6 #2
Raygoza is a D who’s always at Greeley’s elbow, and he’s the one who told Greeley’s roommate about Friday, who told Pennock, who told Koda.
Koda has been waiting for a battle drill with Raygoza since dinner Monday.
When he gets one, he doesn’t even go for the puck.
He goes straight through Raygoza shoulder first, puts him into the boards so hard the glass bows, and then leans on him.
Dannebrog’s whistle shrieks. “Barnes!”
Koda coasts backward with both hands up. “Battle drill, Dannebrog.”
“The puck was behind the net.”
“I was battling.”
“You were hunting.” Dannebrog skates in, red all the way down his neck, and shoves Koda once in the chest. “Two lengths. Then sit. You’re done.”
“Done? It’s a captain’s skate.”
“It’s my skate. You’re done. Go.”
Koda goes. On his way to the bench, he skates right past Raygoza, who’s still holding his shoulder, and says something low that I can’t hear. Raygoza goes white.
After the skate, Rafe and Koda don’t go back to Corvin Hall. I know because I’m walking out of the rink with my bag and I see them at the far end of the lot, by a gray Honda Civic with a dent in the back bumper. Koda is leaning against the driver’s door. Rafe is sitting on the hood.
Raygoza is walking toward the car with his bag, and when he sees them, he stops. I change direction.
By the time I get there, Raygoza is standing about ten feet from his car with both hands on his bag strap, and Koda is talking.
“—just saying, man, if you’re going to run your mouth, you should know it gets around. It gets all the way around. To Berwyn. To everybody.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Raygoza says.
“You said everything.”
“Get off my car,” Raygoza says to Rafe.
Rafe doesn’t move. He looks down at Raygoza from the hood with his hands folded in his lap. “This is a nice car. For a Civic. It’d be a shame if somebody who talks too much had to get it fixed.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s an observation.”
“Get off my car.”
Koda pushes off the driver’s door and takes a step toward Raygoza, and Raygoza takes a step back. Koda’s grin gets wider. He’s enjoying this more than anything he’s done on the ice all week.
“Barnes,” I say.
All three of them turn. I walk past Koda, right up to Raygoza, until I’m standing in front of him. He’s shorter than me and has to look up. I keep my voice low, and I don’t touch him.
“You didn’t see anything Friday,” I tell him. “And you didn’t see anything today. Right?”
Raygoza swallows. “Right.”
“Say it.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Good.” I step back and look at Rafe. “Off the car.”
Rafe looks at me for a long, slow second. Then he slides off the hood and lands on his feet, and Raygoza gets in his Civic and drives away so fast his tires squeal.
Koda watches the car go, then turns around and throws both hands up. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“We were this close, Kennebeck.”
“To getting suspended before the season starts.”
Koda stares at me. “You’re a fucking hall monitor.”
“He’s worse than a hall monitor,” Rafe says. He’s leaning against the next car over with his arms crossed, watching me. “A hall monitor would’ve let us have some fun first. You’re a cop.”
“He ratted on me, not you,” I say. “You don’t get to decide what happens to him.”
“I get to decide what happens to anybody who makes my captain look like an idiot,” Rafe says.
“Since when do you care about Dannebrog?”
“Since Dannebrog’s the only guy on this team who doesn’t talk out of both sides of his mouth.” Rafe pushes off the car. “Unlike your new friend Greeley.”
“My friend,” I say.
Rafe walks past me and bumps my shoulder hard on the way. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
He heads off toward Corvin Hall. Koda follows him, then turns around halfway across the lot and walks backward so he can yell at me. “Cop!”
There’s a party on the first floor that night, because somebody down there has a speaker and a friend who’s twenty-one. I don’t want to go. Rafe says I am, because if I don’t, he’s going to tell everyone I’m a cop. So I go.
It’s packed and hot, twenty people in a room built for two, beds shoved against the walls, somebody’s roommate somehow asleep under a coat on one of them.
There’s a row of red cups on the dresser full of something pink.
I take a water from the mini fridge, because we have a captain’s skate at seven and Dannebrog will know.
Rafe gets sucked into a card game. Koda finds the pizza and then a freshman from the swim team who made the mistake of reaching for the same slice, and within five minutes, Koda has the kid doing push-ups on the carpet for it while he counts out loud and eats the slice himself.
I end up against the wall by the window with a sophomore from the team, talking about nothing, while somebody on the floor explains the rules of a drinking game to three people who aren’t listening.
Then I see the blonde walk in. Angry girl. She’s impossible to miss, because she walks to the middle of the room, already arguing.
