8. CHAPTER EIGHT #2
I’m on the ice for two of the four. One of them is mine. I go back for a puck with two forecheckers coming at me, look once instead of twice, and rim it up the wall because that’s what I would have done a month ago.
Their winger is waiting for it before the puck leaves my stick. Ten seconds later, it’s behind Percy. I know it as soon as it happens.
By the third, half the building is waiting for us to give them a reason to come back into it. We don’t. With several minutes left, people start leaving.
The horn finally goes at four-one.
For a second, nobody moves. Then somebody boos. One person. Maybe three. I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. I’ve heard boos in every road building I’ve played in. I’ve never heard one here.
We go down the tunnel.
Coach waits until everybody is sitting before he comes in. He has a sheet of paper folded once in his hand. That alone gets everyone’s attention.
“Sixteen, nine, and one.”
Nobody moves.
“You were comfortably inside the national field a few weeks ago. You aren’t comfortably inside anything tonight.”
Stanley is staring at the floor.
Fuller unfolds the paper, looks at it once, and folds it again.
“The teams you’re losing to are the same teams fighting you for those spots.
Every one of these weekends matters twice.
You move down. They move up.” He looks around the room.
“I’m not giving you a magic record. There isn’t one.
Rankings move every weekend, conference tournaments change things, and anybody who tells you exactly what you need today is guessing. ”
He stops.
“The part I can tell you is this: if you keep playing third periods like last night and first periods like tonight, you’re going to spend Selection Sunday hoping other teams lose.”
Nobody likes that. I can see it. Benson’s elbows are on his knees. Blue has both hands clasped between his legs. Stanley hasn’t moved since Coach walked in. Percy is back in the room now. Still in half his gear. Still quiet.
Fuller looks at all of us one more time. “You wanted April.” His eyes move toward Benson, then Stanley, then me. “Start playing like it.” Then he leaves.
Nobody says anything for a while.
We’ve talked about winning a national championship since New Year’s Eve. Not privately. Not like some stupid thing people say because every team technically has a chance.
It’s written on a whiteboard in our kitchen.
We have never seriously talked about what happens if we don’t even get the opportunity.
Hawthorne is miserable when we get home.
The heat is turned down, so the house is freezing. Blue turns the thermostat up and sits on the couch without taking off his coat. Percy goes upstairs immediately.
Benson opens his laptop at the kitchen table and starts watching Friday’s third period. Stanley stands behind him.
I sit down on the couch.
Nobody turns music on.
That might be the strangest part.
After several minutes, Benson says, “Look at this.”
I don’t. “We know what happened.”
“Clearly we fucking don’t.” His voice is sharper than usual.
I look over. He drags a clip back and plays the same ten seconds again. Michigan State gets the puck. We turn it over. Numbers the other way. Goal.
Again.
Again.
I rub both hands over my face. “Fuller can tell us Monday.”
Benson looks at me. “I’m not waiting until Monday.”
Nobody answers.
Stanley attempts one joke about the Michigan State player who lost a tooth. It isn’t even bad, but nobody gives him anything.
“Yeah,” he says quietly after a second. “Okay.”
He sits down.
I order food because nobody else is doing it.
When it gets here, I send one message to the house instead of knocking on doors. Everybody eventually comes down except Percy.
I go down the hall and knock once. “Food, Pers.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Okay.”
I leave.
Five minutes later, he comes down anyway. Finally.
We eat.
The girls show up later than usual. I’m pretty sure they discussed whether they should come at all. Lucy goes straight to Benson. Aspen sits beside Stanley and puts both hands around one of his. Melly drops onto the couch next to Blue. Penelope goes down the hall. Gianna comes in last.
She starts through the doorway, talking. “Okay, why is it colder in here than—” Then she sees the room. She stops.
Nobody says anything.
Her eyes move around once. Benson at the table. Blue on the couch. Stanley staring at nothing.
Me.
She takes her coat off more quietly than she normally does and drops her bag beside the wall.
“Bad?”
“Yeah,” I say.
She looks at me for another second, then nods.
That’s it.
She goes into the kitchen, sees the food, and makes herself a plate.
I move over when she comes back. She sits in the open spot beside me. For a while, the room stays quiet. Then Lucy murmurs something to Benson. Blue answers Melly when she asks him a question. Stanley eventually gets up to get another drink.
Gianna eats. Her knee bumps mine once when she shifts on the couch. Neither of us moves.
I look at her plate. “Derek ever get back to you?”
She turns her head. For the first time since she walked in, her expression changes.
“You got booed in your own rink tonight, and you’re asking me about my event?”
I look at her eyes. “Yeah.”
She watches me for a second. Then sets the fork against the edge of her plate.
“He got back to me.”
“And?”
“The youth program thinks they can fill around forty spots without it being a problem. Ives liked the concept enough to let me move forward, and Derek gave me the next person I need to talk to.”
“Good.”
“I haven’t picked the game yet.”
“You will.”
Her eyebrows lift.
I look toward the TV even though it isn’t on.
Beside me, she says, “You’re very confident for somebody who has watched me change my mind approximately six hundred times.”
“You stopped changing your mind.”
She doesn’t answer right away.
When I look back, she’s smiling slightly.
Then she looks down at her plate again.
After a second, she nudges my knee with hers. Not enough for anybody else to notice. Enough for me.
I leave mine where it is.
Across the room, Benson is still watching film with the sound off. Stanley is slouched into the chair beside Aspen. Blue has his head tipped back against the couch, eyes closed.
Nobody has really recovered.
Gianna finishes eating beside me, sets her plate on the coffee table, and leans back into the couch.
Her knee stays against mine.
So does mine.
For the first time since we got home, I stop replaying the game.