2
The Question Mark Is Personal
Nash
The captains have me centering the second line before any of us have touched a puck, and the whole locker room knows what that means.
It’s on the whiteboard in the hallway in blue marker, in Cal Dannebrog’s blocky senior-captain handwriting: KENNEBECK, between BARNES and WALESKA, with a question mark next to my name like a dare.
Two lines down, on the third, it says GREELEY, no question mark at all. The second-line center spot belonged to a senior named Hollis last year, and Hollis graduated, and for two weeks of captain’s skates everybody in this building assumed it was going to Declan Greeley, including Declan Greeley.
Then I showed up.
It’s 6:52 on a Friday morning. Dannebrog called this skate at eleven last night in the team group chat, the night of the biggest welcome-week party of the year.
Seven a.m., voluntary. Nobody on this team has ever treated one of Dannebrog’s voluntary skates as voluntary.
I got four hours of sleep, most of it after standing outside Corvin at midnight waiting on a burrito that never came while a girl screamed at her boyfriend, and then at me.
Greeley is in front of the board with a coffee he isn’t drinking. We’ve skated together for fourteen days. On the third one, I took the puck off him in a battle drill and walked around him in front of everyone, and he hasn’t said a word to me since that wasn’t meant to cut.
“Enjoy the loaner,” he says, without turning around.
“It’s not a loaner.”
“It’s got a question mark on it, Kennebeck.”
“So does your career.”
He turns around, and I’m already walking.
Coach Berwyn is in the doorway of his office at the end of the hall in a team jacket, holding a mug. He can’t be on the ice for this and isn’t allowed to be. That doesn’t mean he isn’t in the building at 6:53 on a Friday.
“Kennebeck.”
I stop. “Coach.”
“I watched your film again last night,” he says. “You get open. You don’t tell anybody. That’s going to be a problem on a line with Waleska.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“I don’t need you to be good for a freshman. I’ve got hours of you being good for a freshman. When we start for real, I need a center who runs his line.” He takes a sip. “Go skate.”
Twelve minutes into Dannebrog’s skate, Rafe carries the puck over the blue line with two options open and takes neither.
I’m one of them, coming up the middle with my stick on the ice.
The defenseman has shaded toward Rafe, which is what he should do, because Rafe has the puck, and for fourteen days Rafe has made it clear to everybody in this building that the puck is his and he’ll give it back when he’s done with it.
He cuts inside, drags it around the D stepping up on him, gets forced wide, and tries to pull it back through three bodies because the first good decision bored him.
The puck comes off a skate and dies against the boards.
Dannebrog blows the whistle around his neck. He’s in full gear like the rest of us. “Again. Kennebeck. Were you open?”
“Yes.”
“Then say so. I couldn’t hear you from the point.”
The stands are empty. The lights over the far end are still half off, because nobody on staff is allowed to come turn them on. Greeley’s leaning on his stick by the boards, and when I go past he says, just loud enough, “Say so, Kennebeck,” and two of the juniors next to him laugh.
Rafe is coasting back to the dot with his chin up like the turnover was somebody else’s.
“You see me?” I say.
“I saw you.”
“Then give it to me.”
“When you’re worth giving it to,” Rafe says, and goes to the line.
We reset. This time I call for it before Rafe hits the blue line and again when he looks me off, loud enough that the defenseman flinches toward my voice.
That opens the lane Rafe wanted in the first place, and he takes it and shoots, and the goalie kicks it into the corner.
It was the wrong play, and it almost worked.
Koda goes past me on the reset. He’s been on my left wing for two weeks. He’s fast and loud and sloppy. He’s told me to my face twice that I’m an arrogant prick. He looks like he got less sleep than I did.
“He’s got a condition,” Koda says to me about Rafe.
I look at Rafe and agree. “He’s allergic to fucking passing.”
“Stole my words, Nash.” Then, louder, across the ice to the junior goalie still digging the puck out of the corner: “Hey, Fernandes. You going to stop one today, or is your mom still tying your skates?”
Fernandes’s face goes red behind his cage. The juniors by the boards don’t laugh at that one. Koda does.
Rafe glides up on my other side. “What the fuck did you say?”
“Do you know how to fucking pass a puck?” Koda says, skating backward in front of him.
Rafe looks pissed.
“Yesterday, you bounced it off my skate, Waleska,” Koda says. “That’s not a pass.”
“It got to you.”
“And it’s gonna keep coming to me because––” Koda gestures at him with both hands. “You’re going to fucking give it to me.”
