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It was a Thursday afternoon, and Madison High had lost in a pretty rough way to Hamilton Tech the Monday before.
If that game hadn’t gone the way it had, that whole week wouldn’t have gone the way it had, and Eric’s life would’ve gone a lot different.
Or, maybe not. Maybe if it wasn’t that week, would’ve just been another. Wasn’t like groundwork hadn’t been laid.
~
Dicky loved the rink. Loved the dingy front counter, the shiny probably-not-actual wood scored with what must’ve been fifty year’s worth of toe picks. Loved the ancient framed pictures of teams and champions past, the little bronze plaques glued on year after year and win after win. Loved the raised lines of the metal bleachers, the slight stickiness underfoot that no amount of washing could rub away. Loved the white boards streaked with ragged black lines from various impacts, loved the tinny quality of the sound system, loved the ice itself. He loved the old rink. He loved it so much, every second he got to spend in it, the three-block walk from school seeming to go on for miles, the five minutes to walk it taking years. He could never get there fast enough, never be on the ice enough, never love it more.
He was reminding himself of this, emphatically, because practice had been over for going on half an hour, and Coach still wasn’t there to pick him up.
“You want to use my phone?” Stana asked for the third time, stepping up next to where Dicky was sitting on the bleachers and scowling out at the empty ice. The empty rink was a personal affront, the hard rule about figure skaters clearing the ice at four part of a constantly-waged war between her and the Stephens.
“It’s alright,” Dicky said, eyes behind Stana on the flurry of activity in the lobby. “He’s got practice until six or seven, at least. I’m just going to stick around here until then, it’s fine.”
“I could give you a ride,” Stana said. There was sound filtering in now, excited chatter and falling equipment bags. Dicky’s thigh hurt from where he’d fallen hard coming out of a double, his face felt hot with embarrassment at having to have this conversation again with Stana, and he so, so much did not want to be here when the hockey team took the ice.
“Gives me a chance to do my homework,” Dicky said, lifting his bio textbook in a little wave. Besides, Mom was at Aunt Sarah’s (who was “going through it” again), and Dicky had no desire to kick around the empty house for hours on end. “You go on, really.”
“Ice up that hip when you get home,” Stana said, relenting but clearly not liking it one bit. “We’ll try it again tomorrow morning, alright?”
“Alright,” Dicky said meekly. “Can’t wait.”
“Mmm,” Stana said. And was gone, the growing pandemonium in the lobby parting around her as she went.
Dicky loved the rink. He just didn’t love hanging around it after practice. Especially a practice like the one he’d just had.
It was just how it went, Dicky knew. It was all inclines and plateaus, and hitting an incline meant you were getting better. Or that you would be feeling better, once you could learn to wrench your body through the air at such speeds and such an angle that you’d wouldn’t land wrong and get a face full of ice shavings. Some day. Eventually.
He’d been there before. That wasn’t new. But lately, he hadn’t felt much like stepping out on the ice. Lately, he had started to feel like he was struggling with just lacing up his skates, let alone everything that came after.
It was normal, to get sick of a program routine. You did it a million times, wasn’t really any way around it. Practiced, performed, perfected, again and again and again. Was only natural, to get a little tired of it.
What wasn’t natural was getting sick of it when you’d only barely started to learn the thing. And Dicky didn’t know what to do with that at all. Usually there was at least something like anticipation or excitement. Or at least determination. Past few months, he’d mostly just been feeling sick to his stomach before every practice.
The real sad thing was, Coach was really making an effort. Southern Regionals had been something else, and he’d finally seemed to get it. Wasn’t ever going to exactly be sewing up Dicky’s costumes for him, but he’d come along. He’d sat next Mama and watched it all carefully: her, the crowd, Dicky on the ice, all of it. If you didn’t know him, you’d’ve thought he was having a miserable time. But Coach watching, Coach looking around him and quietly paying close attention, it was exactly how he was on the sidelines when his boys were on the field. Dicky knew it, Dicky saw it, he knew what it meant. Meant as much as any of the trophies he’d won, is what it meant.
