Page 90 of Revenge Puck

Leaning around Maya to speak to Finley, I say, “Are you excited about showing the team your house tonight?”

Maya hums and frowns at me. “They might be busy, not able to make it on such short notice.”

“All of them?” I ask in confusion.

“Uncle Preston isn’t the most…agreeable human to be around,” she explains.

“But surely they’ll all want to come celebrate a win, right?”

“We’ll see,” Maya replies. “It’s the first period and nobody has scored yet. There’s still a lot more game to be played.”

“Preston seemed pretty confident the Warhawks would win, despite my own concerns.”

“Yes, well, we know that Preston’s optimism stems from over-indulging last night and probably this morning, so he may not be thinking clearly.”

“True,” I agree with a grin.

“This is the slowest game ever,” I mutter during the third period, when the scoreboard still sits at a big fat zero for both teams. The goalies have both been hot tonight, stopping everysingle puck. Well, except for one of the Warhawk’s goals that was reviewed and taken away because the player was offsides.

With less than two minutes to go, I dread having to sit on the edge of my seat in overtime for who knows how long before someone freaking scores!

“Mom, I’m sleepy,” Finley says into the silence. The rest of the arena must be too, if I can hear him so easily.

“Me too, sweetie. Me too,” she agrees around a yawn that causes me to yawn as well.

“When will the game end?”

“When someone finally scores a point that doesn’t get taken away,” Maya tells him.

“How much longer will that take?”

“I have no clue, sweetie. We could be here quite a while tonight.”

“All night? We get to sleep in the arena?”

“No, sweetie. We won’t sleep here. We’ll stay for the first overtime and then…”

She trails off when there’s suddenly a burst of movement on the ice. And it’s…

“Preston?” we both say at the same time.

Like Finley pointed out, he rarely touches the puck, usually only doing so to pass it to one of the forwards. But he just stuck out his enormous skate to block a pass from a Bobcats player in the neutral zone to head in the other direction, toward the Warhawks goal.

He looks left and right for someone to pass it to, but his teammates are slow and tired, some even changing up, so he’s on his own at the other end of the ice, facing off with the goalie. He picks up speed, dribbling the puck left to right before shooting it…

“Gooooallll!”

The buzzer goes off and the entire stadium erupts. Everyone is on their feet, jumping up and down, myself included. I swear the floor shakes from the excitement.

“He scored!” I exclaim as Maya and I stop jumping long enough to hug each other.

Preston’s teammates surround him, hugging him as well.

With less than a minute to go in the third period, all the Warhawks have to do is keep the Bobcats from scoring.

Everyone starts chanting, “Warhawks! Warhawks!” for the entire sixty seconds after the puck drop until the final buzzer.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! They won! They freaking won!” I shout. “I didn’t jinx him!”

---