The montage kept going.
Me at The Drop, crawling under the table to fix the chair legs. Circus music—jaunty, bouncing—with aBONKwhen I bumped my head. The footage slowed down, stretching the moment, milking the impact.
Me checking the Zamboni bolts.BOING, BOING, BOING—every press of my fingers turned into a punchline. A text overlay appeared:
THUNDER BAY'S FAVORITE DISASTER
I laughed at something Jake said. Except the way they'd cut it, there was no Jake. No context. Just me, laughing at nothing, looking unhinged.
I want to be the kind of player people remember for the right reasons.
They played it again.
Then they cut to me slipping on the ice, arms pinwheeling. The laugh track peaked. Someone added a slide whistle.
Like I was a fucking cartoon.
The video ended.
I stared at the frozen final frame—my face, mid-fall, mouth open in surprise. Ridiculous. Pathetic.
My hands shook.
I looked down at them—vibrating against my thighs the way they did when my brain got too loud, and I needed to fix something, straighten something, count something to keep from flying apart.
I watched them shake for three seconds. Four.
Then I made them stop.
I don't know how. I just decided. The way you decide to take a hit on the ice instead of flinching away from it.
I dragged the playhead back to the beginning.
This time, I didn't drown. I paid attention.
The circus music. The laugh tracks. The rhythm—sincere moment, smash, pratfall. Hope, smash, failure. Over and over.
It should have had a subtitle:Look at this idiot. Look at this mess. Don't you feel better about your own life?
I watched a third time.
This time I watched what wasn't there.
The mentorship with Heath. Crouching next to him on the bench when he was shaking, telling himgetting up is the whole job. Not there.
Every single moment where I'd been a hockey player—not a disaster, an actual athlete with a brain that worked differently and saw things other people missed.
Gone.
I scrolled through the editing timeline. Found other folders. Raw footage, hours of it.
Adrian had filmed me playing hockey.
Not in the network cut.
They had footage of me being competent. Being good. Being the kind of player who made everyone around him better.
They'd cut all of it.