Driving home afterwards, not feeling a chill creep across the dinner table whenever skating came up since then, it meant Dicky could breathe at home at last.
It was on the ice where he was having trouble breathing now.
Anyway. He had his bio book for the moment, until Coach got done beating up on the boys for that shameful performance against Hamilton. He had his program music on his iPod, but given as he’d have to run screaming from the place if he had to listen to that one more time, he figured it was about time to pipe as much Beyoncé as possible directly into his brain.
And was just about to do so, when someone sat next to him with a thud that rattled the whole bench.
“Cheering section of two, today, huh?”
Dicky grinned, automatic. “What’re you doing here, Justin?”
“Same as you, taking up the Ice Capades,” Justin Marshall said, knocking an elbow against Dicky’s side. “Nah, Katie’s my ride home. So I’m waiting on her practice.”
“Practice?” There was that moment in looking at Justin – his shoulders somehow filling out the letterman jacket in a way Dicky’s never could, his smile always easy and warm – when it took Dicky’s brain a second or two to catch up with the words coming out of Justin’s mouth.
“Hockey team,” Justin said, peering at Dicky’s textbook. “You got Cavano this year? Boy, that’s rough, she’s a real hardass.”
“Katie’s on this team?” Dicky said, though normally he’d be too happy to launch in on just how much he did not enjoy Ms Cavano’s sinister fixation on the Krebs Cycle. “It’s a—but there are always all those guys—“
“Co-ed,” Justin supplied helpfully. “Not enough of either to make a go at it around here, but they’re good. Real good. Glad you’re here to see it, Junior.”
Katie Marshall had been in Dicky’s World History class the past few years, and they’d run into each other enough at team things that they’d automatically drifted together. Dicky was re-evaluating just what she’d meant when she had to reschedule group project meetings for “practice.” He’d always just assumed it was piano, or something. Maybe just because he knew that was something Justin was trying as part of his physical therapy, and assumed that where one twin went, the other was just sure to follow.
“I had no idea,” Dicky said.
“She’s weird about it,” Justin said, matter-of-fact. “Folks don’t really get it, you know?”
“Folks don’t get much that isn’t football ‘round here,” Dicky snorted.
Justin’s smile drooped a little. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s true.”
Crap. Dicky opened his mouth to apologize, take it back, ask after Justin’s shoulder, but closed his mouth again. Wouldn’t help any. And, like Coach had sighed over dinner more than once, ‘that boy doesn’t want to hear anything about it that isn’t me saying he can get back out there.’
“Same with me,” Dicky offered, without really knowing why he was making the gesture, since lord knew he kept quiet enough about it. “And, you know. The skating.”
“That’s right,” Justin looked over at him, his dark eyes appraising. “Didn’t catch you out there today. Only just got here around four.”
“Wasn’t anything special,” not just being modest, unfortunately. Dicky’s throbbing leg was proof enough of that.
“Still, wish I could’ve seen it,” Justin said, and Dicky breathed around the casual sincerity in his voice, nothing at all on his face. “Get a look at the mystery.”
That snapped Dicky out of it. He snorted. “Mystery? What’s a mystery?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Justin shrugged. “Just, you know. Everyone knows you do it, but don’t think I’ve ever heard about someone seeing you, or catching a—is—a show?”
“Competition,” Dicky corrected automatically. “Haven’t done a show in ages, they’re not for—what’d you mean, everyone knows?”
Justin laughed. “You know how town is. Everyone in everyone’s business. ‘Specially with your dad being the coach, you know, people wonder—“ He stopped, uncharacteristic uncertainly flashing over his face for the second time.
“—Wonder why I’m not doing football,” Dicky finished for him. Wasn’t like he didn’t know. “Though I can’t see how anyone’d look at me and think I could.”
“Sure you could,” Justin said immediately, giving Dicky a quick top-down assessing look. “Just not a linebacker, maybe.”
Dicky snorted, turned his face away and hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Can’t do what they do out there, that’s for sure. But,” he said, marveling at the nerve of it even as the words left his mouth. “They can’t do what I do out here either.”
