stanley sees it. “That wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, right,” I say.
Blue looks at him. “Nobody accused you.”
Stanley shrugs. “Felt implied.”
He throws his bag into the bed of the truck and spreads both arms toward the empty street.
“Happy fucking New Year.”
His voice carries halfway down the block.
Benson unlocks the truck. Percy gets in behind him and immediately puts his hood up, presses his head to the window, and shuts his eyes. Blue takes the middle. Stanley gets the passenger seat. I’m behind him.
The heat blows cold air at us for the first few minutes, so nobody bothers taking their gloves off. Benson starts the defroster, and we sit in the driveway watching a small clear patch appear at the bottom of the windshield.
Stanley twists around in his seat. “I want to say something.”
“No,” Blue says.
“I’m serious.”
“It’s too early,” Blue says.
Stanley ignores him. “I had to do unspeakable things to convince Aspen to spend Christmas at her parents’ house to watch eighteen games of our hockey.”
Benson looks over. “Your point?”
Then Stanley’s expression changes slightly. “I forwarded the report to Fuller.”
Benson takes his eyes off the windshield. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a short silence.
Nobody tells Stanley that was stupid.
Aspen knows hockey. Nobody in this truck needs convincing of that. Her dad is a legend, and he’s been an NHL coach for a long time. She spends half her life watching video professionally. It’s her job.
But there is a difference between listening to your friend’s girlfriend tell you something about your game and sending twenty pages of it to the guy responsible for deciding whether you play.
“I hope Fuller’s not too proud to read it,” Stanley says.
“He’ll read it,” Benson answers.
I think so too.
I’ve already read mine four times.
The first two pages are fine. Entries. Exits. Shot attempts. Possession numbers. Page three is where it gets annoying. Ninety-one defensive-zone retrievals across eighteen games. Sixty-two of them went up the wall.
That number alone doesn’t bother me. Sometimes the wall is the right play. Most of the time, getting a puck safely to a winger is better than trying something clever through the middle of your own zone.
Aspen’s problem isn’t that I use the wall.
Her problem is that I’ve usually decided to use it before I have the puck.
I look over my shoulder once while I’m skating back.
Usually from twenty feet out. I see pressure coming.
I decide where I’m going. Then I arrive squared to the boards because my body has already committed to the decision my brain made three seconds ago.
By then, I’m not reading the play anymore. I’m completing it.
She wrote: Second scan prior to possession. Arrives closed. Limits available options.
Which is a nice way to say I make the same safe decision so early that sometimes I stop seeing everything else.
“I need Mackey,” I say, nodding.
Benson glances at me. “For what?”
I answer, “Retrievals.”
“You’re doing it today?”
I nod. “After practice if Fuller lets us stay.”
“He’ll let us,” Reeve replies with complete confidence.
I say, “I need pressure too.”
Benson says, “I’ll pressure.”
I nod. “That’s what I was going to ask.”
Stanley turns around. “Look at you two. Communicating. Growth already.”
I look past Blue toward Percy. “Pers.”
One eye opens.
I tell him, “You need to talk.”
His other eye opens. “I talk.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“You don’t tell me what’s behind me.”
“I tell you when necessary.”
I shrug. “That’s the problem.”
Percy stares at me. He is the only guy on the ice who has a clean look at what I’m skating backward toward when a puck gets dumped behind our net.
My back is to the play. His isn’t. Aspen put that in his report too.
Minimal verbal support on retrievals.
I point at him. “Talk.”
Percy looks out the window again. Then he starts saying something in French.
Stanley twists completely around in his seat. “Was that swearing?”
Percy shuts his eyes.
Stanley grins. “Do it again.”
The parking lot at Camden has more cars in it than I expected. Coach Fuller moved practice from nine to seven, added an hour, and sent the email on December twenty-eighth without explanation. I thought at least four guys would be late. Nobody is.
The locker room looks like a hospital waiting room.
Beaumont is sitting in front of his stall wearing sunglasses indoors.
Walker has a gas-station cup between his knees that looks large enough to hold a gallon of whatever he put in it.
I drop my bag beside Mackey. He has one skate on and stares at the other, zoning out.
“You’re staying after with me,” I say to him.
He looks up. “Happy New Year to you too.”
I grin. “Happy New Year.”
“What are we doing?” he asks, forgetting all about his other skate.
“Retrievals. Twenty minutes.”
“You say twenty minutes like I haven’t known you for three years.”
I shake my head. “We’re not shooting.”
I start changing.
Mackey drags the other skate closer. “You’re doing the Aspen thing.”
I look over.
He smirks. “Ermington sent everybody’s report to everybody at midnight.”
Down the room, Stanley looks up. “In the spirit of transparency.”
Walker lifts his giant cup. “You sent mine to Beaumont.”
“I sent yours to everyone.”
“My report says I have a weak backhand draw.”
Stanley shrugs. “You have a weak backhand draw.”
“Fuck you, it’s not that bad.”
Mackey ties off his skate. “Mine has a chart.”
I shrug. “Mine has two.”
He pauses. “Fine. I’ll stay.”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Sure.”
Coach comes in ten minutes later and doesn’t start talking. That gets everybody’s attention because usually, he is halfway through whatever he has to say before the door finishes shutting.
Instead, he stands in the middle of the room with his hands in his jacket pockets and scans the stalls.
“Ermington.”
Stanley has tape between his teeth. He takes it out. “Coach.”
Coach has his hands on his hips. “Office.”
The entire room makes the same sound. Every locker room in the world knows it.
Stanley looks around. “I’m a grown man.”
“Then go,” Blue says.
He goes.
Mackey leans toward me after the door shuts. “What did he do this time?”
“Nothing.”
Benson answers from two stalls away without looking up. “Aspen emailed the report.”
Mackey’s head turns. “She sent it to Fuller, too?”
“Stanley did.”
“Forwarded,” Stanley calls from the hallway.
Then he disappears. He’s gone long enough that everyone stops waiting for him.
Tape starts ripping again. Somebody turns music on low. Walker drinks whatever is in the cup and immediately looks sick.
Nine minutes later, Stanley walks back in, and everybody looks up.
“Well?” Blue says.
Stanley sits down. “He wants her clips.”
That changes the room more than the office summons did. Fuller has video staff. He has systems. He is not a coach who changes what he does because somebody sent him a spreadsheet.
Stanley starts wrapping tape around his shin. “He asked how she tagged controlled entries. Wants the clips sorted by player. Asked if she’s okay with staff using them.”
Benson nods once. “What’d you say?”
“I said I’m not her manager.”
I laugh.
Stanley points the roll of tape at me. “He asked me the question again because apparently that wasn’t helpful.”
Coach gets us onto the ice at three minutes past seven. He holds us at center before we do anything.
“I know what showed up in your inboxes last night.”
A few guys look toward Stanley.
Fuller sees it. “I got it too.”
Nobody moves.
“It’s information. That’s all.” He pauses. “Some of it is stuff we’ve been telling you since October, and now there’s a number attached, which apparently makes it more convincing.”
His eyes land nowhere and somehow directly on Stanley.
A few guys grin.
“Some of it caught things we hadn’t isolated yet. Good. Useful. What we are not doing is rebuilding this hockey team in January.”
That kills the smiles.