Page 2 of The Reckless Rookie

First lie of the night.

The whistle’s still dead while they clear a stick that snapped on the play, and I’m skating a slow loop to keep the knee from stiffening, and my eyes go up the way they do when there’s nothing to hit. Eighteen thousand people on their feet, wanting something from the ice.

And one who isn’t.

A luxury suite off the north end, glass front. A woman standing right against it, close enough that her breath’s fogged a small patch of it near her mouth, arms crossed, weight on one hip. Not screaming. Not holding a drink. Just watching the whole loud mess of us with a stillness that doesn’t belong in this building. Everybody else in here wants something. She looks like she’s reading it. The game is like a page, and she is already three lines ahead of it.

Half a second. Then the linesman drops a new puck, and the game grabs me back by the collar, and I don’t think about her again.

Not tonight, anyway.

Between periods the room smells like wet gear and the orange slices nobody eats, but Sully keeps ordering anyway.

Down one. Nobody’s loud. That’s the tell with a good room. You can hear how a game’s going by the volume between periods, and right now we’re a library.

I’ve got ice strapped over the knee and my mouth shut, which for me is a kind of shouting.

“O’Sullivan.” Sully doesn’t look up from the board. “Knee.”

“Fine.”

“Try it again with the truth in it.”

“Fine, Coach.”

He looks up then. He’s got a face he saves for rookies who lie to him, and he wears it a lot because we do. “Six is hunting you and you’re helping.”

“I’m beating him.”

“You’re kicking his butt and letting him know. That’s two separate jobs, and you’ve only got one to do tonight.” He puts the cap back on the marker. “If you want to hurt that guy, put one behind his goalie. This is his only option against someone like you.”

“I hear you, Coach.”

“You hear me. Whether you use it is the rest of your career.” He turns back to the board. “Third period. We’re down one to a team playing dirty because they can’t play clean. Answer it on the scoreboard.”

Ryan stops by while I’m relacing. Doesn’t sit. Just stands there with that stillness he’s got, the one that straightens your spine without asking.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve got the face.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You’ve got the one I’ve seen cost us before.” He taps my shin pad with his stick and goes, and I sit there feeling like the whole room drew straws on who watches Finn tonight, hating it, and not once, not one time, asking myself why they bothered.

Third period. Down one, then down two.

Their fourth line buries a garbage goal off a faceoff we lost clean, and now it’s 2–0 and the building’s gone quiet in the way a home building goes quiet when the night’s turning, and I can feel the whole thing getting away from us. From me.

I’ve been good. Head down, feet moving, doing the job Sully gave me. I even think, for a shift, that I’ve got a hand on it.

Then I strip six clean on a retrieval, take it right off his stick in front of eighteen thousand people, and I hear him grunt, the small furious sound of a big man beaten by a small one. I know before the next whistle he’s going to make me pay for it.

He does. Cross-check to the back, square over the same knee. Clean off the whistle again. A signature. I go down.

And getting up this time, something’s changed, and I feel it move through me like a front coming in, a pressure drop I’ve got no name for and no brake on. The place in my chest where I fold things is full. There’s no room left. Whatever comes next doesn’t get filed.