Page 80 of On His Mind

I look at the stands. I shouldn’t. There’s no reason to. But my eyes go up over the glass and along the seats behind the bench the way they went at the door of every party last year, before I can tell them not to, looking for one person who was never going to be there. She doesn’t come to these things. She doesn’t ask about hockey, and I don’t invite her. She’s not here, and I knew she wouldn’t be. I put it away. I’m the backup. I’m not playing. It doesn’t matter who’s in the stands when you’re not playing.

Second period, the game is tied, and Hutch goes down. A guy drives the net, there’s a scramble, and Hutch’s leg goes one way while the rest of him goes another. He’s down in the crease with the trainer over him, and Coach Fuller turns and looks down the bench, and there’s only one place to look.Me.

“Deveroux. Go.”

I’m on my feet with my mask coming down. I skate to the net past Hutch getting helped off with an arm around each of two guys. I stop in the crease that isn’t mine and bang my stick on both posts, left then right. My hands are cold, and it’s a tie game in the second period of a game that means everything.

Last year, I went in for a period that meant nothing, and my heart went anyway. This year, it means everything, and I have to make my hands work. There’s nobody to tell me anything. Cole’s gone. It’s just me, a net, my team, and theirs. Don’t chase it, Cole says, a year ago, in my head.

I set my depth. I hold it.

For a while, I’m good.

First one comes off the rush. I read it clean and take it in the chest and swallow it. The whistle goes, and the arena gets loudin a way that’s for me. Second one’s a scramble in tight, so I stay big. It hits me somewhere and stays out. Golding clears it. Third one’s a two-on-one and everything in me wants to slide early. I don’t, I stay, I let it get there, and the pass never comes, and the shot’s right at me, and I’ve got it.

Four minutes. Five. The game’s still tied, and I’m holding it live.

The goal is high glove side. It comes off a defenseman’s stick at the top of the circle, and it’s rising the whole way. The same height that Mike used to use, and Josh taught me to lean into. I don’t move away from it. That anger, this stance, it’s what got me here. I do everything right. I track it off the blade, I stay square, I get my glove up into the path of it — I go for it, clean, the way you’re supposed to. And it beats me. It clips off the heel of the glove where the pocket isn’t, a half-inch less, and it’s in.

The crowd doesn’t go quiet. A goal is a goal, and the game keeps moving. The other bench is celebrating, and the puck’s already coming back to center. There’s no time for anyone in the building to feel it but me. I fish it out of the net and hand it to the ref, skate back to my crease and set my feet, because there’s a game to play. I do everything I did before, and none of it matters the same way now.

We lose four to three.

The room after is feeling the loss. The room is quiet, and guys are peeling tape off their sticks with their heads down, and nobody’s cruel. Hutch is on crutches by his stall. He leans over and says it wasn’t on me, that I went in cold and did fine. Benson stops by on his way to the shower and puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “That’s on us, Pers. The D turned it over.” Plain. Kind. He means it.

That’s the worst part. The kindness. Because Benson knows, and I know, and everybody in this room knows, that the freshman would have had it. Instead they tell me that it’s not onme, but every soft word is the same fact underneath: not yet. Not you. Not good enough yet.

I take my gear off in the quiet room and feel the four walls caving in.

When I’m lying in bed that night, I think about how I reached for two things this year so far. I reached for her, once, at three in the morning, with a word that meant everything, and I got a day of silence. And I reached for the net, tonight, with everything on it, and the puck went in off the heel of my glove.

Those two things just sit there, next to each other — the text I shouldn’t have sent, and the puck I shouldn’t have let in.

I run a hand down my face, and I don’t sleep.

Chapter 24

Penelope

I’mdoingmyeyelinerin the hall mirror and I can see my stack of sketchbooks behind me in the reflection. I keep meaning to draw something –– anything. I keep sitting down at that table in the morning, picking up the 2B, and putting it back. Today, I don’t even sit down. I look at it in the mirror, and I look away. I finish my eyeliner and get my coat, because Gianna’s expecting me at eight.

Gianna lives above a Thai place, up a staircase that smells permanently of lemongrass, in an apartment with too many lamps and a couch that’s seen things.

“Penelope!” Gianna’s got the door open before I’ve knocked, a bottle of wine in one hand, already three sentences into something. “Okay, good, you’re here. Mara’s late, which, shocking, and I ordered too much food on purpose, so that wecan eat however much we want, and we’re going to put on Love Island.”

Inside, it’s warm and low-lit. There’s a brunette on the floor with her back against the couch.

“Penelope. Lucy. Penelope.”

Lucy lifts a timid hand and half-smiles. “Hi.”

Mara arrives twenty minutes later when we’ve already made our plates and started eating. Gianna has been talking nonstop the entire time about Camden and how much she loves it here. Lucy is quiet and shy. She doesn’t say much, but Gianna doesn’t leave her out. But as soon as Mara steps in, she has taken over the entire conversation. Eventually, Mara wants to take a photo, so we crowd onto the couch, and Gianna holds the phone out. We all lean in, and then it’s the first message in our new group chat.

I look at the photo when it comes through. Four women on a couch, and one of them is me. I look like I’m having a good time. Because I am. It’s a strange sight to see that I’m genuinely having a good time, and I’m not working for it. I’m not tracking the room or managing anyone or performing anything. I don’t entirely know how this happened, but I think I could belong to a good group of girlfriends. I haven’t had that since I was fourteen. And I’ve been dying for this ever since I came to Camden U. I watch Mara talk and smile.

“Mara, you remind me of my best friend from home,” I say.

Her eyes light up. “I knew we were meant to be friends. There’s something familiar about you, too.”