I stay silent, which is apparently the correct answer.
“What’s important now is what’s ahead of us. A chance at the playoffs. A chance to take this team where it belongs.”
“I can get on board with that,” I say.
“Good. Then let’s focus on that.” She steps aside with the magnanimity of someone granting passage through their kingdom. “Good luck tonight.”
I nod and resume my walk down the long hallway, feeling her eyes on my back until I round the corner, safely out of her purview.
The locker room vibrates with playoff-level intensity. Some guys sit at their stalls like monks preparing for enlightenment, headphones creating private temples of concentration. Others loosen muscles out on foam rollers before they perform the sacred ritual of taping their sticks pre-game.
Rocky appears at my side as I empty my suit pockets and fish out my pre-game workout gear. “The media maelstrom showed up tonight, LeClerc. When we have nationally televised games, it’s usually a circus. But tonight? This ain’t the local circus; this is Ringling Brothers.”
Then he vanishes into the bathroom.
“Clerky, we’re about to play two-touch. You in?” yells Dewey from across the locker room as he grabs a soccer ball from his stall.
“Let me get changed first.” I reach for my phone to check the time and find a text from Zoe:
“CALL ME NOW! IMPORTANT.”
I tap her phone number and find a quiet corner of the room.
She answers right away.
“Make it quick,” I tell her as I cup my hand over the phone. “I gotta start warming up.”
“Turns out we might be coming to the game tonight,” she begins.
“What? What happened toThe Nutcracker?”
“Yeah, well…Lila really wanted to see the Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier dance, but, uh…apparently, they’re cutting it.”
“They’re…cutting it?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Why?”
Zoe sighs. “I guess all the male dancers got food poisoning or something. So, they’re scrapping the Sugar Plum and Cavalier parts.”
Petra’s debut. Her first performance as a principal. The moment she’s worked toward her entire life. A hollow feeling settles in the pit of my stomach.
“Liam?” Zoe’s voice sounds distant, like she’s calling from another dimension.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
Dewey’s voice booms from across the room: “Clerky, let’s go! Two-touch!”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I tell Zoe. “I gotta go. I’ll call you back in a little.”
I hang up and stand there for a moment, phone still in my hand. Around me, my teammates prepare for the biggest game of our season, a night that will determine playoff hopes and the number of zeroes tacked onto future contracts. But all I can think about is Petra, probably in her dressing room right now, staring at a costume she won’t really get to wear, holding a wand she won’t get to raise.
I know what I should do. I should walk out there, play two-touch, warm up, focus on the game. That’s what professionals do. That’s what my contract pays me to do. That’s what twenty thousand fans are paying to see.
But I also know what it feels like to have your moment stolen. To work for something your entire life only to watch it disappear because of circumstances beyond your control. I know that exact emptiness that comes when the thing you’ve built your identity around suddenly isn’t there anymore.
