I turn off the engine.
Ten thousand seats. Six thousand residents. Before sunrise.
Someone built this here. Someone looked at a town smaller than most Boston neighborhoods and saidyes, here, this is where ten thousand seats belong. Not because the town neededit. Because someone believed the town could grow into it.
I don't know why that matters to me.
I get out of the car.
Inside, the scale hits differently.
The Jumbotron above center ice runs pregame coverage from Milan—arena shots, player warmups, crowd noise piped in from the other side of the world. Italian commentary layered under the hum of a Colorado morning. Two auxiliary screens on the concourse. The building already two-thirds full and climbing.
A local news crew moves through the crowd. Red, white and blue everywhere. The zealous energy of people who woke up before dawn for something they believe in.
I get coffee from a vendor. Find a spot in the upper bowl. Everyone gets sightlines to the Jumbotron.
Pull out my phone.
ME:watching the game in a rink. Cedar Falls goes hard apparently.
West's probably still asleep. Or watching with teammates. Or in a blizzard somewhere trying to find a sports bar opened for hockey enthusiasts.
I put my phone in my pocket. Don't think about it.
Grace has already made two friends. She's wearing someone else's Team USA scarf—a thick wool thing with "BELIEVE" knitted across the fringe. I don't know when this happened. I don't ask.
The Jumbotron cuts to the ice in Milan. Players lining up for the anthem.
The arena goes quiet.
The anthem plays.
Ten thousand people—standing with me, hands over hearts, singing.
Six-ten. Puck drop.
The building roars.
Six-sixteen. Matt Boldy, streaking down the right side, receives a cross-ice feed and buries it. USA 1, Canada 0.
My coffee goes airborne.
I'm screaming before I decide to. The sound tears out of me—raw, involuntary, the kind of noise I didn't know I had in me. Grace grabs the stranger next to her—the one whose scarf she's wearing—and hugs them. The stranger hugs back. Lifts Grace off the ground. Sets her down. They high-five like they've known each other for years.
Cedar Falls.
The celebration rolls through the space in waves. Feet stamping. Hands pounding. A chant starting somewhere in the upper deck and cascading down like a waterfall made of human joy.
And then—automatic, unstoppable—I think about West.
This is his world. This specific electricity. The roar after a goal. The ice. The stakes. The way a building full of strangers becomes a single organism for three periods.
I wonder if he's watching. If he heard that horn and felt it in his chest the way I just felt it in mine. If he's sitting somewhere in New York, alone in a storm, watching the game he was supposed to beplaying.
The thought sits heavy. I push it down.
I check my phone. Previous message unsent. No signal.The arena's concrete walls are apparently as committed to dramatic timing as Grace is.
