She studied him for a moment before asking, “Are you doing okay?”
He nodded again. “Great.” Being here was practically the same as being back at his hotel, curled up in his bed for an energizing nap before a big game.
Katie put a hand on his forearm, a touch he swore he felt through his whole body. His eyes went to her hand first, then to her eyes. Once their eyes met, she said, “You’ve got this.” She lifted the camera and started filming again.
Connor could go blade-to-blade with any player on the ice. So, he could wrap a simple present with a bunch of 8-11-year-olds. He grabbed one— a craft kit that looked like an easy box to wrap— and then went to a table where a group of boys who looked like they were probably fifth graders were waving him over. He introduced himself, and things seemed like they were going okay.
Until about thirty seconds in. He’d barely gotten the wrapping paper cut before one of the boys said, “My older brother’s favorite hockey team is the Thunderstorm.”
That… he wasn’t expecting. Especially this far from Charlotte. He smiled. “They’re a great team.”
“Yeah. He says you’re a traitor.”
He might have been able to salvage the conversation at that point, but before he could, another boy said, “My uncle said hewent to high school with you and that you’ve basically been a traitor your entire life.”
The comments went downhill from there. And Katie was not only witnessing them all but getting them— and his reactions to them— on video.
The moment he was done wrapping the craft kit, he quickly left that table, put it in the bin for wrapped gifts, and grabbed a new one from an unwrapped bin. He decided to go to a table with a completely different demographic: third-grade girls.
They seemed a lot happier about having him join their table. In fact, the girl to his right really wanted to help him put the tape on his present. As the group chatted about books and gymnastics classes and gossip and what games they were going to play at recess and what presents they thought they were getting, he worked on wrapping presents. The girl next to him sometimes put the tape where she should, but more often tried to tape his fingers to the present, making everyone laugh when she did.
Then, when he turned his attention to a girl on his left who was talking about her brother, the girl on his right started placing the pieces of tape right onto his arms.
“He looooves hockey.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s twelve. He plays right wing, too. He thinks he’s pretty good, but he doesn’t get nearly as many assists as you do.” Then her eyes shifted to the tape on his arm and she said, “Hey, Shaylie, that’s mean!”
Then she, along with the girl across the table from him, both leaned in to help pull the tape off, and pretty soon, he had four hands pulling tape— along with all the arm hairs they were stuck to— from his arms.
He couldn’t guarantee what expression was on his face, but he didn’t yelp. He didn’t curse. He didn’t say any bad words. That had to be worth something.
The third group he visited didn’t seem interested in hockey at all and only talked about Minecraft. He tried to join in their conversations, but he didn’t speak the lingo. He didn’t know what piglins and griefing and spleen meant, or what an Enderman, a creeper, or skelly was. The more he tried to join in, the more they looked at him like he was just another out-of-touch adult in their world.
What was he even doing there? Not anything good or helpful at all. He should be at his hotel in Denver, preparing for his first game day with the Glaciers.
He should have been glad when the teachers finally had the students line up to head back to their classrooms, except that meant that it was time for Ms. Messina to lead him back to the storage room on the stage where there was now an elf costume hanging from a hook, waiting for him.
An elf costume that was much too small. He came out of the room wearing green pants that were super tight and about eight inches too short, pointy-toed slippers that slid on over his own shoes— barely— and a green button-up shirt with a red zig-zag collar that would only button up if he sucked in and then didn’t breathe. The sleeves only came halfway between his elbow and wrists. Luckily, he’d been wearing a white t-shirt underneath his jersey, because if he didn’t have it to wear under the elf costume, he’d be showing a good three inches of his stomach.
He opened the door to see Katie waiting, and she immediately tried to stifle a laugh.
“Katie, what do I do? I can’t wear this.” She brought her video camera up to film, which just annoyed him. “Seriously, what do I do?”
“Maybe I can check with some teachers, and see if any of them have a green cardigan or something stretchy that you can wear over it.”
“Or I can just change back into my jersey. Tell the kids that Santa lets hockey players act as elves, too. Maybe make up something about us spending so much time on the ice as the reason.”
But before he could even take a step back toward the room, Ms. Messina appeared and said, “Oh, my, that really doesn’t fit. Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now— the first class of Kindergartners is already here, and they are extra squirrelly today. Come quickly. We’ve got a throne ready for you to sit on and everything.”
She led him to the front of the stage where there was indeed a throne. Maybe one they’d used for a school play. Katie had positioned herself on the other side of the kids, ready to film their interactions. She gave him a thumbs up with the hand not holding the camera along with a smile, which looked more like a grimace.
He couldn’t take a deep breath, not in this shirt, but he took a shallow breath and then greeted the kids and told them he was one of Santa’s elves and that he would let Santa know about their Christmas wishes. Ms. Messina placed the first kid on his lap, a five-year-old girl who kept poking at his shirt that was showing in the spaces between each button as she told him her mile-long list.
When she hopped down, Ms. Messina didn’t place the next kid on his lap. The little boy just walked right up to him. So he reached down to pick the boy up, and as he was lifting him, the seams on both of his sleeves tore open at both the front and back, leaving only a few threads at the top and bottom to hold it on.
“Oh, my!” Ms. Messina said. “Um, children, it looks like Santa’s elf has been eating his vegetables and has grown big and strong. We need to take a short break while we get a new shirt for him.”
