Center Ice (4 page)

I was so stupid. Right after my mother’s car crash, I’d go visit her in the hospital and every time I opened the door to her room I’d truly expect her to be sitting up in bed, looking a bit beat up, maybe, but smiling at me and gesturing for me to come over so I could lay my head on her lap and she could comb through my hair with her long, slender fingers.
“
I’m sorry I scared you,
”
she’d say, and I’d cry but tell her that it wasn’t her fault.

Every time I’d walked into her room and seen her still lying there unconscious, I’d felt the same sick twisting in my stomach that I was feeling there on the sidewalk watching the tail lights disappear around the next corner. My mom was gone. Tyler wasn’t going to rescue me. I had nowhere to go, and no one who cared. I started walking, but I didn’t hurry.

There was absolutely no reason to.

Chapter Six

- Tyler -

My billet family was nice enough, but there were only two reasons that anyone allowed an unrelated teenage boy to live in their homes for ten months of the year: they either needed the money, or they were
big
hockey fans. The Cavalis were fans, and it got a bit tiring.

“So how was practice today?” It had been Rob Cavali, the father, who asked, but every head in the room swiveled to wait for my answer. I had it on good authority that the family only had dinner together when they had a hockey player to interrogate; over the summer or when the team was out of town, they grabbed meals whenever it was convenient. But with me there, it was a different story.

“Pretty good,” I said. I knew from experience that this wasn’t going to be nearly enough for them, so I added, “The rookies are still working really hard, trying to earn their spots. And the rest of the team came back strong and fit.”

“So you’re going to beat Peterborough, then? On Sunday?” Little Robbie was a true believer, his face glowing like he was having a conversation with God. No pressure, of course. Lots of fun to come home to this house after we lost a game.

“Sunday’s just an exhibition,” Robbie’s sister Christina said with all the scorn she could muster. “It’s for trying out new players, not
winning
.” Christina was thirteen and starting to be a bit of a nuisance, her interest shifting from the hockey itself to the guys underneath the uniforms. If the Cavalis kept billeting players after she got her braces off, they’d be asking for trouble.

The rest of the meal, as usual, was an interrogation, and I wasn’t sorry to escape to my room with the excuse that I had to watch game films. I turned on my laptop and hit “play”, but then I flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I knew it was coming, so I just waited for it, and sure enough, my cell phone played the distinctive tone that always made me want to smash it against the wall.

I picked the phone up and said, “Hey, Dad.”

“Tyler. You’re at home, right? Your truck’s here.”

It was great, being stalked by my own father. “Yeah, I’m at home.”

“Come outside. I want to talk to you.”

Of course he did. I hung up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, then just sat there for a few seconds before heaving myself to my feet and heading for the door. There was no point in delaying the inevitable.

I got outside and looked around for my dad’s beat up Toyota but didn’t see it. That was when a bulky-looking SUV flashed its lights at me and I peered through the darkness to see my father sitting behind the wheel.

I crossed the street and cautiously eased into the passenger seat, and we pulled out into the street. I sniffed at the new car smell and ran my hands over the leather seats, just waiting. My dad liked to be driving when we had these conversations; it gave him an excuse to not look at his disappointment of a son.

“Your coach is living in the past,” he said firmly. “First off, you don’t need that much endurance to play hockey; it’s a game of sprints, not a marathon. Running is just a way to get injured, with no payoff. And second, if you
are
going to run, you need to do it somewhere public. The treadmill would be best and safest, but if you need to be outside you should run around the parking lot at the arena, or something. Somewhere people can see how hard you’re working.”

“Coach said not to change my training.” I sounded like a little kid, almost whining, and I hated it.

“Me and Brett say differently.” There was something in the way he said my agent’s name that made the back of my neck itch.

“Where’s the Toyota, Dad? Where’d you get this from?”

He shook his head impatiently. “The Toyota’s dead. This is a loaner.”

“Loaned from who?” My dad was an unemployed drywaller. He didn’t have friends who had brand-new SUVs lying around waiting to be borrowed.