“Yeah?” Justin smiled. “I’ll have to come and try and catch your practice some time.”
“Lord, you’ve got enough cheerleader duties as it is, sounds like.”
“Doesn’t bother me, especially for Katie’s team. Hockey’s something else.”
“Is it?” Dicky searched for some opinion to offer about hockey, coming up with nothing but Stana’s annoyance at the rink schedule.
“You’ll see,” Justin said. “They’ll be out here in a minute.”
Wouldn’t be the end of the world, Dicky thought, if maybe Coach was just a little bit later after all.
~
Far as Dicky could tell, no one in town cared about his skating.
They did care, in a way. But only in that it was a stopover to another point of discussion. They were just looking for something that took them from “Eric Bittle is the Head Coach of Madison High’s team” to “his son doesn’t play football,” figure skating being just a bit of detail between Point A and Point B. Not even a point worthy of interest in itself.
Not everything was that way. Skating seemed to be the one blind spot everyone had in regards to his doings and choices and general… life. Everything else, he heard about. Who he’d been around with, what was he spending so much time cooking with his MeeMaw for, when he was going to give one of his girl friends some real attention. But the figure skating thing? Just a teeny point, hidden behind larger questions about Eric Bittle, Junior. Not worth much notice.
It was the one thing he wished people actually would notice. Which just figured.
~
Dicky’s biology textbook stayed in his lap throughout the hockey practice, and he didn’t look at it once.
Justin kept a running commentary going on the drills, the positions, how it all would translate into a proper game situation. The names of the players, a lot of them not even kids Dicky knew from Madison High. Some of them coming from way outside the county just to be there.
And they were good. There was no real way Dicky should or could know that, but he did. He could feel it.
Stana never coached more than two of them at a time anymore, Dicky sharing practice time with Olivia maybe once a week. Otherwise he was at a level where it was just him and his coach, often Dicky all on his lonesome with Stana off the ice to get a judge’s view of his work. There’d be other coaches and skaters out there, but the rink was big enough for them to move around each other with only a minimum of hairy eyeballing, the coaches generally working out their feuds on their own time and the skaters just trying not to accidentally murder each other.
Dicky’d never been on the rink when it was so packed. There were, what, thirty, forty bodies on that ice? Maybe more. Sure seemed like more, all the hubbub and motion out there. For him, that would be torture. Tension, hyper-awareness of outflung arms and legs, the disorganization and improvisation taking what should have been perfect control to total chaos. Skating wasn’t something you did in a pack. It wasn’t something you did in a group. That was a great way to get seriously injured. Or worse, screamed at by an angry Russian.
But they were managing it, out there. Not just managing it, but managing it with grace.
“I didn’t know hockey was—that they could move like that,” Bitty said, cutting Justin off mid-thought about Katie’s vice-captain and how she was also captain of her debate team or something.
“It’s not all getting punched in the face,” Justin agreed with a short bark of a laugh, unruffled by the interruption. “It’s real pretty, even. What do you think, gonna recruit any of them for your getup?”
“Figure skating’s supposed to be beautiful, people don’t see the power in it. Guess hockey’s supposed to be powerful, so you don’t hear about how beautiful it is.”
Bitty realized with a jolt that he’d said all that out loud. Lord, he lost all control of his mouth completely around this boy.
“I mean,” Dicky said, oh no, here it comes, here I go. “It’s just amazing how they move, isn’t it? The way they can hold a line and are so aware of everyone else on the ice around them, and you wouldn’t guess that they could be able to move so fast as bulked up as they are but they don’t look slow, any of them. And the stick isn’t much of a problem at all, seems like, seems like they can use it just like it’s a part of them. That’s how it all looks, it all looks like this is just a part of them, and—“
“Holy shit, Bittle,” Justin laughed, mercifully ending Dicky’s ramble. “You sound just like Katie. Sure you’ve never seen hockey before?”
“I swear,” Dicky laughed jerkily, almost certainly blushing now. “First time. Wasn’t what I was expecting.”
