Page 76 of Fractured Ice

"You skate around on ice and fight people."

"We also have superior hand-eye coordination." Ethan sinks another. "Objectively."

"Football players have⁠—"

"Football players have helmets," Ethan says. "We take pucks to the face and keep going."

"You also lose teeth."

"Worth it."

Dylan seems to like bringing up the classic hockey stereotype. Not that I blame him. There aren’t really that many specific insults for hockey players that I know of.

I step up, mostly to stop listening to them, take the ball, and put it up. It banks off the backboard and goes in, and Ethan reacts as if I've just performed surgery.

"There it is," he says, with complete sincerity. "That's the skill right there."

"It bounced in."

"Skill."

"Off the backboard."

"Deliberate use of geometry."

“It was luck,” I say.

"She always smiles when she's concentrating," Ethan says to Dylan with the matter-of-fact delivery of someone sharing a well-established fact. "Always has. She'll tell you she's relaxed but the smile gives it away."

Dylan looks at me. I look at Ethan. Ethan picks up another ball.

"Since when," I say, "do you know what my face does when I'm concentrating?"

"Since always." He shoots. It goes in. "Next game."

The fishbowl toss draws a small crowd once both of them step up, which feels like more than the game warrants, but I've been watching these two for the better part of an hour now and the fair seems to have caught on.

Dylan throws first. Bounces out. Then out again. Then in, then out.

Ethan throws. Out. Out. Lands in a small bowl and pops back out. Out again.

Then, on what feels like the ninth attempt, one of Ethan's lands clean in a bowl and stays.

The small crowd reacts. The booth operator gestures at the prize wall with professional enthusiasm.

The prize wall has a giant stuffed bear. Several oversized animals. Sports pennants, novelty sunglasses, bags of candy, things on lanyards. The full spectrum of carnival excess.

Ethan looks at the prize wall for about four seconds. Then he points at something small and low on the right side.

"That one," he says.

The operator reaches for it. It's a pen. Silver, slim, with small blue crystals set near the top, catching the afternoon light. Elegant. Out of place on a carnival wall. The kind of thing that probably got donated by someone who didn't know what else to give.

Dylan stares at it. "There's a giant bear."

"I see the bear."

"You're choosing a pen over the bear."