by K R Collins
Eventually, she recovered and began putting up big points again and everything was fine.
“Holy shit,” Theo says.
Sophie glances at Merlin. He’s gone pale around his mouth. “There are some things I’m weird about,” she says gently. Her food, her drinks, people touching her gear. “I have reasons for it.”
She can almost see him running through all the strange things she does; how she won’t drink from a water bottle she hasn’t seen someone else drink from, how she won’t sleep on the plane no matter how tired she is, or how she checks the insides of her skates before she puts them on.
Sophie wants to hunch her shoulders against the stares of her teammates. Instead, she takes a bite of her first burger. “Good job with the food,” she tells Matty.
“He’s King of the Grill,” X says, automatic. There’s none of the usual chirping in his tone.
Chapter Five
THEY OPEN THEIR season in Cleveland on a Tuesday. The National Sports Network flies in to cover the season’s first Tuesday Throwdown. As a kid, Sophie loved Tuesday Throwdown. TNSN would always pick a couple of Montreal-Quebec games, and she watched them on the couch with her billet family. At Chilton, she and Travis would make bags of popcorn before the Philly-Boston match-ups.
There’s a saying in hockey: if you want to see two teams brawl, you go to a Boston-Philadelphia game but if you want to see the fans brawl, you go to a Montreal-Quebec game.
Sophie wonders who will throw down at tonight’s game. The Concord-Cleveland rivalry began last season when Michael Hayes was traded to the Presidents. Concord picked Sophie to build their team around and packed Hayes off to Ohio. Their uneasy truce was snapped, and they were free to play each other as hard and nasty as they wanted. Their teams followed suit. Then, in the final game of the season, Concord won, officially eliminating Cleveland from the playoffs.
“It’s a game,” Sophie says when she’s asked about it after morning skate. “We play eighty-three of them a season.” She doesn’t put much effort into her answer, because she knows no one will believe this game is like all the others she plays.
“It’s not.” Carol Rogers has been in the hockey business far longer than Sophie. She smiles pleasantly, but she narrows her eyes slightly, a warning to quit trying to bullshit her. “This is Cleveland.”
“It’s the first game of the season, and I’m excited for it, but we’ve prepared the same way we prepare for all our games. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but routine is important to hockey players.”
No one laughs at her joke. If anything, Rogers grows more serious. “Your personal rivalry with Michael Hayes is entering into its sixth year. What impact will it have on tonight’s game?”
“Teams are made up of more than one person. This game is the Condors against the Presidents.”
“You’re starting the season with McArthur and Aronowitz on your wings,” Ed Rickers says. “Are you hoping to pick up where you left off last season?”
“Yes. We’re looking to start where we ended last season and improve from there.”
She can tell the media this game is like any other but, even as stubborn as she is, she can’t convince herself of the same thing. She has an A on the front of her jersey and a target on her back.
Cleveland didn’t like her last season, but it was the same mild distaste every team had. They didn’t truly begin to hate her until Hayes joined their ranks. He and Sophie were high school rivals turned teammates after Concord drafted him second and her two hundred and twenty-fourth. When Concord traded him, choosing Sophie to lead their franchise, he took all his hate for her and found a fertile breeding ground in Cleveland.
The fans boo loudly enough for Sophie to feel it vibrate against her skin as she takes the ice for warm-ups. She skates her two half-laps and ignores the people banging against the glass, wanting her attention. There are fans here in Condors shirts, but she knows from experience it isn’t her condor on their shirt, proud and majestic, its wings spread wide. The Cleveland Condor hunches over a body with long brown hair, its beak stained red. And on the back it will say LAST with the number 224 instead of 93.
This isn’t the first hostile rink she’s played in, and she allows herself a brief glance at a pair of fans who wave their middle fingers at her. Her lips peel back in a slow smile. No, this isn’t the first crowd to hate her, and it’s cute they think they’ll break her. If she crumpled under pressure, she never would’ve made it to the NAHL.