What he had been expecting was drawn mostly from the plaques on the wall, the trophies in the case, the sniffs of his coaches whenever they had to surrender their ice to the stick-carrying ruffians. They aren’t like us, being the implication, and Dicky was fairly sure that the types of guys who played hockey certainly weren’t much like him either. And wouldn’t much like him, full stop, end of story.
But Katie liked him. Justin – Justin wasn’t a hockey player, but he liked hockey, and he liked—he didn’t mind being around Dicky. And there were girls out on that ice too. Dicky tended to be more comfortable around girls. Not—the familiar flush of discomfort, the constant background hum of guilt—not in the way that he was supposed to be comfortable, maybe. But he got on well with girls. Tended to be able to relax around them, in a way they generally seemed to respond to.
How do you do it? Greg had groaned in homeroom just that morning. You’ve friends with practically every girl in the grade, you’re so good at it. How do you do that? How do you just get them to like you like that? I just get tongue-tied, and you’re always so cool.
See Dicky in a locker room full of other boys, then you’d see tongue-tied and uncool. And scared. Very scared.
“She does okay too, with the guys on the team?” Dicky asked.
Justin shot him a look that was probably meant to be shrewd. “She’s not bothering with them much. You know Katie. But yeah, the team gets along. Maybe a little uneven sometimes, the guys are always gonna be stronger, you know. But she holds her own.”
“Hey,” A shout from the ice made them both look up. Speak of the devil and she’ll appear, Katie herself was leaning her elbows against the boards, red-faced and grinning at the pair of them. “You two talking shit ‘bout me?”
Not a large girl, Katie Marshall. It was hard to reconcile the two, the slight classmate most at home in sundresses the color of the sunset, and the strong-shouldered athlete bulky with pads and at ease with the stick in her hand. Dicky didn’t think he’d ever seen her out of sorts or decomposed, and yet she looked downright natural with sweat gluing her bangs flat against her forehead.
“Your secret’s out, Katie Marshall,” Dicky said, pointing an accusatory finger. “You’ve been leading a double life, and now I know the truth.”
“Oh darn,” Katie said, dry as the desert. “There goes my air of mystery. Justin, you keeping Eric here when he should be home?”
“My dad’s got practice,” Dicky said, shrugging. “My ride’s a little late, is all. Justin’s keeping me company.”
“Talking your ear off, sounds like,” Katie said, her eyes having jumped instantly to her brother’s face at the mention of practice. Dicky didn’t turn to look at him too; that would not have been even remotely helpful.
“So you’re not only one of these hockey terrors, but Captain too?” Dicky said, sure that his tone was easy and casual and not obviously a change in subject. “Justin’s just telling me how you rule with an iron fist, boys and all. Why haven’t you told anyone at school?”
“It’s not a secret,” Katie laughed. Dicky kept staring, trying to make sense of it. “Just, no one much cares.”
“They don’t care?”
Katie rolled her eyes. “I’m not exactly a cheerleader, Dicky. Don’t do dance, or theater, don’t do much school clubs at all. Well, apart from student council, but that’s a joke. You don’t do any of that other stuff, especially if you don’t do football, and no one cares what it is you do do. You’d know that better’n anyone.”
That again. Dicky smiled, when he really wanted to sigh. He was used to it. People said all sorts of things to him, from ‘football ain’t all that’ to ‘your Dad rates somewhere below Jesus Christ and well above the President,’ and he just kept a tight lid on every kind of reaction.
“Guess I do.”
Katie snorted, and turned to glance behind her at the rink. They were at some sort of break, seemed like, two coaches speaking to a couple of players bulked out in almost double the gear and wearing big old mits on their hands. Goalies, seemed to be, while the rest of the players gulped down water and skated lazy loops around each other or to rest up against the boards.
“Anyway, it’s a good group,” Kate said approvingly. “And we’re not bad, either, even if we are co-ed and no one around here gives a fuck, since no one’s throwing punches or getting checked to the boards. It’s almost like how they do it up in Canada, if you close your eyes and pretend you’re on ice double the size and double the quality.”
