16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GIANNA
My first alarm goes off at four-thirty, but I’ve been awake since four.
I know this because I have watched the clock change three separate times while lying completely still in the dark, trying to convince myself that resting counts even if my brain is running through the same list it has been running through since yesterday afternoon.
Registration table. Waivers. Volunteer assignments. Rental skates. Jerseys. Name tags. Water. Photos. Locker rooms. First-aid kit. Sponsor banner. Gary’s equipment. The second resurface. Parent viewing area.
The worst part is that I know all of those things are handled. That does absolutely nothing to stop me from thinking about them.
The alarm goes off, and I finally sit upright and immediately check my phone. There are no emergency emails. No volunteer has called out overnight. Lisa has not discovered that all forty-eight children have suddenly developed scheduling conflicts. The rink is still standing.
I put my phone down, take one breath, and then pick it up again to check my email anyway. Nothing.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself. My own voice sounds ridiculous in the dark.
I get out of bed. Lucy’s door is shut when I walk past it, and the apartment is so quiet that every cabinet sounds louder than it should.
I make coffee, toast half a bagel, manage three bites, and then stare at the rest while standing over the sink.
I cannot tell whether I’m nauseous because I’m nervous or nervous because I’m nauseous.
My phone buzzes on the counter. My stomach drops so violently that I nearly spill my coffee, but it’s Rowan.
Rowan: Awake?
I stare at the message.
Me: Unfortunately.
Three dots appear almost immediately.
Rowan: Eat.
I look at the half bagel.
Me: Wow, thank God you texted. I almost forgot how the human body works.
Rowan: You probably did.
Me: Rude.
Rowan: True.
I smile despite myself.
Rowan: You good?
I look around my kitchen as though the answer might be taped to one of the cabinets.
Me: No.
His reply takes a few seconds.
Rowan: You will be.
I hate how much better that makes me feel. Not completely better. He’s not magical. My clinic is still happening in approximately three hours, and somewhere in Camden there are forty-eight children preparing to become my responsibility. But my shoulders come down a little.
Me: You have a game tonight. Go back to sleep.
Rowan: Yes, ma’am.
Me: Don’t call me that.
Rowan: Okay, G.
I put the phone down before I can keep talking to him and make myself finish the bagel.
I get dressed in black leggings, sneakers, and the Camden quarter-zip I set out last night.
My hair goes into a ponytail because I know myself well enough not to pretend I’m going to maintain anything more complicated than that for seven hours.
I check the weather even though the entire event is inside. I check my email again. Then I wake Lucy by opening her bedroom door three inches and whispering, “If I die today, tell my mother it was the jerseys.”
Her face is mostly buried in a pillow. “Have fun.”
“Love you.”
“Good luck.”
I close the door. That counts as support.
The parking lot at the rink is still blue with early morning when I pull in a little after six.
There are already three vehicles near the service entrance.
One belongs to Cole. One belongs to facilities.
The third is an old truck I don’t recognize, parked crooked near the curb with its headlights still on.
A man in a Camden Youth Hockey jacket is standing beside it holding a small canvas bag.
“Gary?”
He looks up. “Gianna?”
“Yes.”
We meet in the middle of the parking lot and shake hands like we are about to enter a business merger instead of spend six hours trying to keep children upright on ice.
“I brought two,” he tells me.
“Two what?”
He opens the canvas bag. I look inside. They are hooks. Actual metal hooks attached to old wooden handles.
I stare at them.
Gary pulls one out. “Skate hooks.”
“I have never seen one of these in my life.”
“You have now.” He hands it to me.
It’s heavier than it looks. “What do I do with it?”
“You’ll want it when your fingers stop working after the twentieth pair.”
I turn it over. The wood is worn smooth from years of hands. “This looks like something from a museum.”
Gary laughs. “It probably is.”
I put it in my coat pocket because I don’t know where else to put it.
Inside, the rink smells the way it always does before anybody arrives — cold air, rubber mats, old ice, coffee somewhere nearby. There’s something comforting about being here before the building fills. Everything is where I left it last night.
Registration packets stacked. Name tags alphabetized. Sponsor banner rolled beside the table. Jerseys in their box. All forty-eight identical youth-large jerseys.
I look at them and decide I am not reopening that wound.
Cole comes through the hallway carrying two plastic bins. He puts the bins down.
“Do not complain today,” I tell him.
