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"Good," Brandt says. "Wear 'em. Make Varga look at 'em all night." He pulls his jersey over his head, and his voice comes out muffled. "Also, you're on my line. So if you're going to be sad tonight, be sad on somebody else's line."

"I'm not going to be sad."

His head pops out of the jersey. He looks at me. For once, the parking-garage smile isn't there.

"Good," he says again, quieter, and goes back to his skates.

The building's even louder than game three. I didn't think that was possible. They've got a fog machine going during the introductions, and a guy on the jumbotron with a guitar, and a light show that makes the whole ice look like it's on fire. Nineteen thousand people in gold and navy, and every one of them wants us dead.

I skate out for warmups and look up, and there's a sign in the second row behind our bench.

CASTEL: BOYFRIEND'S NOT HERE TO SAVE YOU

I laugh.

I don't mean to. It just comes out of me, loud, the way it used to. I point at the sign. I give the guy holding it two thumbs up. He looks confused. The people around him look confused. Somebody in the row behind him laughs too, and then a couple of other people, and then the guy with the sign lowers it a little, like he's not sure anymore what it means.

Varga's watching me from across the red line.

I blow him a kiss. Bonne chance, Cody.

The first period, I play like I'm nine years old in my mom's driveway.

I don't think. I stopped thinking. I've been thinking since December. About where Owen was on the ice, and where the cameras were, and what my face looked like, and whether my celebration was too big, and whether anybody was watching the way I looked at the bench. I've been playing hockey with half my brain on something else for six months.

Tonight I don't. Tonight it's just the puck and the ice and the noise.

I get it on my first shift, off a faceoff Brandt wins, and I take it wide, and their D comes at me, and I don't reach. I stay square. I stay between him and the puck, the way Owen taught me at midnight on the empty ice, and when he commits, I'm gone. I get a shot off from the top of the circle and their goalie stops it, and I'm laughing again, skating back, because it felt so good.

On my third shift, Varga gets his stick in my face in a scrum by their net. Not hard. Just enough.

"Nice laces, sweetheart," he says. "Old man pick those out?"

"My mom did," I say. "She says hi."

"Your boyfriend's done, Castel. I saw him go down. They say he'll never skate again."

It goes in. I feel it land, low in my stomach. For one second the whole building disappears and I see Owen on his side at the blue line, holding his knee, screaming.

I don't swing.

I look at Varga. I really look at him. At his shaved lip. At his eyes, which are watching me very carefully, the way you watch a dog you're not sure is going to bite.

"You're scared of me," I say.

He blinks. "What?"

"You've been scared of me since I was sixteen. Since the bus. You're so scared of me that you've spent four years talking about who I sleep with." I smile at him. My real smile. The big one. "Cody. It's so much work. Aren't you tired?"

The linesman drops the puck. Varga's still looking at me. He's late on the draw. Sorel steals it right off his stick.

They score first. A deflection off Webb's shin pad in the middle of the first period. We tie it in the second, Kowal from the point, a slapshot so hard it goes in off the goalie's shoulder and he falls over backward.

In the second intermission, the room's quiet. Not the bad quiet from game four. A different kind. Guys are sitting in their stalls with towels over their heads, breathing, drinking water, not talking.

Brandt stands up in the middle of the room.

Everybody looks at him. He's got the C on. He's never had it before. He stands there for a second with his mouth open, like he forgot what he was going to say.