2 #2
Something hot and ugly comes up behind his eyes, and then it’s gone, and he grins like I told him something funny. “Careful. You’re starting to sound like you care.”
Thirty seconds later, I put the puck on his tape with him moving into open ice, and he scores, and for half a second, his face looks almost satisfied. Then he glides up next to me. “See? Coachable.”
“You scored. That’s not the same thing.”
“It is when it’s me.”
By the end, my shirt is stuck to my back and Rafe has scored enough times to confirm the problem. He really is that good. Somebody should have knocked the ego out of him years ago, nobody did, and now it’s going to have to be me, and neither of us is going to enjoy it.
The locker room is loud and humid and smells like old tape and older sweat. I’m on the bench unlacing my skates when Greeley walks past on his way to the showers and says something to the junior beside him. I don’t catch the words. I catch my name in the middle of them, and the junior’s laugh.
Koda catches all of it. He’s up so fast the bench rocks. “Hey. Greeley. Say it louder.”
The room drops half a decibel. Greeley stops. “Wasn’t talking to you, Barnes.”
“You were talking about my line.”
“I was talking about your center.”
“Say it,” Koda says, and takes a step with a skate still in one hand and the other already opening. I’ve known him fourteen days, and I know what that hand looks like. I reach over without getting up and grab a fistful of the back of his shirt.
“Sit down.”
“Don’t fucking touch me, Kennebeck.”
“Sit down.”
“He’s—”
“I know what he is. I don’t need you to tell him. Sit.”
For a second, I think he’s going to turn around and swing at me instead. I think he’s considering it too. Then he sits, hard, and yanks his shirt out of my hand. “You had him on the glass and you let go. You got no follow-through, Kennebeck. You’re a real fucking buzzkill.”
Greeley laughs once and keeps walking, and the noise comes back up like nothing happened.
Across the room, Rafe is in his stall with a towel around his neck, watching me with his head tipped.
“What,” I say.
“Forty minutes ago, you were about to put that guy through the glass.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because Pennock pulled you off.”
“And Koda.”
“Koda was foaming at the mouth.”
Koda shakes his head. I pull off my other skate and run my thumb down the blade. The inside edge near the heel is dull; it caught wrong on my crossovers in the last drill. I set it aside for the equipment room.
“You going to answer me?” Rafe says.
“There wasn’t a question.”
“There’s always a question with you. You just don’t answer it.”
Dannebrog comes through before I can tell him to go to hell.
He stops in the middle of the room with his arms crossed until the noise drops.
“Same time Monday. Everybody shows. And if anybody talks to anybody about what happened out there, I’ll find out who, and I’ll make your life hell until official practice starts.
” He looks at Greeley, then at me. “After that, I’ll let Berwyn do it. ”
He walks out.
On my way out, I drop my skate with the equipment manager. He runs a thumb down the blade, grunts, and says, “Monday.”
“I need it by six-thirty. Monday.”
He looks at me like I’m the first freshman in history who’s ever asked for a time. I don’t leave until he writes it down.
By the time we get back to Corvin Hall, my legs are heavy in the way I like.
The hallway smells like detergent and whatever somebody incinerated in the microwave.
Our door is propped open with one of Rafe’s shoes because he doesn’t feel like using the handle, and I kick it into the room on my way in. It skids under his bed.
“Don’t touch my shit,” Rafe says from his bed.
“Then don’t leave your shit in the door.”
“It’s a two-hundred-dollar shoe.”
“Being used as a fucking doorstop.”
His half of the room has looked finished since day two: clothes put away, desk squared, a speaker that cost more than my phone, a comforter. My half works. The overhead light on my side has been buzzing since move-in, so I stand on my desk chair and twist the bulb a quarter turn until it stops.
“Handy,” he says. “Put that on your résumé for when hockey doesn’t work out.”
“At least I’ll have a résumé.”
“I’ll have a trust fund.”
“That’s not a skill.”
“It’s better than a skill.”
I sleep until two. When I get up, Koda is in our doorway without having knocked, still looking like he hasn’t decided whether he’s done being pissed at me.
“You guys eating dinner?”
“Eventually,” Rafe says.
“Dining hall at six,” I say. “I need to lift first.”
“Six-thirty,” Rafe says, flat on his back, thumbs going on his phone.
“You don’t need six-thirty.”
“I need six-thirty because you said six.”
“Six,” I say, and that’s the agreement whether Rafe likes it or not.
I’m pulling clean clothes out of the drawer when my phone buzzes on the desk. Jules, a girl I met at a party the second night of welcome week.
Jules: You around after 10?
Rafe is angled exactly right to see the screen and doesn’t pretend not to look. “Jules,” he says, dragging it out. “Who’s Jules?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody’s texting you about ten o’clock on a Friday. Is nobody coming here?”
“Maybe.”
“Should I leave?”
“You’d leave?”
“Fuck, no,” Rafe says.
Me: Yeah. After 10.
I’ve barely hit send when my phone starts ringing. My dad. I sit on the edge of the bed and answer. Koda loses interest the second he hears me say “Hey” and wanders off down the hall.
“You skate this morning?” my dad asks.
“Yeah.”
“How’d the captains set it up?”
“They’ve got me in the middle of the second.”
“Between who?”
“Barnes and Waleska.”
“Waleska’s the kid who won’t pass,” Dad says.
I look across the room at Rafe. “You’ve done your homework.”
“I’ve got the internet.” I can hear him smiling. “How’d it go?”
I start peeling the old tape off my left wrist while I tell him.
Not every detail. The rushes, the timing, that Coach watched my film.
Dad listens the way he always does when it’s hockey, quieter than usual, not filling space just because it’s there.
When I get to calling for the puck early, he makes a low sound of approval.
“That’s right. That’s exactly right. If he wants you to run the line, run it. Don’t wait for anybody to ask.” He pauses. “You doing that entry where you swing low before the regroup?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re coming in too high on it. You get to the top of the circle before the D’s turned, and you’ve got nowhere to go.”
“You haven’t seen me do it.”
“I’ve watched you play for thirteen years.”
“Not today.”
“Watch it anyway.”
I get the tape free and ball it in my fist, and I’m already running the entry in my head: where the D’s hips are, how late I can leave it.