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I open my mouth, and the door opens. The woman with the binder looks in, and the GM is behind her, and Morley, and Sato’s standing up.

“I have to go,” I say. “I’ll call you tonight.”

“Go,” she says. “Go sign it. Go.”

I sign it.

The pen is a Sentinels pen. Black. Heavy. Somebody hands it to me and somebody else takes a picture.

And for one second, with the pen over the line, I stop.

My father signed me up for everything. Mites when I was five. Squirts, peewees, bantams. Juniors. The camps. The showcase tournaments. Woodbury. He filled out every form. He signed every line. I was just the name on the top.

The GM is looking at me. Sato is looking at me.

Nobody decided this but me. Not my father. Not Berwyn. Not the Sentinels. They offered. I read it. I said yes.

I sign my name.

Rafferty Waleska.

It looks like my handwriting.

They shake my hand and congratulate me.

Tessa’s waiting at the curb when I come out of the airport. Her sunglasses are on, and she’s wearing shorts. Her legs are long.

She sees me and smiles. I smile back. Her face is doing something I’ve never seen it do in public. Wide open. All of it. She gets to me and puts both arms around my neck and I pick her up off the curb, bags and all.

The cop blows his whistle.

“I signed,” I say into her hair.

“I’m so happy for you.”

“I’m a professional hockey player.”

She pulls back and looks at me up close and puts her hands on my face. Then she kisses me.

The cop blows his whistle again. I don’t put her down.

She drives us back. I don’t know why I let her. I sit in my own passenger seat with the bag that won’t zip on my lap and tell her about everything that happened. She tells me the guide sold two hundred and forty copies while I was gone because she was posting five videos a day. I tell her that’s two hundred and forty people who are going to start a business and fail. She tells me to get out of the car.

She’s happy. I can see it all over her, in the way she drives, too fast, with one hand, the way I drive. She keeps looking over at me.

I’m happy, too. I’m so happy I don’t know what to do with myself.

The room on Wren Street is hot, the way it always is. The fan in the window. The maple tree outside. I drop both bags on her floor. The new one falls over. Sentinels shirts come sliding out of it, and a hat, a water bottle, a pair of socks with the logo on the ankle, a lanyard, and another hat.

She looks at the pile.

“How many shirts did they give you?”

“Seven.”

“Seven.”

“And three hats.”