8. CHAPTER EIGHT
ROWAN
I get up for lift Wednesday morning, regretting going at all last night. Mara apparently believes every song is the last good song that will ever be played in public, so leaving Drew’s birthday took significantly longer than Gianna’s original promise of one hour.
By the time I got back to Hawthorne, showered, and actually fell asleep, I had less than six hours before my alarm. I need eight minimum. Stanley claims that makes me elderly, but I love my sleep. I can’t help it.
I’m sitting on the bench in front of my locker trying to convince my legs that squats are a reasonable thing to do when my phone buzzes beside me.
Gianna: Mara slept at my place and puked at like 4am.
Another comes in.
Gianna: She says she’s never drinking again.
Gianna: I’m giving her until Friday.
I smile at my phone.
Me: Dinner or alcohol?
The typing bubble appears immediately.
Gianna: She is blaming dinner.
Gianna: The dinner was French fries.
Me: Definitely the fries.
Gianna: Thank you for coming last night btw.
I look at that one for a second.
Me: Yeah.
Drew drops onto the bench beside me before I can put the phone away.
He follows my eyes. “Who do you text?”
“No one.”
I lock my phone.
Theo walks past behind him and starts laughing before Drew says anything else.
I look between them. “What?”
Drew gets up and does an exaggerated version of Gianna shoving me in the kitchen last night.
Theo points. “That.”
I’m unbothered as I watch them.
“I can’t believe you came to my birthday,” Drew says. “The rest of Hawthorne couldn’t make it?”
I shrug. “They didn’t know.”
“And you did?”
I nod. “G.”
“Right.” Drew says, “I tried to hit that once. Couldn’t land it. Fucked Mara instead.”
Theo cackles when I give Drew a look.
I say, “Are we lifting or talking about girls?”
Drew grins. “You have a girl now?”
I walk away. That answer is apparently funnier than anything else I could have said.
The rest of the week moves fast. We win both games at home.
Friday is controlled. Saturday isn’t. Saturday is six-three and loud and stupid and the kind of game where every time somebody scores, somebody else seems to answer before the crowd has completely settled down.
Benson has four points. Blue scores twice.
Stanley has four of his own and spends the last five minutes of the third trying not to look at Aspen in the stands because he knows exactly what she’s going to say about one of his goals coming from outside again.
I get an assist. Nothing special. Puck through the middle, Mackey up the wall, Benson does most of the work after that.
It’s my second point since break. Nobody says anything about it.
The second-look thing is getting less annoying.
It’s not natural yet. I still catch myself arriving at pucks with an answer already in my head, but now I notice when I do it.
Sometimes noticing is early enough to change it. Sometimes it isn’t.
We win anyway.
By Sunday night, Hawthorne is full again, and sometime over the next week, Gianna starts showing up in my phone without needing a reason.
The first thing she sends me is a picture of a dog outside the library wearing four tiny boots. No caption. I stare at it for a second.
Me: Okay.
Gianna: Look at his feet.
I look again.
Me: I saw them.
Gianna: He hates them.
Me: I would too.
Gianna: Knew you’d understand.
After that, it keeps happening. Sometimes it’s something real.
A sentence from her event project she wants another opinion on.
A question about whether Percy always travels with the same headphones.
Once, she sends me a picture of Stanley asleep at the rink with his mouth open, and I save it before I can think better of it. It’s hysterical.
Other times, she just appears at Hawthorne. She comes over with Lucy one night, steals two fries directly off my plate, and laughs when I look at her. Another night she texts me three words about something Mara said that make absolutely no sense without context.
I don’t think much about any of it until one night my phone stays quiet. Not all night. Just long enough that I notice. Then it lights up while I’m brushing my teeth, and before I even look at the screen, I already know who it is.
Gianna: Mara wants to know if you secretly hate her.
Me: No.
Gianna: I told her that.
Me: Why does she think I hate her?
Gianna: Your face.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Same face.
Me: What’s wrong with my face?
Her answer takes less than ten seconds.
Gianna: We don’t have time to unpack that tonight.
I laugh and put my phone down.
It isn’t until the next road trip that I realize we’ve been doing this every day.
Not long conversations. Sometimes it’s one text.
Sometimes she asks me something. Sometimes she sends something that has nothing to do with anything and apparently expects me to understand why I’m seeing it. I usually do.
We’re in the hotel at Notre Dame when I’m sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for Stanley to finish arguing with the room-service menu when my phone buzzes.
