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Then me. I hold at the hash marks. The defenseman has to commit before I do, and he does, and the lane opens exactly where my dad said it would, and I put it through on the tape.

“Again,” says Berwyn.

Six reps each, alternating, and by the fourth, there’s no sound in the building except skates and the puck and Coach saying one word after each rep. On my fifth, Greeley is on the defensive side, and he comes across on my hands with a short, hard chop right onto my gloves as the puck arrives, on the same knuckles that spent last week scabbing over. The puck skips past me.

“Reset,” the assistant says.

I skate back to the line with my right hand singing, and for about a second the floor of me comes up, the way it did in his kitchen and on his front walk, and I know exactly where he is on the ice without looking. Every league you’ll ever play in, somebody on the other bench gets paid to find out what makes you stupid. I flex my hand twice inside the glove.

“Kennebeck,” says Berwyn. “Again.”

I get four more, and so does he, and on two of mine, he’s on me. The second time, he gets his stick between my legs on the entry, and I have to fight through it and get the puck to Koda a half second late.

“Late,” Berwyn says.

“Yes, Coach.”

And I don’t miss the next one. I come low. The puck goes flat off the wall. I hold at the hash marks with every muscle in my legs screaming to go early, let the defenseman commit, and I’m through the middle with Greeley two strides behind me the whole way to the net, and I go top corner.

“Yeah,” somebody says at the boards. I think it’s Koda. Coach says nothing. We do it four more times, and the last three are mine.

Practice runs until five-fifty, because Berwyn doesn’t care what the sheet says. At the end, everybody’s bent over at the boards, and a guy at the far end actually throws up. Berwyn skates to center with his clipboard under his arm and reads the lines. He reads four forward lines and three D pairs off a clipboard.

“Second line. Barnes. Kennebeck. Waleska.”

Koda makes a noise into his glove.

“Third. Orr. Greeley. Weber.”

That’s it. He keeps reading, says something about Friday and the exhibition, and then, “That’s it. Get off my ice,” and skates for the tunnel.

I stand at the boards with my hands on my knees and my chest heaving. Rafe skates past and hits the back of my shin with his stick, hard, and doesn’t say a word. Koda puts me into the boards.

Greeley doesn’t say anything. I watch for it in the room, because I’ve been braced for whatever it’s going to be since Dannebrog read our names in the locker room two weeks ago. He sits in his stall and takes his skates off. He drinks his water. When Weber says something, he answers and laughs a normal laugh. He gets up and goes to the shower with his towel and walks past me on the way without looking, without slowing down, without congrats or enjoy it or we’ll see.

Pennock hits my shoulder. “About time.”

Two stalls down, Mathers says, “Kennebeck,” and tips his chin.

I sit there in my gear with my elbows on my knees. I got everything I wanted, and nobody told me it was over, because it isn’t.

My phone is in my bag. There are messages in the team chat about the lines, one from my academic advisor, which means somebody called him within about four minutes of Berwyn reading that list, and one from my dad at 5:31 that says How’d it go? because he knows exactly what today is. I don’t open any of them. I get dressed. Koda wants to go eat, and I tell him I’ll catch up. Rafe looks at me a second longer than he needs to and doesn’t ask.

Then I walk back to Corvin with my hair still sweaty and my hand still singing, go up three flights, and knock on a door that isn’t mine.

Kylie opens it in a hoodie and shorts with her hair up. “You?”

“Blondie.”

She rolls her eyes and looks at my bag. “Are you just getting back?”

“Yeah. Practice ran long.”

“Okay. So?” she says slowly. “Why are you at my door?”

I open my mouth, and nothing comes out, because I haven’t thought about this at all. I walked off that ice, got dressed, and walked here, and at no point did I plan a sentence.

“I got the line,” I say.