Chapter 39 Semifinals
CALEB
The semifinal was the hardest game of the season and the most difficulty had everything to do with what the game meant and almost nothing to do with what it required technically, because what it meant was that losing would end this, not just the season but my time in this building, the last game I would ever play as a Hamilton Wolf in the rink that smelled like ice and rubber and cold air and which had been the most consistent place in my life since Walter brought me here when I was eight years old and told me to find my legs.
I had found them here.
I had found everything important here, starting with hockey and ending with considerably more than hockey.
I told the ice that in warmup instead of telling Mia, because the ice would not worry about it and Mia would have, and she had enough to carry.
I found her on the bench before the anthem.
Clipboard, hair up. Eyes moving across the ice in the tracking pattern I had watched develop so gradually over two years that I had not noticed it until it was complete and she was the most attentive observer in any arena she walked into.
She looked up.
I tapped the ice with my stick.
She nodded once.
I skated back to center and played the game in front of me.
Their goaltender was the problem and it was the kind of problem you could not solve by shooting better, only by shooting more and trusting that percentages eventually cooperated. Three of my shots in the first period should have scored. Eli hit the post at fourteen minutes. The bench stayed patient. Coach said one word between periods.
Patience.
Second period I scored from a bad angle on a rebound I decided to reach for before the percentages suggested I should, and it went in off the near post in a way that was partly skill and partly the specific luck that came to players who committed fully rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity.
Two to one going into the third.
Then at seven minutes they tied it on a sequence that nobody was proud of and the building went uncertain and loud and I sat on the bench between shifts and thought about nothing except the next shift, because ready lived in the next shift and nervous lived in the final score and I had spent this entire year learning the difference between those two things.
At thirteen minutes I moved a puck to the slot and Eli was exactly where we had run that play in practice for the past three weeks and he scored with the clinical simplicity of someone who had been running the same sequence until it was automatic.
Three to two.
Seven minutes left.
We held.
The noise when the buzzer went was immediate and enormous and I stood on the ice and let it arrive completely, the championship final, the last game in this building that was also the first game toward everything the year had been pointing toward, and both of those things were true at the same time.
In the tunnel she was standing against the wall with her clipboard at her side, not writing, just standing there and waiting, and when I came through she looked at me with those brown eyes completely open in the way they only got when she had run out of energy to manage what she was showing.
Final, she said.
Final, I said.
I crossed the tunnel and grabbed her and kissed her in front of Eli and three teammates and Coach Briggs, who walked past and said good game Kessler without breaking stride, which was the version of approval Coach Briggs was capable of and which meant considerably more than it would have from anyone else.
Eli applauded slowly from behind me.
Finally, he said.
We have been together for months, Eli, I said.
I meant in public, he said. Where I could see it. I have been waiting since October.
Mia was already writing in her clipboard again, like the game had not fully ended just because the buzzer said it had.
Six days, she said.
Six days, I said.
Rest the shin properly.
I definitely will.
Caleb.
I know, I said.
My phone buzzed.
Walter: Final is on Saturday. I will be in the front section, east side. Your mother will be beside me. Good boy.
I looked at the message.
Both of them there.
Together.
I showed it to Mia.
She read it. Looked up.
Something moved across her face that was not quite a smile but was the thing that existed in the same territory.
Then you better win, she said.
Yes, I said.
I mean it.
I know you do, I said. That is exactly why I will.
Six days did not feel like long enough for anything except the fact that everything was already in motion, and for the first time I did not try to slow it down.