She grabs a puck so she can do her stickhandling. A glance up shows Spitzweg hovering next to her. His eyes are wide as he looks around the stadium. “They said Cleveland would be rough but…” He shakes his head as if he didn’t understand how bad it would be.
“They’ll try and get you off your game. Don’t let them.” The A presses against her chest, letting her know it’s there. “They’ll talk shit about your mom and your sister and me and your play. They’ll run through everything they have until something sticks. Don’t let it stick.”
“I don’t have a sister.” Spitzweg flashes her a small smile before he squares his shoulders. “I won’t let you down.”
“Play your game. Be responsible in our zone and make good passes on the breakout the way you’ve done all preseason.” She claps him on the shoulder. “The louder they boo, the better you’re playing.”
It’s the same thing her dad told her growing up. There wasn’t a single rink she played in where she wasn’t booed. She’s learned to hear it as a sign she’s playing well. And, as the “Sophie sucks” chants begin, she can’t help a tiny spark of satisfaction. They’d rather heckle her than cheer for their own team.
She looks across the ice at where Hayes is warming up. As if he can feel her gaze, he looks up. She smiles, nothing nice about it. They’d rather use their energy on me than you. Always falling short, even in your home stadium.
He adjusts his grip on his stick as if he wants to skate over and cross-check her with it.
She turns and joins her teammates in a three-on-two drill.
Matty’s line starts the game, and she can’t help her jealousy as he lines up against Farage. Her captain has earned every minute of playing time he receives, but the harsh truth is she won’t be the 1C or have the privilege of taking the opening faceoff as long as she and Matty are on the same team.
She presses her fist against the logo on the front of her jersey. Team is what matters. She cheers with the rest of the bench as Matty wins the first faceoff of the season. A small part of her still wishes she was the one out there.
The puck clunks against Garfield’s stick before Garfield’s rammed into the boards, a sharp crack which brings the crowd to life. Sophie leans forward to get a good look at the action. Garfield shakes himself and jumps into the battle for the puck.
Hockey is back.
Garfield wins the puck to Matty who passes to X before dropping down toward Strindberg. It forces the defense to shift their coverage. X passes to Kuzy who sends the puck to Matty. He wrists a shot on Strindberg, but the Cleveland goalie knocks the puck away.
Farage gathers the rebound and flicks the puck out of his zone.
Garfield races Caldwell for the puck. He reaches it first and takes the puck behind Lindy’s net so the rest of his line can change. Sophie switches for Matty. Garfield passes to her so he and Merlin can trade places.
She carries the puck up the ice as Cleveland makes changes of their own. The defensemen skate backward, and she tracks where they are and what lanes they leave open as a new line of forwards take the ice. Hayes skates out to challenge her.
You want him on the ice with me? She spares a moment to scoff at Cleveland’s coach. She drives toward the net and stops, sharply enough for Hayes to lose an edge and fall on his ass. She passes to Merlin and skates around the back of the net. With Hayes out of the play, there’s more room, and Merlin drops down by the hash marks, forcing the defense to come up and meet him.
Sophie taps her stick once on the ice. Merlin pa
sses back to her and she shoots. Strindberg snaps his glove up, but he’s too slow, and she has the first goal of the season.
She throws her hands up in the air. First shift of her sophomore season and she scored. The crowd boos, but her teammates drown them out as they converge on her.
When she and Hayes were Condors last year, they had to pretend to like each other. Sophie sucked it up and did it, playing Ping-Pong against him and allowing her hair to be curled before she went on camera to compliment his grit on the penalty kill. But now what’s best for the team is getting under Hayes’s skin.
It comes more naturally to her, a skill she acquired freshman year and honed over the next four. Hayes is easy. He’s part of the class of hockey player who can’t stand a girl being better than them so all she has to do to get in his head is play good hockey.
She breaks through the neutral zone, and dances around his coverage before she passes to Witzer. His stick is a second too slow to intercept her pass. “Maybe next time,” she tells him sweetly.
