29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Percy
I leave her in my room and go down to watch the hockey game. I don’t look at the whiteboard because it’s been watching me all day. I’ve walked past it a hundred times and never once needed to read it. I’ve got the rules memorized anyway.
They’re all in the living room with the game up. Benson’s got the remote and won’t give it up. Rowan’s on the floor with his back against the couch. Blue’s in the corner of it with his hood up. Stanley’s sideways across the whole loveseat, phone in one hand, eyes on the screen.
“Sit down, you’re blocking it,” Benson says without looking.
I sit down and watch the screen.
This is a perfect Sunday in normal terms — the five of us, a game, and nowhere to be.
Rowan reaches up to steal the remote, Benson holds it out of range, and Stanley narrates a save like he’s calling it for television.
I’ve sat in this exact position a hundred Sundays but today my mind keeps floating upstairs.
“He telegraphs everything,” I say when the other goalie bites on a fake. “Watch his glove. He drops it before the shot.”
Benson looks over at me. “Since when do you talk during footage?”
“He’s right, though,” Rowan says.
“I know he’s right. I’m asking why he’s talking.”
Blue’s looking at me from under the hood. He doesn’t say anything. He just looks, a second longer than nothing, and then back at the screen.
“Leave him alone. He’s got opinions now,” Stanley says. “That’s growth. I’m proud.”
I watch the goalie for a while and think.
“Stanley,” I say after a while.
“He speaks,” Stanley says, watching the screen.
“How does a goalie go pro?”
Stanley turns his head. He looks at me for a second like he’s checking whether I’m serious, and then he sets the phone down on his stomach.
“You actually asking?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He sits up. And the joke goes out of his voice, most of it, which almost never happens.
“So. Real answer, not the answer people give you. My dad ran junior camps for fifteen years, so I’ve heard this my whole life.
” He points at the screen. “Goalies develop late. That’s the first thing.
You don’t age out at twenty-two like everybody thinks.
Guys break through at twenty-four, twenty-five.
So the clock’s longer, which sounds good, but it’s worse, because it means you’ve got to grind three, four extra years for a maybe. ”
“Numbers,” Benson says quietly, eyes still on the game.
“Numbers are brutal.” Stanley nods. “One net. You know how many guys want the one net. It’s not like a winger, you can carry four lines of wingers, everybody plays. There’s one of you on the ice. So the funnel’s tiny and it never gets wider.”
Rowan has turned around now, too.
“So how do the undrafted ones make it?” Stanley says, answering his own question, because he can’t not.
“Because some do. Deveroux, listen, this is the part.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees.
“The ones who come up with no draft pedigree, no camp behind them, nothing — they make it because they did nothing else. For years. I mean nothing. No offseason, no split focus, no — you’re on the ice at six in the morning when nobody’s making you, every day, for years, because the guy you’re up against is doing it too, and the only thing that separates you is who put in the reps when there was no reason to.
That’s the whole margin. It’s who wanted it more when it was inconvenient. ”
“That’s bleak,” Rowan says.
“It’s not bleak, it’s just true. Most guys don’t make it. The ones who do gave up everything else to do it.” Stanley shrugs, sitting back. “That’s it. That’s the answer. It’s not talent. Everybody at that level has talent. It’s who’s got room for nothing but this.”
I don’t say anything. I’m looking at the screen, and I’m not seeing it.
Because I want it. I’ve let myself want the net all fall, in the dark, where it was safe — and hearing it laid out like that, the six-in-the-morning, the years, the nothing-else, it doesn’t scare me off, it does the opposite, it lights the whole thing up in me.
That’s mine. I already do that. I’m already the guy on the ice when nobody’s making me.
“You’ve got the head for it, for what it’s worth,” Blue says from the corner. That’s a speech from Blue. “Nobody works the net like you.”
Something goes through my gut. Blue doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. I nod at him.
“That’s why we have the house rules, by the way,” Stanley says. He says it easy, offhand, picking the phone back up off his stomach, eyes already drifting back to the game.