She laughed again, and Dicky wondered at how easy she’d said it. “Canada,” like it was nothing, like it was as close as Mercer County, familiar and kinda boring. Dicky supposed it would be familiar, if you were into hockey. For himself, it sounded like more of a fantasy world of ice and maple trees and more ice, with no help from his imagination beyond that.
Maybe he said “Russia” in the same way, from all he’d heard about it, from what it meant to skating and whatnot. Somehow, he doubted it. There was no place outside of Georgia that felt familiar on his tongue, nowhere outside of the towns he’d grown up, which had never had any far-off glamour to them to begin with.
“We do alright, though,” she said. “Not joking, we’re pretty good. Go up against some big teams, and we’ve had a few players go on to places with, like, actual hockey. For college and everything.”
“You thinking about that?” Dicky was impressed. This was a depth of information he’d never have expected to discover about someone he’d suffered through his World History unit on Ancient Rome with.
“I’m nowhere near good enough,” Katie said, resting her hockey stick against the wall and leaning against the door.
“But you’re Captain,” Dicky said, hesitant, because maybe the word somehow meant something different.
“Well, that’s not really about playing good,” Katie said sagely. “There’s more to it than that.”
“Right,” Dicky said, not actually understanding at all.
“Coach’s waving you over, don’t you have some skating to do?” Justin said, kicking at the boards with a foot.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you two have your privacy to gossip about me some more,” Katie said. “Eric, if you still need a ride after practice, I’d be happy to give you a lift. The Marshall Cab Company is the finest in Madison.”
“Yeah?” Dicky snorted. “What’s the fare?”
“You can afford it,” Katie said primly. “Cost’s no more than the satisfaction of dragging you out on the ice to run a few drills with me.”
She skated off, before the no no definitely not could work its way out of Dicky’s throat.
“She’s kidding, right?”
“You know better than that,” Justin laughed. “If I wasn’t all busted up I’d be up there with here until midnight. As is I end up playing goalie in our driveway most nights.”
“Wow,” Dicky said, honestly impressed. “She loves it that much, huh?”
“Like she said,” Justin said, proud. “She’s not really Captain based just on skill.”
~
Was a time, when the nature of skating was the most comforting thing in Dicky’s life. Was a time when it was just what he needed. They moved around, Coach got different jobs and climbed the ladder in places that did not enjoy change of any kind. Dicky grew up knowing that he wasn’t the ideal football player. Wasn’t his father’s ideal son. There were the small things: the baking, dancing, music. And then there was his secret, the big one, so constantly present that he could almost forget it entirely. Until something called it up to rage right in his face, too strong and too bone-deep true to even try to deny.
And a life without skating, it sure would’ve been easier. Maybe football wasn’t for him, but there were other teams. Other sports. Maybe would’ve made his life easier, to take up soccer, or something.
Easy wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was that feeling of smooth ice under his blades, to know that the jump was coming. To have planned it, prepared for it. And then to take it, and land it, and know exactly what was coming next. Know what he had to do, and how to do it, and how to make it all just right.
Wasn’t like he could do that many other places.
Thing was, he’d gotten better at the off-ice side of that. Going into high school, he knew what people wanted from him. Knew what he was expected to be. And not just knew it, but could be it. Most of the time. Maybe not as well as he saw others managing it. But he did alright. He could do alright. Could plan for it, prepare for it. See the challenges coming, and land each one with a smile.
It had been comforting, to have that in skating where it wasn’t anywhere else. But things were different now that he’d finally been able to take that control, that power, and put it in the rest of his daily life. And not different in the way that he’d thought it’d be.
When he got up to skate, when he got set for the start of his program—he didn’t feel comforted. Now he just felt tired.
~
“Ya’ll are sure it’s alright to be out here?” Dicky adjusted his grip on the stick, the ice feeling new and unfamiliar under his very much broken-in skates.
