Page 2 of On His Mind

“No,” he says quietly. “Fuck thinking it isn’t for you.”

Something twists in my chest.

“You get good enough,” he continues, “and they’ll pay for you to play college hockey. They’ll pay for your classes. They’ll pay for your room. They’ll pay for your food.” He points his stick at the net. “They’ll pay you to stand right there.”

I stare at him.

He isn’t smiling. He’s serious. “You don’t believe me.”

I don’t. Not because I think he’s lying. Because nobody has ever looked at me and talked about a future like I deserved a real one.

He notices the doubt on my face and lets out a slow breath. “Alright, kid,” he says. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Home.”

“What for?”

“I’m gonna show you.”

He starts collecting pucks before I can ask another question.

“Show me what?”

He glances over his shoulder.

“Your way out.”

Chapter 1

Percy

Ilearnwithinthefirst ten minutes of college that everybody brings too much stuff.

Plastic drawers stacked four high. Desk lamps still boxed. Laundry baskets loaded with folded towels. Mothers carry pillows against their chests like they’re carrying newborns. Fathers sweat through polo shirts and pretend they don’t care that their sons are already ten feet ahead of them, already halfway gone.

I have one duffel at my feet, a backpack on my shoulder, and goalie gear in the bed of Josh’s truck.

That’s it. That’s everything.

Josh kills the engine and doesn’t get out. Neither do I. For a second we sit there looking at the house through the windshield.

It looks nothing like the dorms we passed coming in. Older. Bigger. Two stories of brick and white trim, a porch sagging on one side, a mailbox leaning off its post at an angle somebody’s clearly hit with a car and decided to live with. Bikes chained badly to the railing. Upstairs, a hockey stick is jammed under a window sash to hold it open. Music thumps through the walls loud enough to reach the curb.

Josh exhales through his nose. “Well. Looks like a dump.”

I glance at him.

His mouth twitches.

I don’t answer, because I don’t know what to say.

My stomach has been in a fist since we crossed onto campus. It got worse passing the rink — squat gray building, banners down the side, WOLVES in letters two stories tall — and worse again when Josh pointed at some brick building and said that’s probably where you’ll have classes, like it was normal. Like it was a thing that was going to happen to me on a Tuesday.

By the time we turned onto Hawthorne, I’d started counting.

In for four. Hold for four. Out for six.