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Brick stays on campus through winter break.
All the hockey players do. They have games scheduled, and - Brick jokes or, well, Jack thinks he's joking, maybe he isn't - "Coach likes to keep an eye on us."
Brick's roommate is gone for break and his bed is stripped to bare mattress but his posters of pretty girls still adorn the walls and there's a six pack of Pepsi in one of his desk drawers. Or rather, there was, because Brick's taken the bottles out and cracked two and given one to Jack, who is huddled up on Brick's bed because after that long afternoon in November, they stopped pretending with the chair and the arm's-length-at-all-times and the counting-holes-in-the-ceiling-tiles-when-things-got-heavy-thing.
If Jack had expected anything, back in November, it was that Brick would've wiped his mouth, called him a queer, kicked him out, and not spoken to him for at least a week. But he should've known Brick better, he thinks. Even then, he should've known him better than to back down from anything. Jack liked that about him - a lot of things he liked about Brick, as it happened, and that was one of them. Brick didn't mess around. Just drove himself shoulder-to-chest into whatever conundrum it was he found himself faced with, from a two-on-one with the puck on his stick, to the two of them, in his bed, their fumbling punctuated with obnoxious squeals from the mattress. Oh, yeah. Drove himself right into that one. Neither of them had any clue what to do and Jack is pretty sure neither of them has gotten a clue yet, but it was sure effective.
"Brick," Jack says, eyeing the bottle of tonic, "you can't steal from your roommate."
"I'll buy him another one before he gets back." God love him. The direct route. Right. Brick slugs from the bottle and Jack watches his throat work above the collar of his sweatshirt (two sweatshirts because who cares if there's still folks in the dorms, who cares if it's January in New Hampshire, god forbid they turn on a boiler or two) and watches openly and enjoys it because it is one-thirty-five (according to Brick's wristwatch, a pretty gift from a pretty girl who lives on the seacoast and rides horses and Jack has nothing against her really except he wishes he could give Brick a gift like that, but he doesn't know how, and it sort of scares him, but only a little) and it's the first week of January and it's cold enough to freeze the stink out of a skunk.
"Isn't it nice of the college," Jack says, taking a sip, leaning back into the wall, wrapping one of Brick's blankets around his shoulders, "to keep the room at a steady forty-three degrees, to keep your tonic cold for you?"
Brick laughs, loud and abrasive something like laying your cheek on hot concrete, poolside, summer. The sun overhead and close your eyes. "Real fuckin' generous," Brick agrees, and holds his bottle out to toast. Clink, clink.
For a while they drink their tonic and pretend it's warm. It's quiet and dim - Brick's desklamp just catching them in the edge of its halo glow - and companionable, and Jack is considering shifting from his corner retreat and seeing if the two of them can get some real heat going. It's a long consideration. He's almost warm, and it's such a good angle to watch Brick, watch his eyelids droop, watch him spin the empty bottle on his knee.
"I'm fuckin' bored," Brick remarks finally, and plonks the bottle on his desk, an easy reach from the bed.
"Yeah? I'm fuckin' cold."
"Got an idea," Brick says, clapping his hands together. "Let's go skating."
"Brick, it's - " Two in the morning now. " - the middle of the night, it's freezing, are you nuts?"
"Yeah but that's 'sides the point. See I've seen this rink around here, I think it's - it's just near the border, and it's just a sheet with some boards and a fence around it. Easy hop. Whaddya say to a little midnight shinny?"
Jack is liking the idea. He should not be liking the idea. It's two in the morning. He's cold. Brick is grinning and his eyes are bright and his teeth not all of which are his are small and square and sharp in his mouth and this is the best idea ever, let's go, let's go.
Jack grins back. "Alright, alright. But if we get arrested - "
"Ah, we won't."
" - I'm pinning everything on you."
"That's cool. I'm a freshman phenom with the one-and-only University of New Hampshire Wildcats, aren't I? Gotta be good for at least one get outta jail free card."
"Just one, where's that leave me, pal?"
"Two for one deal. You and me. Don't worry, I'm not lettin' any statie ship you off to Walpole."
"Thanks."
"Anyhow, they'd probably just take one look at ya in skates and send you to Bridgewater."
"Jerk."
Brick reaches out and rumples his hair.
In twenty minutes they've got on their boots and hats and scarves and coats and between them enough clothes to start up a Zayre's and they're down in the parking lot. It takes another fifteen minutes or so for Brick to get the car open - another fifteen minutes of cursing, kicking, wiggling the handle until finally it pops, and crackles with frost as it swings open. They'll be lucky if it starts, Jack thinks, they'll be luckier still if it ever gets warm in that shitbox of a car. Brick tells him it's a Ford Bronco and it might've been at some point, but mostly it's a metal box on too-big wheels with no suspension and it's brightest point is that it will, 9 times out of 10, get you from point A to point B.
"What's Ford stand for, again?" Jack asked him once, and this was in December, at the side of a road somewhere between Durham and Lowell, "Found On Road Dead?"
Waiting for a passing car, Brick had eyed him. "You wanna be Found On Road Dead, buddy?"
They'd wound up making out for a while, and nearly missed a passing car, and nearly got caught by a cop.
Another point in the car's favor, Jack thinks. Deep truck bed and battered, discolored back windows.
But that was December and it was comparatively balmy then, like, it must be ten below out now, and thinking back to thirty-five that's practically shorts weather, that's practically time for a swim.
Brick hammers the heater up as far as it will go and their breath smokes. They drive and they drive and where the hell is this rink anyway.