“It’s fine,” Katie said from next to him. She’d ditched her helmet and the formless blue practice jersey, now in just a long-sleeved black shirt under her pads. They looked like armor, like she was about to ride into battle, and Dicky was sure she’d be ready for it. That weight on her back, her chest, her shoulders—looked like a sure way to feel anchored, on a surface that gave you no stability at all. “No one gives a shit.”
That was probably true, too. The rink was hardly empty; one of the coaches was still in intense conversation with one of the goalies, gesturing emphatically at theoretical players scoring on him from various angles. Justin was off at the far side of the rink, leaning against the boards and talking to Naomi, Katie’s vice-captain. She was beautiful, with a beauty mark just under one eyebrow and a ponytail of curling dark hair. Dicky wasn’t surprised to see the two of them together, talking like that. He wasn’t, he definitely wasn’t. It made sense, and it wasn’t surprising at all.
“Yeah,” Katie said. Dicky looked up, and saw her eyes focused across the ice too. On her brother, or on her teammate, Dicky couldn’t quite be sure. “No one’s paying attention. So,” she said, appearing to shake herself, giving Dicky a sunny smile. “What do you think, run some drills? Passing, shooting? How’s it feeling?”
“Alright,” Dicky said, thoughtfully. “I mean, weird. But alright. What do you think, what’s a good place to start a beginner?”
“You’re no beginner, Dicky,” Katie said approvingly. “Can see it just from how you skated out here. Let’s try a little bit of passing, see how you do with a puck on your stick.”
“Just the two of us?”
Katie glanced over at Naomi, who at that moment leaned over the boards towards Justin, her ponytail sliding over a shoulder and a laugh on her perfect lips.
“Just us,” Katie said, voice distant. “Just us is just fine.”
Dicky could’ve asked. But Katie was already turning back to him with a somewhat evil smile. No longer looking as lost as she had a second ago, not looking anything other than eager. So Dicky put his stick to the ice, tentatively, and got to it.
“Here’s the thing about hockey,” Katie said, trying to be comforting after the first ten minutes of Dicky falling over himself trying to connect with anything, let alone the puck. “You can’t predict it. You can do your best, try your hardest, practice like hell. And it’ll still do you no real good.”
“Ugh,” Dicky said, already winded. “What’s the point then?”
“Getting as ready as you can to face the chaos, I guess,” Katie said, grinning, and not winded at all. “And that’s the best part.”
“Sounds terrible,” Dicky said, staring down at the stick.
“Sounds crazy,” Katie agreed, flipping the puck back and forth over the ice, easy as anything. “But it’s the best. I can’t really explain it much. Mom says hockey’s like having a tiger by the tail. You can train up all you want, and that’ll help you most of the way. But the rest, the tiger’s just gonna run. And you’ve just got to hang on.”
Dicky considered this. Considered what it would mean, to work and work and know that your work could only do you so much good. And to like that. To look forward to it, to see that total failure of preparation, of control, as the best thing in it.
To his own surprise it tugged at him, sharp, just under his breast bone. Getting lost in chaos. Being just one of many, trying to navigate it. Sounded an awful lot like pure insanity.
Sounded just a bit like what freedom really meant.
He wanted to know more. And he was halfway to asking for it, mouth open before he really had the words for it, when he saw Katie’s eyes slide behind him, and her posture straighten up. Could really only mean one thing.
“Hello, sir,” she called across the ice. Justin jerked, where he had been deep in conversation with Naomi. Dicky turned around, the stick feeling freshly alien in his hand.
“Katie,” Coach said, leaning against the boards, watching the two of them out there. He looked across the ice at Justin, and nodded. “Marshall. How ya’ll doing tonight?”
“Just fine,” Katie said. “How was practice?”
Dicky was looking at his father, and not at Justin. He caught the sympathetic glance Coach sent his way, maybe not one anyone else at the rink could read as such.
“Not bad,” Coach said. “Sorry for keeping you, Junior.”
“S’alright,” Dicky said, skating over to him, adjusting for the weight of the stick in his hand before he could even think about it. “Been doing a bit of hockey drills with Katie, here. She’s Captain of the team.”
