I blink at him. The tone of his voice sounds less like a skill you should have and more like an embarrassing skill not to have as Mickey James III. We stare each other down, but I have a lot more practice in keeping my face chilly and unsettling, and Coach cracks eventually. He looks away and says, “Go on, get on with it.”
I take an extra few seconds before tearing my eyes away and leading Coach Stempniak to the ice. We take over one of the zones and set up identically to how Cauler and I did. But this isn’t Cauler and we’re not alone and where each failed shot brought me this weird kind of joy before, now they bring me nothing but rage. I feel eyes on my back. I know the boys are busy practicing behind me, but all I hear is blood rushing in my ears, and I swear they’re all standing back there watching me miss every shot.
I wonder what Dad would say if he could see me now. Probably something about my name and my blood and his legacy. He didn’t have these problems. He’s tall. Strong. Can take a shot from anywhere, slap a puck so hard it breaks the glass. I will never live up to his name.
Sometimes I wonder if he regrets marrying Mom. If he blames her for making me so short.
It takes a half an hour of continuous failure and Coach Stempniak doing the hardest work of his career trying to fix me before I finally connect solidly, accurately, the way a real hockey player should.
And then I’m Mickey James III. A flawless hockey machine who can hit a slap shot as good as anybody.
TWENTY-ONE
DECEMBER
Just because we’re regularly having sex now doesn’t mean I’m gonna let Cauler off easy. I put up three goals and two assists in our two games that weekend, while he comes away with a goal and two assists, and I am officially eleven points ahead of him.
Twitter loves it. Especially when Cauler tweets:
Jaysen Caulfield @jaycaul21
Imagine if @mjames17 could add those eleven points to his height. Maybe then I’d be nervous.
I’m sitting next to him on my bed, sharing a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips, when I reply.
Mickey James III @mjames17
Replying to @jaycaul21
Must really hurt your ego for someone as small as me to be so much better than you.
Cauler snorts when he reads it. “That the best you can do?”
I shrug. “Not like I can get vulgar on social media.”
He pushes me down onto my mattress while Twitter blows up about our rivalry and how much we despise each other.
I wake up on Monday to the alma mater chiming from the bell tower, greeting the first heavy snowfall of the year. My jeans are soaked halfway to my knees by the time I make it to class, only to find a sign taped to the door saying it’s canceled.
My toes are frozen solid for no reason. I check my email before I can make the same mistake again and find messages from my professors canceling my later classes, too. Apparently canceling all classes was what the bell was for, and I’m too much of a freshman to have known that. I’d almost forgotten how good a snow day felt. I just wish I hadn’t come all the way out here for nothing.
I stop at the dining hall for coffee and a bagel, and I’m on my way back to my room when Zero messages the team group chat.
Luca Cicero: Lax team heading to fall ball in twenty minutes
It’s snowing
You all know what this means
I have literally no idea what that means. I watch the replies come in as I change out of my wet socks and jeans and after a few minutes, Barbie’s the one to speak up.
David Barboza: Anyone wanna explain whats going on to us noobs?
Maverick Kovachis: Get your asses to the hockey house and prepare for battle.
Apparently, battle means pelting the men’s lacrosse team with snowballs as they leave the lax house. It’s a full-blown war within seconds, and they have the advantage of lacrosse sticks to launch their snowballs farther and harder.
“We’ve made a terrible mistake!” Kovy shouts in this awful British accent. “Retreat!”
We all scramble to fall back, but my foot gets stuck in a mound of snow. I fall face-first, sinking so low into the powder, it feels like I’m in quicksand. I watch my teammates leave me behind, spitting snow out of my mouth and trying to push myself up to my knees. Dorian’s a few steps ahead before he notices and comes back to grab my wrist and yank me to my feet, screaming and pulling me along behind him. Sid and Karim are on us a second later, tackling us both back into the snow.
“Should’ve saved yourself, Hidalgo,” Sid says, pinning Dorian down.
“Just ’cause you laxers are disloyal doesn’t mean we are,” Dorian says. He gets a handful of snow shoved in his face in response.
By the time we make it back to the hockey house, we’re soaked to the bone and shaking from the cold, but the boys are piling into the cars, giving us no time to recover. Cauler’s standing by Zero’s SUV with the back door open.
“Don’t worry, Cauler, I went back to save him,” Dorian says, jabbing a thumb at me. He doesn’t see the dirty look Cauler shoots him as he climbs into the car.
I stand in front of Cauler, shivering so bad my teeth are chattering. My hair’s frozen solid against my forehead, and I feel every change in the wind as it pummels me. “You left me to die,” I say.
Cauler scoffs. “You really expect me to go back for my mortal enemy?”
“That’s what I am to you?”
“You’re a little shit, that’s what you are.” He grins as he grabs me by the shoulder and pushes me into the car.
I don’t know what we’re doing until we get to the rink and I see the women’s team out on the ice. I practically run to the locker room for my skates and stick. Pond hockey with my sisters was a highlight of my childhood. We had a pond out back, fed by flooding from the creek that snaked through the woods behind our house and curved into our yard. It was a few feet deep, smaller than a standard rink, but good enough for us. In the summer it was full of frogs and turtles and enough mosquitoes that we didn’t get to swim in it much. But in the dead of winter, it froze solid and clear, enclosed by snow drifts and backdropped by white-dusted pine trees. A picture so perfect it ended up on postcards in local grocery stores and a western New York calendar or two.
Back then, I’d wake up before the sun just to get out there in my skates with my sisters. They feel like the memories of a completely different person.
The lake here is too big to freeze and I don’t have all my sisters here and things aren’t perfect. But I don’t get to be on the ice with Delilah often, so I’ll take it.
Delilah, Barbie, and I are all picked by the women’s team captain, but Cauler and Dorian end up with Zero. I kind of wish I could play against Delilah so we could battle for points like we have been all season, but I’m happy to dominate the ice with her instead. We played together often enough growing up to know exactly where to put the puck for the other to appear in its path, no matter how long it’s been or how much we’ve changed as players.
Now we skate circles around our teammates and make impossible passes to one another, burying goals that make everyone scream in frustration and astonishment.
“Okay, who the hell thought it was a good idea to put the Jameses on a team together?” one of the girls on Zero’s team asks after a set of filthy passes and a goal by Delilah.
I pull off a goal by picking the puck up on the blade of my stick and throwing it like a sidearm lacrosse shot, and Delilah straight up lifts me off the ice while Kovy shouts, “Oh shit, he’s got the dangles!”
Delilah’s screeching in my face and spinning me in circles. I roll my eyes. “Put me down?” I say, and she does only to take me by the hands and keep spinning.
“Dangles?” Cauler hisses as he slides up next to Kovy. He gives me this scathing look with the faintest glint in his eye that gets my blood pumping. “More like betrayal. Might as well dump him at the lax house where he belongs.”
I dig my skates in to stop Delilah’s spinning and tilt my chin up at him. “You really expect to go Frozen Four without me?” I keep my voice low and even, fighting a smile.