Page 22

It takes a long time.

When he's done he's standing in the middle of the room in a gray compression shirt and black compression shorts and socks with holes in both heels.

"Happy?" he says.

"Hands behind your back."

He does it. He puts his hands behind his back. He doesn't make a joke. That bothers me more than anything he's done all morning.

"Stand there. Don't move until I say."

So he stands there.

He's shorter than me by two inches, and his whole body looks different without the pads on it. Narrower. All that speed is in his legs, long thighs and tight calves, and his shoulders are wide for his size. There's a bruise coming up on his left shoulder, yellow-green at the edges, right where the strap of my bag sits. I didn't think about that when I gave the order. I'm thinking about it now.

His chest is going up and down. Fast. He's breathing hard through his nose. He's fixed his eyes on a spot over my head, on the wall. He's got a little scar through one eyebrow I've never noticed, white and thin.

The room is so quiet I can hear the compressor for the ice hum through the wall.

He doesn't move. A minute goes by. Two. His fingers flex behind his back. His jaw works. Once, he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and then puts it back, careful, like he's caught himself.

I meant to make him feel small.

That was the whole idea. I'd make him stand in an empty room in his underwear like a kid who got caught, and he'd feel it, and every time he walked into this room for the rest of the season he'd remember it.

He doesn't look small.

He looks like he's holding something up that's too heavy for him, and he's not putting it down, because I told him not to.

His eyes leave the wall. They come down and meet mine.

They're blue. I knew that. I've seen them through a visor a hundred times. I didn't know they were this blue, or that he'd look at me like this—not angry anymore, not cocky, just steady. Waiting. Like he's in the crease, and I'm the one with the puck.

I look away first.

I look at the floor. At my own skates. My face is hot. I can feel it in my ears.

"Get dressed," I say. "Practice is at nine."

I don't watch him do it. I get up and walk out of the room in my pads, which you don't do, and I go and stand in the empty hallway with my back against the cinder block and my mask in my hand.

I don't know what that was.

I know exactly what that was.

I'm off all day.

At practice, I let in three on a drill where I never let in anything. Kasper asks me if I'm sick. At lunch, I eat half a sandwich and throw the rest away. In the weight room I put too much on the bar for squats and Wes has to spot me, and when I rack it he looks at me with that face, the face from the kitchen.

"You okay?" he says.

"Fine."

"You look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm fine, Wes."

I'm not. I'm angry. I'm angry at Lindqvist and I'm angrier at myself and I can't figure out which one I'm angrier at, which makes me angrier.