For the first eight minutes of play, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. In the first place, Hartley was kicking ass, so the D-men like me didn’t have a whole lot to worry about. My teammate Trevi, a junior wing, fed Hartley an early goal, and all seemed well.
Things deteriorated very quickly about nine minutes in.
On the next faceoff, I watched one of the Saint B’s wings — a giant with the name EROS printed on his back — yapping into Trevi’s face. I couldn’t hear what was said, but the look on Trevi was far past ordinary annoyance. His face turned the color of raw meat.
The next time I noticed Eros, he was leaning over Orson, who was minding the goal tonight. And Orson’s jaw was as hard as concrete, though he didn’t remove his eyes from the field of play.
So I knew this Eros must be a real piece of work. But I didn’t get to witness his assholery firsthand until a little later. Saint B’s had the puck, and it was my job to get it back. As I flew behind our net on the backcheck, I heard the guy ragging on Orson. “You’re Rikker’s favorite, right? ‘Cause you’re already wearing knee pads.”
Holy crap.
Distracted by the comment, I didn’t get to the puck fast enough. Their other wing flung it to the Saint B’s center, who flipped it to Eros. The asshole took a shot. But Orson butterflied himself in the crease, saving it.
Play moved down the ice, but not before I heard Eros lob another one of his gems into Orson’s face. “Faggot! I bet you like it when Rikker comes in your crease.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Orson growled.
A minute later my shift was over, and I swung myself over the wall. A row of tense faces greeted me. The snarl on Big-D’s lips was as ugly as I’d ever seen it. Eros’s poison had begun to spread.
Rikker was living out my nightmare tonight. Because it’s one thing to tolerate the gay guy when everything is going well. And it’s another thing to have some red-faced asshole yelling “faggot” into your face.
Trust me. I’d know.
The upshot was that my team began playing a sloppy game of hockey. And that meant that Coach got pissed off. Which meant that Hartley got pissed, too. The players, not to be outdone, got pissed off that Coach and Hartley were pissed off.
And nobody would evenlookat Rikker.
Meanwhile, Eros took long shifts, asking his toxic little questions. “How many to a bed on your road trips?” And, “do y’all usually jerk together before practice, or after?”
Each of these little ditties had the effect of exploding my teammates’ ability to concentrate. Their passes stopped connecting, and our offensive strategy broke down.
Theirs didn’t.
Orson got shelled, saving shot after shot. Each time he fell onto the puck, stopping the action, our team might have had a chance to regroup. Instead, Eros or one of his cronies, shoulder to shoulder in the faceoff circle, started the taunts anew.
Inevitably, Eros and Rikker ended up helmet to helmet on a faceoff. I could not look away. From the bench, I could see Eros’s mouth moving. And Rikker’s eyes were angry slits. After the puck dropped, I saw Rikker haul off and shove his former teammate in the gut. The refs didn’t see it, because Hartley had won the faceoff and play rocketed toward Saint B’s goal.
Rikker didn’t get away with it though. Not really. Because when Hartley passed him the puck a few seconds later, Eros saw his chance.
The next two seconds seemed to last a week. Rikker skimmed the boards and scouted for his opening. I saw him adjust the angle of his stick in preparation to take a shot. But I also saw Eros dig in his edges, accelerating toward Rikker like a torpedo. And it didn’t matter that Rikker got his pass off. There was no stopping the bigger guy’s momentum. Because recovering the puck was no longer the point.
The hit was brutal. Eros slammed Rikker into the plexi, and I watched my teammate crumple like a bag of rocks onto the ice.
Eros stumbled, too. That’s why it wasn’t really efficient to hit another player so hard. Like they taught you in physics, for every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction. So if you go around flattening people, you’re going to get knocked around, too, losing precious seconds with the puck.
The only reason to hit like that is if you’re trying to injure. Or at least make a point.
Eros made his.
Rikker lay on the ice, unmoving.
—Rikker
Oh, fuck. Oh… fuck.
Get up, I ordered myself.Now. At least once a season this happened. That awful feeling of having the air knocked out of me — like my lungs didn’t remember how to expand, and my guts had been permanently compressed.
But even without air, I lurched to a seated position. Somehow I got one skate back onto the ice, and struggled for the second one. The hockey game narrowed down around me, and there was only a thin slice of my consciousness left — a straight tunnel between the spot where I’d been brutalized and the bench.Go, asshole, I ordered myself, even though I still hadn’t drawn a full breath. Somehow I limped toward my team, and somebody — Bella — yanked the door open for me as I approached.
