Page 5 of Nothing to Lose: Lost Trilogy: Part 1
“Mother,” I greet her short and to the point.
“Lucas,” she murmurs into the phone. She doesn’t sound drunk, but she doesn’t sound exactly sober either. Just a happy medium, I guess. “I just wanted to hear your voice today. I know you’ll be too busy celebrating tomorrow to answer your phone,” she teases me. I don’t remember her ever doing that before.
“Well, thanks,” is all I say, unsure of where she’s going with this. I am nervous and I hope to God she didn’t do anything stupid. That trust fund I’ve been waiting on will release me from Kenneth Adams’ clutches.
“I need you to do me a favor,” she says after a slight hesitation.
This is new. She’s never asked me for any favors either.
“What’s that?” I bark into the phone.
“I know you don’t care for me much,” she starts laughing. “Actually, sometimes the feeling is mutual, right?”
“Right.” My response is dry and to the point. I know she most likely wishes I was never born. There were complications during her labor, things happened that prevented her from getting pregnant again, which in turn left Uncle Kenny with no sons or daughters of his own. He loves to remind us all of that during each one of his rages.
“Everything will probably be okay,” she continues snickering. “But I just felt I owed it to you to tell you that if you ever need help, you should look up Bricks. He is the president of a motorcycle club from the Austin area,” she explains.
My eyebrows go up in surprise. Or shock, more like.
“Since when you know a biker, Mother?” I burst into laughter myself. “President of a club at that.”
“All you need to know,” her voice becomes harsher, definitely not amused now. “All you need to know,” she repeats, “is that he hates Kenny as much as you do. Or maybe not quite as much. But he hates him. And you will be the key to get Kenny to him. So he’ll help you.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” I tell her but don’t mean a word of it.
“You should also know,” Elaine adds like I never said a word, “that there was this woman a few years ago. Before you were born actually. She and…”
“Puck,” Brandon booms from the entrance to the hockey arena. “You coming or what?”
I raise my arm to wave at him that I’m coming, then start walking faster that way. Seeing that my mother’s call is not what I was fearing, I don’t need to stand here all day and make small conversation with her.
“I need to go,” I cut her off. “Thank you for the call and for the well wishes.” I then hang up and get on with my day.
I follow Brandon to the back where their lockers are located. We both change into hockey gear, him with his own stuff, and me with what he borrowed from one of the other guys’ lockers, one that’s more my size.
When we step on the ice, I take a moment to inhale the cool air. I’ve always loved hockey, mostly because I knew Blake did before he died. I never got as passionate about it as Brandon, but I do have some moves from the few camps I attended over the years when Kenny allowed it.
I do a couple of laps around the rink to warm up, then get in the position with Brandon. We push the puck around the ice, him with a lot more ease than I’d ever be capable of, with me trying to grab it from him.
I manage to take him by surprise in a second when he looks to the side, and I skate away with it. I am so close to pushing it into the goal when he comes strong from behind and hooks his stick around mine just as I’m about to do it.
“Hey, not cool,” I yell at him, but I’m laughing.
“You just got lucky there, rookie,” he teases me.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I’m gonna keep this puck. It’ll be my lucky one.”
An hour later, I am completely out of breath and ready to die. I skate to the gate and walk to the benches where I drop on my back and refuse to move. Sweat is running down my face and onto the floor underneath, drenching everything in its path.
Brandon is not ready to be done, so he skates around some more. By the time he’s done, I feel like I am getting enough oxygen into my lungs.
We walk together to the showers, then change into the clothes we wore when we came in.
“Here,” Brandon presses something to my chest. My eyes grow big when I see what it is.
“Is this…”
“Your lucky puck,” he winks at me. “That way, when I’m a famous hockey player with ice bunnies following me around, you can watch me on TV and say, hey, that guy gave me my lucky puck!”