Rafe coasts into position beside me and says, without looking over, “You were open on the first one too.”
“I know. I told you.”
“You told me late.”
He’s right, and I hate that he’s right, so I fix it.
Next rep, I’m moving before the puck crosses center, and I get to open ice a full stride before the D reads it.
Rafe finds me. It’s closer to a flip than a pass, but it lands on my tape, and I move it to Koda at the back door before the goalie’s done sliding, and Koda buries it.
Rafe skates by and knocks his shoulder into mine hard enough to push me half a step. “See? Passing.”
“That was me.”
“That was me letting you.”
By the third drill, I know where everybody on the ice is, including Greeley.
Dannebrog puts us across from each other in the battle drill, which is either a coincidence or a senior captain who wants to find something out. Two guys go into the corner after a dump-in, first one to win the puck moves it to the point, repeat until somebody’s legs quit.
The first time, Greeley gets there half a step late and finishes his hit anyway, low, stick up across my lower back. It’s a battle drill. I win the puck and move it.
“Easy,” Dannebrog says.
The second time, Greeley gets his stick between my legs and lifts after I’ve already chipped it out, and I go down to one knee. When I get up, he’s standing over me.
“Must be nice,” he says. “Walk in off a plane. Coach watches your film at night. Get told you’re the center. Get your name on the board.”
“I know you’re third line.”
His jaw works, and I skate back to the line.
On the bench side, Koda’s on his feet with his face gone tight. Maybe he’s standing up for me, or maybe he likes the idea of hitting Greeley. With Koda, the second one might be closer to the truth. I shake my head at him once. He flips me off and sits back down.
The third time, the whistle has already gone, and the puck is already at the point. I’m turning out of the corner when Greeley’s glove comes up into my cage. It isn’t a punch. It’s a flat, slow palm on the bars across my face, pushing my head back toward the glass.
“Stay down this time, rookie.”
Wrong guy.
I have his jersey in both fists before he finishes the sentence.
He’s going backward, because I’m stronger than he thought and closer than he wanted.
His shoulders hit the boards so hard the glass shakes.
His stick goes somewhere. Mine is on the ice behind me.
My face is an inch from his cage, and I’m smiling at him. I watch him notice it.
“Do it again,” I say.
He shoves at my chest. I don’t move, and I don’t let go. I lean in instead, all my weight, and watch him feel the difference.
“Go on. Do it again.”
“Kennebeck!”
Arms come around me from behind: Pennock, a defenseman built like a vending machine, and Koda, who is laughing.
They peel me off an inch at a time because my hands don’t want to open.
Greeley comes off the boards swearing, Dannebrog throws himself between us with both arms out, and the whole rink stops.
Somewhere a puck is still sliding, and I can hear it the whole way to the boards.
“Do it,” Koda says in my ear, still hauling on me, delighted. “Kick his fucking ass.”
“Shut up, Barnes,” Pennock says.
Dannebrog rips his helmet off. He’s red all the way down his neck. “You want Berwyn to find out about this from somebody in the stands?” He points at the empty bleachers, the half-lit far end, the office window upstairs with its blinds down. “He’s in the building. You think he’s deaf?”
Nobody says anything.
“This is my skate. You two want to kill each other, do it on your own time and your own ice, and don’t wear the logo when you do it.” He turns to me. “You done?”
I nod at Greeley. “Ask him.”
“I’m asking you.”
My pulse is slamming in my ears. My hands are finally open. I’m breathing through my teeth, and I make myself stop. “I’m done.”
“Greeley. Other end.” Dannebrog waits until Greeley goes, skating backward the whole way with his eyes on me. “Two lengths. Then back in line. And if Berwyn asks, nothing happened, because nothing’s allowed to happen. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
On my second length, Rafe is standing at the far blue line with his stick across his thighs, watching me.
“The robot has a setting,” he says as I pass.
“Fuck off.”
“No, I’m impressed.” He falls into stride beside me. “I had money on you being a narc.”
“You don’t have money on anything.”
“I have money on everything, Kennebeck. That’s the difference between us.”
The rest of the skate is clean because I make it clean.
I call for the puck early and loud. I move it on one touch.
I win two faceoffs off Greeley without looking at him, and on the second one I hear him swear.
Near the end, Rafe tries to beat two guys by himself, loses it, and slams his stick against the boards so hard the sound goes up into the empty rafters and Dannebrog turns his head.
I go past him. “Could’ve moved it.”
“You a captain now?”
“If I was, you’d be sitting.”