Finally, mercifully, Mara raised her hand.
"Shooting drills. Two lines. I want to see clean releases, no wasted motion."
Lou's legs trembled as she skated to position, taking her place at the front of the defensive line. The pucks waiting in the corner buckets looked heavier than she remembered, though that was probably exhaustion playing tricks with her perception. She grabbed one anyway, settling it on her stick blade with the automatic grace of ten thousand repetitions.
Her first shot went wide, clanging off the post with a sound that rang through the arena like an accusation.
"Again." Mara's voice brooked no argument. "Sloppy. Unfocused. Again."
Lou shot again. This time it hit the back of the net, sliding into the corner with the satisfying whisper of rubber against mesh. But there was no acknowledgment from Mara—no nod, no mark on the clipboard, nothing to suggest the shot had even registered. Just that same flat expression, those same calculating eyes watching everything and giving nothing back.
The drills continued for another hour. Passing. Defensive positioning. Power play setups and penalty killformations. Mara moved through each exercise like a surgeon cutting away dead tissue, identifying weaknesses and exposing them without mercy. When Frankie's cross-ice pass went astray, Mara made the entire defensive line run the play fifteen times before moving on. When one of the younger forwards—Hannah, barely twenty-two, fresh from college—missed a coverage assignment, Mara stopped practice entirely to explain, in excruciating detail, exactly how that mistake would cost them games.
"You think the teams we're competing against for qualification will make the same mistakes?" Mara's voice carried across the rink, directed at Hannah but meant for everyone. "They won't. They've been training at this level for years. You're playing catch-up, and you're starting behind. The only way to close that gap is work—more work than you've ever done, more work than you think you're capable of. If that sounds overwhelming, there's the door."
Hannah's face was red, her eyes bright with tears she was refusing to let fall. Lou skated closer, positioning herself between the young player and Mara's gaze.
"She's got it," Lou said, keeping her voice even. "We all get it. Maybe we can move on."
Mara's eyes narrowed, but something flickered in them, not warmth, exactly, but recognition. "Fine. Scrimmage. Full contact. Twenty minutes, no line changes, no excuses."
The scrimmage was worse than the drills. Full contact meant exactly that—bodies crashing into boards with the thunder of impact, elbows and sticks finding gaps in padding, the kind of physical punishment that left bruises for weeks. Lou played defense, marking her opponents with the methodical aggression she'd developed over fifteen years of competitive hockey. Her body remembered every hit, cataloguing each impact for the pain that would bloomlater, after the adrenaline faded and she was alone with the consequences.
By the time Mara finally blew the whistle, Lou could barely stand. Her legs had gone past trembling into something numb and distant, the connection between brain and muscle fraying under exhaustion. Around her, the team skated toward the benches with the slow, shuffling movements of people who'd been pushed past their limits and were only now realizing it.
"Tomorrow. Same time." Mara gathered her clipboard and walked toward the tunnel without looking back. "I expect improvement."
The locker room was quiet. Not the comfortable silence of a team at ease, but the heavy, oppressive quiet of people too tired to speak. Lou sat on the bench in front of her locker, helmet in her lap, staring at the scuffed concrete floor without really seeing it. The familiar smell of old sweat and gear enveloped her—worn leather, the chemical sharpness of equipment spray, the particular staleness of a room that had absorbed decades of athletic effort. Her fingers were shaking slightly, the fine tremor of muscles pushed past their limit and not yet recovered. Her gear was soaked through with sweat, the familiar smell of salt and effort and old padding thick in the enclosed space. She needed to shower. She needed to eat. She needed about twelve hours of sleep and maybe a time machine to go back and reconsider every life choice that had led her to this moment.
Instead, she just sat there, feeling the ache settle into her bones like water finding its level.
"Well." Frankie dropped onto the bench beside her, the impact shaking the worn wood. "That was fun."
Lou managed a grunt that might have been a laugh.
"I'm serious." Frankie leaned back against her locker,stretching her legs out across the floor. Her face was still flushed, hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, but her eyes held that familiar spark of dark humor that had gotten them both through years of garbage seasons and ownership changes. "Haven't been that destroyed since Marquette in '19. Remember that training camp? Three-a-days for two weeks?"
"I remember wanting to die." Lou pulled off her gloves, examining the calluses on her palms. Raw in places, angry red where the stick had worn through skin. She'd need to tape them before tomorrow or risk bleeding through her grip. "This might be worse."
Elise appeared from the showers, towel wrapped around her shoulders, dark hair dripping water onto the concrete. She moved with the same quiet grace she always did, even exhausted, the natural poise of someone who'd learned long ago to carry herself through whatever came. "She's testing us," Elise said, settling onto the bench on Lou's other side. "First practice, she wants to see who breaks."
"Did anyone?" Lou asked, though she already knew the answer. She'd been watching, even through the tunnel vision of her own exhaustion. Watching for signs of surrender, of weakness, of players who'd decide this wasn't worth it.
"Hannah looked close." Elise's voice was thoughtful, not judgmental. "But she stuck. That's something."
"Kid's got grit." Frankie stretched her arms overhead, grimacing at the pop and crack of joints protesting. "Didn't think she had it in her, honestly. Figured the college types would fold first."
"Maybe." Lou stood, legs wobbling momentarily before they found their footing. "Or maybe Mara hasn't reallystarted yet. Today was orientation. Tomorrow's when it gets real."
Frankie groaned. "You're a joy, you know that? A real bright spot in my day."
"Just being realistic." Lou opened her locker, pulling out the towel she'd hung there that morning—a lifetime ago, it felt like now. "Astoria didn't hire Mara Ellison to make us comfortable. She hired her to make us qualify. If that means practices that feel like war crimes, that's what we get."
"You sound almost okay with it." Elise was watching her with that steady, perceptive gaze that always made Lou feel slightly transparent.
"I'm not okay with anything yet." Lou met her friend's eyes. "But I've been grinding for nine years at this level, working maintenance shifts to afford the privilege of playing semi-pro hockey. If someone wants to give me a chance to actually make something of it, a real shot at the PWHL, I'm not going to quit because the training's hard."
"Even if the training's designed by a sadist?"
