Chapter 14
Blue
The tape is the wrong color again.
I’m halfway through the second wrap when I notice the black tape on the blade because Benson moved the white roll to his own stall and didn’t put it back.
I’m not going to ask for the white roll.
I am also not going to get up and walk across the locker room and get it myself, because the way this room is right now, if I stand up, Stanley is going to remember I exist, and I don’t need that right now.
It’s ninety minutes to puck drop.
The room is loud. Walker is across from me on his fourth roll of tape because Walker tapes his stick like a man taping a Christmas package.
Tate is doing his hip stretches on the rubber mat in the middle of the room with his AirPods in.
Rowan is at his stall buckling his pads in.
Percy is in the far corner with his mask off, staring at the floor, doing his pre-game thing.
I have slept maybe four hours. My mind won’t stop replaying the house meeting. I’m having a hard time believing that she broke up with her boyfriend, but they said that she said it. I can’t sit alone with the thought that she told my teammates, but she didn’t tell me.
I’m not going to think about any of it. I’m going to play hockey.
Benson and Stanley arrive together. I hear them before I see them — Stanley mid-rant in the hallway, Benson laughing, and then the door bangs open and Stanley says, loud enough that the whole room turns, “— and she literally swiped on me, Benson, like literally with her finger, on the screen, what is wrong with women —”
Benson, behind him, choking a laugh. Walker barks a laugh. Tate pulls one AirPod out. Stanley drops onto the bench across from me. His pad bag thumps. He’s grinning like a maniac.
“Baby Blue.”
“Sterm.”
That makes Walker cackle.
Stan side eyes him. “How we feeling tonight, buddy?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“Just fine.”
He leans forward. “I’m asking how my favorite second-line winger is feeling about his home game.”
“I am feeling like you should tape your stick and leave me alone.”
“That’s not a great attitude, Goldie.” He turns to Benson. “That’s not the attitude of a winner, my brother.”
Benson, from his stall two down, drops a glove on the floor and reaches for it. Without looking up, he says, “Let the man tape his stick.”
“I am letting him tape his stick. I’m asking him about his feelings while he tapes his stick. This is a normal pre-game conversation. This is what supportive teammates do.”
I keep taping, and Stanley watches me for a second. He leans back. He folds his hands behind his head. “Just one question, Blue.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what the question is.”
“I know what the question is.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“No.”
He grins. He picks up his own roll of tape and goes back to his stick.
Walker, two stalls down, is doing the small careful suppressed-laugh shoulder shake of a man who would like to be in on the joke and knows better than to participate. Tate has put his AirPod back in. Rowan, at his stall, is grinning into his elbow pad.
Benson is in a good mood. I watch him from the corner of my eye while I do my second wrap of the blade. He’s humming. Benson does not hum. Benson is the captain of this team, and the captain of this team does not, in my two years of knowing him, hum in the locker room before a Hockey East matchup.
Benson is humming a song I almost recognize.
I narrow my eyes at the toe of my skate. “Reeve.”
“Golding.”
“You good?”
“I’m great.”
“Why are you great?”
“I am playing hockey on a Thursday night with my best friends. Why wouldn’t I be great?”
Rowan scoffs, “First round, fucker.”
Walker chuckles.
Benson sticks his tongue out like he knows he’s top dog.
“Blue. I am a man in love. I’m always great.”
I shake my head. “Disgusting.”
Stanley adds in, “You make me sick, Reeve.”
“You’re going to make somebody sick someday, Stan.”
“Doubt it.”
“Statistically speaking.”
“Reeve, I’m going to die alone. Hawthorne House rules for life, baby!”
I look at him, recalling what he said at the bar the other week. He asked how serious the rules are, and now he’s saying this. “Yeah, right,” I mutter.
Stanley widens his arms. “And I’m at peace with it.”
Walker laughs out loud this time.
I look at Benson.
He winks at me.
I narrow my eyes harder.
He goes back to humming.
I go back to my stick.
I don’t have time to figure out what Benson is sitting on. I have a kid I am about to spend two and a half hours hunting.
Cole Bauer.
UMass. Junior winger. Six-three, two-ten. Lefty. Has been on the all-conference list two years running and has not stopped reminding the local press about it once.
I’ve played him twice.
The first time was in October of my sophomore year. He chirped me through warmups, chirped me on the bench, chirped me on the ice. I said nothing. We won that game, and I went home and slept fine.
