Page 41 of Jaded

I’m alsostaring, ’cause the way he moves is mesmerizing. It’s like how he was out on the ice last night, but different too. The Ice Out was so bold and brutal, vicious and hard and cold. But this . . . it’s like a dance on ice, his body flowing through each movement, each flick of his wrist or turn of his feet.

I can’t look away.

Maybe I wouldn’t have, except that somewhere in the back of my mind, I register the click of the locker room door that tells me the rest of the team’s started to arrive.

Damn.

Time to go do team-captainy things—I am still the captain, regardless of whether or not I’ll be on the ice tonight.

So I slip down the hall, through the door, and into chaos. A ball of tape thwacks me in the temple, and a hoot of laughter cracks over the rumble of voices, the barrage of innuendos, and the low throb of music.

“James!” Charlie yells from across the locker room, half naked, chest painted with what looks like bright red lipstick. Blocky red letters spell out D-I-N-G-U-S.

“Close,” I mutter, a grin stretching my mouth at the deliberate misspelling of our team name. “What is this techno crap?”

“It’shouse.” The tall blond guy by the radio turns towards me. Skyler Johnson, linemate to hippie-with-locs Andy Everton, currently trying to shove him out from in front of the radio.

Skyler’s just about the most Legolas-looking dude I’ve ever seen, thanks to that lean-n-lanky form and wash of white-blond hair—braided. I have a strong and probably not advisable inclination to ask if he can walk on snow.

“This song sucks!” Everton gives him one final nudge and crushes his way into position in front of the speakers.

Coach barrels through the door behind me, and silence washes over the room as the music cuts off. Skyler and Everton slip into their respective cubbies without so much as another word, and a stray elbow pad tumbles to rest in the middle of the floor.

Coach kicks it aside as he takes the stage. “We got a fight ahead of us, boys.”

I swear I’ve heard a million variations of this same speech a million and ten times. This one, thankfully, only takes five minutes before Coach is retreating from the room.

Chaos returns. Everyone, save yours truly, dons their gear. And then it’s my turn.

“I know I’ve been Captain for like seven minutes,” I say as I rise from my cubby. I don’t bother walking to the middle of the locker room, ’cause I don’t plan on talking that long. “So I don’t have much to say. But I have seen everybody in here skate, and I know that every single person in this room has something good to bring to the game. So . . . bring it!”

They roar. Leap to their feet. Crush in close so I’m in the center of a sea of smelly pads and pulsing shoulders and lifted fists and hollering voices. The energy is goddamn tangible.

“Dingoes!” Everton yells, and everyone else echoes. “Dingoes! Dingoes! Dingoes!”

And then the locker room door opens and they race out in a cerulean-and-navy wash of skates and pads and sticks. I’m still rocking my suit and tie, but I jog out alongside them as they barrel for the ice.

Overhead, the speakers crackle, and the announcer booms, “And now, your own DAY RIVER DINGOES!”

Out of the locker room, the first thing that hits me is the quiet.

There’s no resounding roar of the crowd. There’s a murmur, a buzz, a faint report to the announcer’s gunshot-loud voice. I slip out of the hallway and up the stairs to the bleachers—and stop dead.

Where the Ice Out was a mass of people crammed together, drinking and cheering and swearing and fighting and all gathered together under that one roof for one passionate purpose, this is . . .

I doubt there’s a thousand people in those stands.

I climb into the bleachers, still staring, my jaw slack with shock at what I’m seeing. Not seeing. Whatever.

We’re in an ice town of hockey-obsessed people. It’s a Friday night. And it’s dead. Empty. A few diehard fans pressed up against the glass, and a whole lot more who look like maybe they won free tickets or have nothing better to do, or maybe they’ll leave before the second period.

The shock hits me in a cold wave. I flop down into one of the chairs behind the glass, but I’m not seeing my team out there on the ice, skating circles, flinging pucks, stretching. I’m just staring at the crowd.

What the hell is going on here?

How could this possibly be the same town that turns out in the thousands for the Ice Out? That braves the dark and the cold, risks the illegality of gathering in an underground space filled with drugs and gambling and fights and God knows what else?

How could this be the same town that roars numbers in their support and disfavor. That makes bets, begs for blood—

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