“From Brett. From the guy who’s actually looking out for you and your family.”

“He loaned you an SUV?”

“Loaned, leased…whatever. He saw that I was driving a piece of shit, and he did something about it.”

I tried not to react. It was none of my business, and there was nothing I could do about it, anyway. But I could practically hear one more chain wrapping around me and being locked tight, attaching me to an agent, a career, a life…

“He said he’d asked you about wheels, and you said you were all set.” My dad still didn’t look at me, but I could see him snarling in disgust. “Why the hell wouldn’t you go for an upgrade?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my truck.”

“There’s plenty wrong with that truck.”

“I only have one parking spot.”

“Jesus, Tyler, you’d throw out the goddamn truck! Do you really think you’re going to be cruising around in that piece of crap when you’re in the NHL?”

There was no point in having the fight. I’d said it all before. What if I wasn’t good enough to
make
the NHL? That question just showed that I was weak-willed and not devoted enough to my game. What if I was good enough but got injured? I was being a pessimist, talking like an old man. Of course I wasn’t going to get injured. There was one question I’d never dared to ask, though: What if I didn’t
want
to play in the NHL?

“You’re a strange kid, Tyler.” He sounded defeated, as if he’d made every effort to understand my twisted mind but just couldn’t manage it. “But it makes more sense for me to have it, anyway. I have to drive back and forth a lot.”

Again, there was an argument that I didn’t bother even starting. Because he
didn’t
have to drive back and forth. Most parents tried to come by for the big games, or at least came to watch when the team was at an away game near their homes, but there were plenty of guys whose parents hardly ever showed up. My dad was one of the few who made it to every home game and most of the away games; he’d tried to convince the coach to let him ride on the team bus last year, but thankfully that hadn’t worked out. It was convenient for my dad that he was unemployed, I guess; there’s no way he could have held a job down anyway, and I was pretty sure hockey would always come first with him.

“So it worked out fine,” I said. “Everything’s good.”

“No, it’s
not
good. Not when you’re wasting your damn energy running around town instead of training.” His voice was loud, bouncing back off the windshield right into my face. “I don’t want you to do it anymore. No more.”

“I can’t change my training without the team’s approval, dad. You know that.” And it was time for the secret weapon. “Nobody’s going to want to draft a difficult player. I have to work with the team, do what they say.”

“Your coach is an idiot.”

“The trainer agrees with him.”

“The trainer
works
for him. Brett says we should look into building our own support staff. You need independent advice on this stuff.”

“I make two hundred and twenty dollars a week. I don’t have money for ‘support staff,’ and neither do you.”

“Brett says he can get you a loan. It’d be like an advance against your future income.”

There was no way on Earth that was a good idea. But I had no new arguments to make, and he wouldn’t have heard them anyway. “I’ll think about it,” I said. I wasn’t lying. It was hard
not
to think about it all.

“And don’t run tomorrow.”

The team was doing fitness testing the next day, and the trainer had already told me to come in fresh, so it was easy for me to say, “Okay. I’ll take tomorrow off. And I’ll talk to the trainer about it.”

He’d got what he wanted, so he circled back around and pulled up outside the Cavali house. “This is an important year for you, Tyler. Don’t screw it up.”

I didn’t bother saying good-bye, just jumped out of the SUV and slammed the door behind me. If I’d had my keys in my hand, I think I’d have put a pretty long scratch in his shiny new paint as he drove away, but I was too slow, and he was gone.

I thought about going for a drive myself, but there’s times when I see myself doing the same shit my dad does and it freaks me out. I didn’t want to be out on the road at the same time as him, both of us circling around, trying to figure out how to make our lives make sense.

No, I didn’t want that. So I walked instead, and my body followed the route I took on my morning runs. The Cavalis lived in a nicer neighborhood than my own family, but it still wasn’t ritzy or anything. The best part about it was how close to the park it was, and the best thing about the park was how few people ever seemed to use it. When I arrived there that night, there was enough moonlight to show me a big, empty sweep of grass, ending in the forest on the far side. Lots of space for me to just be alone and think about it all, or, even better, space for me to be alone and
not
think, if I could manage it.

