Page 34 of The Puckable Playbook

Zaiah skates backward, giving me the biggest grin. “I think you meanpucker.” I never knew what kind of smile would be considered shit-eating, but I’ve seen it now. I could describe it with ease if I ever needed to.

I pick up my notebook and point to it. “Watch what I write,” I yell, trying to threaten him, but I’m about as ferocious as a caterpillar. My words don’t dissolve the pure enjoyment on his face. If anything, they make it worse.

“Maybe there’s still time to kick him out,” Izzy quips.

Her mother gasps. “Don’t say that. Can’t you see how much happier he is now?”

Izzy leans in conspiratorially. “Don’t let him win. We’ll exchange numbers, and I can tell you all the little things that get on his nerves.”

“You’d do that?”

“Happily.”

“I’m going to take you up on that,” I murmur as I pull the wig over my head. I know I don’t have to wear it. I could simply sit and bury my head in my notebook, and if it was only Zaiah asking, I might tell him to kick rocks, but his family… I sigh, thinking at least it will be hard to recognize me with this wig on. Not that it matters. The seats in the stands are barely occupied. Only a few students, some family members—as Izzy said—and a cluster of people from the community made the trek to see the game. It’s easy to pick the different segments out.

A line of younger girls on the opposite side of the ice, most definitely high school aged, hold up signs. Exactly the type of girls Izzy and I were talking about. Probably falling all over themselves to get the attention of an older hockey player.

“Zaiah calls them puck bunnies.”

Oh, I know. They ran rampant around my father’s arena. His team has a strict “no fraternizing with puck bunnies” rule. In fact, one of the crudest fan signs I’ve ever seen was held up by a cluster of twenty-something women: “I’ll kiss my friends if you score, 17.”

The more innuendo the better. Thinking about it now, after talking with Zaiah yesterday, those comments are disrespectfulto how much work players put into their sport. I’m sure on some level they love it. They can get an easy lay and a confidence boost, but don’t tell me pro players are actually settling down with puck bunnies. The girls let themselves be used, and the players do it because they can.

I jot down a note about that. Seems like I could write a detailed story about putting athletes on a pedestal. Definitely won’t be the topic of Zaiah’s story, but in the future, maybe. I’d already touched on it in my Warner University football scandal articles, so I know there’s a lot more to be explored there.

Then again, I’m not writing about sports long-term. It is the last thing I want to write about.

I mentally cross off the idea when the announcer comes on. The players don’t even get a grand entrance with their names called. They just line up to start the game. Pretty sure introducing players isn’t only a pro-level thing. They should announce the starting lineup at the very least.

Zaiah takes his spot right in front of us as a winger. The guy lining up across from him is already jawing, but he gets his because as soon as the whistle blows, Zaiah checks him hard.

Izzy and I must have similar bloodlust because we laugh maniacally, even capturing the attention of the guy who was the brunt of Zaiah’s check—now sprawled out on the ice—and I follow suit when she jumps to her feet.

“Go Bulldogs!” she yells.

I don’t scream, but I grab the cowbell.

Oh dear Lord, what am I doing?

The guy from the opposing team glares, but that has me shaking the thing faster.

“Girl,” Izzy starts while we sit back down, “are you sure you don’t care?”

“That guy was a dick,” I say under my breath.

Izzy’s father leans in on the other side. “Can confirm that guy was a dick.”

I smile sheepishly, which makes him beam. Izzy, however, laughs so hard she grabs her side. “My parents don’t care if you swear,” she finally gets out. “Not really. Not since we’ve gotten older, anyway.”

“As long as you don’t sound like a trashy teenage dirtbag,” her father remarks, waving a white-and-blue pom-pom.

I peer down the line and notice they all have pom-poms, but… “Am I the only one with a cowbell?”

“Think of it as an initiation,” his mom calls out from farthest away, her full focus still on the ice. “One of us has to do it, and you drew the short straw.”

“I didn’t even draw a straw.”

“Neither did we,” Mr. James says as he jumps to his feet. I glance over at the ice to find one of our players making a run for it toward the other team’s goal. He’s out ahead of the pack.

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