Frankie knew that there were some messes she simply couldn’t clean up. She stood in the middle of the rink, with a 360-degree view of the ice and the stands, with her hands on her hips, and honestly had absolutely no clue how to resolve this. From her vantage point, she could see that the Zamboni had plowed clear through the side of the rink’s wall—where the little door should have been to allow skaters to enter the ice, there was at present just a gaping hole littered with debris and plaster and shards of wood.
Though now, she at least knew what the keys were for. She pulled them from her pocket. Her options were to drive the Zamboni back through the front door and park it in the middle of the rink, as if it had been here all along. Or wipe down the keys (no fingerprints—all those episodes ofLaw & Orderin hotel rooms could finally pay off) and run. Or... she chewed the inside of her lip... accept accountability and call campussecurity and offer to write a check for the repairs?No, no. She rewound and went back to the previous ideas.
She heard footsteps echoing off the emptiness of the rink and started to scramble toward the bleachers, the keys dropping into her purse. But the ice was slick against her Doc Martens and there was nothing to grab on to, and she slipped and slid and slipped and slid until she more or less careened into part of the side wall that was still intact. The lump on her head was unhappy with this, despite its recovery at the pool, and she could feel the pulse in her neck bleating, beating, angry.
“I figured,” was all Ezra said, and then he was standing in front of her. “Of course.”
Frankie righted herself. “This wasn’t my fault. This was everyone else’s fault!”
Ezra scoffed as if this were the most preposterous thing he’d heard all day. Which, Frankie knew, could not have been the most preposterous thing from the day, because she was really starting to think that they’d gotten married.
“The three of you—this was your idea!” Frankie yelped. She yanked the keys out from her bag and threw them at him.
Ezra held out his hand and caught them, then narrowed his eyes.
“You remember?”
“You don’t?” Frankie said, her voice still too sharp, and it bounced off the ceiling and back to them. They both quieted and peered around, as if someone else might overhear.
This is what Frankie had ascertained since arriving at the rink from the pool: she remembered that Abel was their next clue after the athletic center, though she couldn’t place what theclue had said. That felt irrelevant anyway, and Frankie was not in the business of worrying about irrelevancy; this was at least part of the reason she was so good at her job: if an artist was set to fade into obscurity or not hitting the way they’d anticipated, she simply let them drift off into the figurative musical sea. It wasn’t kind, she knew, but then you didn’t get to the top of the game in a male-dominated, highly charged industry by being kind. Besides, kindness, she was sure, was overrated.
By the time they’d tripped from the swimming complex through the bone-chilling Western Massachusetts cold to Abel, Ezra and Gregory had been very very drunk. Frankie remembered that too. In some ways, this made being teammates easier. Ezra had never been an emotional drunk; that had been Frankie. Instead, he became quieter, more introverted, so mostly, they slunk down to the rink in silence, a mutually understood pact that saying nothing was better than saying anything, because then, they were really going to get into it. Besides, Gregory was keeping up the conversation for both of them. He and Alec, who was still in top college-athlete form and bigger than all three of them and, therefore, seemed to hold his alcohol the best, belted out a medley of Whitney Houston hits, and it was all Frankie could do not to interject when he got the words wrong.
No one knew exactly what they were looking for when they got there. Probably because no one could remember the clue, which explained why Frankie couldn’t remember it today. Alec swore he had stuffed it in his jacket, but alas, it was gone. Frankie emptied her purse on the bleachers while Ezra and Gregory went through their pockets, but their only hope of staying competitive and/or winning, which Frankie very much still wanted to do, was scouring the rink for something thatlooked amiss. It was then that Ezra noticed that either due to the spotty cell service on campus or due to his inebriation, he had missed three calls from Mimi.
Alec, who Frankie now realized may have been more drunk than she’d been aware of at the time, had pumped his fist and said, “Dudes! Have you ever driven a Zamboni? Let’s break into the shed!”
And Gregory threw his head back and yelled, “Oh, I wanna dance with somebody!” As if this had anything to do with anything.
And Ezra shrugged, mostly just moving around the bleachers trying to get a signal, his eyes fuzzy, his legs limber, and said: “Cool. A Zamboni.” Then to Frankie, “I just remembered that you can skate.”
