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"I saw it. Your cousin Luc sent it to me. Then Jean-Guy at the shop sent it to me. Then some guy I don't even know sent it to me on Facebook."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not saying sorry. I'm saying people are watching." He clears his throat. "You know what I always told you."

"I know."

"Say it."

"Papa—"

"Say it, Rémy."

I look down the hallway. It's long and beige, and at the end there's an ice machine humming to itself, and a room service tray somebody left outside their door with a half-eaten burger on it.

"Don't give them a reason," I say.

"Don't give them a reason," he repeats. "They're looking for one. You're not some kid on a bus anymore. You're on TV. Every mistake, they're going to say it's because of—" He stops.

"Because of what?"

"You know."

"Say it, Papa."

He doesn't. He never does. He came to every one of my games from the time I was five, and he drove me to five a.m. practices in a truck with no heat, and when I came out at sixteen he hugged me in the kitchen so hard my ribs hurt and then went outside and sat in that same truck for an hour with the engine running. He loves me more than anybody in the world except maybe Maman. He has never once said the word.

"Just be careful," he says. "That's all. Be twice as good. Be twice as careful. Keep your head down."

"I don't want to keep my head down. I want to play."

"You can play with your head down."

"Hale says head up. On the boards."

"Who's Hale?"

"My captain. My roommate." I don't know why I'm telling him this. "He's okay. He's strict. He made me a list of rules."

"Good," my dad says, and he sounds relieved, like somebody's finally listening to him. "Good. You listen to him. A captain like that, he knows. He knows how to keep his head down. Seventeen years and nobody ever said a word about him."

I don't say anything. For me, that's basically a coma.

"Rémy?"

"Yeah. I'm here."

"Eight minutes," he says. "I got to go, I got a job in Mont-Joli. Play good tonight."

"I will."

"Je t'aime."

"Moi aussi, Papa."

He hangs up. I stand in the hallway holding the phone. The ice machine drops a load of ice, loud as a gunshot, and I jump.

Seventeen years and nobody ever said a word about him.