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Captain’s Orders on the Ice

Page 26

by Ellis Rhodes

"Six," I read. "No phone in bed after lights out. The light keeps me up. Seven. Breakfast at seven-thirty. Together. Together? Like, at the same table?"

"Moretti said you eat when I eat."

"He didn't mean at the same table. He meant at the same time."

"I'm not interpreting it."

"Eight," I read, slower now, because this one's different. The letters are pressed in harder. "No social media posts from the room. No photos of the room. No photos of me."

I look at him. He's still facing the desk.

"Why would I post photos of you?"

"People do."

"People who?"

"People who want clicks." He finally turns around in the chair. He's in a gray T-shirt and track pants, and his hair's still wet from a shower he must have taken before I got here, which means he broke his own rule three before it even started. "Some kid in Seattle posted his roommate asleep with his mouth open last year. It was a joke. It was on every highlight show in the country the next morning."

"Is that what you think I'm going to do?"

"I don't know what you're going to do. That's why there's a list."

I look down at the list again. Number eight has been gone over twice, like he stopped writing and came back to it.

"Okay," I say. "No photos."

He waits, like he expected a fight.

"I mean it. No photos." I hold up the paper. "I'll even sign it, if you want. Do you have a notary? Beth might be a notary."

"Keep reading."

"Nine. Video session after every game. Thirty minutes. Mandatory." I groan and fall back on the bed. "Thirty minutes of watching myself turn the puck over."

"Thirty minutes of watching yourself learn."

"That's the same thing, but sadder."

"Ten," he says, before I can read it. "What's ten."

I sit back up and look. Number ten is short. It's only one line.

10. If anybody in the room gives you trouble, you tell me.

I read it a couple of times. Then I look at him. He's looking at the carpet between the beds, his elbows on his knees.

"You wrote this after the parking garage," I say.

"I wrote it on the plane."

"After the parking garage, though."

"It's a rule. Rules go on the list."

"You don't have to⁠—"

"It's a rule, Castel."