by Lucy Smoke
“Yeah baby, I remember. Hayden, nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said with a smirk.
“Nice to meet you too,” I replied as I hesitantly took his hand for a quick shake. Not sure why, but this guy was giving me an odd feeling. Not like a creep or anything, but like I was missing out on an inside joke.
Someone’s phone started ringing; the high pitched shrill echoed in the all but empty room.
“Sorry, that’s mine; my mother has been ringing every hour since we left worried I will push myself too hard and end up back in the hospital. I keep telling her Grant’s looking after me, but she still worries. I’ll be back in a jiffy!” she stated as she answered the phone and walked out into the hallway.
Grant and I stood in awkward silence for a few seconds before I turned back to the desk and started to pick up all of the papers and put them into the box ready for Elizabeth to take when she came back in.
“The Puck Games have been shut down.”
My shoulders pulled tight at those words. So, he was a hockey player. An image of the Puck Board suddenly filled my mind, the door with the current list of Whips coming to the front, as I turned around to face him again.
“Grant Michaels I take it?” I asked, with a raised eyebrow. I threw everything I had at the strong and confident façade that I was rapidly building in front of this guy. I did not need him to see how damaged I was at the moment, not with that statement he’d just made. Obviously, he knew who I was, and what I’d done.
“Yep,” he said with a smile as he rocked back onto his heels. “Grant Michaels, Whip and Goalie.”
I nodded my head slowly and crossed my arms over my chest. I leaned back against the table, trying to infuse a casual vibe into my body even though I was feeling far from casual.
“I’d apologize about the Puck Games, but you know, I’m not sorry,” I stated, wondering if one, should I be recording this, and two, since he was a Whip would he care the games had been stopped?
“Nah I wouldn’t accept it anyway, they needed to be shut down a long time ago. Did you know that participation was mandatory?” he asked as he moved to look out into the hallway before turning to face me again.
“For who? The girls?” My forehead wrinkled as I tried to remember if Tori had mentioned that.
“No, for the hockey team. Players got hazed if they didn’t put scores up. Something about playing as a team. Only way out was to declare Whip. You have to date your girl in secret until you make things exclusive,” he replied, watching my face closely.
Participation was mandatory.
My eyes closed briefly, before I reopened them, slamming down a shield.
“Thanks for that. Okay, well if you could let Elizabeth know that she can call me if she has any questions about the papers,” I returned as I secured the lid onto the box. I grabbed my bag, turning and stepping past Grant as I headed towards the door.
“Hayden, wait,” Grant called out to me.
Knowing I would regret it, I stopped in the doorway and looked back at him.
“They miss you. All of them. Just thought you should know.” His eyes were kind, as he held his hands out towards me, palms facing up.
I gave a tiny nod as I turned and continued out of the room; my heart pounded with every step, getting faster and faster, until I was running out of the building and into the snow.
I didn’t stop, slipping and sliding on the frozen paths between the buildings as I made my way back to the dorm building. There was barely anyone left on campus at this stage, so no one got to witness my headlong flight.
By the time I reached my dorm room door, I was breathing so heavily I shook; the lock blurred in my vision. I made several attempts to get the key in before giving up and letting my forehead thump against the door. It was then that I realized I was crying, tears streaming down my face.
Suddenly, the door was wrenched open, and I stumbled forward a few steps before being caught in a hug by Steph.
“Wow, Sugar, what’s wrong? What’s happened?” she asked as she pushed the door shut behind me, and I wrapped my arms around her.
I couldn’t speak as sobs exploded from my body. They missed me. All of them.
“Shh, Sugar, it’s okay. Get it out,” Steph soothed as she rubbed my back. When I calmed down a little she walked me over to my bed and sat me down. We sat side by side, her arm wrapped comfortingly around me, waiting patiently for me to start.
“The Puck Games, they’re gone. Over.” A tear slipped down my cheek, and I turned to face her. “Did you know that participation was mandatory for the hockey team? If someone wasn’t performing, then they got hazed.”
The soothing motion of her hand up and down my arm paused for a split second. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“I think I might have gotten this wrong, Steph. Yeah what happened to you was shitty, but after talking to Tori and Professor Turner, I’m wondering if we destroyed rather than saved.” Yesterday, when Steph had finally come back from James’ room, I’d told her what the Professor had told me and had even shown her the photos. Steph had been intrigued by what I’d said, but had still stood firm on the fact that my article had needed to be written.
Steph sighed. “Hay, I know it’s hard, and I know you feel like you disappointed Professor Turner, but we got what we wanted, right? The Puck Games are gone. My name, our names, have been removed. We can walk around campus without being harassed by horny hockey players.”
Steph watched my face as I reached past her for a tissue off my bed side table. I wiped my eyes, trying to blot up all the mascara filled liquid smeared all over my face. Avoiding her eyes, my gaze roamed around her room until I saw her bags all packed and sitting on her bed. My heart twinged, realizing that I was seriously going to be alone this Christmas.
“But it’s not just about that now is it? It’s about them isn’t it? You miss them,” she stated quietly yet firmly.
