He took out his phone, looked at the screen, and then tossed it back inside. Turning to me, he blew out a breath. “I was wondering something.”
I didn’t have much time, but dissing teammates had never been my style. “What’s up?”
“Well…” He looked around, then scratched the brown stubble on his cheek. “I hope I’m not out of line, but I was wondering if you’d want to hang out sometime.”
Remembering our dinner last summer, I figured something else was bothering him. “We can talk anytime.”
A loud clang out in the hall made him jump, and he glanced around again. “That would be great. Maybe we can have dinner tomorrow? I’d like to run something by you.”
“Sure, I don’t have any plans. We can?—”
An obnoxious sound filled the room—the four-minute bell, announcing it was time to line up. I slammed my locker shut. It was too bad I hadn’t been able to text Sven, but we’d be talking soon enough.
The Huskies’ coach must have ripped them all new assholes, because they’d become lightning on their skates. They scored two points right out of the box, and with six minutes left in the period, Tyler hooked one of the Huskies’ D-men. The ref sent him to the sin bin for two minutes, so the Huskies got a power play. I was on edge because we were down a man, and Nick had disappeared right before the shift change. Shuford had sent Eckie out to play with our line.
We were good on penalty kills, but with the Huskies on a roll, we raced back and forth between zones. They had us pinned onour end of the ice and were about to score when Cleevs got his stick on the puck. Hemmed in by Huskies, he passed to me, and I sped off toward the Huskies’ zone. The ice was a little slushy, so the hiss of skates chased me all the way there. As I approached their goal, the Huskies’ netminder skated out to meet me, and I banked right to try to get one through on his glove side.
The extra second or two it took to get into position gave everyone else a chance to catch up. Surrounded by green Husky uniforms, I needed to get rid of the puck.
“Gags!”
Eckie was about fifteen yards in front of the goal, so I sent him a saucer pass. He caught it, and as the goalie turned, the Huskies took off toward Eckie.
“Bat, bat!” he yelled, our code word for pass. The puck was on its way by the time the words were out of his mouth, and I shot off the pass. The puck sailed past the goaltender’s left leg into the net. After the guys crashed into me for a celly and we yelled our heads off, I skated by the bench, excited to see the smiles and high-fives.
In one of those eerie moments when the atmospheric pressure changes in a heartbeat, the roar of the crowd faded as I stepped off the ice and looked for a place to sit. Something wasn’t right. Nick, who had disappeared earlier, was standing where he shouldn’t be—behind the bench. His worried expression was completely at odds with his usual grin. When our eyes met, he called my name and yelled, “Tunnel.”
Reaching him was a slalom through sweaty bodies and cheery high-fives. When I got to Nick, he nodded down the passage. “Come on.”
“Stick?” I asked, a knot tightening in my stomach. “What’s going on?”
“Back here.”
He guided me to a cramped nook near the equipment room. A single green folding chair sat by a wardrobe container they used for our uniforms.
Javy, our head trainer, was waiting, his brow deeply wrinkled. “Sit down, Gags,” he said, his voice hesitant.
Irritated at being called out of the game, I snapped at him. “I don’t need to. What’s this about?”
Stick closed his hand around my biceps and murmured, “Sit down, buddy. We have to tell you something.”
The chair creaked under my weight, and Javy handed me a piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it. “The Congressmen’s GM called. He says Sven gave you his medical power of attorney last summer. Is that right?”
“Yes.” My irritation was growing, and it took a moment for an alarm bell to go off in my mind. “What’s going on?”
Javy chewed his lips, and I looked at Stick. “The fuck?” I asked. “What the hell is this about?”
Stick knelt beside me and spoke in a raspy voice. “I hate like hell to tell you this, but Sven has been in a car accident. They took him to Washington Medical Center.”
The words hit me like a hard shot to the gut. “That can’t be. He’s watching the game.”
Javy knelt in front of me and put a hand on mine. “It’s true, Gags.”
“But he’s okay, right? It was a fender-bender?” Their silence was deafening. Fucking shit—Stick and I wouldn’t be back here in the middle of a game if it wasn’t serious. An adrenaline rush made me lightheaded, and my vision went blurry. I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them again, Javy was still there, his face grimmer than before. “Sven’s watching the game. He just saw me score.” Javy and Stick remained silent, and I raised my voice even more. “Say something, goddammit!”
“The doctors need you to call as soon as possible,” Nick said, rubbing my arm. “At the number Javy gave you.”
My heart pounded like a sledgehammer. “What’s wrong with Sven?”
