The rink at six twenty-five in the morning smells of nothing yet.
That is, frankly, the part I love about it.
By noon this ice will be a city, every man on it having added his weather to the room — sweat, leather, hot rubber, the chemical pine of Jimmy’s floor mop — but for now the air is still cathedral-clean, that scorched-mineral bite of freshly Zambonied ice climbing up the back of the throat and laying down a thin metallic chill on the tongue. The lights overhead hum in the way fluorescents hum in big empty rooms. My breath plumes white. My new pads slap a familiar percussion against my thighs as I work my way down the rail toward my crease, and the gear smells, properly, of me again: frosted strawberry, cold steel, the faint sugary ghost of a body mist I have not yet committed to giving up.
Five-thirty in the morning has always been the only church I know how to attend. The cold scrubs the night off you. The ice forgives no shortcuts. The crease is the most honest piece of real estate in the building, twelve feet of paint that does not care who your father was, what your scholarship paid for, or which housein which sector currently has your name on a piece of paper. You stop the puck or you do not. There is something about that bone-simple yes-or-no that, on the worst days of my entire life, has been the single thing I have been able to trust.
Underneath it, indelibly, the burnt-orange-and-espresso whisper of a crimson hoodie I almost wore to practice and was talked out of by my own better judgment at six-oh-three.
Almost.
I made the right call. Probably.
The team is on the ice in two halves, as I am beginning to understand is the unspoken architecture of this entire program. Sector one is grouped near the far boards, blue practice pinnies, the dark fortress shape of Brennan at the center of it with one of his lieutenants on each shoulder. Sector two is closer to my end, white pinnies, looser arrangement, less performance in their posture. The gap between the two groups is, as ever, the kind of gap you could lose a body in.
At center ice, the three coaches are in conference.
Coach Declan in the middle, in a fresh black jacket that does not, to my private gratification, look like the one I emptied my breakfast onto seventy-eight minutes ago. To his left, Coach Whitlock — the tall, lean one with the clipboard, the one I have been collecting micro-expressions on since yesterday morning. To his right, Coach Marek, the stockier of the pair, who has not let go of his travel mug all morning and seems to use the coffee as a kind of prop, a thing to look at when he does not want to look at me. The three of them are speaking too quietly to hear, but the body language is loud enough on its own. Coach Declan is delivering. The other two are receiving and visibly disliking what they have been handed.
I drop into my crease. I tap the pipes with my stick the way I have tapped the pipes of every crease I have ever stood in since I was nine years old. I bend down to check the strap on myright pad as though the strap is, at this exact moment, the most fascinating object in the building.
Do not look at the kitchen. Do not look at the kitchen. Do not.
I look at the kitchen.
Coach Declan’s eyes, across the cold length of the rink, flick to mine for less than half a second.
Then back to his colleagues.
Professional and clean. As though there is no strawberry shake anywhere in his entire history of human experience. As though we did not, one hour and eighteen minutes ago, stand a hand-span apart in a dark kitchen and conduct the worst five-word conversation of either of our lives.
I refuse to be the one who reads more into that flick than there is. I bend back down to my strap.
“LISTEN UP.”
Coach Declan’s voice goes the whole width of the rink without raising itself by a single decibel. The whole team obeys at once, the noise of forty blades dragging in the same direction settling into a single hush. Coach Whitlock and Coach Marek straighten slightly on either side of him with the precise discomfort of two men who have been told the meeting was about to be moved to the boards.
“As of six a.m. this morning,” Coach Declan announces, flat and even, “Iris O’Shea is officially rostered to this program. Sector two. Starting goaltender consideration. Effective immediately.”
The rink freezes.
Properly freezes. Twenty bodies that had been doing the small fidgety pre-drill shifting all stop at once, sticks in hand, breath plumed. The fluorescent hum becomes, in the absence of any other sound, mortifyingly audible.
Coach Whitlock’s clipboard does a small involuntary thing.
“Excuse me.”
“Mm,” Coach Declan replies. Not a question. A reminder he heard.
“Declan.” Coach Marek, lowering the coffee mug for the first time in living memory. “When, exactly, did this get approved.”
“Yesterday afternoon. The captain submitted the housing-and-roster paperwork on his way to the four-thirty debrief. I countersigned at five. Headmaster’s office stamped at five-forty. Pack confirmation came through at six this morning.”
“You —” Whitlock looks at Marek. Marek looks at the coffee like it has betrayed him. “— you were going to mention this when, exactly.”
“I am mentioning it now.”
It is, technically, the truth.
