3. Chapter Three
Stanley
“She tried to kill me!” I slam the door behind me hard enough to rattle the picture frames. “On purpose. With a vehicle. In front of where I live.”
Benson doesn’t look up from the couch. “Who?”
“Linwood!”
“Stop lying,” Blue calls from the stairs, still holding Melly’s framed face to his chest like a shield. “She stopped and talked to you.”
“She said oh, it’s just you.” I throw my arms wide in the entryway. “Just you? JUST ME. Like I’m a pothole. Like I’m a dead raccoon in the road she has to go around. Do you know what this face is worth in endorsement money?”
“Lower than you’d think,” Benson says.
“You want to know what she is?” I plant myself in the middle of the living room.
“She’s an ice queen. No — scratch that, too generous.
She’s a clipboard goblin. She’s the human equivalent of sitting bare-assed on a cold toilet seat at three in the morning.
She is the reigning, undefeated Princess of the Third Row. ”
Benson glares at me.
“And I’ll tell you exactly how a woman like that sleeps.” I’m pacing now, hands going. “Standing up in a chest freezer, hanging off a hook by the collar of that thousand-dollar coat, eyes open, plugged into the wall — charging. Like a phone. At four percent. All night.”
I stop and look around the room.
No one is furious about this. Blue says nothing. Benson is listening with no intent to comment. Percy doesn’t even look at me. I don’t know where Rowan is, but he’s also not responding.
“That was a good one,” I tell the room, wounded. “That was genuinely elite material, and you are all corpses.”
Still nothing. A cold crowd is a professional challenge, so I do the only thing a man can do with a cold crowd. I climb onto the arm of the couch, because altitude helps, and I open my mouth to go bigger.
Rowan walks through the middle of it with a glass of water and doesn’t slow down. “I want it on the record,” he says to the room, “that I am not the cook anymore, and I will also not be the referee of whatever this is. Whatever this becomes. I’m out. I’m a civilian.”
“You can’t be a civilian, you took an oath—”
“There was no oath, Stan.”
“The Hawthorne House oath—”
“There’s no oath.” He’s already walking out the door. “I need to leave.”
And that’s when Percy, who has been silent this whole time, says, “You sure you’re mad she almost hit you?”
I stop.
“Or that she didn’t see you?”
Benson’s mouth does the thing where it’s not a smile, but it’s thinking about being one. Blue, the traitor, snorts.
I point at Percy with my whole hand. “Step out to cut the shooter’s angle, Pers. You’re hugging your post.”
“That’s not what we’re talking about.”
“It is now. I changed it.” I head for the stairs. “I’m out, deviants. Enjoy your little romances. I’ll be the only one in this house with any dignity.”
I take the stairs two at a time, so nobody gets the last word, and then the guys disperse to their Wednesday classes.
What’s it called when you can’t take it anymore, but you keep taking it?
The email is waiting for me that afternoon, sandwiched between a fantasy hockey notification and a coupon for a protein I don’t take.
Mr. Ermington — please come by the Academic Success Center today between 9 and 11 to discuss your standing in PHIL 1100.
Standing. Cute word for it.
I go, because if I don’t, they email Fuller, and if they email Fuller, it gets to be a whole thing, and I would rather chew the desk.
So I sit in a little gray room across from a nice woman named Diane who has a folder with my name on it and the gentle, doomed thought that maybe I might fall in love with my tutor.
The quiz I tanked Tuesday, it turns out, was not a fluke.
I am, in fact, failing Introduction to Philosophy, a class I chose specifically because the name made it sound like a nap.
Turns out you have to read things and then write down what you think they mean.
And I don’t have thoughts about what a dead Greek meant, I have thoughts about zone entries and the perfect omelet and whether Percy could beat a goose in a fight.
Diane is so concerned. She wants to talk about a plan.
“It’s handled,” I tell her, leaning back.
“Coach has eyes on it.” (Coach does not have eyes on it.
Coach does not know it exists. I would sooner die than tell him.) “And I’ve got a tutor lined up.
” (I do not have a tutor. The word tutor entered my mind two minutes ago.) “But this is great, Diane, this is really useful, thank you for the heads-up.” (I mean none of this.
I would not recognize Diane on the street in twenty minutes.)
