That’s the part nobody gets to see. Not the boys, not my dad, not the three Allie’s that I generously made out with, not the girl in row three. The airplane is the costume. This — the eggs, the walk, the tape, the quiet — this is the man, and I keep him locked in a back room and let the clown answer the door.
Then the locker room fills up, and I put the costume back on, because that’s my actual job. I don’t like being taken seriously because when I do, it threatens people. I already have my riches and my talent, so I don’t need to knock anyone’s door down by being an entitled dickhead about it.
Benson goes tight before games. Always has. He gets a jaw on him, a thousand-yard captain stare, and a tight captain makes a tight room, and a tight room loses. So I loosen it. I narrate Percy’s pregame stretching like a nature documentary. I start a debate about whether a hot dog is a sandwich that nearly ends three friendships. I tell Blue his girlfriend texted me, which she did not, and watch him short-circuit. By the time Fuller comes through, the room’s loose and laughing and Benson’s jaw has come unclenched, and it cost me nothing. It never costs me anything. That’s the gift.
But once — once, lacing up, head down — I check my watch.
Twenty minutes to puck drop.
She’ll be in row three.
I play my actual game tonight –– the player my dad asked for, the one the club flew a man in to watch. First period, I lay a quiet little saucer pass through two sticks onto Theo’s tape for the easiest tap-in of his life, and I don’t celebrate it big because it wasn’t mine to celebrate, I just bump his fist and skate back.
Second period, it’s mine.
Theo wins it on the wall and feeds me at the top of the circle, and I’ve got a lane and that second where the world goes quiet. The angle’s waiting for me –– top corner, glove side, the keeper a fraction late the way they always are, and I don’t decide to shoot so much as I notice that I already have.
In.
I don’t fly. I don’t spin. I don’t do a single thing for the full seats. The home end erupts, and the bench is up. Benson skates over and taps my glove, and I just nod.
I let the boys mob me for a second.
And then I take the long way back.
Instead of skating to the bench, I loop wide like I’m just stretching my legs, like I lost track of where the door is. Out past the center circle, across the offensive zone, drifting, unhurried, up toward the glass on the blue-line side.
Up toward row three.
Linwood’s there with her phone in her lap, a different coat that’s too good for this rink, and that face she keeps set to unimpressed like a thermostat.
I stop at the glass and look at her. Right at her, through the plexiglass, no grin, no airplane, no mouthful of garbage to throw at her — just her eyes and my eyes, and it’s the first time they’ve actually met, and something goes still in my chest that has no business being still in the middle of a hockey game.
I don’t say anything.
I raise my stick. Blade up, where she can see it. And slow, deliberate, watching her the whole time, I move it through the air like a pen. Two strokes. Three. A little flick at the end, like a signature.
I’m miming taking notes.
I’m mocking the phone in her lap, the reports, the entries, the thing she takes more seriously than anything on this earth. Write that down, princess. Player 11. Goal. Top corner. Save your daddy the trip.
Then I reach out, tap the glass once, and I turn and skate to the bench as if nothing happened.
The crowd has no idea. The broadcast guys are going to spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out what that celebration was. The boys on the bench give me a what the hell was that face, and I wave it off.
But Aspen Linwood knows exactly what just happened.
She didn’t flinch. I’ll give her that. Her face didn’t move an inch, didn’t fall, didn’t flush, stays right on unimpressed.
The girl wants to attempt to murder me? Now she knows she’s on my radar.
I sit on the bench and don’t look back at her, because I already know exactly what I did is going to piss her off.
The boys are still riding the goal, slapping my helmet, and Coach Fuller’s barking the next line over the top of it all. Down the bench, Percy lifts his mask and looks at me. A second too long. He saw the whole thing and knows exactly what I did. Then he drops the mask and looks away.
I tap my stick on the boards, stare at the ice, and wait for my shift.
The goal was a great goal. Top corner, club’s man in the building, my dad’s voice in my ear — it was the player, it was the thing I’m made for. And it felt like nothing next to thirty seconds of a girl strangling a phone because of me.