“I’ll be,” Coach said easily, nodding at Katie. “Well, you ready to head on out?”
“Yes, sir,” Dicky said.
“Meet you out there then, soon as you’re ready,” Coach said easily. He tucked his hair – a darker blonde than Dicky’s, but still not far off – under his cap again, and headed out to the lobby without turning back around.
Dicky watched him go. He was a fair bit like his mama, everyone said. But he thought personally that was just because they spent the time together that they did. Could talk together the way they did. He thought he saw himself in the curve of his father’s spine, his hands in his pockets, the way he calmly deflected attention away from himself.
Maybe he just wished he could see those things. Lord knows he wished he could be more like Coach in plenty of other ways. His quiet, his calm. Dicky wanted that. And the air of certainty Coach seemed to have with just about everything, most of all.
“You know,” Katie said, at his elbow again without Dicky even hearing her glide up. “You ought to come practice with us some time. We’re always open to new folks. And it could be—cross-training, or something. Right? NHL guys, they figure skate to get their skills up there. Why not the other way, right?”
“Right,” Dicky said. Pushing open the gate, stepping out on the bleachers. Aware, intensely, of not wanting to unlace his skates. A familiar feeling, of course. Just not one he’d had in a little while.
“You know, I might just.”
~
Being out on the ice, being in his own skates and using them to skate hockey, was almost unnerving. It was so familiar, so close to being exactly what Dicky had lived and learned for more than five years, and yet so different.
Different, but close enough to touch. Close enough to reach across and grab, to wrap his fingers around and pull closer, to think ‘maybe this, maybe now.’
“Friend of yours?” Coach said, when Dicky caught up to him.
“Sort of,” Dicky said, reading his father’s slight smile and feeling the same prickle along his spine that always came along with it. “She’s a year up, but we’ve had a few classes together.”
“And a hockey player,” Coach made a thoughtful noise, unlocking the car door with a beep. “Tough sport for a girl as small as she is.”
“She says they’re good. Boys on that team too,” there was no real reason for Dicky to feel defensive, but he was trying to keep the tone from creeping into his voice just the same.
“You ever see a game, Junior?”
Dicky blinked. “No. Not even a practice before just now. We’re usually on the rink at pretty different times.”
His father hummed, and that usually meant that was that. So Dicky was a little surprised when he kept on, eyes on the road as they turned towards home. “Closer to soccer than anything else. Your uncle played a few years when we were down by Atlanta,” he paused, organizing his thoughts. “Chaos on ice. It’s a hell of a game.”
Dicky waited for more, but he seemed about done.
“Chaos on ice’s about the farthest thing from my skating,” he said.
His father didn’t say anything, didn’t make a noise. The corner of his mouth lifted a little, but that was about it. Dicky examined his profile, the nose he’d been told that they shared, the so-short-it-was-near-shaved blonde hair that he knew they did, though Dicky’s own was hanging past his ears, tended to flop into his eyes. Then he turned to look fiddle with the dial, scanning for a channel that might suit them both.
“Looking for your Shania?” Coach said, a quiet joke.
“Maybe I’m looking for your Hank,” Dicky said.
“I’ll settle for something in the middle,” his Dad said, thumb tapping on the wheel.
“If I can find it,” Dicky laughed. “Might have to put up with the news on the meantime.”
“Anything but that.”
He couldn’t quite find the right station, but it wasn’t that long of a ride back to the house anyway.
~
He texted Katie, soon as he got back up to his room.
<Tell me more about this hockey of yours>
<Watch out> Katie sent back within a minute. <Let yourself get into it, you’ll be hooked in no time>
Dicky let his phone rest on his stomach a second. Stared up at the blank unremarability of his ceiling, considered the heft of the stick in his hand, the sound of the puck hitting it soundly and squarely. The promise of unpredictability. Of chaos. Of just what he’d been avoiding, every waking moment of his life so far.
He hit call.
“Don’t hold out on me,” he said, soon as Katie picked up. “Hockey, come on. Tell me everything.”