Nothing’s gonna cure your depression but
you can find things that make it easier to handle
If that’s Jaysen Caulfield and you’re both into it
then do what you want
Mickey: Who said it was Jaysen Caulfield?
Nova: Mickey.
TWELVE
Cauler leaves before Dorian gets back.
I can’t sleep. I can hear the music coming from Dorian’s headphones all the way across the room, and I don’t get how he can sleep with it so loud.
But it’s not his music keeping me up. I don’t know what it is, I just feel kind of … I don’t know, lonely, I guess. I’m used to being alone. Not so used to feeling alone like this.
A twin-size mattress should not feel this big.
I pull the blankets over my head and close my eyes. I need to sleep. I can’t play, but I still have to be at the game tomorrow. Plus I’ve got two papers to write and I’m dangerously close to academic probation. Coach and the athletics director don’t care who I am, they’ll still bench me. I’ll have to bust my ass next semester if I want to play through the Frozen Four.
Which reminds me. I only have four months left with the Royals. Six at Hartland. Then I’ll be alone in whatever city drafts me and determines my entire future.
I throw off the blankets and scramble for a clean hoodie from the floor before racing out into the cold, heading for Delilah’s building. I slip in behind a resident before the door can close and lock on me and take the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I pound on Jade and Delilah’s door without bothering to be quiet about it.
The RA reacts first, sticking his head out of his room at the end of the short hall and glaring at me. “Seriously, bro, it’s three in the morning, can you not?”
I stare at him blankly, holding eye contact as I give the door three more slow, heavy knocks. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes before backing up into the darkness of his room. I wouldn’t want to deal with my petty bullshit, either.
Jade answers the door in a sports bra and sweatpants, one side of her hair pressed flat against her skull, the other blown out wide. Her eyes are half-closed, and it takes her a few seconds before she’s able to focus them on me.
“Oh,” she says. Her eyes trail down to my neck, and she’s suddenly wide-awake. “Oh.”
I frown, touching my throat. It feels like pressing on a bruise. Oh. No. I squeeze past Jade into the room and run for the mirror on top of one of the dressers. There is a massive, dark hickey on the left side of my throat.
“Kill me.” There is no way I’m hiding this.
“Take it you’ve had a good night,” Jade says, yawning. She leans against the dresser with her arms crossed.
“Kill me,” I say louder.
“I will if you don’t shut up,” Delilah grumbles from the giant bed they’ve created by pushing them both together. She’s not even visible under the mass of blankets and pillows piled on top of her. I crawl into the bed next to where I think she might be lying.
“Please do,” I mumble.
I can get away with hiding out in my room with a hoodie pulled up over my head most of the day, but there’ll be cameras at the game. Cameras and thousands of people with cell phones. Then there’s study hall on Sunday and game tape and a light skate Monday. Two games next week, more cameras on me, and my parents here, and no way this’ll fade in time.
Jade sits on the other side of me, sandwiching me between them as Delilah wrestles her way out of her blankets just enough to see. She squints in the light and pushes her head back into the pillows for a better angle when she looks at me. She scowls. “That is repulsive. You are my little brother, get that away from me.”
I feel like I’m dissolving. I roll over onto my stomach and bury my face in a pillow, arms curled under me.
It’s too much. I smell like saliva. I need a shower. I need sleep. I need water. I need to work on my papers. I need to go back to the rink. I need.
I spent two full seasons with the NTDP and never grew attached to any of my teammates. A few months with the Royals and I’m already dreading the day our season ends and I lose them. I don’t even know how it happened or when, but I care about them.
And soon they’ll all be added to my list of former teammates, Dorian and Barbie and Cauler still here, still with one another, with team study halls and parties at the hockey house and I’ll be off in whatever city drafts me. Alone.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say. I pull the pillow up over my head to hide from them.
“What do you mean?” Delilah asks slowly.
“Hartland. I want to stay.”
“You can,” Jade says. She puts a hand on my shoulder, and I try to stop shaking so she doesn’t feel it. Fighting it only makes it worse. “You have a full ride. You can have four years if you want them. You don’t have to leave.”
“The NHL will wait for you,” Delilah says.
But she’s wrong. If I stay, there’s a good chance I’ll lose the top pick. The goal I’ve had set for me my entire life. The one thing I want more than anything.
I can’t give that up for anything.
Not even Jaysen Caulfield.
* * *
I’M NOT ALLOWED on the bench with the team for the next game, so I sit with Jade in the row behind where the women’s team will sit once they finish changing. All anyone wants to talk about is my fight, and I chew on the rim of my plastic cup like it’ll hide me and everything I did last night. Delilah used cover-up on my hickey and honestly god bless her, because I didn’t need to add that to the bruises plastered all over the internet now.
Most of the people back off when Jade starts telling me all about her plans for her final art portfolio, but a couple are still rude enough to try to interrupt.
I ignore them.
“I don’t know, I’m worried though,” she says as the first few women’s players start filing into their seats. “I feel like nothing is original anymore, like anything I come up with, someone’s already done, and done better, and even if they haven’t people will say they did because I’m a Black woman. People don’t like to admit when a Black woman can do something better than them.”
“Gonna be real hard to deny it with the work you do,” I say. I don’t know anything about art, but I know when something looks good, and hers looks good.
Jade sighs, watching as Delilah makes her way toward us. “They always find a way.”
It’s weird seeing Delilah in something other than a dress or hockey gear, matching her team in their postgame sweats. She slumps into the seat right in front of Jade, and when I say slumps, I mean she’s sunk so low, she’s barely on the seat at all. Jade leans forward and offers her the tea she brought in a travel mug and a pill over her shoulders. Delilah tilts her head back and says, “God, I love you. Thank you.”
Jade kisses her temple and sits back as Delilah downs the pill with a short sip of tea.
“What’s wrong with her?” I ask.
Jade frowns. “Cramps.”
I’ve been in a group chat with my sisters long enough to know that’s not something to scoff at. Especially not with Delilah. She’s got something called endometriosis and apparently it’s worse than a heart attack.
“But you just played a game!” I say. And she straight-up dominated the ice.
“Such is life with a uterus,” Delilah grumbles.
I grimace, turning my attention back to the ice where my team is finishing their warm-up. Dorian, Barbie, and Cauler skate toward the bench together. The sight of Cauler makes it hard to breathe, and when he looks up at me and smiles, I think I die a little.
I spend most of the first period talking with Jade and answering questions from the fans sitting around us, to the point where I’m no doubt gonna be chewed out by Coach again for not paying attention.