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Declan: Hey. Tonight got weird. Did you get home ok?

Nash doesn’t bother to look over. He doesn’t even have a curious bone in his body. He keeps his eyes forward, his stride even, and keeps walking.

When we get to Corvin Hall, the rest of us wait for the elevator, and Nash takes the stairs.

10

A Completely Normal Week Off

Nash

The door bangs open at eight on Sunday night and hits the wall hard enough to bounce.

“Are you reading this fucking group chat?”

I’m at my desk with homework open. Rafe is in the doorway with his phone in his hand and his jacket still on. He’s been gone since two, and he looks like he’s spent the afternoon walking around getting angrier.

“No,” I say.

“Read it.”

“I’m busy.”

“Fucking read it.”

I pick up my phone. There are ninety-one messages in the team chat since last night. Somebody posted a picture of Greeley’s kitchen floor at two in the morning, cups everywhere. Somebody else said worth it. Somebody asked if anybody found a phone. Then, about halfway down, Greeley posted at eleven this morning.

Greeley: All good with Kennebeck btw. Heat of the moment. It happens. Love that guy.

Seven guys reacted to it, and four replied with some version of that’s why you’re the man, Dec. Further down, from a junior I’ve spoken to maybe three times.

Mathers: Waleska’s line is going to get somebody killed this year.

Pennock: Lmao those three are unhinged.

Mathers: Genuinely, what is wrong with them?

And under that, twenty minutes later, a video from Koda: last season’s conference tournament, Mathers alone on a breakaway, shooting the puck four feet wide of an empty net. No caption. It has more laughing reactions than anything else in the thread.

I put the phone down.

“You see it?” Rafe says.

“I see it. And what?”

“Those three.” He still hasn’t closed the door behind him. “That includes me. That’s me and you and Barnes. That’s what I am now, three weeks into my freshman year. One of those three.”

“Nobody cares what Mathers thinks.”

He finally comes in and throws his jacket on his bed. “I froze Greeley out for a week, on purpose, in front of Dannebrog. I ate a whole practice of Dannebrog screaming at me for it, and I’d do it again. That was me being a problem for a reason. Then you hit him in his own kitchen, in front of the fucking team, over something you won’t even tell me about, and now it’s not me being a problem.” He points at his phone on the bed. “Now it’s a package. And Barnes is in there throwing gas on it.”

“That’s what you’re mad about.”

“Yeah.”

“Not that I hit him.”

“I don’t care that you hit him.” He’s loud now. “I’ve wanted to hit him since the second day. I’d have paid money to fight him. But I’d have done it somewhere without an audience, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have done it in the guy’s own house on a Saturday with the whole roster standing there, because then it isn’t a fight anymore, it’s a story, and he gets to tell it.”