11. Falcon Bait
Falcon Bait
The first chant hit before Noah’s skates touched the ice.
“FAKE. GRADES.”
The second came louder, rolling down from the student section at St. Brendan in a pulse that seemed to shake frost from the rafters.
“PAPER. CHAMPS.”
The rink air cut into his lungs, cold and metallic and meaner here than at North Lake, and for one hard second he felt every set of eyes in the building turn the same direction.
Toward him.
Toward the Wolves crest on his chest.
Toward the smiling heartbeat of a program everybody suddenly wanted to call rotten.
Noah adjusted the tape on his left glove with his stick pinned under his arm and kept his face blank.
Around him, warmups went on in ragged lines—pucks thudding off the glass, steel carving shallow crescents into fresh ice, a freshman winger overskating his turn because his shoulders were too tight.
The overhead lights made every scrape and rut shine.
Across center, a line of Falcons gathered by their blue line and watched the noise build like they’d lit it themselves.
Maybe they had.
Dylan glided up on Noah’s right. “Classy crowd.”
Noah didn’t look at him. “Heads down.”
“That a motivational speech?”
“It’s a request.”
Another chant started, uglier now, less rhythmic and more personal. Noah caught his own name in it this time.
Mercer. Mercer. Mercer.
Then: “CHEAT.”
His thumb throbbed under the tape. He flexed once against the shaft of his stick and felt the hot, familiar complaint run up into his wrist.
Coach banged the boards from the bench door. “Stay on your edges, not in their crap. We are not giving them free power plays because they learned a rhyme.”
A few guys laughed because they were nineteen and scared and laughter gave fear somewhere to go.
Noah circled back toward the bench, touching the top of each stall with his glove as he passed, the same way he always did before the room emptied and the game became public. One. Two. Three. The ritual steadied his breathing by fractions. Touch wood. Count bodies. Remember who was his.
Take care of your people first.
The code sat in his bones so deep it felt older than language.
Tonight it tasted dangerous.
Coach caught him at the end of the row before he turned back for the tunnel. “I need you boring,” he said quietly.
Noah met his eyes. “That your official tactical term?”
“You know what I mean.” Coach’s jaw was set too hard. “They’re going to try to turn this into a circus. I need our bench clean.”
Our bench.
Not your temper. Not your face on every camera.
Noah nodded once. “Got it.”
Coach held him there an extra beat. “And if anybody says anything about Cole—”
Noah’s stomach tightened like he’d taken a stick to the ribs. “They won’t.”
“They might.”
The truth of that moved between them cold as the rink.
Coach lowered his voice further. “You do not answer for things you do not know.”
Noah almost laughed at the impossibility of the instruction. It would have been ugly if it came out at all.
“I know,” he said instead.
Coach’s gaze dropped briefly to Noah’s left hand. “Thumb?”
“Fine.”
That got him the exact look it deserved.
Noah lifted his chin toward the ice. “I’m good.”
It was November. It was rivalry week. It was a lie.
Coach exhaled through his nose and slapped his shoulder once. “Then lead.”
Noah stepped through the tunnel into the full roar of the building.
The sound swallowed thought. Cowbells. Student-section screaming.
The blunt crack of a puck high off glass.
The Falcons intro hit the speakers and lights swung over the ice in red-white sweeps while North Lake got the road-team treatment: no theatrics, no spotlight, just names half-announced under boos.
Noah took his place for the anthem and looked straight ahead.
Dependable. Alternate captain. Fan favorite. Glue guy.
A public image was a thing made of borrowed pieces. Good quotes. Clean shifts. Smiles in the right hallways. Brownie tins carried into locker rooms to make boys laugh when they wanted to be sick.
Private Noah stood in a St. Brendan rink with his ribs still sore from the last time they’d played here, his thumb half-numb under tape, and a board investigation hanging over his team like weather.
Private Noah could feel the pressure in his guys before the puck dropped—the frantic pulse under all that bravado.
Only one person had been looking at him lately like she could see the split screen in full.
You teach them what leadership is every time you decide what can be said out loud.
The memory of Talia’s voice arrived so clear it almost made him turn toward the stands on instinct, ridiculous as that was. She wasn’t here. She had evening discussion sections on Wednesdays and a life that did not orbit his game schedule.
Good.
Good, because he did not need her seeing this place, this crowd, this chant.
Good, because he was already too aware of how badly he wanted her to see everything else.
The puck dropped.
The first shift was all collision and noise.
