Page 78 of Of Pucking Course

“Wow. Camden is so limberon the ice,” I say.

“He used to figure skate when he was younger,” Sam says.

I look over at Xander, who’s pulling two giggling kids across the ice with his hockey stick. On the other side of the ice, Blomdahl is standing in front of the net with a group of five kids who are watching him juggle a bunch of pucks.

Theo skates over to him while holding a bucket of pucks and dumps them onto the ice in front of him. “Can you juggle this many?”

All the kids around them start laughing. I burst out laughing too.

Just then, Del zooms past me, followed by a conga line of my students.

“We’re gonna get you, Mr. Del!” the kids chant as they trail behind him.

My grumpy big brother cracks a smile as he slows down. “Let’s see if you can catch me.”

Theo zooms by and smacks Del’s shoulder. “You’re it!” Theo shouts. The kids giggle.

Del rolls his eyes. “You don’t count.”

He’s skating slow enough for one of the little boys, Jackson, to catch up to him. When Jackson taps Del’s arm, Del stops. He lets out a joking groan. “Oh, you got me.” He spins around. “Now it’s my turn to chase you.”

The kids scream and scatter across the ice.

I playfully nudge Sam with my elbow. “I thought you’d be an expert handling these kids. You have a niece and nephew about their age.”

He laughs again. “Hanging out with two seven-year-olds is way different from corralling forty-five kindergarteners at once.” He rests his hands on his hips and takes a breath. “I have a hard time keeping everything in order when my niece and nephew are trying to talk to me at once.Now I’ve got a whole group of tiny humans speaking at the same time, asking me a million different things. My brain can’t keep it all straight.”

I chuckle. Just then, one of the little girls from my class, Rosie, skates by us, then trips and falls forward, landing on her knee. I run over to check on her right as she starts crying.

“Oh, honey. Here, let’s rest for a second, okay?” I scoop her up in my arms and walk her over to a bench. I sit her down and crouch in front of her. When I pull up the pant leg of her jeans, there’s a pink spot on her knee, but thankfully no scrape or blood.

Gently, I rub the spot. “It’ll feel better in a minute, I promise.”

She sniffles, her full cheeks wet with tears as she sniffles. I pull a tissue from my pocket and wipe her face.

I look up at Sam, who’s standing off to the side, his face twisted in concern.

“She’ll be okay,” I tell him.

He offers to throw away the tissue in the nearby trash can. I hand it to him, and when he walks over, his skate gets caught on an uneven patch of flooring, and he trips forward. He bumps into the trash can, but rights himself before he loses his balance completely.

Rosie starts giggling. Sam’s face lights up.

“You thought that was pretty funny, huh?” he jokes. She nods.

He bumps into the trash can again and makes a big show of losing his balance before standing up straight. Rosie laughs even harder. Sam does it one more time after that. This time, Rosie is laughing so hard, she almost falls off the bench.

Sam starts laughing too. And I’m smilingso hard, my cheeks hurt. A warm feeling pools in my chest at seeing Sam trying so hard to make this little girl laugh to distract her from her pain.

“Mr. Sam is funny,” she says.

I gaze at him. “He really is.”

Abby returns with her group of kids. I check the time.

“Okay, everyone! It’s snack time!” I holler. Abby and I, along with Sam and his teammates, get the kids settled on the benches nearby. Abby and I pass out juice boxes, granola bars, and fruit to the kids.

Sam and the guys stand off to the side, chatting with each other. Del gets a phone call, so he walks off to answer it. Every once in a while, the guys check on the kids to make sure they’re doing okay.

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