5. CHAPTER FIVE #2
Stanley makes a noise.
I point at him. “Don’t.”
Stanley puts his hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”
I scowl. “You were about to.”
Benson still looks at me.
I explain, “It’s for my project.”
That apparently satisfies him enough that when the elevator opens, he takes out his phone. A second later, Rowan’s contact lands in mine via text.
“Thanks.”
I head to my room.
My roommate for the trip is one of the assistant athletic trainers, and she has already taken the bed by the window. I shower, eat two granola bars because neither one of us knows where food is happening tonight, and get into bed with my laptop.
The pitch is still waiting.
I FaceTime Lucy while I work. Mara is at our apartment to keep her company, apparently, but we all know that Mara hates being alone.
“How is it going?” Lucy asks.
I tell them about the loading dock, the cases, Minnesota’s equipment room, and how many times we checked the stick tubes before Donovan was satisfied.
Mara’s expression changes while I talk. “That sounds horrible.”
“No, it was so good.”
She stares at me. “Gianna.”
I laugh. “Whatever, Mara.”
Lucy is smiling.
I hang up on both of them before they can psychoanalyze me.
Then I go back to my pitch. Ives wants the approval chain on the summary page, and I’ve been circling the same sentence for ten minutes because I don’t know whether compliance sits inside Athletics for something like this or whether I need to list it separately.
I pick up my phone.
Rowan’s number is sitting there now.
I start typing.
Hey, so quick question about the—
Delete.
Sorry to bother you but—
Delete.
I stare at the screen.
I have never said sorry to bother you to another human being in my life.
Me: Did your approval chain include compliance, or was it just Athletics and Facilities?
His answer comes quickly.
Rowan: Depends what you’re doing.
Rowan: Hi, G. How’d you get my number?
I sit up.
Me: That is deeply unhelpful.
Me: My brother.
Rowan: Then tell me what you’re doing.
Rowan: I know. Stanley told me.
Me: Clinic. Ticket bundle. Sponsor. Intermission thing.
Me: Of course it was Stanley.
A minute passes.
Rowan: Mine was just Athletics and Facilities because it was free and nobody’s name was attached to anything.
Rowan: Yours has current athletes appearing at an event with a sponsor on it. Compliance is separate. Different office.
Me: So six.
Rowan: Yeah.
I look at the time.
Me: I hope I didn’t interrupt your mom time.
Rowan: Already in my room. Need sleep.
Me: Go to sleep then.
Rowan: Then stop texting me.
I smile.
Me: Fine.
Rowan: That’s still a text.
My grin gets worse, which is stupid. It isn’t like we’re saying anything.
Me: Good night, Rowan.
I wait a little longer than I need to before putting my phone down.
The next morning starts at seven and somehow does not stop. We’re at the rink before nine for a seven o’clock game. Donovan runs skates through the sharpener while I stage them. We hang the whites. I tape. I restock stalls. I fix little problems before they become bigger ones.
By the fourth stall, I stop checking my sheet for Blue.
Then Stanley.
Then Benson.
Then Mackey.
Then Rowan.
I know what they use.
Apparently, I’ve been paying attention at home games without realizing how much.
The building gets louder as the day goes on.
By warmups, it is insane.
Minnesota fans boo Camden for existing.
They boo Percy when he skates onto the ice. They boo Benson. They even boo Coach. There’s a section behind the bench that has apparently waited for this moment.
I stand in the tunnel with spare tape in one pocket and a stick beside me and think this might be the greatest building I’ve ever been inside.
Rowan comes off near the end of warmups and stops.
“You got white?”
I pull the roll from my pocket and hand it over.
He takes it, looks toward the ice, then back at me. “Told you.”
“Told me what?” I ask, confused, not sure what he’s talking about.
He looks forward. “It’s a good one.”
I look toward the student section, where several hundred people are currently informing Percy that he sucks.
I grin. “They’re assholes.”
“Yeah.”
“I like them.”
The corner of his mouth moves. “Figured.” Then he goes.
The game is ugly almost immediately. Minnesota is big, fast, and relentless. They don’t do anything especially clever. They just keep arriving.
By the middle of the first, I understand why Aspen spent so much time talking about getting Camden out of its own zone cleanly.
Stanley scores before intermission.
Minnesota answers.
Owens gets one in the second, but Minnesota gets another late, and by the third it feels like every shift is happening at full speed.
Blue hits a post. The whole bench reacts. Then Minnesota dumps the puck behind our net. And somehow, out of ten skaters moving at once, my eyes find Rowan.
I don’t decide to watch him. I just already am. He moves the puck to my brother, and I watch as Benson carries it to Theo. Theo shoots.
Goal!
I make a noise before I remember I am standing beside Donovan and technically working.
He glances at me.
I straighten.
He shakes his head.
The game goes to overtime.
Blue wins it from the left circle.
4-3.
The Camden bench empties.
Minnesota’s building turns furious.
Somebody throws a drink at the glass. Stanley waves at them until Benson grabs the back of his jersey and drags him toward the tunnel.
I am going to remember this forever.
Then Donovan hands me a laundry cart.
Right.
Work.
By the time we finish, it’s close to midnight. My feet ache. There’s a bruise on my hip from one of the cases. My hair smells like the equipment room. I’m so hungry I’ve moved past hunger and into irritation.
I’m still smiling. Not because the day was perfect. It wasn’t. Donovan caught things I missed. I screwed up four things yesterday and didn’t even realize two of them were wrong until he corrected them.
But when Cole got sick, Donovan called me.
Me.
Because I built the list. Because I knew the room. Because when he needed somebody to know what was packed into twenty-two cases before those cases left Michigan, I did.
I stand in the middle of the equipment room for a second with both hands on the laundry cart and realize nobody working this side of the building has asked me where Benson is all day.
Nobody needed an introduction before giving me something to do. Nobody cared whose sister I was. They just needed me to know my job. I don’t know why that gets me as much as it does. Maybe because Benson has always been the easiest way to explain me.
Camden is his school first. Hockey is his world first. Even when people mean nothing by it, I’m used to somebody connecting the dots for them.
Benson Reeve’s sister.
Tonight, nobody needed the dots connected.
They needed Gianna, and that feels different. It feels great.
I push the cart toward Donovan.
On the bus back to the hotel, Stanley talks the entire way despite having just played an overtime hockey game, and I genuinely don’t understand how his body produces enough energy to keep him alive.
When I get to my room, the group chat has been dead for almost an hour.
I answer the last thing Mara sent.
Me: Alive. Kind of. My feet are destroyed.
She answers immediately.
Mara: How was it?
I think about the loading dock. The cases. The crowd. The way the whole operation starts hours before anybody sits in a seat. The fact that I knew where things were when somebody asked.
Me: I had the time of my life.
I put the phone down.
My pitch is still open on the laptop. There’s a Finance quiz waiting for me. Statistics homework. Sport Law reading. Monday with Professor Ives, which I’m already dreading.
None of that feels very important right now.
What I keep thinking about is that I want more of this.
Maybe not equipment specifically. I don’t know yet.
But this part.
The work before everybody else arrives. The part where somebody has to know what door opens, what form gets signed, what case gets loaded, what happens if something breaks, what comes next when nobody in the stands has any idea there was ever a problem.
I want to know what jobs let me keep doing that.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Donovan: Lobby 7:00 a.m. Don’t be late.
I smile.
Me: I’ll be there.
There’s another game tomorrow.
And I get to do this again.