Sophomore Surge

by K R Collins

Witzer slings an arm around her shoulders, and she pulls back. He looks at her strangely but drops his arm. “Our turn next, yeah?”

  “For sure,” Sophie answers. She shakes Sinclair and his mind games off. They have a game to win.

  For once, Coach Butler spends intermission talking up their game. His pride is evident as he praises Zinger for his tenacity and Nelson for his big hits. Matty’s goal is given a shout-out, and so is Merlin’s net front presence on hers. The room feels lighter than it has all month, everyone on board and focused for the next period.

  Sophie finds another gear as she hits the ice for the third. She feels as if she could go one-on-five and come out on top. She could play another four periods without tiring. Shift after shift she plays hard, and she drags Witzer and Merlin with her. Coach Butler taps her shoulder more often than usual, sending them out because they’re the best line on the ice.

  They haven’t scored yet, but they’re building to something big.

  With 3:27 left in the game, she goes coast-to-coast and snipes the puck over Lenno’s shoulder. She throws her arms up in the air and laughs as the stadium pours their hatred on her. Fuck you, she thinks as her teammates crash into her. I scored the go-ahead goal. Her teammates whoop and cheer and it’s almost loud enough to drown out the crowd’s favorite chant. “Two-two-four! Two-two-four!”

  Sinclair finds her on her very next shift. She passed up the boards to Witzer for a breakout, and Sinclair pins her behind her own net so she can’t join the rush.

  “You worked real hard for your goal,” he says. He leans on her as if he can push her down to the ice. “You must really like being on your knees.”

  She sees red. Years of proving to herself she’s a hockey player and deserves to be on the ice, years of putting up with shit other players don’t have to and not complaining so she isn’t seen as a whiner or a liability. Years of bullshit like this. She bucks him off her and then, gripping her stick in two hands, hits him in the face.

  His head snaps back as her stick cracks against his nose.

  She snarls at him, angry heated French, because she doesn’t have the English for what she wants to say. Maxime Proust, the first official to reach them, looks horrified as he pulls her off Sinclair. Another time it would be funny, but he’s the one keeping her from beating Sinclair’s smug fucking face in and—

  Sinclair laughs as blood drips down his nose.

  Proust escorts Sophie to the box for a double minor.

  Fuck.

  She sits down hard on the penalty box bench and tosses her gloves on the floor. If only she could toss her gloves aside on the ice. At least then she could’ve broken his nose and he’d have a matching penalty. Instead, she’s stuck in the box for the rest of the game unless Denver scores.

  She tugs at the end of her braid, blood still humming for a fight. She only hit him once, and it doesn’t feel like nearly enough.

  The attendant hesitantly offers her a Gatorade.

  “Like you haven’t seen worse,” she says. She plants her elbows on her knees and watches as her team’s penalty kill goes to work.

  With 1:27 left on the clock, Denver ties the game.

  With 0:03 left, Sinclair wins it.

  Sophie’s shoulders slump as the door swings open to let her out. Sinclair makes sure to skate over to her. “Sorry for ruining your night.” The stupid smirk is back. “But if you need a pity fuck, let me know. We’ll be celebrating tonight.”

  Sophie brings her stick up again, ready to knock out a few teeth this time, when Kevlar grabs her, a hand on her shoulder and his other arm across her chest, holding her back. “Let’s avoid a suspension, eh?”

  He skates with her back to the bench. Garfield opens the bench door for her but won’t look at her as she sits, as far from Coach Butler as she can be. There’s 0:03 left on the clock, and the fans give it to her the whole time, jeering her name and telling her she sucks. She grinds her teeth into her mouth guard.

  She had the game won, a rare two-goal night for her, and then she lost the game for her team. It’s even worse because they’d finally snapped their losing streak. They had the opportunity to build on something and instead she undid all their hard work with a temper tantrum.

  When the buzzer sounds, she lets her teammates file down the tunnel first. She lingers, absorbing the cheers for the home team.

  “Come on,” Matty says, tired as if he aged five years over the course of one game, and she knows it’s her fault. “It happens,” he says as they head down the tunnel, forgiving even though she doesn’t deserve it. “Next game will be better.”

