The sound hits the boards and comes back twice as big. I flinch. Barely, but it’s there. Quick, sharp, gone just as fast. I adjust my grip on my stick again, rolling my shoulders once, resetting myself.
The girls break, energy spilling back out as they skate toward the benches, talking over each other again, reliving plays, arguing about passes, laughing.
Emma exhales beside me, satisfied. “Not bad for your first day.”
I glance out at the ice, where the last puck spins slowly to a stop near the blue line.
“They’re good,” I say.
“Told ya.” Emma bumps her shoulder lightly against mine. “Do you think I’d coach losers?”
We crack up and watch as one of the girls retraces her path to grab that last puck before I glance back at Emma.
“It was the hardest room I’ve ever been in,” I add.
“Welcome to my world.” She snorts, stepping onto the ice and moving in a circle, her eyes on me. “14U is not for the faint of heart. Thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds are very set in their ways.”
There’s a silence that falls between us as she cocks her to the side and squints. “Speaking of worlds, how’s yours? You had therapy again yesterday, right?”
I shake my head no, stepping onto the ice as well, tossing a puck her way. “Next session is in a few hours.”
“It’s a good thing this all happened while you’re off hockey for summer, huh?”
“It does help so I can wrap my head around it. It’s like nothing’s changed, but everything has changed…if that makes sense.”
“It does.” She slaps the puck my way and we move in sync down the ice, not really competing but not really giving anything up either. “I’ve been doing some of my own research, too.”
“You have?”
“Of course,” she says with a laugh and pushes off a little harder, circling back toward me. “You’re my brother. I want to understand what’s going on.”
I catch the puck on my blade, settling it automatically, the familiar weight of it anchoring me. “It’s not like there’s one thing to understand.”
“I know.” She taps her stick lightly against mine. “But there are answers now, right?”
I nod, nudging the puck ahead of us as we skate side by side.
“Yeah,” I admit. “It’s like someone finally handed me the right language for things I’ve felt my whole life.”
Emma glances over. “And before?”
“Before, I just thought I was bad at stuff everyone else seemed to handle naturally.”
She doesn’t immediately respond to that. Just angles her skates, looping us both toward center ice again.
“That must’ve been exhausting,” she says finally.
I let out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “Yeah. Dr. Hale said that I spent so much time masking as I grew up, that the pressure of last year, being in the NHL and the team’s rise, all aided in the discovery that I’ve been living with this. Crazy isn’t it? But just knowing that this is who I am, and that it explains things, is already starting to help.”
A beat passes between us before Emma gestures with her stick. “Like what, though? What’s one thing that feels different now that you know?”
I glance down at the puck, rolling it slightly side to side on my blade.
“Everything’s louder than I thought it was,” I say. “Not just sound. That’s one of the signs that started messing with me, actually. But I noticed my input felt big. Louder than a crowd, but I always figured everyone else noticed all of it, too, and just didn’t get distracted.”
Emma tilts her head a little. “What do you mean by input?”
I let out a breath, rubbing the back of my neck. “Everything, I guess. Not just noise. It’s…” I hesitate, trying to line it up in a way that makes sense outside my own head. “Lights. Movement. People talking, even if it’s not to me. The way something feels, like fabric or sweat or…” I shake my head once. “It all comes in at the same level.”