I headed for the two wooden benches that sat in the middle of the park, facing each other in the middle of all that space like two ships tied together in the middle of the ocean. I wasn’t too impressed when I got close and realized there was someone lying on one of the benches.

I’d never lived in a city, but I’d visited a few and seen homeless people and drunks and whoever sleeping in public. But somehow I wasn’t getting that vibe from this person. I stepped a little closer and the body made a startled sound and sat up.

“Karen,” I said. It was too dark to see her clearly, but there was something about the way she ran her hands across her face that let me know she’d been crying. Shit. I wasn’t much good at being the comforting guy, and this was none of my business. I had my own stuff to worry about, and I’d already messed up once with someone in the Beacon house so I didn’t really want to dive into another mess. But still, I took a couple steps forward. “You okay?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Squirrel hunting. They let down their guard at night.”

She looked at me for a few breaths as if trying to decide whether to go along with my nonsense, then finally said, “You don’t have a gun.”

“I use my teeth. Want to help?”

“Do I want to help you hunt squirrels with your teeth? Not tonight, no.”

“Some other time, maybe.” I sank down carefully onto the other bench, twisting around so I was still more or less looking at her.

“I have seriously never had this many squirrel-conversations with one person before in my whole life.”

“Welcome to Corrigan Falls.” I guess I probably should have taken the conversation in a more meaningful direction from there. I should have asked her more about why she’d come here, or why she was living with the Beacons. I absolutely should have mentioned that Miranda Beacon hated my guts and probably had a fairly good reason to. Yeah, there were all kinds of responsible things I should have done.

Instead, I swung my feet up on the bench and lay back, looking up at the stars like Karen had been doing before I arrived. I guess what I
should
have done was leave her alone, but something about the tears had made me think she hadn’t really
wanted
to be alone. And after running into her, I didn’t want it anymore, either. “You watching the stars?” I asked.

“I guess.” She didn’t sound hostile or anything, just a little sheepish.

“You know anything about them? The constellations or anything?”

“Not really. You?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m pretty much an expert. That one right there, over toward the trees. Big Dipper, obviously.”

“Okay,
that
one I knew.”

“The one over to its left?” I raised my arm and tried to trace the picture. “Two squares, kind of? That’s Rodentus minor, the angry squirrel.”

“Oh my god, you’re obsessed.”

“But don’t worry. Runner majoricus is right there to rescue any fair maidens who are attacked.”

“Is that how you’ve built it up in your head? You’re a great big hero?” She sounded better now, and I let myself relax a little more.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. These are the stars we’re looking at. I’m not saying there’s any connection to any real life events.”

She was quiet for a moment, then lifted her own arm and pointed. “So, those ones there. Those aren’t Driver horrificus and Passenger odiferous?”

And right there, lying on the bench in the summer darkness, it was like I had a weird out of body experience. I knew the logical response, the one that would take me the next step down the path I always took. Attractive, friendly girl, already lying down, under the damn stars…it was too easy, really, but that had never stopped me before. I should say it was actually Driver horrificus and Passenger beauteous, or something. I should build on the fair maiden line I’d dropped a little earlier. Either of those would work.

But it was like there was another me, one looking down at the scene, and that me saw how nice things could be just as they were. It told me I didn’t need to push forward, didn’t need to race for the goal line. Just this once, I didn’t have to be quite so focused on scoring.

So instead of feeding her a line, I smiled up at the stars. “Damn,” I said. “That
is
what those ones are. I guess maybe there’s some connection after all.”

We lay there a while longer, looking up at the stars and trading lies that somehow felt like the truth. And when Karen finally sighed and sat up and said it was late and she had to go back to her real life, I knew she was right. But I really wished the two of us could have stayed in our little make-believe world at least a little longer.