  If she has a next game. She stumbles on her next step and slaps her hand against the wall to keep her balance. Last season, Coach Butler scratched her after she didn’t bring enough grit and compete to their game against Denver. Tonight, she brought too much. Is another scratch in her future?

  Past the locker room, Coach Butler has a crowd of reporters around him. Fortunately, their backs are to Sophie so they don’t notice her, even though she knows it’s only a matter of time before she has to face them and explain what happened tonight.

  Coach Butler spots her, though, and he glances at her for a brief, dismissive moment, before he turns back to the media. “Fournier’s young and tonight she let her emotions get the better of her.”

  Fuck. Sophie looks over at Matty who has the same stricken expression on his face. “I’ll be in the locker room in a minute,” she says, shoving all her panic down until a more appropriate time. “I’m not ducking my responsibilities, I promise. I need to check in with Mary Beth.”

  “Yeah.” Matty’s shoulders slump, and he gains another five years.

  Sophie heads away from the locker room and away from Coach Butler’s impromptu scrum. She meets Mary Beth halfway as if the woman was looking for her as well. It’s been a while since Sophie needed to be prepped for some postgame soundbites, but this wasn’t exactly a normal game for her.

  “Coach told all our reporters I’m emotional.”

  Mary Beth raises her eyes to the ceiling. Then she squares her shoulders. “Damage control tonight. At least we have your show-and-tell tomorrow. I’m dressing you, you’ll let your hair be curled, and you’ll smile and be nice to little kids.”

  Sophie nods. She hates it when they curl her hair. They do it to soften her, but she’s a hockey player, not a doll. After making Mary Beth’s life more difficult, she accepts her punishment without complaint.

  “Can you keep your cool tonight during interviews?”

  It’s a fair question given her meltdown earlier but it still stings. “Yes.”

  “You’re a hockey player.” Mary Beth leads her back to the locker room. “Sometimes, hockey players lose their cool, and you’re disappointed it cost your team the game, but you’ll be better next game.”

  Sophie nods, grateful to have a game plan to latch onto. Thankfully, Coach Butler’s scrum doesn’t notice them as they pause outside the locker room.

  “Deep breath,” Mary Beth says.

  Sophie takes a deep breath and pushes down all her frustration, her anger, her tears, every shred of emotion. She takes another deep breath for good measure and enters the locker room.

  Chatter pauses and then picks up again, but it’s forced. She ignores the stares and the glares and the indifference as she goes to her stall. She hangs up her helmet and wipes her face with a towel. She doesn’t change out of her gear. If her angle is hockey player, she’d better look the part.

  When the media’s let in, Merlin shifts away from her as they descend. They circle around her, cutting her off from the rest of her team. She sits tall and doesn’t shrink back against the wall as they push even their thin boundaries for personal space.

  Marty Owen is positively gleeful as he says, “Your coach is on record saying you let your emotions get the better of you tonight. Do you think women are too emotional to play hockey?”

  There are a few outraged sounds throughout the locker room, and she wants to join th
em but it would be emotional. Theo is praised when tempers lead to him dropping his gloves and coaches praise the “edge” a lot of their guys play with. Sophie knows she crossed a line tonight, but too emotional to play hockey? Seriously?

  “I played some of my best hockey tonight and some of my worst,” she answers. “Obviously, I’d rather we talk about my two goals, but I let Sinclair goad me into a penalty, and it cost us the game. I let my teammates down tonight. I’ll make it up to them the next time I’m on the ice.”

  “I’ve never seen you lose your composure,” Ed Rickers says. There’s a hint of fear in his expression as if he thinks she’ll come after him.

  “I’m a hockey player. It happens sometimes.”

  “You broke his nose,” Rossetti says.

  Sophie tries to look at least a little apologetic. “Agitators agitate and when they’re good at their job there’s often blood involved.”

  “What’d he say to you?” Owen asks. “Does Anthony Sinclair know the secret to cracking Sophie Fournier?”

