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"Mikey's mom got laid off in January, Dane. Halvorsen just told me he can't promise it doesn't get back to Ashby. Do you know what Marrack does when it gets back to Ashby?"

He doesn't say anything. His face has gone white.

"I was going to tell," I say. "After the series. When it couldn't cost them anything. I told my mom. I told her last night, on the phone, at two-thirty in the morning, after the series. I had a plan. I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you first."

"Theo."

"I trusted you." It comes out barely a whisper. "In there. I trusted you more than I've ever trusted anybody. You made a rule. In there, you tell me the truth. And I did. And you used it to⁠—"

I can't finish.

He takes a step toward me. His hand comes up.

"Whistle," I say.

He stops.

He stops like I've hit him. His hand drops. His whole body goes still, the way it does in the crease, except it's not the stillness of waiting. It's the stillness of something that's been hit too hard to move.

That word was for in there. For the bed. For the tape around my wrists. It was never for this.

I said it anyway. I watch him understand that.

"Everything stops," I say. "That's the rule."

I walk out.

Wes's room is at the other end of the hall, past the bathroom. I knock on the door with my bag on my shoulder and a garbage bag of my clothes in my other hand, the same garbage bag I came here with in October.

He opens the door. He looks at me. He looks at the garbage bag.

He doesn't ask.

He steps back and opens the door wider, and pulls the spare sleeping bag down off his closet shelf, and lays it out on the floor next to his bed, and gives me his second pillow.

"Game in five hours," he says. "Try to sleep."

I don't.

We lose 3–1.

I don't remember most of it. I remember the noise, the chicken suit, the clucking. I remember Marrack behind the Harrow bench with his arms crossed. I remember my legs being somebody else's legs, my hands being somebody else's hands. I get the puck in the slot once in the second period with a clear look and I don't even shoot. I just pass it, to nobody, and it goes off a Harrow skate and out of the zone.

Halvorsen moves me to the fourth line in the third. I don't argue.

Dane's good. Dane's better than good. He stops thirty-six shots and it doesn't matter, because the three that go in are the kind nobody stops. A tip. A deflection off Petey's skate. An empty-netter.

In the handshake line, Dane's in front of me. He shakes Marrack's hand this time. Fast. Doesn't look at him.

Then it's me.

Marrack takes his glove off. Takes my hand. Holds on. Smiles the beer-commercial smile.

"Heard your coach has been making phone calls, Theo," he says pleasantly.

Everything in me goes cold.

"Hope you know what you're doing." He pats my shoulder. "See you next Saturday."