“What?” Benson says.
“The whiteboard. Rules one through four.” Stanley waves a hand around the house.
“Everyone thinks it’s a fucking joke, but it’s not.
My dad had the same rule for himself, and he tells it straight — you can’t do the thing I just said and have a girlfriend.
There’s no room. You give everything to the game, or you give some to a girl, and if you give some to a girl, you’re not all the way on the ice, man. And it’s not fair to her either.”
He’s not looking at any of us.
“Like, think about it,” Stanley goes on.
“You’re twenty-two, you’re on the ice at six, you’re gone every weekend, your whole head is one thing.
What are you giving a girlfriend? Nothing.
Scraps. You’d be dragging somebody through years of coming second to a sport for a maybe that probably doesn’t hit.
” He shakes his head. “It’s not about being a monk.
It’s that it’s cruel to ask somebody to sign up for that.
The rule’s almost nice, if you think about it.
You don’t do that to a person unless you’ve got room for them. And we don’t. Not till this is over.”
“Didn’t know you’d thought about it that hard,” Rowan says.
“I contain multitudes.” The joke’s back, and the moment closes. Benson turns the volume up on a breakaway, and the room goes loud again.
My heart’s fucking going rampant, and I keep my eyes on the screen.
They go to bed early. It’s Sunday. There’s ice at six tomorrow, so by ten, the house is quiet. Rowan first, then Benson, Stanley last, of course, banging around the kitchen for a while before his door finally goes.
I wait. I give it longer than I need to.
I go up the stairs, skipping the third one out of habit, and open my door.
Penelope’s on my bed. On her side, one hand under her cheek, phone dark on the pillow beside her, just the streetlight coming through the curtain enough to find the shape of her, and for a second, I stand in the doorway with my hand on the knob, because Stanley’s voice is still in my head — no room, it’s not fair to her — and here she is, taking up the exact space the rule says she can’t, in the only room I’ve ever had, and I want her here so badly it goes through me like something breaking.
I don’t get to want this. I just got told why.
I close the door and whisper, “House is down. We can go.”
She sits up, blinking, her hair pushed to one side.
She doesn’t say anything. She finds her shoes, and I find her jacket.
I hold it up, she turns and puts her arms back into it, and I settle it on her shoulders.
My hands stay a second too long, and I make them stop.
Then I take her down through the dark house past all their doors, my hand at her back, moving her off the boards that talk.
I lift the front door on its hinges, so it won’t make a sound, and we’re out.
The cold hits, and she pulls the jacket tight.
We go down the block to her car under the dead streetlight, quiet, our breath showing.
And the whole way, I’m not watching her.
I’m watching the house. The upstairs windows.
Stanley’s, Benson’s, Rowan’s, Blue’s — dark, all of them, no faces, no lights, nobody up, nobody at the glass — and I don’t let a breath all the way out until I’ve checked every single one and they’re all still black.
Nobody saw. It worked. And I hate how good I’ve gotten at this, how fast I did the math on the windows, how easy the sneaking came — like I’ve had years of practice being the thing that has to stay hidden.
She stops at her car and turns around.
She looks up at me.
“Text me when you get home,” I whisper.
She nods. She stands there another second like there’s more, and I stand there like there’s more.
Neither of us says a word, and then she gets in.
The engine turns over loudly in the empty street, and I flinch at the sound of it and check the windows again — still dark — and she pulls out, and her taillights swing red across and go.
And then she’s gone, and the emptiness comes up in me all at once, the exact thing that wasn’t there all day, because all day, hidden or not, lying to everyone or not, she was up there, in my room, in my house, and now there’s nothing up there.
I go back in, past the whiteboard. I don’t look at it.
I lie down in the dark on top of the covers, in a bed that smells like her now, and I know exactly why I can’t have this.
Stanley told me an hour ago. I lie there wanting it anyway, wanting the net and wanting her, and I already know, the way I’ve always known everything that was going to be taken from me, that I’m not going to get to keep both.