19. CHAPTER NINETEEN #3
That lands harder than I expect.
I nod once because anything more is going to turn into something I don’t want to deal with before a hockey game.
Then I look toward the stands. Gianna is standing beside Lucy, and she has both hands around her mouth like she’s been yelling my name for the last thirty seconds.
When she realizes I’m looking at her, she points at me. Then she puts one hand over her chest. It is such a Gianna thing to do that I smile before I can stop myself.
The ceremony moves on. Stanley makes his mother laugh while she’s crying. Benson’s parents look like they are trying not to do the same. Pictures get taken. Flowers get handed over. Then it ends. Our parents leave the ice, and finally we get to do something I understand.
Play hockey.
Michigan scores first again. That irritates everybody enough to settle us down.
Tate gets it back in the second. The puck comes loose near the slot, and he puts it through before their goalie can close down the angle.
The second it goes in, our bench loses its mind.
Not just because it ties the game. Everybody knows what it could be. Tate’s last home goal.
Maybe the last goal he ever scores in this building. He knows it too. I can see it when he gets back to the bench, and everybody is hitting the top of his helmet. He smiles, but something else is underneath it.
Blue gets our second.
Michigan ties it in the third.
2-2.
By overtime, the whole building feels tight.
Every rush gets louder. Every bad bounce feels dangerous. Every time Michigan gets possession in our end, the crowd rises before anything even happens.
Nobody wants Senior Night to end with us watching them celebrate.
With two minutes left, Michigan turns the puck over near their blue line.
Stanley gets there first and moves it across to me. Benson is already cutting through the middle, slipping into the space that opens when their defense steps toward the puck.
I give it back. One touch. He shoots. For half a second, I lose sight of the puck. Then the red light comes on. The sound in the building hits before anything else does.
Benson gets maybe one stride toward the corner before Stanley tackles him. The rest of us pile in. I lose my stick somewhere. Somebody’s glove hits the back of my helmet. Benson disappears under Camden jerseys while Stanley is screaming directly into somebody’s shoulder.
Senior Night.
Michigan.
Overtime.
There are worse ways to play your last regular-season game in a building.
The locker room afterward is too loud for anybody to hear properly.
Parents come down once we’re dressed. There are cameras and phones everywhere, people trying to get pictures before somebody leaves. Tate is carrying the game puck around like he doesn’t trust anybody else with it. Stanley’s mother is crying harder than mine now.
Benson gets pulled into three separate family photos before he makes it ten feet from his stall.
I’m halfway through talking to my dad when I see Gianna in the hallway. She spots me at the same time. She doesn’t run over this time. She just walks toward me with this huge smile on her face, weaving around two parents and somebody carrying a garment bag.
“You won,” she says with a gigantic, proud smile.
I look at her mouth. “Yeah.”
“On Senior Night,” she adds, stopping in front of me and reaching up to fix the collar of my shirt.
There is nothing wrong with it. I let her anyway.
“You okay?”
I look past her for a second. My parents are talking with her parents.
Her mom looks over at us and winks at me.
I smile back. Stanley is still surrounded by people.
Tate is showing somebody the puck. The door toward the rink is open farther down the hall, and I can see a strip of white ice through it.
“Yeah.”
I mean it.
Gianna watches my face long enough that I know she hears the part I didn’t say. She doesn’t make me say it. She just slips her hand into mine.
We stay a little longer because there are more pictures and more people who want to say congratulations. Eventually my parents leave, and the building starts emptying in pieces.
By the time Gianna and I head toward the exit, most of the noise is behind us.
That’s when it hits me. Not standing on the ice with my parents. Not the sign with my name on it. Not hearing the announcer call me a senior. Leaving.
I have walked out of this building after hundreds of practices and games. Usually I’m already thinking about food or film or whatever is next. Half the time I barely notice the hallway.
Tonight, I notice all of it.
The rubber floor under my shoes. The equipment-room door. The smell of the rink still hanging in the corridor. The sound of somebody dragging a bin somewhere behind us.
There could still be more hockey.
There should be.
But there might never be another home game.
I slow down near the doors without meaning to. I look back once. The hallway is almost empty now. Still, I look.
Then Gianna squeezes my hand. I turn back toward her. She doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.
We walk out together.