“Let’s go boys,” someone called with much less enthusiasm than usual, and everyone started to getup.
I was pulling up the rear and noticed Griff waiting forme.
We walked back out toward the ice silently, until Griff opened hismouth.
“Where’s Ellie?” he asked. “Sav said she invited her to a girls’ watch party, but she never showed.”
I swallowed. I was being tested today.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” I said gravely.
“Ahh… Snakebitten,” he aimed at me.
I shoved him away from me. “Shut the fuck up, man.” Was he mad that I didn’t make it better with her? It’s not like it was my fault she wasn’t answering my phone calls. I was trying. She was the one cutting me off.
“Ay, just tryin to help, bud,” he said, with an arched eyebrow.
It rained popcorn as I sat in the sin bin.
I tried to ignore it; this wasn’t my home crowd, and I probably deserved it after what I did to that other rookie… and at least it wasn’t beer.
But I should have taken the popcorn as a hint that this South Carolina trip would not end well for me.
I got the communication from Coach that I would be stepping out of the box and moving into my regular shift, which I thanked the Lord for. Sometimes guys got lucky when they left the box and were able to get a breakaway out of it.
I should’ve known that wouldn’t be my luck today.
As soon as I stepped onto the ice, I got the pass, but it was a little further up than I would have liked.
I went skating as hard as I could towards it, thinking I’d have a bit more time on my hands than I actuallydid.
It didn’t help that Charkoff, who was known as South Carolina’s enforcer, had been put on the ice for the sole purpose of trying to impose repercussions on me for what I did to their rookie.
As soon as my stick touched the puck, I was rocked.
My whole world was turned upsidedown.
And then I was laying on the ice staring up into the arena’s rafters, noticing how much higher up they were than Pine Ridge’s when black bled into my vision from allangles.
“Ughhh,” I moaned. My whole body hurt, and my ears were ringing.
I laid there not moving, and momentarily lost where I was in the world.
Griff’s face filled my vision.
Fuck. Did I just blackout?
I was freezing. Why was I freezing?
The memory of the hit came back to me in a rush then and my hearing returned to normal. Like a nightmare, the crowd was chanting Charkoff’s name, and they were replaying the check on the jumbotron with the word Yard Sale overtop of it. I watched in tantalizing slo-mo how my helmet, gloves, and stick went sprawling away from me as my body was airborne and then flat on the ice.
I looked at my hands, just then realizing I didn’t have gloves on. I touched my head, not really believing what had happened, but felt my hair. I saw my helmet then, about five feet from me as well.
Fuck.
I’d never felt like this after a check before.
“Can ya get up, bud?” Griff asked with a concerned face. After I let out another groan in response, he heaved a sigh and said, “If ya don’t get up, they’re gonna have the medics come onto the ice, and that always makes it look worse than it is. Plus, you definitely won’t have a chance of comin’ back on the ice anytime soon if that happens.”