  Sophie’s stomach twists as she realizes he’ll definitely tell his buddies in the League how he threw her off her game. Which means she’s going to put up with guys running their mouths for the next month if not for the rest of the season. One game at a time, she counsels, as a wave of nausea unsettles her stomach. If she thinks about the whole season stretching out before her, she’ll crumble.

  By the time the media’s filed out, her whole team has showered. They linger in the locker room and none of them try to hide the way they stare. Some of them look even more freaked out now than they did after she snapped during the game.

  “What?” Sophie asks.

  “I see where the ‘hockey bot’ articles come from now,” Nelson says. “Why weren’t you this chill during the game?”

  Sophie’s hands shake as she pulls her jersey over her head. She tosses it in the laundry bin and rips the tape off her socks. “Because I’m not a hockey bot. But my coach told a cluster of reporters I’m emotional, and women aren’t allowed to be emotional if they want to play hockey.”

  She chucks the balled-up tape at the nearest trashcan and misses, but no one dares move and pick it up. Something is building, everything she pushed down for the interviews wants to come back up, and it feels good so she lets it. She looks around the room and almost laughs at the shocked expression on everyone’s faces. Did they really believe the bland persona she projects to the media is who she is? Do they think Sophie Fournier is made up of hockey soundbites and drop passes?

  “Tomorrow, all the headlines will be how I blew my fucking lid against Sinclair and how I followed it up by being nearly catatonic in my interviews. ‘Hockey bot’ will be the nicest thing they have to say. Then, they’ll ask the same question you did.”

  She stares down Nelson who does his best to tuck himself against his stall.

  Sophie unbuckles her padding and tosses it on the bench. “They’ll ask—which is the real Sophie Fournier? Is she the hotheaded, irrational woman we saw in the final minutes of the Denver game or is she the boring soundbite dispenser? Because heaven forbid she be multi-dimensional. A couple good games, a couple bland interviews and everyone will be reassured.”

  She’s down to her spandex now, but she doesn’t want to take it off. She has her sports bra and underwear underneath, and she has a towel hanging up, but she’s too angry to be half-naked. “As long as Denver’s an exception, they’ll let me keep playing.” She wishes she had something else to throw. “As if Scott fucking Pearce didn’t break his defensemen’s sticks one game because ‘it’s not like you’re even using them.’ Or the time Justin Rust thought the official called a penalty when it should’ve been a dive and he speared the other guy in the dick because ‘that’s what a penalty looks like.’”

  She’s breathing heavy, another rant or two from losing her temper again. Showing her teammates a flash of what she’s feeling is okay, but she can’t completely fall apart again. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Then another. Her skin still buzzes, and her heart still pounds, her body gearing up for a fight it won’t get. But she feels calmer and when she opens her eyes, she knows she has everything locked down tight.

  “Holy shit,” Nelson says.

  She grabs her towel and shoves her feet into her sliders. “I’ll be quick so I don’t hold up the bus.”

  She wishes they were home so she could linger in the shower until she scrubbed the game from her skin. But they’re on the road and no amount of soap will wash Sinclair’s words out of her head. They troop onto the plane, and Sophie takes her now customary seat next to Teddy.

  Her dad calls once they’ve reached cruising attitude. She stares at her phone as it vibrates, his number displayed across the screen. She doesn’t want to answer, but he won’t stop until he’s said his piece.

  She answers with a quiet, “Hello,” so she doesn’t disturb everyone trying to sleep.

  “You have to be better,” her dad tells her, anger heavy in his voice.

  Teddy picks his head up from his sweatshirt as if he can hear, and she digs her headphones out of her bag. “I know.”

  “What were you thinking?” He’s louder through the headphones, as if he’s here in person yelling at her. “Clearly, you weren’t.”

  “I know. I—” She wants to defend herself. Her dad’s thrown punches for less, surely he’d understand, but it’s exactly why she has to stay quiet. Her dad was banned from four different hockey rinks before she learned she couldn’t tell him what the guys on the ice said to her. She was eight. The last thing she needs is for him to be banned from NAHL rinks.

  “I’ll be better,” she finishes weakly.

