The look of pure murderous rage on his face tells me I’ve found his weakness.
And I plan to exploit the hell out of it.
The locker room feels like a funeral home after we lose 4-2. Coach’s post-game speech bleeds into background noise—something about effort and regrouping—and all I can think about is how Levi Kane scored the game-winner in the third period then had the audacity to blow a kiss toward me.
“Fucking bullshit,” I mutter, ripping off my jersey and throwing it into my stall harder than necessary.
“What’s eating you?” Knox asks, sitting down heavily beside me. “We’ve lost to them before.”
Riven looks up from unlacing his goalie pads, calm as ever despite letting in four goals. “It’s not about losing,” he says quietly. “It’s about that redhead in the stands.”
Shooting him a look, I blurt, “What?”
“I see everything from the net, Holt, including your googly eyes at Kane’s sister every time you were on the ice.”
“I wasn’t making googly eyes.”
“Sure, you weren’t,” Riven says, running a hand through his dark-blonde hair. “If you’d paid attention, you would have noticed her watching their games last year.”
“She goes to Gravepoint,” Knox adds.
“I know,” Riven replies. “I’ve seen her around campus. Usually at the athletic center.”
Of course he has; Riven notices everything. He files it all away like he’s cataloging weaknesses in opposing players.
“You know what?” I stand up, a plan already forming. “They’re having their victory party tonight.”
“Yeah, so?” Knox asks.
“So we’re crashing it.”
Knox raises an eyebrow. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Riven simply looks at me with those calculating eyes. “I’m sure you have a crazy plan ready?”
“The best ones usually are.” I pull out my phone and start texting. “Remember freshman year when we tried to crash one of their parties, and they all wore those stupid glow masks. It’s our way in this time, and they won’t even know we were there.”
Two hours later, we’re crouched in the woods behind the Stormhaven hockey house, dressed in black and wearing aqua glow masks with built-in voice distorters. The masks weredefinitely worth the fifty bucks; we look like something out of a Halloween movie, and the voice modulators make us sound like demons.
The party is in full swing by the time we arrive. Music is pumping, and people are spilling out onto the back deck.
“Remind me again why we’re doing this?”Knox’s voice comes out in that distorted robotic tone.
“Because fuck the Kane brothers, that’s why,”I reply.
“Security cameras on the north corner of the house. Escape routes through the trees to the east and south,”Riven tells us. He is always the perfect lookout.
“See? This is why I brought you.”
We’ve got everything set up. Smoke bombs are positioned around the perimeter, along with strobe lights that look exactly like police flashers, and the best part, stink bombs that smell like a combination of rotten eggs and gym socks. The rest of the team is here, waiting for the chaos and ready to leave little plastic dicks in their wake. Stormhaven will find reminders of this for weeks to come.
“You ready?”I ask Knox.
“This is crazy.”
Riven just nods once, moving into position.
I give the signal, and all hell breaks loose. The smoke bombs go off first, filling the backyard with thick, acrid fog that reeks. Then the strobes flash, blue-and-red lights flickering through the smoke. Someone inside screams about the cops arriving, and within seconds, chaos erupts.
