The arena bursts into laughter. Not boos. Mockery.
Baby Shark chirps through the speakers, loud and humiliating.
Doo doo. Doo doo doo doo.
The Islanders skate out stiff, forced to glide onto the ice to a children’s song while Brooklyn fans howl like they’re watching a prank unfold live.
Marshall laughs beside me. “That’s brutal.”
“It’s undignified.” I smirk.
“It’s hilarious.” Dash chuckles.
“They swam all the way over from Long Island… let’s hope they remembered their floaties.” The announcer taunts.
Laughter doubles. The Islanders pretend not to react.They react.
Baby Shark cuts mid-beat. Silence slams down. The arena goes black.
A low bass rolls under our feet, slow, heavy, predatory.
“And now…” the announcer growls. “Brooklyn… get on your feet.” The crowd explodes upward. “Protecting home ice. Defending the borough…” Spotlights fire toward us. “YOUR BROOKLYN BEARS!”
Then the beat hits. Pop Smoke’s voice cracks through the speakers like a warning.Christian Dior, Dior…
The bass shakes the tunnel. The crowd roars with it. We storm onto the ice to Brooklyn drill, sound thick with swagger and threat. No laughter now. No jokes.
I settle on the right side of the blue line. Right D.
Hold the line.
Chapter 3
Sharks
Hildy
I’d never seen ice shine like diamonds before I’d come to Costello Arena. Not until I saw it from up here, where we’re cordoned off from the crowd below. The boxes along the arena’s gravity line are all glass-fronted, some of them dark, some lit with the warm glow of catered dinners and the polite movements of employees stacking drinkware. This box is different. It’s a flex, but not a gaudy one. The only garish thing about it is the logo—FAIRFAX MEDIA—stenciled on the inner window in crisp, fog-resistant vinyl, the font chosen to look simple.
I’m not supposed to be here in the box, or in any of the boxes. Hell, I don’t think I could afford any one of the seats below without compromising a meal or draining my emergency cab fund for days that my alarm might not go off in time to catch the train or a subway to get to the college.
In this box, I am both invisible and exposed. The other women I am surrounded by are amazing. From what I havegathered, they all have worked to get through something to get to where they are, but they are not like me. They have arrived —so to speak— and me, I’m still orbiting in shifting patterns. Sofie, who moves with the precision of someone who survived years in a war zone without breaking a nail; Nalani, who always wears headphones around her neck but never actually plays music; Claudia, who stands with her back to the glass in a perpetual state of readiness, as if she’s waiting for someone to walk in the door and challenge her existence and after seeing that actually happen, I understand. Noelle, the owner of the bookstore I brazenly walked into and applied for a job, the reason I am here working this gig, is sitting next to Paul Bronski, holding Claudia’s daughter, Savannah, and cooing. I swear she has hearts in her eyes. I take a few pictures and a short video.
These people are not the kind of women I grew up around. In my hometown, women performed competence only if it was ornamental or if it reflected well on the man they had clung to in hopes he’d pick her. In undergrad I just didn’t fit in, nor did I try, I worked my ass off knowing if I didn’t, I’d lose my scholarship, if I let my grades slip, I’d never get another and that couldn’t happen. Failure was not an option. Going backtherewas the punishment.
Here, competence is a barrier to entry, but it’s also a currency. I’ve been paid in this currency for two months now, since Sofie recruited me for this ‘digital engagement project’. I’ve learned a lot about hockey, but more about the strange, high-tension sisterhood that forms in places like this—half fortress, half observation deck.
I know now that hockey is a game of circles: the lines, the faceoff dots, the endless loops of skaters in warmups. The language is alien, but I learned it in self-defense. The first time I corrected some dude on the difference between a power play anda penalty kill, he looked at me like I’d stolen a secret. I don’t even like hockey, but I like stealing secrets.
“They’re looking good in warm-ups,” Sofie says. She’s got her phone out, live-tweeting something about team culture and “accountability on the ice.” She doesn’t bother to look at me when she speaks, but her body shifts, angling just a degree in my direction—one of those micro-movements you learn to notice if you grew up with a parent who might, on any given day, crash a car into the living room or decide to start fresh in another state and never return.
I learned to read rooms early. This room is the first one I’ve been in where I don’t feel like my failure is inevitable, and they can’t wait to see it happen. These women don’t soften their ambition to make anyone more comfortable. They don’t need to. They don’t test me to see if I’m a threat, I wouldn’t be here if they had any inclination I was. Something inside me that’s been tense since birth unclenches by the smallest possible increment and I can breathe a little easier when I’m here or at the bookstore.
Claudia now has Savannah standing at the glass and she’s giggling and waving her chubby little hands, I take some more pictures, and find the right spot, the perfect angle to catch them from behind and get Deacon looking up at them.
“Perfect.” Sofie winks.
I’ve watched every game for two months now, not because I was told to, but because I want to understand the kind of people who watching sports becomes their religion. Not just the players, but the fans. The girlfriends, the wives, the women who show up in box seats and team hotels, who get dismissed as arm candy but are actually running three covert ops at any one time and are unbothered by those judging them falsely.
