Page 140 of Jaded

But this isn’t organized hockey.

While I’m watching my teammate, trying to get open, an opponent cuts in behind. His gloved hands ram my shoulder blades, slamming me into the boards. The edge drives up into my solar plexus to rip the air out of my lungs.

No whistle, no pause in play.

I shove him off, gasping. He takes a swipe at me, and I barely manage the dodge, still trying to find my air. What was I thinking, playing like it was real hockey and not . ..

The second swing rocks my jaw. Whips my head around, sends a bloom of pain through my skull. For an instant, I see stars.

And then, I see red.

He turns on me again, and I lose hold of the final shreds of my control. My vision tunnels in on the skater. The numbers stretched across his chest read Eighty-Nine—and they bunch in my fist as I yank the jersey towards me.

I swing.

He’s too dumbfounded to flinch back. My knuckles crack his jaw. And for the first time in far, far too long, the world feels like all its jagged, broken pieces have fallen into alignment.

I swing again.

Crack.

I should feel something, but I don’t, don’t; we’re far fucking past that. The anger consumes me. Red leaks into my vision and rage leaks into my limbs, and I let it, I let it, I let it, because anger is so much easier than any of the things I’ve been feeling—today, yesterday, these past weeks. These past years.

It’s why I fight: because anger is uncomplicated. One-dimensional.

Simple.

Red and white.

My opponent fills my vision: his blocky body, his leering black mask. My glove smashes into his face, and in that instant of distraction, I drop those gloves, rip the helmet off his head, and slam my bare knuckles against his cheekbone.

So it hurts this time.

It’s my first real fight in a long time, and I can’t stop because the rage has me blind to reason, blind to the world, blind to the skaters and the crowd and all I can feel is anger and all I can see is the blood.

My knuckles collide with his face again. Again.

Because how else would it go, how else does it ever start or end—my knuckles, someone else’s face.

I hit him again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Too many times even for the Ice Out, because he’s down and he’s bleeding and I should stop—

And without warning, time fades.

Suddenly I’m seven years old, face pressed into the ice, blood pouring from my mouth and nose like somebody turned on a great red faucet. The jeers echo behind me, the ugly chants that brought me here, outside the school, that pressed my face against bitter ice with my nose bleeding and my eye swelling shut and my ribs aching.

My fingers dig at ice and snow until they find something solid, hard.

They’re bigger than me, those kids.

Stay down, says my head, but I can’t. I can’t, not while the voices chant behind me, not while the anger pulses through me like something separate and alive.

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