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For a second, I think he’s going to turn around and swing at me instead. I think he’s considering it too. Then he sits, hard, and yanks his shirt out of my hand. “You had him on the glass and you let go. You got no follow-through, Kennebeck. You’re a real fucking buzzkill.”
Greeley laughs once and keeps walking, and the noise comes back up like nothing happened.
Across the room, Rafe is in his stall with a towel around his neck, watching me with his head tipped.
“What,” I say.
“Forty minutes ago, you were about to put that guy through the glass.”
“I didn’t.”
“Because Pennock pulled you off.”
“And Koda.”
“Koda was foaming at the mouth.”
Koda shakes his head. I pull off my other skate and run my thumb down the blade. The inside edge near the heel is dull; it caught wrong on my crossovers in the last drill. I set it aside for the equipment room.
“You going to answer me?” Rafe says.
“There wasn’t a question.”
“There’s always a question with you. You just don’t answer it.”
Dannebrog comes through before I can tell him to go to hell. He stops in the middle of the room with his arms crossed until the noise drops. “Same time Monday. Everybody shows. And if anybody talks to anybody about what happened out there, I’ll find out who, and I’ll make your life hell until official practice starts.” He looks at Greeley, then at me. “After that, I’ll let Berwyn do it.”
He walks out.
On my way out, I drop my skate with the equipment manager. He runs a thumb down the blade, grunts, and says, “Monday.”
“I need it by six-thirty. Monday.”
He looks at me like I’m the first freshman in history who’s ever asked for a time. I don’t leave until he writes it down.
By the time we get back to Corvin Hall, my legs are heavy in the way I like. The hallway smells like detergent and whatever somebody incinerated in the microwave. Our door is propped open with one of Rafe’s shoes because he doesn’t feel like using the handle, and I kick it into the room on my way in. It skids under his bed.
“Don’t touch my shit,” Rafe says from his bed.
“Then don’t leave your shit in the door.”
“It’s a two-hundred-dollar shoe.”
“Being used as a fucking doorstop.”
His half of the room has looked finished since day two: clothes put away, desk squared, a speaker that cost more than my phone, a comforter. My half works. The overhead light on my side has been buzzing since move-in, so I stand on my desk chair and twist the bulb a quarter turn until it stops.
“Handy,” he says. “Put that on your résumé for when hockey doesn’t work out.”
“At least I’ll have a résumé.”
“I’ll have a trust fund.”
“That’s not a skill.”
“It’s better than a skill.”
I sleep until two. When I get up, Koda is in our doorway without having knocked, still looking like he hasn’t decided whether he’s done being pissed at me.