On the next play, she meets him in open ice and hip checks him, sending him to the ground. “A real hockey player would stay on their skates,” she says. Then, as if she planned it, Olsson tries to bury her in return. Two hundred pounds of Swedish defenseman knocks into her, but she weathers the hit. She flashes Hayes a smile. “See?”
It takes two periods, but Sophie goads Hayes into a penalty. She waves at him as he’s escorted to the box. He spits his mouth guard into his glove so she can clearly hear him when he calls her “a fucking bitch!”
She grins as she skates to her bench. “So, who’s scoring on the power play?”
Clifford and Spitzweg stare at Sophie as if they’ve never seen her before. The guys who were on the team last year are used to the way she gets against Cleveland. Kevlar knocks his shoulder into Garfield’s. “I bet it’s a d-man.”
“Ha! Right winger for sure.”
“I bet on Sophie,” Merlin says.
Sophie doesn’t try to hide her smile.
It’s Matty who scores, a gorgeous goal, but Sophie sets him up for it so she takes half-credit.
“Half?” Matty asks, amused as they skate to the bench.
“It was practically an empty net. It’s okay, you get 45 percent of the credit. Kevlar gets 5 percent.”
“Hey! My pass was worth more than 5 percent.”
Sophie shrugs. “Seven then?”
She laughs as he rubs his smelly glove in her face.
Sophie ends the game with two points, and it’s a struggle to sit in her stall for the media. She’s buzzing from the win and a whole season of hockey ahead of her and beating Hayes. She taps her foot and fidgets with her ball cap.
When the media pours in, she forces herself still. Rickers is wearing a tie patterned with the Condors logo. Marty Owen’s rumpled suit of choice for the night is navy blue. It’s too big in the shoulders and too tight across the waist. She wants to ask him if he’s heard of a tailor. Or a dry cleaner.
“First goal in your first game,” Rickers says. “It’s a better start than last year.”
Last year, she didn’t score her first goal until her fifteenth game of the season. It became a thing, taking over all the coverage. There were actually people suggesting her lack of goals was proof women shouldn’t have been allowed in the League. Never mind she was leading all rookies in points with only assists. Never mind she broke Kyle Sorkin’s twenty-nine-year-old record by tallying at least one point in her first thirteen games. Her entire life, coaches and her dad have preached selflessness. Play for the team on the front of the jersey rather than the name on the back. Pass first. She’s molded herself into the ideal hockey player and she’s still criticized.
It’s why she’s learned to tune out all but the important voices. Is her coach happy with her play? Is her team? Analysts and broadcasters and the media can say whatever they want. She knows better than to take any of it to heart.
“It’s nice to get the first one out of the way early,” she says neutrally.
Marty Owen puffs up to claim her attention. “You had thirty-three goals in your rookie season. Do you think you’ll score more this one?”
“I expect I’ll score around the same number. I’m more of a playmaker than a goal scorer. If I have a good opportunity, I’ll shoot, but it’s not where my strength lies.”
“You made a beautiful play to get Mathers the puck on the power play,” Danielle Rossetti from The Burlington Times says.
Sophie allows them to see a small smile. “Thank you.”
She finishes up her media and, like usual, she’s the last person on the bus. Unlike Chilton where her teammates would complain when she held up the bus or even last year when her teammates would stare, not saying anything, no one seems to notice. The few guys who look over at her are more relieved than anything else. As long as she wears a Condors jersey, she’ll take the bulk of the media, and it means the rest of them are safe.
She sinks into her usual seat next to Teddy. He came over in the Hayes trade last season, and she likes to think he’s happier in Concord than he was in Cleveland. They’ve never talked much about the trade since it’s widely accepted it’s her fault he’s here. It’s why he spent the last half of the season apart from his girlfriend and why he’s had to uproot his life and move again.
