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Dane's in his stall by the door, taping a stick. He's not looking at his stick. He's looking at me.

I smile at him. It feels like it's hanging off my face on a hook.

Back at the house, everybody's too wired to sleep and too scared of Halvorsen to do anything about it. Gunnar and Jace are playing a video game with the volume all the way down. Petey's on the couch with his playbook, mouthing the breakout. Kasper's door is shut.

I sit on the stairs with a new bag of ice on my ankle, because the couch is full and my room feels too small.

Wes sits down two steps below me.

He doesn't say anything at first. He's got a bowl of cereal at eleven at night, the way he always does after games, and he eats it with his elbows on his knees and looks at the front door.

"Okoye's coming around," he says finally.

"Yeah?"

"He said something to me in the shower. About Marrack." Wes chews. "He said his old bantam coach used to do stuff like that. Little threats. Said he quit hockey for a year when he was thirteen because of it."

I didn't know that. I've been sitting near Okoye for five months, and I didn't know that.

"Huh," I say.

Wes puts his spoon down in the bowl.

"I watched the October tape again," he says. "The handshake line. And the one from tonight, when D skated past him." He turns around on the step so he can look at me. His face is very serious. "I'm not asking you what it is. Okay? I want to say that first. I'm not asking."

"Okay."

"But whatever it is, you're not by yourself in it. Not anymore." He picks his bowl back up. "And if you ever decide to say it out loud, I'll stand next to you while you do. That's all. That's all I wanted to say."

I can't talk. My throat's closed up.

"Okay," I manage.

"Okay." He gets up. He ruffles my hair on his way past, like I'm a little brother, like I'm Petey. "Ice that thing. You're a lunatic."

"Everybody keeps saying that."

"Because it's true," he says, and goes up the stairs.

I can't sleep.

That's not new. I haven't slept right since Tuesday, since the clip. But tonight's worse. I lie on my back in Nico's old bed with my ankle up on a pillow and my phone held over my face, and I open my Notes app, and I write.

My name is Theo Lindqvist. Last April, in the conference final, I hit Nico Kovač from behind.

I stare at it until the words stop looking like words.

Before the third period, my coach, Ray Marrack, came to my stall and told me to take Nico out of the series. He didn't tell me how. I chose how. That's on me, and it will always be on me.

I delete the second paragraph. I write it again. I delete That's on me. I put it back.

I'm not saying this to make myself look better. I don't. I'm saying it because Coach Marrack said on television this week that I acted alone, and that's only half true, and the half he left out is the half that⁠—

Delete.

Coach Marrack threatens players' scholarships to make them do what he wants. He did it to me. He's doing it now to my old teammates, who are⁠—

Delete. Delete. Delete.