Coach says nothing. Just blows his whistle for the next drill.
My legs are screaming by hour three. Every muscle fiber begs for mercy. My lungs have graduated from glass shards to full-on razor blades. Sweat drips down my back, pooling in places that will no doubt chafe later.
I want to cry. I really, truly want to let the tears fall and admit that this is too much, that I can’t do this, that maybe I should have stayed in Boston and worked at a hardware store for the rest of my life.
But I need to keep impressing Coach. Prove to him that I belong here, that I am the best hockey player he’s ever seen.
This is what I was born to do.
I dig deeper. Find reserves I didn’t know existed. When Coach calls for another set of suicides, I’m the first one to the line. When he demands faster shots on Kyle, I wind up and let it fly with everything I have.
Kyle stops it. Barely. But he stops it.
“That’s more like it, Larney!” Coach surprisingly sounds pleased, and the validation shoots through me like a drug.
Gerard glances over, and I see the question in his eyes.How? How do you keep going?
I don’t have an answer for him. All I have is this burning need to prove that I belong here. That all the sacrifices were worth it. That Drew Larney isn’t just some kid from Boston with a chip on his shoulder and too much to prove.
“Water break!” Coach gratefully announces. We all collapse against the boards like puppets with cut strings.
Oliver hands out water bottles, his usual cheerfulness completely depleted. “Good job, everyone,” he says flatly.
Gerard tilts his water bottle back, gulping desperately. The excess escapes the corners of his mouth and traces paths down his flushed neck.
“Two more hours,” someone groans.
“Two more hours,” I repeat, changing it from a death sentence to a promise.
Because that’s what Drew Larney does. He survives. He pushes through. He makes himself indispensable.
Even if it kills him.
As the day progresses, to tune out the pain in every limb, I find myself thinking about when I was six years old. I was frozen in the kitchen doorway, watching my dad stuff clothes into aduffel bag while Mom begged him to stay. The memory is as unexpected as it is brutal.
“Please, think about the boys,” I remember her saying with my baby brother in her arms.
Dad didn’t say a word. He zipped his bag and walked out. I stood there, frozen in despair in my dinosaur pajamas, wondering what I’d done wrong.
After that day, Mom worked doubles at the hospital to keep the lights on. I remember the weight of my baby brother in my arms, his tiny fists grabbing at my shirt while I walked around the living room at two in the morning. Mom would stumble out in her scrubs, eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, and I’d lie.
“He just woke up,” I’d say, even though I’d been pacing for hours, singing off-key lullabies I half-remembered from episodes ofBarney.
Eventually, I taught myself how to cook macaroni and cheese because Mom had passed out after a thirty-six-hour shift. I learned how to forge her signature on permission slips because she forgot, too overwhelmed to remember school existed. I watched my friends complain about curfews while I figured out how to stretch twenty bucks for a week’s worth of groceries.
And the worst part is I can’t even hate my mom for any of it. She did what she had to do. We survived because of her sacrifice, her endless shifts, her determination to keep us fed and housed. But, fuck, sometimes I look at my brother now—fifteen, carefree, the biggest worry being whether that girl from his English class likes him back—and I get this ugly twist in my gut.
He got the childhood I never had. Mom remarried when he was five and I was eleven, got us out of that apartment, and gave him stability. He’s never had to lie awake wondering if the heat would get shut off during freezing winters. Never had to pretend he wasn’t hungry. Never had to grow up overnight because someone had to be the man of the house.
We get another break, and I grab my water bottle. I squirt what’s left into my mouth, trying to wash away the bitter taste of old memories. Nobody knows this but hockey saved me from an early death.
When I was ten, a charity program provided free equipment and lessons to children from low-income families. The second I stepped on that ice, everything else faded away. No more bills, no more crying brother, no more exhausted mother. There was just me, the puck, and the beautiful simplicity of trying to score.
Hockey became my escape, then my obsession, then my ticket out. Every early-morning practice, every late-night game, every bruise and broken bone—it all meant that I could be more than that six-year-old kid watching his world fall apart.
“You good?” Kyle asks, pulling off his mask. His face is screwed up in a slight expression of concern, which for Kyle is a rarity.
“Yeah,” I lie, because what else am I supposed to say? That sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat, thinking I hear my brother crying? That I check my bank account obsessively, terrified of seeing zero? That every time someone says I’m cocky or arrogant, I want to scream that it’s armor. That underneath, I’m still that scared little kid trying to hold his family together?
