Page 7

He turns around, and I’m already walking.

Coach Berwyn is in the doorway of his office at the end of the hall in a team jacket, holding a mug. He can’t be on the ice for this and isn’t allowed to be. That doesn’t mean he isn’t in the building at 6:53 on a Friday.

“Kennebeck.”

I stop. “Coach.”

“I watched your film again last night,” he says. “You get open. You don’t tell anybody. That’s going to be a problem on a line with Waleska.”

“Yes, Coach.”

“I don’t need you to be good for a freshman. I’ve got hours of you being good for a freshman. When we start for real, I need a center who runs his line.” He takes a sip. “Go skate.”

Twelve minutes into Dannebrog’s skate, Rafe carries the puck over the blue line with two options open and takes neither. I’m one of them, coming up the middle with my stick on the ice. The defenseman has shaded toward Rafe, which is what he should do, because Rafe has the puck, and for fourteen days Rafe has made it clear to everybody in this building that the puck is his and he’ll give it back when he’s done with it. He cuts inside, drags it around the D stepping up on him, gets forced wide, and tries to pull it back through three bodies because the first good decision bored him. The puck comes off a skate and dies against the boards.

Dannebrog blows the whistle around his neck. He’s in full gear like the rest of us. “Again. Kennebeck. Were you open?”

“Yes.”

“Then say so. I couldn’t hear you from the point.”

The stands are empty. The lights over the far end are still half off, because nobody on staff is allowed to come turn them on. Greeley’s leaning on his stick by the boards, and when I go past he says, just loud enough, “Say so, Kennebeck,” and two of the juniors next to him laugh.

Rafe is coasting back to the dot with his chin up like the turnover was somebody else’s.

“You see me?” I say.

“I saw you.”

“Then give it to me.”

“When you’re worth giving it to,” Rafe says, and goes to the line.

We reset. This time I call for it before Rafe hits the blue line and again when he looks me off, loud enough that the defenseman flinches toward my voice. That opens the lane Rafe wanted in the first place, and he takes it and shoots, and the goalie kicks it into the corner. It was the wrong play, and it almost worked.

Koda goes past me on the reset. He’s been on my left wing for two weeks. He’s fast and loud and sloppy. He’s told me to my face twice that I’m an arrogant prick. He looks like he got less sleep than I did.

“He’s got a condition,” Koda says to me about Rafe.

I look at Rafe and agree. “He’s allergic to fucking passing.”

“Stole my words, Nash.” Then, louder, across the ice to the junior goalie still digging the puck out of the corner: “Hey, Fernandes. You going to stop one today, or is your mom still tying your skates?”

Fernandes’s face goes red behind his cage. The juniors by the boards don’t laugh at that one. Koda does.

Rafe glides up on my other side. “What the fuck did you say?”

“Do you know how to fucking pass a puck?” Koda says, skating backward in front of him.

Rafe looks pissed.

“Yesterday, you bounced it off my skate, Waleska,” Koda says. “That’s not a pass.”

“It got to you.”

“And it’s gonna keep coming to me because––” Koda gestures at him with both hands. “You’re going to fucking give it to me.”

Rafe coasts into position beside me and says, without looking over, “You were open on the first one too.”