On the other side of the room, Kieran was at his stall with his back to us, already half-changed, in no apparent hurry. He hadn't looked up once during the exchange.
"Kieran," I said.
He looked over.
"Do I look different?"
"You've been on your phone," Kieran said. "Someone must be on the other end."
Heath pointed at him. "That's it. That's the thing." He walked toward the showers. "You've been on your phone on the bus for almost every ride on this trip. It's new."
I changed into street clothes and went to find something to eat. Two blocks east of the facility, I found a nondescript diner.
It was just starting to fill with an early lunch crowd. I ordered eggs and toast.
Sully's text came in while I was finishing up. He'd sent it at 10:19. He would have just climbed out of bed.
Sully:Do you ever miss anywhere? Like not a person. Just a place.
I thought about the question properly. There was a pond fifteen minutes from my house growing up, down a service road that ran along a soy field before opening into a clearing. It froze solid in November and stayed that way until March.
It was always empty. No boards, locker rooms, or Dad running drills. Just ice and the sound of my blades.
Pratt:There's a pond outside of Mankato. Off a service road. It froze before the official rinks did every year by about two weeks. I skated on it before I was supposed to.
Sully:Before you were supposed to meaning it wasn't safe yet, or before you were supposed to meaning someone had a rule about it.
Pratt:Both.
A short pause.
Sully:That's a good place to miss.
I stayed at the counter for another four minutes after I'd finished eating. After a quick glance around, I left a tip, folded the receipt, and walked back to our hotel.
After the game, I was back in the room by eleven. It was the last game of the trip. I had my duffel sorted.
No new messages. Sully would still be at Carver's. It was Thursday, his second-longest shift, and Chicago was a time zone behind me.
I set the phone on the desk and opened Spotify.
I had three playlists for the road. One was warmup tempo. The second was post-game cool-down. A third was miscellaneous songs I'd accumulated because they sounded like something I should keep.
I skipped all three.
Instead, I typed into the search bar "Fleetw," and the autofill did the rest. I selected "Don't Stop" and placed the phone face up on the desk.
After the last notes, I fell asleep and slept soundly.
***
On the team plane, I took my usual spot by the window, fourth row from the front. I settled in, bag overhead, and coat on the empty seat beside me. I opened the altitude display on the seat screen before boarding finished.
Across the aisle and one row forward, Cross had a folded newspaper on his tray table and was doing the crossword. He wrote in ink, not in pencil. It was a Cross-style commitment.
I watched him solve three clues in the time it took the plane to finish boarding.
Two rows behind me, Heath had already claimed Kieran's shoulder. Kieran had a book open. It had the fin of a whale breaking the ocean's surface on the cover.
