He reacts exactly like I expect him to, finally looking at me with disdain all over his face. “Shoulda gone CHL, then. Why bother coming to college if the NHL is such a sure thing?”
He kinda has a point. Playing in the CHL would let me focus solely on hockey instead of wasting time on classes and homework. But Hartland is a James family tradition. I didn’t have much choice.
I adjust the pen behind my ear and turn my eyes back to the sidewalk. My face is starting to feel hot, and not just from the late-August sun. “I could ask the same of you.”
“The NHL has never been a given for me.”
I scoff. “You’ve been a top prospect for years. It’s a given.”
“James.” He says my name like it causes him physical pain, all strained and raspy. “I already had one career-threatening injury. One bad hit’s all it’ll take for me to lose this. Then there’s the fact that less than one percent of men’s college hockey players and two percent of NHL players are Black. I haven’t been set up for superstardom like you.”
I take a deep breath and let it out heavily through my nose. I can’t argue with that.
“You realize like half our team’s been drafted, right?” Jaysen goes on. I wonder how he would’ve gone about flipping out on me if I’d answered that first question differently. Because this was obviously his plan from the start. “Hell, Dorian went second round to the Kings, and he’s still declaring astronomy. You might as well have a backup plan for when that legacy blows up in your face. One bad attitude can sink an entire team. No one’s gonna risk that for your name.”
I roll my eyes and stop walking. “Listen. Jaysen.”
He faces me with his arms crossed and eyebrows pinched.
“We don’t have to do this,” I continue, voice hoarse. “You don’t have to remind me how much you hate me every time you see me. I haven’t forgotten.”
He bites down hard, the tendons in his jaw popping out. I don’t give him time to come up with another insult before I walk away.
The air-conditioning in Stratton hits me like a wall, and I take in a relieved breath of cold air, wiping sweat off my forehead. I should’ve brought a backpack just to carry around extra deodorant.
I take a desk at the back of the lecture hall and sink low in my seat, leg bouncing as I watch people come in. Jaysen trails in right behind me, but he sits closer to the front, thank god. I prop an elbow on the table and scrub at a drawing of a dick in Sharpie with my thumb while I wait for Delilah to show up. Good to know college students are no more mature than the ones in high school.
The slap of a notebook on the table next to me makes me jump. “We’re sitting up front next time,” Delilah says, Jade sinking into the seat on her other side, wearing a T-shirt that says Seventeen on the front and Woozi 96 on the back. They must’ve gotten together because of K-pop. It’s the first thing I’ve seen them have in common so far. “I need to pass this class.”
I sigh. “Fine.”
She takes her seat next to me and slides over a sweating plastic cup. “You’re in college now, kid. Time to caffeinate.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, and take a small sip of some kind of bitter iced coffee.
She laughs at my grimace. “You have to stir it first.” She jerks her chin toward the front of the room. “Try not to make so many ugly faces—you’ve got an audience.”
A few people quickly look away when I follow her gaze. “What the hell.”
“They’re selling these in the Sommer Center.” Delilah reaches into her backpack and pulls out a magazine, tossing it onto the table in front of me. The Hockey News. The cover photo has me in full gear, my new purple-and-black Royals jersey, completely unsmiling.
“The Dynasty Continues: Presenting His Majesty, Mickey James III.”
Suddenly, Nova’s Your Majesty and Jaysen’s Your Grace make a lot more sense.
My eye roll and sigh combination is a work of art perfected by years of practice.
“Wait till you read it,” Delilah says.
I grumble as I flip through until I find my face again, surrounded by my sisters on the couch at Mom and Dad’s house in Raleigh. My face is as blank as always, but my sisters stare at the camera like they’re trying to break it.
At the time of that photo shoot, I’d been bitter about a lot of things. My parents have lived in Raleigh since I was ten years old, but that was only the third time I’d ever been there. I got to see my sisters for a day, and it was all about hockey.
Mickey James set NHL records, the article says. Mickey James II broke them. Mickey James III was bred to shatter them entirely. His five older sisters are a testament to their parents’ desperation to have a son to continue the James family’s hockey dynasty.
I blink. Read that last line again. Then a third time before I push the magazine away from me. “Fucking seriously?”
Delilah nods. “That’s the only mention of any of us. I mean, they do say Bailey and me are at Hartland, too. But they don’t talk about Mikayla’s SID job, or Nicolette’s medals, or Bailey’s lacrosse championship, or Madison’s coaching.”
“Or your Patty Kazmaier?” Delilah was literally named NCAA women’s hockey’s MVP last season. This is The Hockey News. They should probably mention something like that.
Delilah shakes her head. “Nothing we do matters. We only exist because Mom and Dad were desperate for a child with a Y chromosome.”
Jade tsks from her other side, stirring her own iced coffee with a metal straw. “That is an inaccurate indicator of gender and you know it.”
“Speaking from their perspective,” Delilah amends. The two of them start talking about a gender studies class they’re in together, and I drag the magazine back to me to give it a rage read while waiting for the professor to show up.
I skim through comparisons of Dad and me, how we were both too young for the draft coming out of high school, spending a year at Hartland in the meantime. Of course it has to bring up my height, because the hockey media is so obsessed with how tiny and adorable they think I am. The writer seems confident that my name and skill will be enough to secure the top pick in June despite my size. The third Mickey James to be taken first overall.
I only start really absorbing the words when I stumble on Jaysen’s name.
They seriously interviewed him for this?
Kill me now.
I’m not letting him take that spot without a fight. Teammate or not, I’m coming for him.
“This dickhead,” I mutter.
“What, you scared?” Delilah says. She raises her hands in mock surrender when I glare at her. “He’s sitting right there. Want me to get in his head? Throw him off his game?”
“No.” I want to earn that first overall spot. I need Jaysen at his best when I beat him. Prove I didn’t get here on my name alone. Prove that I’m just better than him.
“I don’t get how he’s even up for the draft?” Jade says. She takes a small sip of coffee and goes back to stirring. “He plans on graduating, right? How can someone be drafted if they won’t be available for four years?”
Delilah sits up straighter, ready to dispense some hockey knowledge. “Whatever team drafts him will hold on to his rights until the August after he graduates. He gets his degree, his draft team gets some free development, everyone wins.”
Jade looks unconvinced, but my phone vibrates, distracting me from the rest of their conversation. The official NHL Twitter just tagged me in a post with a picture attached. The preview shows a row of gray tables and half a person slouched over a notebook. My stomach bottoms out before I even click on it, expanding the picture to reveal this very classroom. I glance up, but the room is filled in enough now that I can’t pinpoint exactly who took it. All I see are the backs of heads bent over cell phones and a math textbook I didn’t bother to buy.
I take a better look at the picture. It shows Jaysen looking down at his phone and me in the back of the room turning a page in the magazine with a scowl on my face, Delilah and Jade smiling at each other as they talk.