Frankie hadn’t known if this meant that she should skate while they took a joyride on the Zamboni or if it meant that he remembered that she’d once took lessons because she’d been too embarrassed to go to the pond near his house. She hadn’t even thought about that pond by his house in a decade, though every timeMoonstruckwas on cable as a late-night movie and Frankie couldn’t sleep, she did think of Ezra.
Alec disappeared somewhere for a moment, and Gregory shuffled out to the middle of the rink, right at the center circle where the puck gets dropped, and lay flat, as if he were making snow angels. She and Ezra sat in silence, each of their arms still folded, on opposite ends of a bleacher bench, while he punched buttons on his phone and mutteredgoddammit.
Finally, he paused and said, “You know, I know you think you hate me, but I did nothing but try to do right by you.” He stopped and seemed to swallow a burp.
Frankie sighed, loud, annoyed. She wished she were as drunk as the rest of them, even though she didn’t really, because being clearheaded felt like a marvel right now. Why had she spent so many nights drunk like the rest of them? It wasn’t that she was having fun. But at least now she was in control of herself; at least she wasn’t mumbling about old wounds from ten years back.
After a minute she said, “You can think whatever you want about me, about doing right by me. Like I care.”
She waited for a response because, it turned out, maybe she did care, but Ezra just stood and stumbled down the steps and through the little door that swung open to the rink, and then he threw his body forward, as if he were sliding into home plate, his stomach on the ice, his hands pointed in front of him, toward Gregory. They howled at the hilarity of it. Then she heard Ezra yell, “Wait, I have a signal,” and then he tried to stand but slipped and so he pressed the phone to his ear while flat on his back on the ice.
Frankie didn’t see how this was getting them any closer to solving their clue and winning.
Just then, there was a rumbling from the back of the rink, and a mechanical door lurched open and a Zamboni emerged. Alec had found the keys. Overhead, the speakers blasted a piercing shot of feedback, and then the unmistakable opening riff to the Beastie Boys:You gotta fight, for your right, to party!Gregory let out a cheer and tried to stand but fell flat backward and splatted again. Ezra yelled over the din of the engine and the noise: “What? Shit, Mimi’s flight!” And then he let out a primal scream.
Well, Frankie was going to have to be the grown-up here,that much was clear. That Gregory was having so much fun didn’t really surprise her. He was always throwing parties in his room, always egging them on to get an early start at Lemonhead. But Ezra. Ezra was supposed to be the levelheaded one! What had happened in the span of ten years that this had changed?
Frankie considered that a lot had happened, including his mother dying, which could fundamentally shift everything about you, especially a soul like Ezra. Something about this moved her, there in the stands, watching her ex splayed on the ice, listening to his voicemail, seemingly crestfallen but also trying not to be distracted by the hilarity of Gregory. Ezra had always loved everyone so deeply, including her. For a long time after their fight outside Burton just before graduation, this had enraged her, that he had loved her so much.
Gregory had made it to his feet now, then Ezra did too, though in trying to regain his balance, his phone fell from his hand and skittered across the rink. Alec, his eyes closed, started to veer off course, waving his hands in the air and belting out the chorus. Frankie saw the wreckage a few seconds before it happened, but by then, even when she’d yelled, it was too late. The Zamboni crushed Ezra’s phone in a mere blink, and then plowed clear through the side wall of the rink, and then Alec was screaming and trying to steer the machine back onto the ice, but soon enough there was an enormous thundering wail beyond the ice, and Frankie was certain the ground shook.
“What the fuck?” Gregory shouted. “Alec?Alec?”
He tried to scramble toward the exit, toward the noise, but kept slipping. Ezra had abandoned all hope of standing, so he just crawled in the same direction, stopping to moan and mournthe shards of his phone in front of him. At some point, Gregory fell right on top of Ezra, and though Frankie didn’t see it, Ezra must have elbowed him square in his previously broken nose. The blood spurted out instantly, as if a tap had been turned on, leaving a round, red crime scene on the ice.
Frankie had always been terrible with blood, and just as Alec stumbled back toward the rink, threw the keys at Ezra, and said, “Uh, guys, I think we better split,” Frankie herself staggered down to the ice, holding her hand in front of her eyes as if this could make anything better at all, but then Gregory was in front of her, his face mangled like a boxer’s. And there was blood everywhere. On his teeth, on his chin, down his neck. And Frankie, because this could not be said enough, really, really was not good with blood, and so the ground tilted on its axis, and Frankie, the toughest gal around, unceremoniously fainted.
