Chapter 1
Stanley
The puck leaves my blade, and I already know.
I’m not a mathematician. I need to make that clear up front, because people hear the wordprodigyand picture me in the locker room doing long division for the love of it, and the truth is, I suck at the real kind of math. But the second the puck slides off my tape, the part of my brain that won’t show up for anything else in my entire life goes dead quiet, and the angle is justthere. Top right. The pocket. Speed and force and the one square inch where Percy isn’t, all of it lining up like the universe owes me money and finally decided to pay.
Boom, baby.
Ping.
Mesh.
In.
I coast all the way to the far blue line and turn around to look at it, because a shot like that deserves to be witnessed by the man who made it, and, honestly, by everyone else in the building too.
Percy gets there a full second late. I catch his face through the cage and it’s a beautiful thing. Percy Deveroux does not enjoy being scored on. Not in a game, not in scrimmage, not — I’d bet my left nut — in his actual dreams, where he’s probably wearing the pads and crying. But that’s the cross you carry when your roommate’s a prodigy. I came out of the womb with a measuring eye and a grudge against goaltenders. My daddy’s sperm raced into my mama with a stick and a puck already taped up, and I was in there, winning already, in the dark doing edge work for nine months. There was never a version of me that wasn’t this.
Benson taps two on Percy’s pads as he glides past. Captain thing. Good for the room, keep it moving, say nothing. Blue’s grinning into his cage down at the boards. Even Coach Fuller’s stopped writing on his little clipboard, which from Fuller is basically a standing ovation. And Percy’s livid because that was the third one I’ve put past him after I looked him dead in the eye and promised I’d take it easy on him today.
I skate back toward the bench with my arms already lifting, because I’m an airplane now, that’s just the situation, and I throw in a little spin for the people.
“I think I’m in love,” I announce to the rink.
Every head swings my way like I said somebody died.
“With myself,” I clarify, and laugh at my own joke, which is a habit I refuse to be ashamed of. “Obviously. Keep up. Get on my line.”
Nobody gets on my line. That’s the other thing about this year. The Hawthorne House rules have gone to absolute shit in the last two months, and I’m the only one still pretending we’re a unit. Five of us. That was the deal. Five of us, senior year, no distractions, ride it to the end together — and now Benson’s a goner, Blue’s done for, and I genuinely don’t want to know what’s happening for Rowan and Percy behind closed doors, except I do want to know, I want to know everything, I just don’twant it to betrue. We were supposed to be untouchable. Now I’m doing the airplane for an audience for a bunch of sick love puppies.
Anyway.
Rowan nods at me, so I tap the side of my head and tell him, “Math.”
He shakes his head in his disappointed-dad slow way.
Percy lifts his mask. “It went in,” he says, flat as the ice. “Pucks are supposed to do that.”
“It’s okay, Pers.” I pat the air toward him like I’m soothing a horse. “You’ll get one next time, buddy. I believe in you. We all do. Some of us more than others.”
He flips me off. I take it as applause.
Coach watches the whole thing, decides it isn’t worth his soul, and looks back down at his clipboard. Then he sighs. “Ermington.”
“Coach.”
“Bury that one on the rush against Washington in December, and I’ll frame it for the lobby.” He doesn’t look up. “Pull the airplane again in scrimmage, and you’ll skate lines for an hour.”
“The airplane’s a gift, Coach. It’s morale. The boys need it.” I do it again, keeping my eyes on his.
He stares at me. “The boys need you to backcheck. Lines.”
I shrug. “Worth it.”
I push off the boards and take a lap with my arms wide open, and I’m not even an airplane anymore, I’m a jet, I’m an F-something with the good engines, and I let the jet fuel rip — loud, on purpose, full body, a fart that echoes off the empty seats and clenches my own cheeks in betrayal. Whatever Rowan put in last night’s dinner is leaving me like it’s got a connecting flight.
I take the long way around the rink, because there’s an entitled little princess in the stands taking notes for her daddy like the good girl she is, and I’m a giver, I like to give the people content.
