“Hey, Coach!” somebody yelled from the back of the darkened bus. And when he stood up, I saw that it was Big-D.
“Yeah, kid?” A couple of seats ahead of me, Coach swiveled around to answer him.
Big-D trundled down the narrow little aisle, his phone in his hand. “There’s some news story out there about our team. I just got, like, twenty texts warning me not to drop the soap in the shower.”
Jesus.
Coach stood up, parking his butt against the seat back. “Okay, guys, listen up. There is an article, and it’s in theConnecticut Standard. But the national outlets are going to jump on this. Rikker’s transfer was pretty unusual, and a reporter sniffed that out and interviewed him. So the team is going to be in the news for a little while.”
There was a collective groan, and a few curses thrown around.
“Hey!” Coach barked, holding up a hand. “It’s just noise. If you want people to respect your game, if you want towin, you need to play through the noise. You guys fucked that up once already, right? I’m telling you right now, if you can’t concentrate, go ahead and hang up your skates.Noton the news or on the shit people send to your phone. Your game is all that matters. Figure out how to win again, and the reporters will be asking much different questions. Like, ‘how does a small school like Harkness do it?’”
Coach folded his arms, and the bus got very quiet. “I know you don’t like having this shit in the news. But neither does your teammate, Rikker. What happens next in your team story is completely up to you. Don’t blow it by getting distracted by the noise.”
Coach turned around, as if he was going to sit down. But then he stopped and turned toward the back again. “I can practically hear your wheels turning. You’re thinking, ‘my buddies are going to have a field day with this.’”
“We didn’t sign up for this shit,” Big-D grumbled.
Coach just shook his head. “That is exactly the wrong way to look at it. The truth is simple: you can either have an easy life, or you can be hockey players. The pro scouts are poking around, keeping tabs on some of you. You’re hoping make it into the AHL after college, or — God bless you — the NHL. Guess what? People are going to write shit on the Internet aboutyou. You’re too slow. You’re too small. You’re ugly. Some of it might even be true.”
There was a little chuckle at that.
“It’s just noise, right? And you’re sitting on this bus thinking, ‘Yeah, but I won’t care, because I’ll be a professional hockey player.’” Coach paused to smile at us in the dark. “Nothing isevergetting easier for you in this sport. The noise only gets louder. The hits get harder. You’re a bunch of pampered little shits right now. Did you stop to consider that some of teams you play against have their own noise? Maybe they practice on shitty ice, or the coach is a drunk. You think you’re being tested by this shit on the Internet? Fine. But find a way to pass the test. Because there will only be bigger ones.”
Then Coach sat down. And I let out a giant breath that I didn’t even know I’d been holding.
“Wow,” Bella whispered beside me.
Wow, indeed.
Eventually, the bus pulled off at a rest stop, so that everyone could have a pee break and maybe buy a candy bar out of the vending machine. “Ten minutes,” the driver called. Bella counted everyone as we got off the bus.
I didn’t go into the building like the others. Instead, I hung back in the parking lot. When I was sure that I was all alone, I took out my phone.
—Rikker
When my phone rang, I hauled myself up off the couch in Gran’s den and turned down my music. I was surprised to see a 616 area code lighting up my phone. Graham had the same number he’d had in high school. I really never thought I’d see that on my phone again. “Hello?”
“Hi.” Then there was a small silence. “I was going to call you tomorrow. To apologize. But then something happened on the bus just now, and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“Uh, okay?” That sounded ominous.
“There’s some newspaper article out there, but I guess you know that already. But it must be making the rounds on Reddit or wherever, because guys started getting texts about it.”
“Fuck,” I said. So this was really happening.
“Yeah. But Coach just gave Big-D a smackdown for whining about it. And it was a hell of a speech. He didn’t even quote any dead presidents. He basically just said that if you’re the kind of wuss who lets a few texts wreck your day, don’t bother calling yourself a hockey player. And forget about the pros.”
Shit!“And how did that go down?”
“Okay, I think. It was hard to argue his point.”
I just stood there in Gran’s old farmhouse, losing my everloving mind. “Did you read the article?” I trapped my phone with my shoulder and leaned over my laptop to type my name into Google.
“No, I just called you.”
My screen lit up with hits. I clicked on the link that would take me straight to the reporter’s original article. I was hoping that the title would end up being something bland about transfer rules. Instead it read, “I Just Wanted to Play Hockey.”
