The Understatement of the Year (5 page)

Until one awful day in August, before the start of our sophomore year, just after I got my driver’s license. Freedom was our downfall.

We’d driven to a seedy part of town to find a comic book shop we’d heard of. But that was really just an excuse to be alone together. After I parked the car, Graham put his hand on my leg, just because he could. We were together, and we were out in the world in a car. Two huge freedoms in one afternoon. So after a cursory glance out the car windows, I leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.

Smiling, he grabbed my face in both hands and licked into my mouth. We were probably only there for ninety seconds. Maybe even less. But immediately after we stepped out of the car, everything went very, very wrong.

There was shouting, and the pounding of feet behind us. We both ran. I thought we were going to get away. But then I looked over my shoulder to count our pursuers.

That mistake that changed my life.

I tripped. And then came the horror of pitching toward the asphalt, and the terror of those feet pounding closer. A second later, the first kick landed at my ribs. The second one nailed me in the cheekbone, and I heard my own scream.

Curling up into a protective ball was my last conscious act.

Much of the next few hours were lost to me. I woke up in a hospital room with my arm in a sling, stitches on my face and a snug bandage around my chest. My mother was crying, and my father was on the phone.

“Where’s Graham?” was the first thing I tried to say.

“Why?” my mother sobbed.

Telling her the truth turned out to be my second big mistake.

For the next five days, I would lay in that hospital bed wondering what had happened to him. Every time someone walked past my room, my eyes would flick to the doorway. Each time I expected to see Graham.

He never came.

Body Check
: The use of the body against an opponent. A body check is legal against an opposing player who has the puck or was the last player to have the puck.

—
Rikker

Before our next ice time, I stood in the locker room strapping on my pads, half listening while Hartley and a guy they called Big-D argued about the Bruins defense lineup.

Bella skipped through with an armload of practice jerseys, tossing one at everyone in her path.

“Thanks,” I said when she got to me. But before she could dart away, I grabbed her hand for a closer look at her T-shirt. “Hey! I had that shirt once.”
JESUS SAVES
, it read. Jesus was pictured on the front in full goalie gear, deflecting a puck.
W.M.C.A. Hockey
was stamped below the drawing. As in: West Michigan Christian Academy.

She looked down at her chest and then grinned. “I love this thing. I stole it from Graham.” She tipped her head back in his direction.

Ah, of course she did. I lifted my eyes to find Graham staring at us, his gorgeous mouth in a grim line. He looked away as soon as our eyes met.

Well, fuck. This was getting ridiculous. It’s not like I’d walked in here a week ago determined to pretend that Graham and I had never met. We needed to at least be able to nod hello to one another. Or something.

Bella went on her way, sowing practice jerseys like so many seeds. I was just shoving my foot into a skate when I heard my name.

“Rikker?” I looked up to see Coach beckoning me from the doorway. “Can you come here a minute, son?” I kicked the skate off and followed Coach in my stocking feet. He led me all the way to his office, where he shut the door. “Why don’t you have a seat for a minute,” he suggested.

I sat, not knowing why I was there.

“I have some tapes for you to watch this weekend,” he said, opening a desk drawer and pulling out a couple of DVDs. “Our first two games are against Brown and Colgate. We’ll go over the strategy next week, but I thought you could get a jump on it.”

“Awesome,” I said, taking the discs.

“Do you have a way of watching those? Not everyone’s computer has a slot anymore.”

“I’m good. Thanks.”

“How are you settling in? Classes okay?” He sat in his desk chair, folding his hands as if we had all day for small talk.

“Um, sure. So far so good.”

“Which house were you assigned to?”

“I’m in Turner. But since I wasn’t part of the housing draw last year, I’m living in a building called McHerrin.”

“Ah,” Coach said. “Hartley lived in the handicapped room there last year when he couldn’t climb stairs.”

“That’s what he told me,” I said.

Coach tapped his fingers on the desk blotter. “We’ll just give it another minute, okay? Bella had something she wanted to say to the team before practice.”

“Oh.”
Oh
. “Hell. Sorry. I don’t like being newsworthy.”

He grinned. “I’d like to be newsworthy.” He held up has hands as if hanging text in the air. “Harkness Wins the Frozen Four.”

“All right,” I chuckled. “Your version works for me.”

“I live in hope. We look good this year, kid. Hartley’s back. We scooped you up from Saint B’s. And those Canadian freshmen skate like crazy men.”

“I noticed that.”

The conversation died again. I felt Coach’s eyes on me, and I didn’t enjoy it. “You know…” he said, pausing. “I have a grandson who plays basketball at a small school in the Midwest. He had to conduct a few very awkward conversations with his teammates last year. But nobody died.”

I tried not to gape. Coach had a gay grandson? I didn’t see that coming.

“If we get any pushback from the team, I’m prepared to tell them to shove it,” Coach said. “So I need you to let me know if that’s necessary. But I thought I’d step back, and see if things got by on their own first.”

Jeez
. “Thanks?” I managed. “I hope it won’t come to that.”

He looked tired for a moment. “Me too.”

There was a quick little knock at the door, and then Bella put her head in. “I told everybody to hit the ice now.”

Coach stood up and looped his whistle around his neck. “Lace up, kid. Let’s do this thing.”

The only person left in the locker room while I put on my skates was Bella, who sat picking her cuticles on Hartley’s end of our bench. “Well?” I said finally.

She shrugged. “Too soon to tell. Big-D made a face like I’d just served him shit for dinner. Everybody else just blinked at me. Then they picked up their sticks and went.”

I stood up and went for my stick, the last one in the rack. “Thank you, Bella.”

She followed me to the door, patting my ass pads. “Let’s see some action, Rikker. I fucking love this job.”

