21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE #3
When I wake up the next day, there’s nothing to do. No morning skate. No opponent to prepare for. No meeting telling us what the next forty-eight hours look like. The selection show is not until three, which leaves the entire morning open for thinking.
By eleven, half the team is at the rink anyway. Nobody tells us to come in. We just end up there. Fuller pretends not to notice.
Benson is already in the building when I arrive. Percy comes in not long after. Stanley appears carrying six coffees and refuses to explain why he bought six when nobody asked him to.
By two-thirty, all of us are in the team room. Something is playing on the television before the selection show starts, but nobody is watching it. Stanley sits down, gets back up, walks behind the couch, sits again, then gets up one more time.
Blue finally looks at him. “Sit the fuck down.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re making everybody worse.”
He shakes out his hands. “I’m making myself better.”
Percy is leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands linked between them. Benson sits beside him, quieter than usual. Mackey is next to me.
My phone buzzes.
Gianna: Are you going to throw up?
I look at the message.
Me: No.
Her reply comes immediately.
Gianna: Benson said Stanley might.
I glance across the room. Stanley is pacing again.
Me: Possible.
Gianna: Call me when you know.
Me: Yeah.
I turn the phone over on my knee.
The selection show starts. The room goes completely quiet.
I don’t understand why TV makes something this important look so casual.
Regions populate one at a time while some guy at a desk talks in the same voice he would use to discuss weather.
Entire seasons are ending or continuing based on names appearing on a screen, and the broadcast keeps moving like everybody watching is not losing their minds.
The first region fills.
Not us.
The second starts.
Michigan.
Stanley makes a sound under his breath, but nobody reacts.
Then the third region appears.
One-seed.
Two.
And then:
Camden.
It takes half a second for thirty people to confirm that we all saw the same thing. Then the room explodes.
Stanley gets on top of a table. Percy jumps up and hugs Coach, which might be the strangest part of the entire day because Fuller freezes with both arms halfway out before eventually patting him on the back.
I tackle Benson. Blue throws a water bottle.
Mackey grabs me around the shoulders while somebody screams directly into my ear.
I’m on my feet, bringing Mackey in and smacking his back.
“We’re in!”
I shake Benson’s hand, pulling him up. “Jesus, Laurens,” he laughs. “We’re fucking in!”
We start cheering as Benson shouts it again.
My phone starts vibrating in my hand. Gianna. I answer.
“You’re in!” she screams before I can say anything.
I laugh. “Yeah.”
“WHY DO YOU SOUND NORMAL?”
“I’m not.”
I can barely hear her over the room, so I slip into the hallway and let the door shut behind me. The quiet hits immediately. Now I can hear her.
“It just got really quiet. Where are you?” she asks.
“Hallway.”
“Why?”
“Couldn’t hear you.”
There is a small pause on the other end.
Then her voice softens. “So, you’re in.”
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes. “Yeah.” The relief feels different without twenty people yelling around me.
“What happens now?” she asks.
“Denver.”
“When?”
“Thursday.”
“Where?”
“Toledo.”
“Okay.”
I can hear Lucy talking somewhere near her, then Gianna laughs at something I cannot make out. “Congratulations, Laurens.”
“Thanks.”
“Boyfriend.”
I smile. “Yeah.”
The team-room door opens.
Stanley sticks his head out. “Laurens!”
“What?”
“Four.” He holds up four fingers, stares at me like that explains everything, then disappears back into the room.
Gianna hears him. “What is he yelling about?”
“Four.”
“Four what?”
“Games.”
The words settle differently when I say them out loud.
Denver. Another game if we survive that. Then two more. Four wins between us and a national championship.
“Holy shit,” Gianna says quietly.
Someone calls my name again from inside. “I have to go. I’ll see you tonight.”
“You better.”
“I will.”
There is another pause before she says, softer this time, “I’m really happy for you.”
I look down at the floor. “Thanks, G.”
When I go back into the team room, Stanley has dragged the whiteboard out from wherever Fuller keeps it and is standing in front of number five.
WIN THE FUCKING THING.
He points at it with the marker.
“That was never about the Big Ten.”
Benson is still smiling when he says, “It was a little about the Big Ten.”
“No.” Stanley shakes his head like Benson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “I said the fucking thing. Singular.”
Somebody laughs.
Stanley turns back to the board and writes beneath everything else.
DENVER. THURSDAY.
Then beside it, he draws a huge 4.
The room quiets, and we all stare at it.
Yesterday, I was trying to figure out whether I had already played my last college hockey game. Now there could be four more. I look around the room at Benson, Percy, Blue, Stanley, Mackey, and all the guys I have spent years sitting beside in places exactly like this one.
The end is still coming. Just not today. Today we get another week.