“Yeah, she’s smart, but not so much in math. I brought it for you, in case we had time, but now we can just hang out,” she says brightly. “Unless it’s too late, and you have to get home? Which is fine too.”
Even if I had a million things to do, I wouldn’t dare bail on her now.
“Hot chocolate or ice cream?” I ask, getting a smile from the backseat.
“Mama Joy’s,” she chooses, because Mama Joy will give her a bowl filled with both, plus marshmallows, sprinkles, and whipped cream.
“Mom will kill me, but it’s not like I can say no to you.” I make a show of sighing, like she’s impossible to deal with, then wink, so she knows I’m joking. It’s exceedingly hard to say no to her, but it’s a me problem, based on not wanting to disappoint her, nothing at all to do with her being difficult, because she’s the coolest kid I know.
* * *
At the local diner, we split the hot chocolate and ice cream combo, which makes me feel slightly better about Izzie’s sugar intake, but way worse about mine. Mom texted to make sure Izzie finished her homework before she agreed to the extended curfew, so we quickly go over what she did with Savannah. I wouldn’t have bothered, only Izzie said her new friend wasn’t good at math, and if a third grader can tell, I can only imagine what her homework looks like.
For a second, I’m confused, but then I let out a grateful sigh when I see that instead of just correcting Izzie’s practice questions, Savannah added Post-its with the different techniques she used to remember her multiplication tables. She went above and beyond what even I would have done.
“Where did she get the Post-its from?” I don’t remember her having more than a small purse with her, but she clearly came prepared.
“She had a bunch of them in her bag. And pens and highlighters. She says it’s for research.”
“She must really love hockey,” I decide, based on the effort she put into our trade. Or she’s just a nice, helpful person, but that puts the burden on me, doesn’t it?
“I don’t think she knows anything about hockey.”
“Why would she be in the arena then?”
Izzie shrugs before putting her math books back into her pink bag.
“This isn’t mine,” she says, handing me a leather notebook.
It’s Savannah’s. She was holding it when I first found Izzie talking to her, but I open it and pretend I’m trying to figure out who it belongs to. Instead of the first page, which might have her name, I use the ribbon to get to her current one, noting the many-colored Post-its along the edge. It reads ‘Hockey?’ and includes a rough drawing of the rink and a list of notes like:
What is icing?
Offside=Aside?
Is biscuit a bad thing?
Do the coaches ever smile?
I grin at the last one, because Coach Benson only smiles if his wife or granddaughter can see him. I shut the book, feeling the slightest tinge of guilt for invading her privacy. But I would’ve stopped if it was a diary.
“We must have thrown it in without looking when we were packing up,” I say when I find my sister’s eyes still on me.
“Yeah, we must have.” Izzie shrugs her shoulders like she has no idea how that happened, but she looks guilty as fuck. “She’s researching hockey?” she looks over my shoulder and asks before I can comment.
“Looks like,” I agree, slipping the notebook into my hoodie’s front pocket so I can hopefully get it back to Savannah. If the way Donovan gets about the notebook he carries around everywhere – that I know contains song lyrics, even if he won’t tell us – is any indication, Savannah will be stressing out until she finds it. Which means I’ll have to actively look for her, not just hope I’ll run into her on campus.
Izzie’s face lights up like it’s Christmas morning. “You know everything about hockey! You can help her.”
“I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t want my help,” I argue, based on the way she ran out tonight. Not to mention, I blackmailed her into babysitting when she was clearly trying to observe our practice.
I have no idea what the research is for. Wynchester doesn’t have classes on hockey, or I know a lot of non-academically inclined guys on the team who would be all over it.
“You can’t know that unless you ask her,” Izzie points out.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Savannah again, which is exactly why I shouldn’t.
“I’ll bring it up when I return her book,” I say instead.
