Page 88 of Nowhere to Hide
“Why are you making the face?” Ivy says.
“I’m not making a face.”
“You are absolutely making a face.”
“I’m cold.”
Ivy lets it go, which is a minor miracle, then turns to scream something at the St. Adrian’s boys as they emerge from the tunnel. I’m glad she looks away, because I don’t think it would take much to get me crying again, which is not the reaction I expected when I saw Rowan.
The puck drops, and the game starts, fast and slick.
The first period is tight, and I spend most of it watching Rowan. He’s a half step late on everything — reaching for pucks that used to find his stick, dumping it deep when he’d normally carry it in, making passes that land on skates instead of on tape.
Nobody around me notices — not even Ivy — because the score’s still even and he’s still upright, but I’ve watched him enough to know this isn’t his game. And I can’t help thinking it’s partly my fault, because whatever peace he’d started to find is now gone.
And then there’s Mason.
He’snotstruggling.
He’s playing like it’s a showcase — holding the puck, refusing to play the team game, showboating and taking shots, andskating past open teammates as if they aren’t there. He’s playing well, though, the star on a team that’s struggling, which makes it worse.
During a stoppage, Rowan skates over to him and puts his hand out.
Mason looks at the hand, and then brushes it away.
It’s such a small gesture. He doesn’t shove him or say anything. He just lifts his glove and bats Rowan’s hand away, then skates off, and The Den makes a sound I haven’t heard a crowd make before: five thousand people breathing in at once and not breathing out.
“Oh my God,” Ivy says, very quietly, and grabs my forearm.
Rowan’s hand drops down to his side and he stands there for one second. Then he turns and goes back to the bench, and the moment is over, except it isn’t, because I can see the tension that’s still in his shoulders.
The game gets ugly fast.
With Mason playing for himself and the lines falling apart, I watch Rowan do what Rowan does. He calls changes, pulls Theo aside after a rough shift, and tries to hold the rest of them together.
But his own play suffers even more through it all. He’s slow on everything, sloppy with the puck, and rough in transition. A couple of guys behind us start muttering about what’s wrong with him.
“I’m going to kill one of these assholes,” Ivy hisses, glancing behind us.
“You are five foot three.”
“Violence has no height requirement.”
During a TV timeout, Rowan reaches forward and lines up the water bottles on the bench ledge, labels forward, three in a row. I’ve seen him do that before — with highlighters, salt shakers, tape rolls.
He does it when he’s feeling stressed or uncertain.
He’d stopped for a while.
With me, he’d stopped.
And now it’s back.
The game grinds on, still scoreless, deep into the third, until a St. Adrian’s defenseman catches Theo with a late hit. Theo goes down hard and The Den turns on the defenseman, students hurling abuse.
Rowan skates straight for the defenseman and levels him.
The defenseman folds to the ice, The Den surges up around me, and I go cold all over because the boy I know doesn’t do this. But deep down, I know it isn’t about Theo. It’s everything he’s been holding in, and this guy just got close enough to take it.
