Page 42 of Gave Proof Through the Night

For some reason, the guys have some kind of competition between the East and West teams to see which team can give away all our commemorative sticks first. We each were allotted five to give away. I felt a little awkward going up to perfect strangers on the street and offering them a hockey stick they may or may not want, so I figured they’d be best received if I gave them all away on the parade route. Apparently, they’re highly valuable, especially when signed, so I took a sharpie to them this morning.

Bryce Chambers drops into the last open chair with a plate stacked so high it should require its own zip code, sets a stray sausage link rolling across the table, and doesn’t chase it. “Anybody seen the lineup? They put us directly behind the Olympic equestrians, which nobody in the history of parade logistics should ever do to a group of professional athletes with the attention span of golden retrievers.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jake jokes.

“You’ll find me closer to the back, thanks,” Colt says. “I’d rather not be downwind of horses.”

Bryce swallows a big bite, nodding. “Me too.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Coach Badaszek calls out. “Hydrate. Sunscreen. Smile like you mean it, we’ve got cameras on the whole route.”

Somewhere behind me, Hilary Drummond, the tournament event organizer, is actively avoiding a guy asking about whether the Liberty Bear mascot costume smells like “summer camp” or “an actual bear died in this.”

By the time we’re lined up, the staging area looks like America threw up glitter and bunting and then decided it looked great. I wonder for more than a fleeting moment, whether Sticky Fingers/Dangerous is somewhere in that crowd. I have to admit, if it were up to me, I’d spend the day inside the air conditioned arena. The heat’s already climbing, that thick July heat that makes the air look wavy above the asphalt, and we haven’t even started walking yet. DC in summer doesn’t do subtle, it just commits fully to being a swamp with monuments in it.

The parade route unrolls down Constitution Avenue in a wall of heat and noise, flags snapping, the marching band behind us doing something patriotic and slightly out of tune. I can feel the tuba in my molars. The second we round onto the avenue proper the crowd noise hits like a wave. People ten deep on either side, kids on shoulders, somebody’s dog wearing a bandana with stars on it. A guy holding a sign that says HONK IF YOU LOVE HOCKEY, which, sir, this is a parade, not a highway.

Jason Dexter has positioned himself behind the equestrian unit like a bodyguard, arms crossed, glaring at Dante Leinecker, who is holding both hands up in the universal gesture of I didn’t do anything while clearly having done something.

“Not my monkeys, not my circus,” I mutter, and continue forward.

My jersey feels like a wool blanket sewn directly onto my skin, even with my undershirt underneath. My gold medal sits heavy and warm against my chest, and every time I turn my head it swings and somebody in the crowd completely loses it. Which, fine. I get it. I’d probably lose my mind too if I saw an Olympic medal at a Fourth of July parade. It’s a good bit.

“Precio! Precio, over here!”

I turn. A kid, maybe eight, is doing his absolute best to climb his father’s shoulders to get closer to the rope line, waving both arms like he’s flagging down a rescue helicopter.

I grab a stick, kneel down to his level, hand it over. “Happy Fourth of July.”

His face does the thing kids’ faces do when something enormous and unexpected happens to them, this full-body joy that adults have mostly forgotten how to feel. His dad takes a photo and mouths thank you at me over his head, and I nod, and my whole chest is full.

One stick down. Four to go.

A girl in a leg cast and glitter face paint waves. Red, white, and blue everywhere, including her hair. Stick number two, gone. She tells me very seriously that hockey is her third favorite sport after gymnastics and “competitive baking,” and I tell her, equally seriously, that competitive baking sounds terrifying and I respect it. Her mother laughs so hard she has to lean on the rope line.

Twins, maybe six years old in identical outfits. They get one stick between them that immediately becomes a tug-of-war. I give them a second one before things escalate into an international incident. Stick three and four, gone in one transaction.

One stick left. About four hundred more kids between here and the reviewing stand.

Then a kid in a tiny Team USA shirt is jumping up and down at the barricade, screaming my name like I invented fire, and I hand him my last stick without even thinking about it. His whole face rearranges itself into pure joy. Worth it.

I wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist and keep walking, waving, shaking the occasional extended hand, doing the thing where you make brief, genuine eye contact with as many people as physically possible because that’s the job today, that’s the whole job, be a person these people can point at and say I met him, he seemed nice.

The heat climbs with the sun. By the time we pass 10th Street, my jersey’s gone from damp to genuinely wet, sweat running down my spine in a way that makes the gold medal stick uncomfortably to my chest. Somebody hands me a bottle of water from the sideline and I down half of it in one go, and for one blessed block I stop thinking about Sticky Fingers and just exist inside the parade, smiling, waving, shaking hands, and being exactly the poster boy for a sport I’d play for free.

Then the crowd thins for a second near a shade tree.

That’s when I see her.

She’s maybe thirty feet off the parade route, tucked into the crowd behind the barricade tape, and my brain short circuits so fast I nearly walk into a fire hydrant.

Cutoff denim shorts. A crop top that says KISS ME, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY in sparkly red letters. She’s got a Bomb Pop, the red white and blue kind, melting fast in the heat, which she is currently licking with an expression of total unbothered joy like she doesn’t know she’s standing in the middle of the single most distracting outfit ever created.

My whole nervous system just quits its job.

“Hey Zesty,” Kingston says beside me. “You just stopped walking.”

I have, in fact, stopped walking. The rest of the team drifts forward without me, waving at the crowd, doing the job I’m supposed to be doing, while I stand there like a man who just saw a ghost. A ghost in denim shorts. A very good ghost.