I got up from the bed and walked over to the kettle, grabbed it and filled it up in the bathroom sink. When I returned, she was staring at me, hard.
“Hayden, if you miss them you can tell me. It makes sense that you would. You did get really close to them. And the Winter Wonderland, if all your dates went the same way as the one with Christian, then Sugar, let me tell you that I don’t blame you.”
I turned to face her after I plugged the kettle in to boil. I had to tell her, I couldn’t not.
“I do miss them, more than you can imagine. Each one for a different reason, but all for the same reason at the same time. And I know it’s wrong Steph; I know they were a part of the Puck Games, but they made me happy.” I walked back over to her, sitting beside her again. “And I honestly believe that if I hadn’t of fobbed them all off, especially Justin, they each would have asked me to be their girlfriend. I truly believe that they would have declared Whip for me.”
Steph looked at me with a little bit of pity in her eyes. “But Hay, they put your name on the Puck Board. How could they declare Whip for you if your name was on the board?”
Ahh, I forgot about that. I turned away from Steph as I played it through my mind. I truly, one hundred percent believed that they had all intended to declare for me. “Let’s work this backwards. Let’s say, hypothetically, they didn’t put my name on the board. That means that someone else did. I didn’t have any contact with any other hockey players prior to Monday.”
“Right, okay. So, that means that you ended up on the board another way, right?” Steph stated as she got a bit more comfortable on my bed. I stood and started to pace; the motion helped me to think. Steph’s eyes followed me as I walked up and down the length of our room.
“Right, and Grant, Elizabeth Merriton’s boyfriend who is also a hockey player by the way, I met him just now with Elizabeth, said that players needed to date in secret until things were exclusive with their girl. And since I wasn’t exclusive with any of them, maybe we’d been found out?” I questioned the room.
“But when, Hay? I mean, everything you did with
each of them was pretty casual and low key,” Steph interjected.
She was right. We hadn’t really gone anywhere that could be consider a romantic date. I dropped my head back and closed my eyes as the answer came to me.
The Winter Wonderland.
I had gone on a romantic date with all three of them at the Winter Wonderland. They had all given me the best dates of my life, the best kisses of my life, and then they had all given me their little red love hearts.
Someone must have seen us, but who?
Tori and the hockey captain, Cameron Davidson.
I stopped pacing and turned to Steph. “It was the Winter Wonderland, the three dates. And you said Tori was there with the captain of the hockey team. He must have seen me with each of them. That’s how my name got on the board.”
Steph sat on my bed, staring down at her hands in her lap. I decided to give her a few minutes to get her thoughts together and went and made us each a cup of jasmine tea. I carried both cups back to the bed, carefully passing one to Steph.
As the warm fragrance wafted through the room, I sat there blowing on my tea to cool it down, waiting for Steph.
After a while, I couldn’t take the silence anymore, so I changed the subject.
“When do you leave?” I asked as I gestured to her bags.
Steph glanced down at her phone by her leg for the time, “Now-ish, actually. My flight is at six-twenty, which is in three hours.” She got up off the bed and placed her tea cup on the dresser before coming back over to me.
“Sugar, if what you think is true, and you really do miss them, call them. It won’t be violating the best friend code. You didn’t break your promise. My name isn’t on the Puck Board any more. You got it taken down. You don’t have to choose me over them. But it sounds like you might need to choose one of them, and I don’t think you are going to find that easy to do.” She finished with a sad little smile as she pulled me in for a quick hug.
Choose one? I don’t know if I can…
Steph grabbed her bags from her bed, dropping them down so the wheels were on the ground.
“Here let me take one of those for you,” I quickly offered, reaching for the bag closest to me. “I’ll walk you out to your car.”
“Thanks Sugar.”
41
Hayden
Saturday 23rd December – 2 days until Christmas
I had been officially alone for nineteen hours and twenty-seven minutes. I’d already binged watched the first season of an entire series on Netflix, done a mud mask, washed my hair, and eaten almost all of the junk food we had in the room.
I was bored. And still trying very hard not to message them. I owed it to myself to give it a few days, for the initial emotion to subside, so that I could make a clear and logical decision. Not an emotion fueled one.
Trying to keep myself busy in an effort to distract myself, I decided to give our room a really good cleaning. I grabbed the waste basket under my desk and started tidying up my shelves above my bed, careful to avoid touching the red hearts. Once I had those tidy, I moved on to my beside table, emptying out the little basket drawer and sorting out all the junk that had accumulated in there.
Then, I kind of just tidied Steph’s bedside table, her shelves and then her desk as well.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t kill me.
Once I’d finished with all of the clutter, I searched through the bottom of my wardrobe for the little handheld vacuum my mom had gotten me my freshman year. Once I found it, I started vacuuming the floor near the door, bent over uncomfortably, and made my way deeper into the room. I crawled under my desk and under Steph’s, then moved to the carpet between our beds. I then flicked up the quilt of my bed to get access to underneath.
And there was an empty red wicker love heart.
I stared at the heart for a while, not really sure what I should do with it. Had it fallen out of one of the boxes that had been in my room?