St. Brendan came fast through the neutral zone, hard on the forecheck, every finish a little extra, every shoulder check delivered with the kind of innocent violence refs were never eager to call in the opening minutes of a rivalry game.
Noah tied up his man in front on the first defensive-zone sequence and took two hacks to the back of his calves for his trouble.
No whistle.
The crowd loved that.
When he got to the bench, sweat was already cooling under his pads despite the rink chill. “They’re coming high on the cycle,” he told the freshman winger beside him. “Talk earlier. Don’t wait till you’re buried.”
The kid nodded too fast.
Noah bumped his helmet. “Breathe.”
Back out.
The chant returned every time he touched the puck.
“FAKE. GRADES.”
He made the easy play off the wall, skated through a finish, got tripped into the boards, and heard the section behind the glass laugh like they’d paid for a comedy show.
“PAPER. CHAMPS.”
He kept moving.
By the middle of the first, it wasn’t just the crowd. Falcons players had started joining in under their breath, each little drive-by comment delivered with a grin and a hard stick tie-up.
“Need a tutor for that breakout, Mercer?”
“Thought they gave you guys answers ahead of time.”
“Where’s your boy now?”
That one landed under Noah’s shoulder blades.
He turned too fast after the whistle and found St. Brendan’s captain already facing him, smiling with all his teeth through his cage.
He was older than most of their roster, broad through the chest, mean-eyed in the way some captains wore like a patch. Noah knew his game well enough: legal until it wasn’t, disciplined until he smelled blood.
“Easy,” the Falcons captain said. “Wouldn’t want to jeopardize eligibility.”
The linesman slid between them with practiced boredom. “Keep moving.”
Noah moved.
Barely.
At the bench, Dylan leaned in. “What’d he say?”
“Nothing worth repeating.”
That was untrue, but Dylan was wound up enough. Half the bench was. North Lake was playing like a team trying to prove innocence through force, which meant every touch was a little overcommitted, every zone entry a half-second rushed.
Late in the period, the Falcons scored on a rebound scrum Noah should have cleared.
He saw the lane. He got there. His left hand failed for a fraction when he tried to turn the blade over and lift the stick in front of the crease. Pain flashed white and hot through the thumb joint. Their winger tapped in the loose puck from three feet out.
The arena detonated.
Noah skated to the slot, stopped, and stared up at the scoreboard for one breath too long.
1–0 Falcons.
On the way back to center, their captain glided past him and said, almost pleasantly, “Guess that one won’t count after the ruling anyway.”
Noah’s mouthpiece bit hard into his teeth.
Coach met him at the bench with a low, furious calm. “Eyes here.”
Noah looked.
“I don’t care what they say.”
He wanted to believe that. He wanted to live in a world where noise was just noise and provocation was just background static and all that mattered was the next clean shift.
Instead he could feel every insult stacking with every missing answer, every board interview, every frightened text he’d fielded this week from boys too young to know the language around institutional failure but old enough to know when adults were lying.
“I know,” Noah said.
Coach’s gaze said he wasn’t convinced.
Intermission came with North Lake down one and the room too loud.
Wet gear steamed. Someone slammed a stall door.
Somebody else muttered about the officiating.
Athletic tape stuck to the concrete by the training table in pale loops.
Noah sat with his elbows on his knees while the trainer unwrapped his thumb enough to check swelling.
“You’re compensating,” the trainer said under his breath.
Noah stared at the floor. “Helpful.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
The trainer rewound the tape tighter. “If you can’t close on the stick—”
“I can.”
The answer came too fast.
Across the room Coach drew lines on the whiteboard with a marker that squeaked like a blade caught wrong on bad ice. “We stop feeding the building,” he said. “Short shifts. Simpler exits. They want us emotional because emotional teams chase. We do not chase.”
Noah got up while Coach was still talking and crossed to the freshmen on the end of the row.
“Listen to him,” he said quietly. “Nothing fancy. You get pucks deep, you finish clean, and if they yap, let them talk to themselves.”
One of the kids nodded. Another swallowed hard. “They keep saying stuff about the investigation.”
Noah looked at him.
The kid flushed under the attention. “Sorry.”
“No.” Noah’s voice gentled despite the anger under it. “You don’t apologize for hearing what’s in the room.” He touched the top of the boy’s helmet once. “You answer by playing our game.”
It was the right captain line. The one the cameras would have loved.
It even meant something.
But when he straightened, his own pulse was still punching too hard under his sternum.