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"That's not a reason."

"It's the one you're getting."

Jace is watching me from his stall with a look on his face I've never seen before. Careful. Like he's trying to figure out if I'm sick.

"D," he says. "Can I ask why?"

I look at Theo.

He's shaking his head. Just barely. A quarter-inch. Don't.

Because if I tell them why, I have to tell them about Marrack. And if I tell them about Marrack, it gets out, and if it gets out, it gets to Ashby. And there's a kid named Cole Vasko and a kid named Mikey Brandt on scholarship review in a hockey program in Michigan, with a coach who holds on too long in the handshake line.

"No," I say. "You can't ask why."

The room is very quiet.

"So we're supposed to just forget it." That's Okoye, quietly, from the corner. "He hit Nico, man. Nico was here. We all saw it."

"I know what we saw."

"Then what⁠—"

"I said it's done." My voice comes out harder than I mean. "Nobody has to like him. Nobody has to be his friend. But it's done. Anybody who's got a problem with that can bring it to me."

I sit down.

Nobody moves for a long second. Then Halvorsen leans in the door with his whistle, says "Ice, ten minutes, let's go," looks around at the silence, frowns, and leaves again.

Slowly, guys start moving. Gunnar's muttering to Kasper. Okoye's shaking his head. A couple of the freshmen are looking at Theo like they're trying to figure out if he's dangerous now.

Theo's looking at the floor.

I did it wrong. I know I did it wrong.

On the ice, it's worse than before. Before, at least, it had a shape. Everybody knew where he was supposed to stand. Now nobody knows anything. Guys pass to him in drills, and then look at me, like they're checking. Gunnar doesn't pass to him at all. Okoye passes to him once, hard, so hard Theo has to scramble for it, and then skates off without a word.

In the room after, the freshmen sit closer to him. The juniors sit farther away. The room's split down the middle and the line goes right through his stall.

"You okay?" I ask him later, in the stick room, when it's just us.

He's taping. Black on the blade, heel to toe.

"I told you not to make it a thing."

"I know."

"Now it's a thing." He doesn't look up. "Now everybody's wondering why the goalie who wanted me dead for four months suddenly flipped. You know what they're going to think, right?"

"I don't care what they think."

"I do." He finishes the blade. He holds the stick up to the light and squints down it. "I care about Cole and Mikey."

I don't say anything.

He sets the stick down.

"Thank you, though," he says, quieter. "For trying. You did it really badly. But thank you."