2 #3
“Listen,” Dad says. “Don’t try to win the spot in one skate. It’s preseason. You’ll press. You always press the first couple weeks.”
“I’m not pressing.”
“You kept your head today?”
I look at the tape in my fist. “Yeah.”
“Good man. How’s the roommate?”
Rafe looks up at the same second, like he felt it. “Annoying,” I say.
Rafe gives me the finger without taking his eyes off his phone.
“Good,” Dad says. “Builds character.”
“Mine or his?”
“Yours. His might be a lost cause.”
I laugh, and Rafe’s eyes narrow. What did he say? he mouths. I shake my head.
Dad asks if I’ve got enough food in the room. I tell him I do. What I actually have is protein bars, half a bag of chips, and something Rafe bought yesterday that I’m pretty sure needs a refrigerator and is currently sweating on his desk.
“All right. I’ll let you go. Call me after the next skate.”
“I will.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
“What did he say about me?” Rafe asks when I hang up.
“That you’re a lost cause.”
From the hallway, Koda yells, “Are we lifting, or are you two getting married?”
The dining hall at six on a Friday is louder than the rink, because nobody in it is moving for a reason.
People stop in the middle of every aisle to decide whether they want pizza like the outcome will follow them for life.
I get a plate, find the gap in the line nobody else sees, and take a table near the back with a view of the doors.
Rafe has built a plate that could feed three people. Koda has cereal.
“What the fuck is that?” I say.
“Cereal.” He points his spoon at a table of girls from the rowing team across the aisle, loud enough that they hear it. “It’s what they eat and look at them. Shoulders like a refrigerator. I’m doing the opposite.”
One of them turns around. He winks at her. She gives him a look that should have ended him, and he goes back to his cereal.
“Some of us care about protein,” I say.
Rafe stares at the cereal for a moment, then starts in on the skate. Not his turnovers. Never his turnovers. He wants to know why Dannebrog stopped the transition drill twice when the timing looked fine to him.
“It wasn’t fine,” I say. “Koda was late.”
Koda looks up. “Thank you.” Then, a second later, “Wait. Fuck you.”
“You were a full stride behind on both. Cheat your first three steps, and you’ll get there.”
“I don’t need you to coach me.”
“Clearly you do. You were late twice.”
He chews and glares, but I can see him running the three steps in his head anyway, which is more than Rafe would ever do.
Rafe points his fork at me. “Are we not talking about the Greeley thing?”
“No.”
“You were smiling at him, man. Like a serial killer.”
“He put his hand on my face.”
“He wants your spot.”
“He can want it.”
“He’s going to keep coming,” Koda says. “He’s an entitled prick. He thought it was his. Everybody told him it was his. Then you showed up with your film and your scouts and your personality.”
“I don’t have a personality.”
“Exactly,” Koda and Rafe say at the same time, and then look at each other like they’re annoyed about agreeing.
A crowd walks past while I’m glaring at them, and my eye catches on a head of blonde hair.
It’s the blonde from last night outside Corvin, who screamed at her boyfriend at midnight and then decided I looked like a guy who cheats.
She’s got a tray in one hand, she’s talking with the other, and her eyes are red around the rims.
She sees me the same second I see her, and her mouth stops. Recognition, then a scowl, then plain annoyance. At least we agree on something. I go back to eating.
“Fucking asshole,” she mutters as she passes.
Koda twists around to watch her go. “Was she talking to us?”
I shake my head without looking up.
“Shame,” Koda says, still watching her. “She can talk to me like that anytime. Face down.”
Rafe snorts. I keep eating.
“What’d you do to her?” Koda asks, staring at her.
“Nothing.”
We walk back across the quad after seven.
It’s still warm, and the sprinklers outside the library are ticking in slow arcs under the lampposts.
I’m thinking about the entry. Swing low before the regroup.
If I hold at the hash marks instead of drifting to the top of the circle, the D has to commit before I do, and Rafe, if he ever looks, gets the seam.
I’ll try it on the first rush Monday and find out if the old man’s right.
My skate had better be sharp by six-thirty, and if it isn’t, I’ll stand at the equipment room door until it is.
I’m thinking about Greeley’s palm flat on my cage when my phone buzzes.
Jules: 10:15?
I send her a thumbs-up and turn to Rafe. “If you don’t want to hear it, go to Koda’s.”
Rafe stops walking and looks at Koda, then at me. “You’re kicking me out of my own room?”
“I’m giving you a warning.”
“I’m not sleeping at Koda’s.”
“Then stay and listen to me fuck,” I say. “Your call.”
A slow grin comes up across his face. “I’ll go for ten minutes. That’s all you need.”
“Fuck you, Waleska.”
“You’re right,” Rafe says, and starts walking again, loose and cocky, hands in his pockets. “It’ll probably be five.”