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“Thanks,” I say, and go through.

“What’s your number?” he asks quietly, before we reach my door.

“Um,” I say, because I don’t have my phone.

He quickly adds, “So you can text me if anything happens.”

“Right.”

He pats his pockets. He doesn’t have his either, so we trade numbers out loud in the hallway. I say mine, and he says his.

“What’s your last name?” I ask.

“Kennebeck. Yours?”

“Vandercook.”

He nods and repeats my number back to me.

“Yeah.” I stop at my door and watch him walk to his. When he grabs the knob, he looks over at me. I give him a small smile and don’t wait to see his reaction. I walk into my dark room, grab my phone, get into bed, and hit Create New Contact.

Nash Kennebeck.

14

Totally Normal Hockey Behavior

Nash

I wake up at five on Monday and lie in the dark for ten minutes, and by the time my alarm goes off, I’ve decided I’m done. Not with hockey, not with the spot, not with sitting at that table twice a week with my name on a clipboard. I’m done letting a guy walk up on me in hallways and tunnels and say whatever he wants, because every person in my life has told me the same thing: take the number, skate away, don’t give him what he wants. Coach said it. My dad has said it. Rafe dressed it up in a plan and made it sound clever. And all of it works right up until you watch somebody sit down on a cold step in a stairwell and put her face in her hands.

I get up and go lift.

The captain’s skate is at three, after classes, and I take Rafe’s advice. I’m the nicest person in the building. I hold the door for Mathers on the way into the locker room. I ask Pennock about his knee and listen to the whole answer, including the part about the physio he doesn’t like. When Dannebrog reads the lines off his phone and puts me back with Barnes and Waleska, I say, “Thanks, Cap,” and mean it so convincingly that Rafe turns his head.

When Greeley walks past my stall with his bag over his shoulder, I say, “What’s up, Dec?”

He stops. Half the room stops with him. Mathers has one skate on. Somebody’s speaker is still going. Greeley looks at me a second longer than he means to, and then he puts on the good version of himself like a jacket. “What’s up, Kennebeck?”

“How was your weekend?”

“It was great.” He’s smiling now, not missing a beat. “Yours?”

“Real quiet.”

From two stalls down, Koda says, “How was your weekend, Dec,” in a falsetto, loud enough for the whole room, and then, in his own voice, “Jesus Christ, Kennebeck, who got to you?” A couple of the juniors laugh. Rafe doesn’t. He catches my eye and nods once.

The skate is the best one I’ve had since I got to this school, and not because I’m dominant. Because I’m clean. I win eleven of fourteen draws. I don’t take a single extra stride after a whistle. When Greeley and I end up in the same corner in a battle drill, I win the puck, move it and skate away without looking back at him once.

“Good, Kennebeck,” Dannebrog says out loud, in front of everybody.

Forty minutes in, Greeley comes off the bench late and ends up next to me at the boards waiting for a whistle, and he leans in, friendly. “Haven’t seen your friend around.”

I don’t say anything.

“She stopped texting me.” He tips his head. “Weird. Everything was great Friday.”

Sixteen feet away, Dannebrog is drawing something on a whiteboard for the D.