“Connor Kennedy,” the announcer on the television says while a headshot of Connor and his all-American golden boy smile lights up the screen.
“As if that’s a surprise,” Tavish says, making everyone in the locker room laugh.
“You better snake that puck away from him every chance you get,” Ander Bouchard, our starting goalie, says.
“You can count on it!” Tavish yells out and winks at the exact moment Bouchard’s name is announced on the TV.
“Yeah!” The locker room erupts into cheers and half the team tackles Bouchard to the ground. Thankfully, he’s still wearing most of his goalie gear.
When he gets out from under the scrum, he points his finger at Tavish. “See you on the ice!”
“You better not take it easy on me!” Tavish says back, grinning like a kid at Christmas.
I wish I could join him in that smile. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them. I really am. But despite my trash talk with the reporters, I do want a spot on the team. I don’t know why. Maybe to prove something to myself. Or to the league. Or the fans who hate me for leveling their beloved stars. Or the coaches and GMs who are always trying to tweak the rules to have me suspended.
Honestly, though, I’d like to do it for my father. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for everything he sacrificed, raising meon his own. It wasn’t easy, and I want him to know it was worth it. Unfortunately now, it’s looking less likely to happen. It’s extremely rare for more than two players from the same team to be selected. Even with one being picked for Canada and the other for the USA, my chances of going to Milan just got much slimmer.
It’s not all bad, I suppose. Lord only knows how a team with both Connor Kennedy and me would work. We hate each other. Or, at least, he hates me. I hate the idea of him. I hate what he represents. The elitist nature of being the son of a legacy player who’s had his path laid out for him on a red carpet since birth. But I can’t say I actually hate him. I barely know him. In fact, we were almost friends once: a long time ago when we first met at a junior hockey camp. But that was shut down faster than a puck flying across freshly zambonied ice. Connor’s father, a player I grew up admiring from the moment he won our country Olympic gold, turned out to be an absolute prick. The minute he discovered my ticket to camp came from a crowd funder organized by my local rink in Alaska to send me to the lower forty-eight for a shot at playing in the biggest junior league in the country.
Connor Kennedy Sr instantly read me for exactly what I was. Still am. A dirty white boy from some Podunk fishing village who has no business playing with his golden boy son.
He hand picks the players for the Broad Wings. I’d be stupid to think he doesn’t have his hands in deciding who gets to play for the United States at the Olympics.
Or maybe he doesn’t. For it’s exactly at this moment, I hear my name coming out of the announcer’s mouth on the screen.
“Holy shit,” I say, and fall back onto the bench in front of my stall while my team goes absolutely insane.
FIRST PERIOD
TWO
FEBRUARY 8TH—UNITED STATES HOCKEY OLYMPIC TRAINING CAMP—LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Connor
I still have a vivid memory of the first time I laid eyes on Gavin Marshal. We were sixteen and had just arrived at a junior league development camp being hosted in Ann Arbor, Michigan over the summer. For most of the junior hockey players in that room it was the official start of their potential professional hockey player trajectory. The best of us would end up on teams that would feed us into the draft or head on to college for further development. Unlike the rest of them, my path had been laid out for me at birth, so I was already familiar with the process and everyone in that room. Everyone, that is, except for Gavin.
He was an anomaly, and he stood out, looking like a man in a sea of boys. Even at sixteen, Gavin was big. He was easily the largest player at camp. He stood tall and broad, carrying a beat-up hockey bag full of secondhand gear and an air of suspicion, like he was ready to bolt out of the exit he stood near. I remember noticing he had stubble. A full-on five o’clock shadow at two in the afternoon. It showed off his sharp jaw and contrasted enticingly with his permanently tanned olive skin that was framed by longer strands of deep, dark hair.
Some of my friends in the group who I already knew from playing traveling hockey for years had taken notice too.
“Where the fuck did they find that guy?”
“I thought this was a junior league.”
“Yeah, he seems ready for the prison league.”
“Don’t start, you guys,” I said, even though they weren’t exactly wrong. It was clear from the beginning he didn’t fit in. To start, he arrived on his own when everyone else’s parents had brought them here. He was a mystery that no one had ever heard of. But the thing that drew me to him was there was something in his eyes that gave away his actual age. The man standing by the door, poised to make a quick exit if he needed to, looked nervous and utterly alone underneath his rough exterior.
I excused myself from my friends and approached him. “Hi. I’m Connor. Is this your first time at camp?”
He nodded at me, then stuck out his hand and said his name was Gavin Marshal. I barely heard him, too distracted by the way his hand felt in mine. It was rough, heavily calloused, but not in a way I was used to as a hockey player. His hand felt like it had been roughened on wood instead of ice. He was far too rugged for a sixteen-year-old.A fact that my newly discovered homosexuality took immediate excited notice of.
I swallowed as I pulled my hand away and looked him right in the eye. “Let me guess,” I said, smiling. “You’re a versatile forward, but often used as an enforcer.”
He nodded again, but a slight grin pulled at his lips. “And you play center.”
“Oh, come on.” I laughed. “It can’t be that obvious.”
