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And with about six minutes left in the second, twenty-two catches Barnes along the wall with his head down.

It’s not dirty. It’s close. It’s the kind of hit that’s legal if you’re watching the replay at full speed and a penalty if you’re watching it slow. Barnes goes into the boards shoulder first, his helmet cracks off the glass, and he goes down to one knee.

The whistle goes. Offside, somewhere else, nothing to do with it.

And twenty-two leans over Barnes on his way past and says something.

I don’t hear it. I’m at the far blue line. I just see his mouth move close to Barnes’s cage, and his stick tap Barnes on the back of the helmet. Twice.

Barnes gets up slow. He turns around, and his face behind the cage is something I’ve never seen on him. It isn’t Barnes. It’s completely blank.

He shoves twenty-two in the chest with both gloves. Twenty-two shoves him back. Barnes drops his gloves and swings first.

The building comes up out of its seats.

I’m already moving. Twenty-two’s winger is coming in from the side to grab Barnes from behind, and Kennebeck gets there before me and takes the winger off Barnes by the back of his jersey, and then there’s a guy on Kennebeck, their D, number five, coming over the top, and Kennebeck goes down on one knee with five on his back.

And I stop thinking. I get five by the shoulder and pull him off. He turns around and grabs my jersey. I grab his. My glove’s off, I don’t know when. His helmet’s crooked. Somebody’s stick goes clattering across the ice between our skates. The linesman is between us and then he isn’t, and five gets one in, on my cheek, under the visor, and I feel it split. I hit him back hard in the side of the cage, and his head goes sideways.

It’s six guys. Maybe seven. Pulling, shoving, and grabbing in a pile along the boards. I hear the crowd like it’s underwater. I hear our bench, everybody standing, banging their sticks on the boards. I hear Berwyn over all of it, his voice cracking, screaming my name and Kennebeck’s and Barnes’s, all three, over and over, like he’s trying to call dogs off a fence.

Greeley comes in from somewhere. He doesn’t throw anything. He just gets a guy off Kennebeck’s back by the collar and holds him there, and looks at me over the guy’s shoulder, and doesn’t say anything.

And past all of it, in the middle, Barnes is still going.

The linesman has him by the arm. Twenty-two is down on the ice. Barnes is still swinging. His face behind the cage is still blank. Two linesmen get him off finally, and he stands there between them breathing as blood runs out of his nose and onto the front of his jersey. He doesn’t look at anybody.

It takes ten minutes to sort out the penalties.

Barnes gets a fighting major and a game disqualification. Which means he’s done tonight, and he’s done for the next game, and maybe more, depending on what the league office says Monday. Twenty-two gets the same. Kennebeck gets a roughing minor and a ten-minute misconduct. I get roughing and a misconduct. Five gets roughing and a misconduct. Their winger gets nothing somehow, which their bench screams about and ours screams about louder.

I sit in the box for twelve minutes with a towel on my face and watch the third period through the glass.

The scout by the press box is writing something down.

We win three to two. I don’t care. Nobody in the locker room cares.

Berwyn comes in, shuts the door, and stands there in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips and doesn’t say anything for a full minute. Nobody moves. Barnes is on the bench in his stall with his jersey still on, a split lip and blood dried brown under his nose, staring at the floor between his skates. Kennebeck’s got ice on his eye, a bag from the trainer, the skin already purple underneath it. I’ve got a butterfly strip on my cheekbone and two knuckles I can’t close.

“Are you three trying to tank my fucking season?” Berwyn says.

Nobody answers.

“We have a conference tournament in eight days. Eight. And I’m going to be playing it without my best winger for at least one game, maybe two, because he decided he wanted to be a boxer tonight.” He looks at Barnes. Barnes doesn’t look up. “And I almost lost my first-line center and my best defenseman in the same scrum, for what? For what? So you could stand around in a pile and hug each other?”

He turns to me.

And I know. I know before he opens his mouth.

“And you.” He points at me. “You knew. You looked up at the press box in warmups. I watched you. You counted them, Waleska. You know exactly who was in this building tonight, and what they were writing down, and you went in anyway.”

“They went after Barnes,” I say.

“And Barnes has a coach.” Berwyn’s voice goes up, finally, all the way. “Barnes has a coach, and two linesmen, and a referee, and a league office. He doesn’t need a fucking militia.”

The room is completely silent.

“Every team in that building already has a file on you,” he says, quieter. “And the first word in it is temper. They wrote it down in October. They wrote it down in December. Tonight you handed them a pen.”