Page 94 of Puck You Both

Becker steps up onto the bench, and the team arranges itself, guys rotating to face him, Hammer leaning out of the shower doorway with a toothbrush in his mouth, Kane already filming. I sit down and start on my pads, one buckle at a time.

"Gentlemen." He raises the cards above his head. "Today, a letter passes to a new generation—"

"It's the same generation," Groover says. Fifteen seconds. I overestimated him.

"—a new chest. A chest that has carried this room for years. Quietly. Without thanks. Without feelings—"

"Get to the shirts!" Hammer says around the toothbrush.

"Don't rush art." But he snaps his fingers at Kane anyway, without breaking eye contact with his congregation. "The box."

Kane sets the phone down against a water bottle, still recording, and produces a cardboard box from under the bench.

T-shirts. Becker starts firing them around the room backhand, no aiming, and the room turns into a receiving drill, guys snagging them out of the air, pulling them on over base layers and half-strapped pads. Somebody yells about sizes, a trade happening across the aisle.

Mine hits me in the chest. I hold it up and read it.

A IS FOR APATHY.

Accurate. Decent print quality, too.

I fold it once and set it in my stall.

Jinx arrives at my elbow while Becker is still distributing. He sets a lit candle on my shelf, next to my spare blocker, adjusts it a quarter turn, and steps back to evaluate his work. "For the transition," he says.

I blow it out.

He relights it. He came prepared for resistance.

I blow it out.

"He's already changing things," Jinx says to Washington, wounded.

"Leave it unlit, Jinx."

"Unlit does nothing!"

"Neither does lit," I say.

Jinx looks at me like I’ve injured a puppy, picks up his candle, and carries it back to his own stall, where it will apparently do something.

Somewhere behind me, Petrov clears his throat. “This is a moment of great gravitas.”

Becker jerks his head back. "Seriously, who is tutoring him? This is becoming a problem."

Petrov shrugs. "The word chose the day."

Washington waits until the room starts interrogating Petrov, then crosses to me, quiet, and then it’s just the two of us in a corner of all that noise. He taps the A on my chest.

"Officially," he says, just for me, "Nothing changes. The rulebook's very clear on that."

"And unofficially?"

"Unofficially, you’re being groomed."

The words land somewhere behind my chest protector, and something climbs my throat. I swallow it down and give him what's left. "Okay."

"He said okay!" Becker yells from the bench, arms flung out to the room. "That's practically a speech!"