The second time was last December. He slashed my wrist on a faceoff in the second period when the ref was looking at the bench. He skated past me afterward and said gloves clean, eight? and grinned. I said nothing. The ref didn’t see it. The wrist swelled up overnight.
He thinks he has me figured out. He thinks I’m the kid he can run his mouth at and slash on the boards because the kid stays quiet and the kid does not retaliate.
Tonight, he’s going to find out he has me wrong.
Coach Fuller does the pre-game speech at sixty.
He stands in the middle of the room with his clipboard tucked under his arm and his hat pulled low. He goes through what he always goes through. Defense first. Win the neutral zone. Don’t take dumb penalties. He stops at the end of my row. He points the clipboard at me.
“Golding.”
“Coach.”
“No fights tonight.”
“Coach.”
“I mean it.”
“Yes, coach.”
“I lost you for seven minutes last game because you couldn’t keep your gloves on. Tonight you keep them on. You are on the ice for sixty minutes.”
“Yes, coach.”
He holds my eye for one beat. He moves on.
Stanley leans across the bench. “No fights, Blue. You hear coach? No fights. Not even one little fight.”
“I will end you.”
“Threats. Hostility. This is exactly what coach is talking about, Goldie.”
Walker is laughing again.
I don’t eat the pre-game banana. I lace my skates and pull my helmet on. I tape the strap. I hit my head once against the stall back to seat the helmet right. I roll my neck. Left, right. The shoulder grabs just a little, not as much as it was. I think it might be getting better.
The room goes quiet, and then Coach claps once.
“Let’s go.”
The tunnel is cold. We line up the way we always line up.
Benson first because he’s the captain. Stanley next because Stanley insists.
Then Rowan and Walker and a couple of D-men and the third line and then me and Tate at the back of the pack.
I have my mouth guard in. My stick is in my left hand.
My right glove is over my left glove because of the chin strap I am still picking at, and I drop my left glove down to my side as Coach walks past and slaps a few helmets and then we move.
The corridor opens onto the ice. The crowd noise hits me through the helmet.
It’s a Thursday-night midweek crowd, which means it’s two-thirds full, which is loud enough.
The pep band is in the corner. Somebody is yelling something I can’t make out.
The Zamboni has just finished, and the ice is gleaming under the lights, and the air at the gate is the cold that lives in this building and nowhere else in my life.
I step onto the ice. The blade of my skate hits clean. My legs know what they are doing before my brain remembers to tell them.
Home.
This is home.
I loop with Walker. He’s quiet. He’s always quiet. He does his stretching loops on autopilot, and I do mine. We cross paths twice and nod twice. The third lap, I’m halfway around, and I see Benson skate up to me with a puck on his stick.
“Come with me.” He throws a puck at me.
I catch it. “What?”
“I’m giving Lucy a puck.”
I scoff.
“Come with me.”
“Take Stan.”
“I’m not taking Stan. Come on.”
Stanley, from somewhere at the other end of the ice, shouts, “I heard my name.”
Benson shouts back, “Go back to your warmup, Stan.”
“Why is my name in your mouth?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Stanley says something else, and Benson sighs.
Rowan comes up on my other side, also looping, also passive on his stick.
Benson grabs his shoulder.
“Laurens. You’re coming.”
“Reeve, I’m not in this relationship.”
“You’re on this team, Laurens.”
“This is not what teams are for.”
“It’s exactly what teams are for.”
Rowan looks at me.
I shrug.
The three of us — me, Benson, Rowan — peel off our warmup loops and skate in formation toward the home side of the ice. The family section is upstairs and to the right, halfway up the lower bowl. I don’t look at the family section during warmups or at all. There’s no point.
Coach yells from the bench, “Reeve! That’s not a warmup!”
“Proper warmups in a minute!”
Coach says something under his breath I cannot hear.
The three of us skate to the glass.
Lucy is standing near the plexiglass in Benson’s Camden U hoodie. She’s grinning at Benson as he approaches like a girl who knew he was going to do something stupid and has prepared for it. Gianna is next to her in a Wolves jersey with her arms folded and her what now face on, and next to Gianna —
I see Mila, and that’s when my mind goes into a frenzy. Because where there is Mila, there is Melly. Where one is, so is the other.
And next to Mila —
The world tilts.
My stick stops moving. The puck on my blade rolls off and clatters against the boards, and I don’t pick it up.
She’s here.
Melly is here.