Page 1 of Second-Rate Superstar
Prologue
Braxton
This is a fuckingnightmare.
Last night was bad enough when my name wasn’t called during the first round of the draft with a camera pointed in my face the entire time. But today, as I listened to a name that wasn’t mine called out every three minutes, it began to sink in that this was really happening.
With two picks left in the seventh round, I wasn’t getting drafted.
Never once hearing my name over the loudspeakers, I was unable to tune out the hushed whispers coming from all around.
“Is there an injury we don’t know about?”
“Did he bomb his draft interviews?”
“You’d think his brother would be enough to get him drafted somewhere.”
“Maybe he just isn’t as good as Jaxon.”
Gritting my teeth, I tried to remain calm, knowing the entire hockey community was watching my public humiliation.
It always circled back to Jaxon. How could it not?
My brother was Jaxon Slate, the captain of the Connecticut Comets professional hockey team. He wasn’t just a good player; he was a superstar, a generational talent.
And I’d been living in his shadow since the day I was born.
Don’t get me wrong, I idolized my brother. But I had been only nine years old when he was drafted number one overall, the hottest recruit in a decade, and suddenly all eyes were on me, expecting me to be Jaxon Part Two.
But the pressure to live up to Jaxon’s talent began long before that day. With such a large age gap between us boys—eight and a half years apart—by the time I was old enough to don skates, Jaxon was already making waves in the youth hockey circuit.
My brother had natural talent. I wasn’t quite so lucky, even if we shared the same parents.
But that didn’t matter to our dad. He held me to the impossibly high standard Jaxon had set.
I could hear him in my head even now, as I once again failed to measure up to my superstar brother, about to become the undrafted Slate brother.
Jaxon did it this way.
Jaxon was the team’s leading scorer at your age.
Why can’t you be more like Jaxon?
For so many years, I bit my tongue when all I wanted to do was stand up and scream, “I’m not Jaxon!”
Jaxon was effortless on the ice; he could see the game in his head like no one else—almost as if his brain were computing the opposing team’s play before it materialized, or finding the perfect open spot on the ice to cash in.
I had to work my ass off every day and still never came close. They said hard work could beat talent when talent didn’t work hard, but unfortunatelyfor me, my brother was the most dedicated player I’d ever met. He didn’t take days off. Hockey was his life.
Sometimes, I wondered what my life would have been like if we’d had more siblings, if Jaxon and I were closer in age, or if perhaps I’d been born a girl. Would any of those changes have made a difference? Would there be less pressure on me now to follow in my big brother’s footsteps?
Maybe this was a good thing, not getting drafted. It could be my way out.
I had earned a full-ride scholarship to play hockey at Hartford State. I didn’t need anyone to point out that for someone trying to escape my brother’s shadow, I willingly put myself in the same city where he played—we all had our issues. Perhaps I could keep my head down, play hockey, but focus on getting a degree. There were tons of college players who knew going in that those were their last years of playing. Outside of beer league, at least.
This might be my chance to carve my own path. One I chose for myself.
What would my life even look like without hockey consuming every waking moment?
