Page 57 of Across His Line

“For two of your three points.”

“One and a half.”

“How is it a half?”

“Because I had to yell at you for the first one.”

Barnes laughs hard from the seat behind us, and he chokes on a gummy worm.

Greeley’s been running his mouth since Thursday. It started with the suit. Somebody got a picture of me on the steps at Theta, in the shirt and the coat, and it made it into the team chat by Sunday morning, and Greeley hasn’t let it go since. Daddy’s boy. Model citizen. On the bus to Massachusetts. In the locker room before warmups. At the hotel, in the hallway outside the room, loud enough to get through the door.

Greeley’s the kind of guy who never knows when to stop. He takes a stupid penalty every other game and acts like the ref has a personal problem with him. He chirps opposing benches until somebody in a different jersey wants to kill him, and then he skates away and lets somebody else on his own team deal with it. He picks at things. He gets under your skin on purpose, and the whole time, he’s smiling.

I can’t stand him. Mostly because he’s reckless. Because he doesn’t have any control over his own mouth. Because he lets himself get wound up and goes off like a firecracker every time somebody looks at him wrong.

Kennebeck says we’re the same person. I told him to go fuck himself.

Friday night, after the first game, Greeley says something in the hotel hallway about my father buying my spot on the roster. I’m off the bed and at the door before I know I’ve moved.

Kennebeck gets there first. He doesn’t grab me. He just puts himself in the doorway and leans on the frame like he’s bored.

“He’s not worth it.”

“He keeps running his mouth.”

“Yeah.” Kennebeck looks at me. “And I kept answering, and you know where that got me?”

I stand there with my hand on the door.

“You beat his ass tonight,” Kennebeck says, “he comes back tomorrow. You beat his ass tomorrow, he comes back next week. Guys like Greeley don’t learn anything when you hit them. They just like knowing they got you mad enough to do it.” He shrugs. “He doesn’t want to win. He wants you to lose your shit. Every time you do, he gets what he came for.”

Then he goes back to his bed and puts his earbuds in, like that’s the end of it.

And I stand at the door for a long time after.

Because he’s talking about Greeley. I know he’s talking about Greeley. But that’s not what I hear.

I hear a rink, and a girl in the student section with her eyes on the ice, and me tapping the glass. I hear a kitchen, and move, Tess. A porch. A dorm room door at midnight. A stairwell, a lounge, a staircase. Every single time I saw her this fall, I lost it. Every single time, I gave her something. My temper. My voice. My face. I stood outside her door and talked to it. I followed her into a stairwell and offered her a year of rent. And she never once lost it back. She just stood there and watched me do it.

I’ve been telling myself for a long time that I was the one with the control. That I was putting her in her place. And she’s been sitting at the end of the table this whole time, watching me get exactly as mad as she knew I would, every single time she walked into a room.

I hate that. I hate it so much that I don’t fucking sleep.

Saturday, after the four–one, Greeley starts again in the locker room. Something about my father calling the coach to ask if I need a juice box at intermission. A couple of guys laugh. He keeps going. He waits for me to turn around.

I don’t.

I finish taking my tape off. I put my skates in the bag. I zip it. And then I look at him, just look at him, while he’s halfway through another one.

“Are you done?”

He stops. Blinks.

I pick up my bag and walk out.

Kennebeck catches up with me in the hallway. He doesn’t say anything for a while.

“Look at you.”