He makes a face. “I haven’t complained.”
“You complained by text.”
“That was yesterday. Today’s a new day.” Cole gives me a look and then starts unloading tape.
Facilities finishes the ice before seven. Lisa arrives ten minutes later with two folding signs, three boxes of paperwork I didn’t know existed, and enough energy for someone who claims to have two children of her own.
Ives comes shortly after seven-thirty. She has her coffee, her clipboard, and appears to be completely calm.
I have not been calm since Monday.
She walks up to me, glances around the lobby, and says, “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“That your registration flow?”
“Yes.”
“Locker assignments posted?”
I point.
“Emergency contacts?”
I point again.
“Good.” She walks away.
I stand there waiting for something else. She told me earlier in the week that she would not hover unless I needed her. Apparently she meant it.
At seven-thirty-five, the first family arrives, then there are four, then eleven. By seven-fifty, the lobby looks like someone has tipped over a truck full of hockey bags.
Children are everywhere. Parents are everywhere. Some of the kids are already half dressed because their parents apparently decided hockey pants were appropriate car attire. One little boy is walking around in shoulder pads with no jersey on, looking like a turtle.
The volume in the room doubles every three minutes.
“Gianna?”
I turn.
One of my volunteers is holding a stack of wristbands. “Blue ones for group one?”
“Yes. Green is group two.”
“Where are the pens?”
“Second bin under registration.”
A father steps in front of me. “My daughter isn’t on this list.”
“Name?”
He tells me. I scan the sheet. He’s right.
I ask, “Did you register through the youth program?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Give me one second.”
I find Lisa, who finds the confirmation email in approximately forty seconds. Problem solved.
Before I can turn back around, somebody says my name again. A mother wants to know whether siblings can sit in the stands.
“Yes.”
A kid can’t find his helmet. His father looks considerably more upset about this than the child does.
“We packed it,” he tells me. “I know we packed it.”
The boy is maybe ten and is looking down at the floor in pure sadness.
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
His eyes come up.
“What size?”
He doesn’t know. His dad does.
I call Donovan, who has already warned me twice this week that he is not participating in my event, and he appears four minutes later carrying two helmets.
He holds one out to the kid. “Try it.”
The helmet fits, and the kid smiles. His dad exhales.
Donovan looks at me. “That’s one.”
“Thank you.”
He walks away.
I barely have time to register that we fixed it before Cole appears. “We have a problem.”
My entire nervous system lights up. “What?”
He points toward the entrance. Two girls are standing beside their mother wearing full hockey gear. And figure skates. I stare at them.
The mother smiles apologetically. “They skate recreationally.”
I look down at the blades. Then at Cole.
Then back at the girls. For approximately four seconds, my brain offers absolutely nothing.
This is the thing I have been afraid of all week.
Not the figure skates specifically. The moment where somebody asks me a question and I have no answer.
Then I realize I don’t need the answer immediately. I need the next thing.
I crouch slightly. “What sizes are you?”
Five and six.
I look at Cole. “Rental counter.”
He nods.
“Five and six?”
“Yeah. Hockey skates.”
“Got it.”
He leaves.
The mother starts thanking me.
“It’s fine.”
And it is. Five minutes ago, I would have imagined this exact scenario as evidence that my event was collapsing. Now it is just two pairs of skates.
The whole morning becomes that.
Something happens. I make a decision. Then something else happens before I have enough time to congratulate myself for fixing the first thing.
Deb is late. She comes through the doors after eight, looking mortified and apologizing before she has even taken her coat off.
“I thought you said eight.”
I say, “I said I needed you until eight.”
“Oh.”
“That’s okay.”
It isn’t useful to be mad at her now. I put her at registration.
Cole takes the bench assignment she was supposed to cover. Done.
A parent brings a waiver they printed at home. Another parent forgot theirs. One kid refuses to wear the jersey because he hates the color. I tell him everybody has the same one. His father backs me immediately.
Thank you, Bryce’s father.
The sponsor jerseys are enormous on some of them.
Eleven kids need theirs tucked into their hockey pants, and once they’re on the ice, nobody can tell.
Nobody except me. I can tell from forty feet away.
Every time I see one, I think, I should have asked for sizes.
Then somebody needs me, and I stop caring.
That might be the biggest thing I learn all morning. Nobody except the person running something knows what it was supposed to look like. They only know what is in front of them.