I shake her hand and tell her she’s the best thing about this whole university, and I almost mean it, because she’s kind, and I’m grinning so wide my face hurts.
On the walk back across the quad, for about four seconds, the grin slips.
Because if hockey doesn’t work, there is nothing else.
There’s no backup Stanley. There’s no version of me who’s good at the gray room and the folder and the dead Greeks.
There’s a guy who can put a puck through a keyhole at fifty feet and absolutely nothing under that, and if the puck thing ever stops, I’m just a loud man with a famous last name.
The thought lasts about four seconds.
Nah, I don’t have to worry about it. The grin slides back on, and I find lunch.
Practice on Thursday is loose. We run a forecheck drill that I could do in a coma, and a breakout I could do dead, and somewhere in the middle of it, mid-drill, mid-nothing, my eyes go up to the stands.
Row three. Blue-line side. The worst-lit seat in the building.
Empty.
And across the bench, Percy lifts one eyebrow at me.
So I deflect and pull a between-the-legs move on the next rush that serves no purpose except to be the loudest thing in the building, and Fuller blows the whistle and informs me at volume that this is a practice and not a circus, and if I want to join the circus, he’ll write me a recommendation.
I grin at him. “Already got an offer, Coach. Better dental.”
The boys laugh. Percy doesn’t.
My dad calls that evening, and you can hear him before you even answer. That’s the thing about Robert Ermington. The man arrives in a room two seconds ahead of himself.
“There he is! The airplane!”
So he’s heard about it. Someone always tells him. There’s a whole network of people whose entire purpose is reporting my behavior back to my father, and honestly, good for them, it’s a thankless job.
“In my defense,” I say, “it was a great goal.”
“Of course, it was a great goal, you’re my kid.” He’s laughing already. “Pull that stunt in a real game, though, and they’ll put a puck in your ear, you understand me? Save it for when you’ve earned it. Then fly.”
“Noted. I’ll fly responsibly.”
“You won’t. That’s fine.” His voice drops half a register into business. “You know who’s in the stands Friday?”
“I do not.”
“Your guy. The development staff from the club flew in. They want to see what they paid for.” He says it light, but it’s not light. “So. You know. Be the player. Not the airplane.”
“Be the player. Got it. Boring. Continue.”
He laughs again — that’s two — and then, “Your mother says hi. And she says if you don’t call her this weekend, she’s getting on a plane, and you know she’ll do it, she’s already looking at flights, I’ve seen the tabs.”
“Tell her I’ll call. Tell her to close the tabs.”
“Close your tabs, too. Love you, cup.” Easy, the way he ends everything easy. “Bury one for me tomorrow. I’ll be watching from home.”
“Always do, old man.”
I hang up, and I’m smiling as I sit on the edge of my bed.
The room’s quiet. Nobody named the pressure — my dad’s too smooth to ever name it — but it got in anyway, the way it always does, the legacy, the scout, the club, and the famous easy voice that loves me and expects everything, all of it sitting on my chest at once.
So I get up and go downstairs. I make a joke at Blue that comes out about ten percent too loud for the size of the room, and he gives me a look, and I keep talking until the look goes away.
Benson mentions that he wants me to try out a new hockey stick. It’s a spanking new brand, and he claims it’ll help us win, so I agree to give it a go for the third period on Friday’s game.
Friday, I’m a different animal, and nobody alive has ever seen it.
I’m up before the alarm. I’m always up before the alarm on a gameday.
I make two eggs the same way I’ve made them since I was thirteen years old, over hard, no salt until after, and I eat them slowly at the counter while the house still sleeps.
I don’t talk. There’s no one to talk to, and I wouldn’t anyway.
I walk to the rink. Same route. The boys drive, but I walk, because the walk is part of the ritual.
It’s my last year, so I’m making every moment last. I put in the one playlist I’ve had since I was a kid and don’t skip a single track, not even the ones I’m sick of.
The cold doesn’t bother me today. Today it’s just air.
Blue’s already here. He’s too pissed about the fourth-round pick, and I don’t blame him. The kid’s got spunk. I’d love to see him in the first round.
I lay my gear out and tape my stick. I tape it slow, by feel, eyes half shut, and somewhere in the middle of the wrap, my head goes quiet. This only happens twice. One with a roll of tape in my hands, and two, after a puck leaves my blade.