She tries not to think about how soon he’ll have to leave. He’s good enough to be a starting goaltender but Lindy is only twenty-nine; there’s a lot of hockey left in him. Teddy will have to find a new team to play for if he wants to be the starter. It’s different for Sophie. She’ll be the 2C as long as Matty is on their team, but she’s still able to play. Her name might not be announced at the start of the game, and she isn’t the one taking the opening faceoff, but she doesn’t have to sit on the bench with a ball cap pulled low over her eyes and watch the team play without her.
She leans into Teddy’s side.
“You do know we won, right?” Despite the teasing, Teddy lifts his arm so he can tuck her against him. “We showed Cleveland who’s boss.”
“Fucking right we did!” Theo shouts.
It sparks a robust “Cleveland sucks” chant which lasts all the way to the airport.
By the time they land in Manchester, the adrenaline from the game has worn off. Sophie rolls down the windows and blasts her music, the wind and the noise helping to keep her awake on the drive home. She trudges up the one flight of stairs to her apartment, and each step feels like a monumental effort. Last year, she told the guys she was buying a first-floor apartment so she wouldn’t have to put up with stairs after a grueling practice or a late night.
When she toured apartments, though, she didn’t like the thought of people walking by and looking in her windows. She compromised with a second-floor apartment but tonight she regrets it. She fumbles with her keys, at first trying to unlock her door with her car key.
When she finally pushes the door open, her apartment is dark, long shadows on the walls. There’s no one waiting for her to come home the way Marissa waits for Merlin or Alyssa waits for Teddy. And it’s not like Theo and Kevlar where they head home together.
She flips the lights on and then dims them. It’s her and her empty rooms. She drops her bag by the door, something to deal with tomorrow, and goes to her room to change. Once she’s in her pajamas, she grabs an ice pack out of the freezer and stretches out across her couch. As much as she wants to fall asleep, there’s one thing she has to do first.
She gasps as she lays the ice against the worst of her bruises. Her toes curl as if she can run away from the cold seeping into her skin. She pulls her phone out, both to set a timer and so she can find a distraction. She browses NAHL.com and, after seeing Dima had three points in their 7-5 win over DC, she texts him.
Good start, she says. She ignores how the box score implies the game was a shit show, more penalty minutes than shots on goal.
DIMA: More points than you
SOPHIE: Don’t get used to it
He sends her a picture of him sticking his tongue out at her. She laughs and then hisses out a slow breath as she jostles her bruise. She’s not sure who this one is from, probably Olsson—he seemed to have it out for her all night. In the moment, none of his hits felt this bad. She stayed on her skates, she jumped back into the play, but it was the adrenaline more than anything which kept her going. Tomorrow, she’ll wake up sore all over.
Her phone pings with a message from Dima.
Late. Why not sleep?
She moves her ice pack and lifts her shirt up to take a picture of her bruise.
DIMA: Is this sexting? Captain warned me about this.
She laughs again, hard enough to hurt. Next time, she’ll have to text someone else to keep her awake. Someone less funny. Dima sends her a return picture. It’s a close-up of his mouth and his split lip.
High stick (((((.
SOPHIE: You don’t look any uglier. It’s fine.
He sends her a bunch of scowly emojis and she grins as she tangles her feet in her throw blanket. For some reason, icing always makes her toes cold. She’s reluctant to say goodnight to Dima when her timer goes off, but her home opener is in two days. She needs to be well-rested for it.
She wakes up to a text from Elsa.
Pretty goal!!!!
Her chest twists, a painful squeeze when she sees Elsa’s name on her phone. She knows it’s unfair to feel abandoned. Being drafted to a team isn’t a commitment, and she can’t begrudge Elsa for wanting to play hockey closer to her family. Besides, Sophie had the opportunity to play in the SHL, and she chose the NAHL. It’s as much Sophie’s fault as Elsa’s they’re not playing together.
It’s too early to deal with complicated feelings so she doesn’t answer right away. She tucks her phone into her pocket and heads to the kitchen for breakfast. As she goes, she pulls a Condors sweatshirt over her head and flips the hood up.