Page 7 of Jaded

Life goes on. When one door closes, another opens.

Syd’s arrival seventeen years ago shocked everything out of place, rewrote my dreams and my destiny. My world changed the day she was born—good, bad, ugly, best. My whole life was rewritten in fresh ink, in a language I couldn’t read, across the pages of a book I’d never wanted.

But I’d learned how to read it. Learned to cherish that fucking book like a pastor with his Bible. I learned to make it the center of my existence, the only thing I needed to want. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing I would change about her in my life either.

What Sydney doesn’t realize, what I’ve never found the words to explain, is that she saved me. Iwantedto be her parent more than I wanted to be a hockey player. She saved me, and now she’s everything I live for.

As much as I’d love to keep playing Zamboni guy and equipment manager in the world of hockey, I owe it to Syd to be the father she needs—to ensure she has food and clothes, healthcare, hockey, and a way out of this town.

Chapter 3

Olli

DayRiverisacity on fire.

Okay, maybe that’s me waxing poetic—sometimes I do that, when I spend too much time alone in my head—but the way the slanting afternoon sun hits the steel of the high rises as I round the last curve in the road throws tongues of orange flame against the surrounding snow. Making it sparkle, sing, with vibrant light. Like a beacon of hope.

It’ll be different here, I tell myself, because that’s what I always tell myself, every move, every new team.

Different.

This will be the one.

Such fierce hope beats through my chest, like a war drum, the only pulse keeping me alive some days. Hope, hope, hope.

I know I’m lying to myself, even as I admire the way the jutting skyline of high rises and factory chimneys cuts across the ragged backdrop of mountains in a juxtaposition of man and nature. It’s such a fitting image of my life.

That’s me—the boy who’s both, or tries to be.

Waxing poetic again, ’cause I’ve been driving solo for a solid ten hours now, with only a mini pee-break halfway through. My head’s an interesting spot on a good day, a dark and desolate one on a bad. On the average day, it’s just filled with a whole lot of random crap, like the junk drawer nobody’s ever bothered to organize.

Today, I’m lost in the wonder of possibility, of another new place. This one’s especially pretty.

Pine trees clamber up over the winding, two-lane highway, giving me a stilted view of the city as it emerges in fits and starts: little clusters of houses through the trunks, windows peeking through the needles, a farm tucked back on a field of snow.

God, this town is beautiful. I bet they’ve got some phenomenal hiking around here—those mountains are begging to be climbed. Sure didn’t need to bring my surfboard up from Florida, but honestly, surfing was never my preferred off-ice activity anyway. There’s just no other way to be outside in mid-summer Miami.

Different.

This will be the one.

I almost believe it this time, the way the city climbs up from the road in a cluster of houses and then some apartments, a grocery market and an outdoor-goods supply store. Pine trees scatter along the roads, an aspen lingering alongside the first traffic light, like the city’s been unable to claim the land from the hands of nature.

It’s a small city, and freezing; snow lines the sidewalks and the narrow spaces between homes, climbs in tiny mountains throughout the parking lots. Industrial, too, if the chimneys rising behind the modern skyscrapers are any indication.

I’ve always liked winter. Not just because of hockey either. My soul is winter—bright and biting and cold, filled with dark nights and sun-drenched mornings made all the more blinding by the endless stretch of snow.

My phone vibrates against the crap in my cupholder in a jarring, violent jangle, cutting my poetic leanings to an abrupt halt. When I snag the thing out from the chaos of pens, loose change, and randomly collected stones, my mother’s face stares back at me, eyes huge and round between a curtain of greying locs.

I swipe to answer, and not only because I desperately need to speak to another human being. “Mom!”

Angel James is, of course, my favorite person on the planet.

“Aspen!” Her voice crackles through the speakers of my truck, warm and familiar. I roll my eyes at the nickname, though I secretly love it. “Did you make it to Day River?”

“Just got in.”

I can almost see the pout turning down the corners of her mouth. “You’re so far away now.”

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