That’s the part nobody gets to see. Not the boys, not my dad, not the three Allie’s that I generously made out with, not the girl in row three.
The airplane is the costume. This — the eggs, the walk, the tape, the quiet — this is the man, and I keep him locked in a back room and let the clown answer the door.
Then the locker room fills up, and I put the costume back on, because that’s my actual job. I don’t like being taken seriously because when I do, it threatens people. I already have my riches and my talent, so I don’t need to knock anyone’s door down by being an entitled dickhead about it.
Benson goes tight before games. Always has.
He gets a jaw on him, a thousand-yard captain stare, and a tight captain makes a tight room, and a tight room loses.
So I loosen it. I narrate Percy’s pregame stretching like a nature documentary.
I start a debate about whether a hot dog is a sandwich that nearly ends three friendships.
I tell Blue his girlfriend texted me, which she did not, and watch him short-circuit.
By the time Fuller comes through, the room’s loose and laughing and Benson’s jaw has come unclenched, and it cost me nothing.
It never costs me anything. That’s the gift.
But once — once, lacing up, head down — I check my watch.
Twenty minutes to puck drop.
She’ll be in row three.
I play my actual game tonight –– the player my dad asked for, the one the club flew a man in to watch.
First period, I lay a quiet little saucer pass through two sticks onto Theo’s tape for the easiest tap-in of his life, and I don’t celebrate it big because it wasn’t mine to celebrate, I just bump his fist and skate back.
Second period, it’s mine.
Theo wins it on the wall and feeds me at the top of the circle, and I’ve got a lane and that second where the world goes quiet.
The angle’s waiting for me –– top corner, glove side, the keeper a fraction late the way they always are, and I don’t decide to shoot so much as I notice that I already have.
In.
I don’t fly. I don’t spin. I don’t do a single thing for the full seats. The home end erupts, and the bench is up. Benson skates over and taps my glove, and I just nod.
I let the boys mob me for a second.
And then I take the long way back.
Instead of skating to the bench, I loop wide like I’m just stretching my legs, like I lost track of where the door is. Out past the center circle, across the offensive zone, drifting, unhurried, up toward the glass on the blue-line side.
Up toward row three.
Linwood’s there with her phone in her lap, a different coat that’s too good for this rink, and that face she keeps set to unimpressed like a thermostat.
I stop at the glass and look at her. Right at her, through the plexiglass, no grin, no airplane, no mouthful of garbage to throw at her — just her eyes and my eyes, and it’s the first time they’ve actually met, and something goes still in my chest that has no business being still in the middle of a hockey game.
I don’t say anything.
I raise my stick. Blade up, where she can see it. And slow, deliberate, watching her the whole time, I move it through the air like a pen. Two strokes. Three. A little flick at the end, like a signature.
I’m miming taking notes.
I’m mocking the phone in her lap, the reports, the entries, the thing she takes more seriously than anything on this earth. Write that down, princess. Player 11. Goal. Top corner. Save your daddy the trip.
Then I reach out, tap the glass once, and I turn and skate to the bench as if nothing happened.
The crowd has no idea. The broadcast guys are going to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what that celebration was. The boys on the bench give me a what the hell was that face, and I wave it off.
But Aspen Linwood knows exactly what just happened.
She didn’t flinch. I’ll give her that. Her face didn’t move an inch, didn’t fall, didn’t flush, stays right on unimpressed.
The girl wants to attempt to murder me? Now she knows she’s on my radar.
I sit on the bench and don’t look back at her, because I already know exactly what I did is going to piss her off.
The boys are still riding the goal, slapping my helmet, and Coach Fuller’s barking the next line over the top of it all. Down the bench, Percy lifts his mask and looks at me. A second too long. He saw the whole thing and knows exactly what I did. Then he drops the mask and looks away.
I tap my stick on the boards, stare at the ice, and wait for my shift.
The goal was a great goal. Top corner, club’s man in the building, my dad’s voice in my ear — it was the player, it was the thing I’m made for. And it felt like nothing next to thirty seconds of a girl strangling a phone because of me.
She gave nothing away, but I fucking felt it. Her anger simmering right under the surface.
I lean over the boards, blow out a breath, and let the one quiet thought come up before I shove it back under the ice with the rest:
She wants to take notes on me?
Almost run me over?
Good.
I declare war, Linwood.