I slowly reached out a hand, as if it would bite me, gently scooping it up and bringing it out from underneath the bed. I sat on the floor with the heart cupped in my hands and my back against the frame of my bed, just staring at it.
A plan had started to form in my mind last night, but I’d felt like a piece of the puzzle was still missing. But now, I felt like I knew what I had to do. I quickly got up and moved to my desk, gently placing the heart down before turning my laptop on.
I sat down in my chair and opened up the recording from Tori. I got a blank document open on my computer, ready to write an article. Once I started, I just couldn’t seem to stop; the words flowed from my fingertips.
I stayed awake late into the night, researching other articles, rewriting sections that I had already edited to within an inch of their lives, and finding educated resources to reference within the content. When I was finally done, I saved the file with a smile on my face. Tomorrow, I would be able to put my plan into action. And then it was up to them.
42
Hayden
Sunday 24th December – 1 day until Christmas
I was in the bathroom of my dorm clutching the sink; my knuckles turned white as anxiety tried to take control of my body. I fought it every step of the way, concentrating on my breathing; the cool feel of the porcelain; the solid thump of my heartbeat.
I’d messaged Justin, Vinnie, and Christian in a group message before getting in the shower, asking if we could talk. I’d gotten a reply from Justin inside the group message with just their address and a “See you when you get here.”
That was it. No greetings, no questions. I was freaking out. I was hoping to get a gauge of how they were all feeling from their responses but no such luck.
Okay Hayden, you can do this. All you need to do is go to The Press and then go to their place. You can do this. Big girl panties.
I looked up at myself in the mirror; my pulse still pounded in my ears, and assessed my hair and makeup. The need to look as fabulous as I possibly could was high on my list of things to do today. I knew it was vain, but I felt like I was already on the back foot. It was my suit of armor; my warrior’s markings. I checked my outfit to make sure everything was in place. My favorite maroon loose knit sweater, check. My black skinny jeans, check. My heeled knee-high Ugg boots with front laces, check. A sweet gold necklace to finish it all off, check.
After another few seconds of procrastinating, I forced myself to leave the bathroom. I quickly pulled on my aqua mittens, beanie, and my black parka, being sure to zip it shut. Grabbing my messenger bag off my chair, I slipped my little wicker love heart into the top of the bag to protect it as best I could. I had a feeling it was going to take a beating later today, but a girl could hope otherwise.
Locking the door behind me, I headed down the stairs and out of the building. There were a few people here and there, mostly just grounds staff attempting to keep the snow from taking over the college during the break. If it built up too much, it would be next to impossible to fix it when students came back.
When I got to The Press, I stood outside the door and stared at my name, wondering if I even deserved to be Chief any more. I doubted anyone had gotten to read the article since the website was so new and that week’s cycle had only been live for maybe two hours.
I knew that everyone made mistakes in their career, and that mine had barely even started yet. But it didn’t stop me from doubting myself.
That is a problem for another day Hayden, you are on a mission. Get going.
Nodding to myself, I stepped up to the door as I fished my keys out of my bag and unlocked it. I flicked on one of the lights and then headed over to my desk. Pulling out my laptop, I opened it and accessed the file I’d been working on last night. Once everything was ready, I clicked print. Waiting by the printer as it warmed up, manila folder in hand, I snatched up the pages and placed them inside the folder. Putting the entire thing into my bag with my laptop, I headed back out of The Press and locked the door on my way out
Okay, the easy part is don
e. Now for the hard part.
I didn’t have a car, so I had to walk to their apartment. I knew it wasn’t too far away since Justin had mentioned walking it once. I opened up the group message.
Me: I’m on my way x
At the last second, I added the x at the end. I wanted them to know I was coming in peace. I hoped that they would at least give me a chance, not that I deserved one.
Copying the address from Justin’s message and I pasted it into my map app, waiting for it to calculate. Apparently, it was only an eight-minute walk. I readjusted the strap of my bag and started to follow the directions.
It looked like they lived in the newer section of apartment buildings that had sprung up recently around the college. Developers had snapped up foreclosed buildings to build student accommodation in recent years. As I wandered through the area, I let my mind wonder about a possible article in relation to developments such as these, bringing economic growth to the area. Before I knew it, I had several ideas about the story, and my map was telling me I had arrived at my destination.
I looked up at the building I was facing. It was a typical five story apartment block, with modern finishes like floor to ceiling windows and glass balconies decorated with plants. I stood there making sure I didn’t need one last second to back out. I eyed each of the windows, wondering if they were standing up there watching me. That thought spurred me on, forcing me to walk towards the glass entry to the building.
The foyer was fairly average, all tiled, finished with two elevators and mailboxes. I pressed the up button and when the elevator arrived, I pressed the button for level five and stepped back.
This was it. I was really doing this.
I clutched at the strap of my bag as the elevator moved, making my stomach drop. Just as I didn’t think I could handle the sensation anymore, it slowed down and with a ding the doors opened. When I stepped out, I was at the end of a hallway. I quickly checked the message for the room number and then started making my way towards it, which just happened to be the very last door.