There’s a tall guy in a backward hat pointing at a desk chair, and she’s between him and the chair. Behind her are two brunettes, both watching the argument like it’s their favorite show.
“I was gone for two minutes,” says the blonde.
“Twenty.”
She scoffs. “It was not twenty minutes.”
She turns to a kid sitting cross-legged on the floor with a plate of pizza on his knee. “How long was I gone for?”
The kid looks like he wants to melt into the carpet. “I don’t know.”
“See?” says the guy.
“He’s scared of you,” she says.
“I really don’t know,” the kid says.
“I put my jacket there,” says the guy.
The girl with the ponytail takes a long, slow drink out of a red cup.
“It’s my chair,” the guy says.
“I want my seat back.”
“It’s just a desk chair.”
“Then this should be easier for you emotionally.”
The sophomore beside me laughs, and all three girls turn to find the source of it. I’m drinking from my water bottle when the blonde’s eyes land on me, and they narrow instantly. Now I’m her new target.
“Are you following me? Is that a thing you do?” She doesn’t wait. “Are you laughing at me?”
I look back at her and don’t answer. On the floor, the kid with the pizza is visibly grateful her attention has moved on. Across the room, Rafe looks up from his cards.
“This asshole stole my washer,” she tells her friends.
The girls are gawking at me.
“I’m going to leave,” the blonde says. “I can’t be in here with—” she throws a hand at me and the guy by the chair, “—this.”
“Kylie,” the girl with the ponytail says, laughing, and grabs her by the elbow. “Babe. Let it go. The chair guy’s leaving.”
The chair guy is, in fact, leaving, backing away with his hands up and looking at the three of them like they’re a pack of wolves.
Kylie.
The blonde has a name.
She lets the girl with the ponytail pull her back toward the dresser, but she’s still looking at me over her shoulder. “Fuck you.”
I lift my water bottle at her, and she turns around.
The sophomore is staring at me. “You know her?”
“No fucking clue who she is.”
Twenty minutes later, the girls leave, and they have to come past me to get to the door. Kylie doesn’t go around me. Her shoulder hits my arm hard enough to move her a step sideways, and she stops and looks up at me like that’s my fault.
“You’re always in the way.” She adjusts her sleeve like I got something on it. “I’m tired of seeing you.”
“Same.”
“Fuck you,” she says.
“You keep saying that.”
She flips me off with two hands, and the girl with the ponytail laughs and drags her out the door by the wrist.
The sophomore is still looking at me.
Somebody hands me a slice of pizza. Across the room, the swim kid is on push-up twenty-something while Koda eats and counts. Rafe has won the card game and is refusing to give anybody their money back.
Two minutes later, the door opens again, and it’s the girl with the ponytail. She comes back in alone, scanning the room, and when she finds me, she comes straight over, smiling in a way I don’t like at all.
“Hey. So.” She tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Kylie wants to know if you’re busy this weekend.”
I know immediately that isn’t true. Two minutes ago, Kylie passionately gave me two middle fingers.
She also told me she was tired of seeing me, and she meant it.
Last week, she told me I looked like a guy who cheats on his girlfriend, and she tried to fight me over a washing machine.
Kylie does not want to know if I’m busy this weekend.
I take a bite of pizza.
The girl doesn’t blink. She stands there smiling and waits me out like she’s got all night, because she knows exactly what she’s doing and isn’t even a little embarrassed about it.
“Yeah, we’ll be around,” Koda says, walking over and leaving the swim kid on the carpet. “There’s a thing Saturday. Off campus. Everybody’s going. You should come. Bring all your friends.”
“All of them?”
Koda nods. “As many as you’ve got.”
“Okay,” she says, and her smile changes, and now it’s aimed at him. “What’s your number?”
Koda gives it to her so fast he nearly drops his plate. She types it in, taps something, and his phone buzzes in his pocket. She holds hers up. “Now you have mine.”
He grins. “Now I have yours.”
“Paige,” she says.
“Koda.”
She flicks her eyes at me on her way out, checking whether I’m going to say anything. I eat my pizza, and the door swings shut behind her.
Koda watches it for about three seconds. “I’m going to hit that this weekend.”
“She used the blonde,” I say.
“What?”
“The blonde hates me. Paige lied to get your number.”
Koda takes a bite of pizza and thinks about it. “Fuck, that’s hot. I like her even more now.”
Behind us, Rafe is arguing about the rules of a card game he just invented. Koda points at me with his crust. “Kennebeck. I’m getting laid on Saturday.”
He wanders back into the room, looking at his phone, and I finish my pizza.