  “Damn right you will. You don’t need to give your coach excuses to drop your ice time.”

  “I know.” She tips her head back against the seat. She knows what she did was wrong, she knows all the consequences she might wake up to tomorrow morning. Does he really think she isn’t running through worst-case scenarios right now? “I had two goals tonight.”

  “Which were overshadowed by your penalty. You could’ve seriously hurt him.”

  I wish I had. “Can I talk to Colby?”

  Teddy reaches between them to curl his fingers over Sophie’s.

  “He won’t coddle you.”

  “I know.” She tries to pull away from Teddy, but he holds on tighter. “I need to ask him something.”

  “Maybe you can talk some sense into her,” her dad mutters before Colby says, “Holy shit, Sofe.”

  “I know.” She’s starting to sound like a broken record. “It won’t happen again. Has Ritchie graduated yet?”

  “From UNH? No, he’s a senior. Why?”

  “Can I have his number?”

  “Sofe—”

  “Colb, please.” Her voice cracks embarrassingly.

  “Yeah, of course. You’re going to be okay, right?”

  “I always am.”

  Colby passes the phone off to her mom and then her dad takes it back for another lecture on anger management and proper discipline. By the time she’s hung up, she has a text with Ritchie’s phone number. She texts him one-handed, because she doesn’t want to give up the small comfort Teddy’s offering her even though she’s done nothing to deserve it.

  SOPHIE: Hey, this is Sophie Fournier, Colby’s little sister. You want to meet up for lunch? Concord isn’t far from Durham.

  Colby and Ritchie were teammates back in high school. She still remembers tagging along to a couple of practices and the pride she felt about gearing up with them. Other guys warn their teammates off dating their sisters, but Colby warned his team to keep their heads up or she’d kick their asses on the ice.

  She’s trusting his friendship with Colby will mean Ritchie will help her. She can’t have another slipup like she did with Sinclair. She needs to be better, which means she needs to practice.

  Chapter Eleven

  LENNY DERNIER, THE former player and former coach who now serves as a loud-mouth
personality for The National Sports Network’s show Rinkside calls for a ten-game suspension to give the League and her coach time to decide if she’s a worthwhile risk to have on the ice.

  She’s learned to take Dernier’s proclamations with a healthy dose of skepticism. He’s the guy who bemoaned the end of hockey last season when the finalists for the Clayton Trophy were “two Russians and a girl.” His job is to say outlandish things designed to appeal to the lowest portion of the fanbase while his cohost frantically walks back what he said to appeal to the other side of the fanbase.

  She supposes it’s a good strategy—his show always has high ratings—but whenever she hears him, she mutes him, and whenever she sees him, she narrows her eyes.

  It’s worse now, because he has a point. Not about the suspension or her ejection from the League, but she definitely crossed the line even though he’s all praise when his favorite players cross the same line. Of course, she doesn’t look anything like his favorite players. She’s not a good Canadian boy playing for a Canadian team. She has the gall to not fit into his hockey player mold and still be good.

  She puts Lenny Dernier out of her head as she prepares for her show-and-tell appearance. She’s allowed to wear jeans and one of her jerseys instead of the dress she feared, but she has to sit still as her hair is curled to Mary Beth’s exacting standards. She even has to wear makeup. The end result is a softer version of herself rather than the person who broke a guy’s nose last night.

  Miss Donovan’s second grade classroom has the kids’ latest projects hanging up around the room. There’s a whole wall dedicated to the life cycle of the frog, which explains why Jessi has been campaigning for tadpoles in addition to the family hamster they already have.

  Jessi Wilcox is at her desk, a red bow in her hair and a giant smile on her face as Sophie comes in, led and trailed by cameras. She sits up straighter and waves excitedly. In the back of the room, Kaylee’s here too, because she convinced her mom to let her skip class as it was only fair.

  Sophie waves back.

  There’s a long flat table at the front of the room, and Sophie lays her hockey stick across it and rests her skates there too. She checks the skate guards again to make sure they’re secure. The last thing she needs is to be the reason some poor second grader is missing a finger.