"I know it's gotta be around here somewhere."
They have passed signs for a half-dozen towns that Jack is pretty sure he has never even heard of and he's lived in UNH's backyard his whole life. They might've crossed into Massachusetts at some point and by now he's starting to get worried they might wind up in Vermont.
"What if we end up in Vermont?"
"Vermont's got rinks, too. You been to UVM? God, what a nice barn."
"You know anyone there?"
"We could get a hotel."
"I don't think we can afford to get a hotel and feed you at the same time."
"Oh, yeah, says the skinny little garbage disposal."
They've been driving forever, Jack knows this, because the car is starting to get almost-warm. Like, he can mostly feel his fingers again. His toes are kind of a lost cause. Not that it matters, if they ever find Brick's mythical rink and he gets on the ice. At least he knows enough to keep his feet under him, at least he won't be clinging to the boards like some frantic toddler on bob skates.
"Shit!" Brick exclaims at once and Jack jolts up expecting to see a moose or something standing in the road, or at least the legs of one, his cousin told him that really people died because they didn't see the whole moose just the legs because they were so tall, the lights would never hit them and - " - there it is! I fuckin' told you, buddy, what'd I tellya?"
And there it is. A single, lonely, empty rink with a single, lonely, yellow spotlight glaring down on it, a warming house at one end. It's in a park covered in snow that sweeps wide and pale like the skin of something dead. There isn't really a parking lot, Brick just pulls over, drags sticks and skates from the bed of the shitbox car, and they make their way down the slope to the rink. There isn't even a fence around it. The boards are hammered plywood, painted on one side, and low. Jack imagines kids playing on this rink. Jack imagines Brick playing on this rink. Six years old and bashing skulls. Jack took his bruisings on the bench of a river to the creak of ice and the groan of tall hemlocks in winter wind. Brick earned his stripes to the waft of diesel exhaust and fifty-cent boxes of cheap greasy fries.
Jack still can't feel his toes and his strides are short and jerky, not at all like Brick, who - even true to his nickname, all square shoulders and square hips - has a certain grace to his movements. Brick on the ice, sweeping through a crossover turn with his stick out for a pass, is like a racehorse turning at the quarter-mile, haunches gleaming and eyes mad beneath the silks. Jack feels crippled just watching him, but the cold wind chases him and he strides away from it, remembering. From somewhere Brick has produced a battered puck and stickhandles from one end of the short little rink to the other, his blades rasping in his long strides.
"Jack - !" Brick calls out, and sails the puck to him, a perfect pass that strikes his stick like a meteor and jumps over, skitters to the corner. "Aw, Jack, that was on the tape - "
"Overshot! Sent it down the river!" Jack brays back, chasing the puck, "Some Freshman phenom you are!"
Jack's passes are terrible. His stickhandling is choppy and miserable. Brick is putting on a clinic. Brick's breath trails him like smoke off a locomotive. Jack is happy to spin lazily and just watch him. Brick takes a shot that nails the boards so hard it's like a cannon shot, then catches the rebound and passes it to Jack, who catches it finally, handles it, and fires a wrister that sails and then dribbles to the end of the rink.
"Jack, coach would skate you til your ankles broke, playing like that."
"Hey, you're the superstar."
Brick is circling him when the spotlight sputters, then shuts off almost entirely and hums. Brick stumbles then and falls, and takes Jack with him, and they both earn their bruises.
"Jesus, wouldya look at that," Brick says, over his shoulder, and when Jack looks up the sky is so clear and the moon so lofty and perfect and round and bright that the whole rink is lit up like daylight, like dawn fracturing the horizon along the river, far around the curve. "That's fuckin' nice."
"Yeah," Jack says, "yeah," stumped for words, rising to one knee on the ice, balancing on his stick - Brick's stick, but his own skates - he can see the shadows of swingsets and a jungle gym at the far end of the park, and see Orion above the treeline and the big dipper high in the sky and stars he doesn't know the names or stories of spill across the velveteen vault of the dark like some hockey god has spit the diamonds of his teeth into the heavens.
Brick is still lying on his back, and he reaches up and strokes Jack's arm, which is a stupid, futile gesture with gloves and about six layers between their separate skins, but at the same time, it jolts him right down deep, and Brick has a half-smile on his face, thick hat tugged down right to his eyes.
"If I could stay right here forever," Brick says -
"Flat on your back in the middle of nowhere?"
"Shuddup. I just mean - like here, right now - if - well. If I could - I might think about never going back to school. Just play moon hockey for the rest of my life. You know? Feel like I might be - infinite, or somethin', here."
"You going spooky on me, Brick? Isn't that my job description, crazy?"
"Crazy, yeah. 'Course you're crazy. That's why when I play hockey forever you're comin' with me. 'Cause I gotta have a guide if I'm gonna go crazy. You know the way, after all."
"Jerk."
"Yeah. Hey. I'm cold."
"Yeah."
"We oughta get back in the car at least."
"Like that's any warmer."
"I can think of a few ways to heat it up."
"You think this town has any cops?"
"Nah. Not even. Like the Alice's Restaurant song. Officer Obie an' that shit. Not even. I didn't see any stoplights and I think it's a law you gotta have at least one stoplight to have a cop."
"I don't think that's a law Brick."
Brick tugs his arm.
"Come back in the car," he says. "An' we'll debate it."
Jack laughs under the toothless god moon.
They fall twice again on their way back to the car.
They leave the puck.
They don't care.