Something felt…wrong.
Adonis didn’t believe in intuition or anything like that, but he had a feeling he couldn’t shake.
He began to walk more quickly, hurrying towards the Rink. He wanted to get inside, out of the open.
He was fifty paces away from the Rink when the front door burst open. A man in a dark hoodie stepped out, looked around twice, saw Adonis, then turned and ran in the opposite direction.
Adonis froze in his tracks. What in the world?
He was too far, and it was too dark to see who the man was. He couldn’t tell the man’s age. He might’ve been a student, or he might’ve been older. His hoodie hid anything that Adonis could’ve used to identify him.
The feeling that something was wrong intensified.
Adonis broke into a trot, hurrying to the entrance to the Rink. He used his student ID card to swipe into the Rink. Inside, it was dark and quiet.
“Hello?” Adonis called. Was someone else in here? If the guy he’d just seen run awaywasn’ta student, a student would’ve had to let him in.
No one answered his call.
Adonis clutched his gym bag, like it could protect him if he needed it to, and began to walk through the quiet, dark Rink. Instead of going to the locker room to change into his skating clothes, he went straight to the ice. His feeling that something was wrong was intensifying, beating inside him like his pulse.
He navigated through the stands. The lights on the ice were low.
Adonis walked slowly to the boards. One of the gates onto the ice was open.
“Hello?” Adonis called again.
He froze. There was a noise. Not quite a voice, but close, like someone hadtriedto respond but couldn’t.
He hurried to the ice. “Hello?” he shouted.
This time, it was undeniable. Someone was trying to answer.
The voice, or whatever it was, was coming from the ice itself.
Adonis squinted out at the ice, but it was too dark for him to see clearly. He dropped his gym bag and pulled out his phone, turning on the flashlight. Then he stepped out onto the ice, wearing his sneakers, something he normally would never do.
“Who’s here?” he called. His voice echoed off the ice.
Then he heard it. Yes, it was a voice. And yes, he could understand what it was saying.
“Help.”
Adonis’s blood froze, and it wasn’t from the chill of the rink.
His shoes threatened to slip beneath him as he shuffled forward on the ice.
“Who—” he started to shout, and then stopped.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
Halfway across the ice, near where they would set up one of the goals for a hockey game, something—someone—huddled in a shivering pile.
Even in the dim lights of the rink, Adonis could see the dark puddle forming around the figure.
“Oh, fuck,” he whispered.
He ran forward, heedless of the ice beneath him. Like a mother when her child was in danger, Adonis was filled with the adrenaline of necessity.