As I’d done the week before, I skated Coach’s drills as if zombies chased me. Then we scrimmaged for a good forty-five minutes. When I was on the bench, I didn’t try to speak to anyone. Instead, I watched the game as if there was going to be an exam later.

Our side was dominating. About halfway through the game, coach switched up the rotation. After that, whenever we were playing our defensive zone, I ended up covering Graham. I was still in the flow, still skating like the Stanley Cup was on the line. Because if this team was going to end up hating me, it wouldn’t be because I didn’t make an effort.

And Graham, to my surprise, played like a skittish granny. He coughed up the puck to me so many times that it almost got boring. “Focus, Graham!” Coach yelled more than once.

Ouch.

After practice, I volunteered to move the nets out of the way of the Zamboni. I stacked cones, and generally made myself scarce for a little while. By the time I made it back into the locker room, there weren’t very many people left. Facing my locker area, I hung up my pads until it was a safe bet that everyone was dressed. Then I headed to the showers alone.

When I came out, only Bella and Hartley were still around. Their two heads were bent over what looked like a glossy hockey program. Bella made marks on it with a black Sharpie.

“Rikker,” she said as I tried to drag my boxers over damp skin. “We need your bio info by Tuesday. Schools and teams, height, weight. You know the drill.”

“Roger that,” I said, hopping into my jeans.

Bella stuffed her paperwork into a bright pink backpack. “Let’s go eat Coach’s barbecue.”

I hesitated, yanking my socks onto my feet. “I wasn’t going to go.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Bella said, handing me my shirt. “That’s not the message you want to send.”

“I don’t want to send any message at all,” I said from inside my polo. When I could see Bella and Hartley again, they were both staring down at me. “Seriously. I’m going to be everyone’s gossip nugget tonight. Why shouldn’t I sit this one out?”

Bella looped her arm in mine and yanked me off the bench. “You’re coming.”

Crap
. “Should we bring anything?”

“Nope,” Hartley said.

“Just your pretty face,” Bella added.

“Not helping,” I said, while Hartley snickered.

Twenty minutes later, we were standing in Coach’s generous backyard. I’d thought it would just be the team, every one of them avoiding me. Luckily, the girlfriends had been invited to Coach’s shindig. With girls there, the conversation was lubricated with summer exploits and other gossip.

“Can you get this?” Bella handed me a bottle of wine, the cork halfway out. “I thought I had it.”

I set my much-needed beer down on the table to do her bidding. Tightening my grip on the corkscrew, I levered it out slowly, trying not to break the cork. That done, I wrapped my hand around my beer bottle again.

“Thanks! Coach’s wife asked me to bring her a glass of white wine. Do you think she meant the chardonnay, or the pinot blanc?”

“Sorry, Bella, but I’m not that kind of gay friend. I wouldn’t know a pinot blanc if it bit me in the ass.”

One of the goalies — a big dude named Orson — choked on his beer when I said it. For a second, I assumed that he couldn’t believe that I’d said the word “gay” out loud. But when he tapped his bottle to mine, I realized that he was only laughing at my joke.

Bella gave us both an eye roll. “So if I want help picking out shoes, I shouldn’t come to you?”

“You can try,” I said. “But my M.O. is just to choose whichever pair stinks the least.”

“Who says that’s not an improvement? Some of these guys can’t manage that.” Bella picked up a glass of white wine and headed for the house.

“You love us anyway,” Orson yelled after her.

She gave us the finger behind her back, and we both laughed this time. And now I knew then that Orson would put up with me. One down, two dozen to go.

—
Graham

At Coach’s barbecue, I choked down a couple of pulled pork sandwiches, and wondered how soon I could leave. But Coach hadn’t made his beginning-of-the-year speech yet. And I’d played so badly this afternoon that I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself.

Pale ale number three wasn’t enough to sooth my nerves. Beer just couldn’t make big enough payments on my overdue buzz bill. Coach was a scotch man, so I wandered into the house to see what he might be pouring.

I found Coach in his study with a handful of guys watching hockey footage on a big screen. “Graham!” he called. “I’ve got video of last year’s Brown game. Watch this defensive play…”

But the video wasn’t what I was after. “Whatcha got there?” I asked one of the new kids — the one we were calling Frenchie. He squinted at me apologetically, probably trying to decide if the word for whiskey was the same in English as it was in French. Instead of attempting to solve the mystery, he handed me the glass, and I took a taste. “Nice.”

“I’ll pour you one,” Coach said, his eyes still on the screen. “Maybe it will put some hair on your chest, Graham. Today you could have used it.”

“My shit was not together,” I agreed with him under my breath.

He put a glass in my hand. “Figure it out, kid. We have a chance to do great things.” Then Coach left the room.

When he was gone, I drank the scotch in two gulps. Big-D picked up the decanter and topped up his glass, and then mine. “Figure it out, kid,” he said, mimicking Coach. “But after practice, be careful not to drop the soap in the showers.”

Another defenseman began to laugh, and then the Canadian kids joined in, the way people do when they’re not sure if they understood the joke. With Big-D right there in my face, I forced a smile and I took another deep drink.

This time, the alcohol burned all the way down.

Coach’s speech always came before dessert. So when I saw the cupcakes coming out of the kitchen, and heard the telltale
ding ding ding
of a spoon on a glass, I made my way to the front lawn.

“Tonight,” Coach said, scotch glass in hand, “I want to read to you my favorite quote of President Teddy Roosevelt’s. Maybe you’ve heard it before in a history class, or philosophy. But it could have been written for hockey players. We’re going to go far this year, and along the way people are going to try to tell us that a little Ivy League school can’t play hockey at the national level. But that’s bullshit!”