Gianna: Good luck tonight.
There are eleven days of messages above it without a break.
I scroll once. Dog. Event question. Stanley sleeping. Something Mara said. A picture of the Hawthorne whiteboard.
I stare at it longer than necessary.
Then Stanley says my name from across the room, and I lock the phone.
“Are you ordering or not?”
“I am,” he says. “I’m comparing value.”
“You’ve been comparing value for fifteen minutes.”
“This hotel wants twenty-seven dollars for pasta.”
I shrug. “Then don’t order pasta.”
I get up. My phone buzzes again in my hand.
Gianna: Rowan, if you lose I’m blaming you specifically.
I answer before putting it in my pocket.
Me: Seems fair.
We lose.
Not because of me specifically.
Percy has the worst game I’ve seen him play in a Camden jersey.
The first goal isn’t his. The second one probably is. The third definitely is.
Coach pulls him before the second period is over.
Percy doesn’t slam anything when he comes off. That would almost be easier to watch. He sits at the end of the bench, puts a towel over his head, and stays there until the horn.
We lose four-two.
Nobody talks much afterward.
Stanley orders an obscene amount of food to the hotel, which is what he does whenever he doesn’t know how to fix something. Blue turns the TV on without sound. Benson sits at the end of the other bed and scrolls on his phone.
Percy sits on the floor with his back against the mattress and a plate balanced on one knee. He doesn’t touch it.
Stanley starts telling us about his cousin’s girlfriend owning a snake. I have no idea why. Neither does anyone else. The story takes at least ten minutes and ends without an ending. Nobody stops him.
Eventually Percy eats. And I’m relieved. That’s good enough.
The next afternoon, Fuller puts him right back in the net.
Percy stops thirty-three.
We win three-two.
Nobody makes a big deal out of that either.
Stanley gets the winner, and for once, Aspen cannot complain about where it comes from. He gets underneath the defenseman instead of drifting around him, takes the puck inside the dots, and scores from close enough that there is no argument to make.
He makes one anyway.
On the flight home, he FaceTimes Aspen and spends five minutes explaining what the slot is. Aspen lets him, even though she knows it.
Benson eventually gets up and changes seats, and I don’t blame him. I’m laughing when my phone buzzes.
Gianna: Did Stanley just score from the middle of the ice or am I hallucinating?
I look two rows ahead.
Stanley is still talking to Aspen with one AirPod in.
Me: He did.
Gianna: Is she okay?
Me: No.
Three dots appear.
Gianna: Proud of him though :(
I smile.
Me: Don’t tell him that.
Gianna: Obviously not.
Things feel normal again for about five days.
That’s the problem with winning the second game of a bad weekend. It gives you just enough evidence to believe the first one didn’t mean anything.
Michigan State comes to Camden the following Friday. The building is full before warmups. We’re home. We’ve won sixteen of our first twenty-four. We’re still in a good position nationally, and nobody inside our room is talking like anything is wrong.
We go up two-nothing.
Marsh gets the first. Blue gets the second. For forty minutes, we look like ourselves. Then the third period starts. Michigan State gets one early off a scramble in front of Percy. He never sees it.
2-1.
Still our game.
We settle for a few shifts. Get possession back. Spend enough time in their end that the building relaxes. Then we turn a puck over at the blue line. They come back with numbers.
Tie game.
The bench gets quieter. Not nervous yet. Just tighter. Everybody knows what Coach said after the last third-period lead we blew. Nobody says it. With less than two minutes left, there’s a defensive-zone draw to Percy’s right. Faceoff. Puck into the slot. Shot. Net.
3-2.
The building goes silent before Michigan State’s bench finishes celebrating. I sit there staring over the boards, already replaying the sequence even though I wasn’t on the ice for it.
The horn goes.
We lose.
Coach comes into the room after and waits until nobody is moving. “That’s the third time.”
That’s all he says about it. He doesn’t need to give us the other two. We know.
Saturday is worse.
There’s no lead to lose.
Michigan State gets two before the first period is half over, and the second one changes the sound in the building.
Not completely. The student section keeps trying.
The band keeps playing. But there’s a drag to everything afterward.
Tate gets one back. For a while, it feels possible.
Then the second period starts. They score again.
And again. The fourth goes in off Faulkner’s stick, but Coach pulls Percy anyway.
Percy skates toward the bench. Then past it straight down the tunnel. Nobody says anything.