Page 119 of Thrown for a Loop
He lets out a snort of laughter at the turnaround.
“Keep it up!” I call, increasing my speed. “Deep knees! Faster.”
At first he’s as awkward as ever. But on the third lap, something shifts. His body gets used to the lower position, and his edges start to carve more deeply into the ice. And the last two laps arefast.
When we stop, he’s breathing hard, his face unreadable.
“You didn’t cheat and think about your edges, did you?” I ask, trying to keep my tone light.
His frown deepens, but there’s something thoughtful behind it. “No… I did not.”
“Good,” I say. “Sometimes you just have to trick your body into doing the right thing. We’re going to do it again, and then we’re going to do it backward. Your only goal is staying low without slumping your upper body forward. And don’t lose that puck.”
He stares at the puck, then at me. “To… trick my body.”
I nod. “Until edging just feels natural. Ready to run it again?”
He shrugs, but his expression is less surly. “Oui. We do it again.”
By the end of our session, Moreau is drenched in sweat. But he’sgetting a better grip on the ice, and he isn’t even giving me murder eyes.
I even get a brusque “Merci” as he steps off the ice.
I’ll take it.
After our session, the building is quiet. The players will be headed home to rest for the afternoon before gathering at the arena this evening. Whistling to myself, I tap in the code for my locker.
And when I open the door, I scream.
Chapter 40
The next sound I hear is the pounding of feet, and I stiffen. But then Bernie comes running into the corridor and gasps. “Ohshit. Zoe! Is that… blood?” He’s staring at the word scrawled in red on the walls of my locker.
WHORE.And writing it just once was apparently not enough. My bully has written it multiple times.
“N-no,” I say, as my heart rate tries to settle back into its normal range. “It’s not blood. It’sthat.” Treating the area like a crime scene, I point at the little red tube that’s lying on the floor of my locker without touching it. “Fenty Gloss Bomb in MVP red.”
He clutches his chest. “That shriek you made? I thought someone was dead for sure.”
“That stuff is twenty-five bucks a tube! You’d scream, too.” I look up and squint around the corridor. “Weren’t they going to put…”
“Shh,” he says, finger to his lips. “That’s a secret. But it happens tomorrow.”
“Fuck.”
“We’ll get him,” Bernie growls. “I want to take the first punch myself. Can I make a suggestion, though?”
“What?”
Bernie leans his hip against a door frame and strokes his mustache with two fingers. “Don’t tell Merritt about this until after tonight’s game.”
My hackles go up immediately. “Why?”
He rolls his eyes. “Just trust me on this. We need his focustonight.” He takes his phone out of his pocket and starts shooting pics of my bully’s artwork. “These are for Mr. Sharp, okay?”
I sigh. “Sure. Thanks. I’ll let him know this happened.”
“Chin up, Zoe. We don’t let the assholes win.”
