Twenty Miles Read Free Page A

wouldn’t look up, and she’d lose the puck, she was about to lose the puck. Open. And Pelly, head up, finally, cage tilting toward me and the puck coming fast,
tock
of the puck on my tape. Breathless, ready. And legs springing long, eyes breathing the bobbing helmets, and the jerseys all different colours – shit, different colours – and holding on to the puck, keeping it – who was on my team, I didn’t know – their voices shouting my own name hot in my ears, coming from behind and beside, the heated jazz of the Z, sawing me open. Chest growing in breath, red bloom of lungs, ribs’ tectonic shift. Open.
    Breath moving in smooth currents, in and out of my lungs, puck clinging tight to the stick, and bodies everywhere, colours everywhere. But now I saw only the spaces between, precise. Incisions in the frozen air. The smooth slice of blades, alignment of joints and muscle, angles measured and tight. Mathematical wonder.
    And then Hal was bearing down on me, and I could feel the swing, tumbling back into myself, but not quite, logic still strung down the electrical wires of my legs, Hal bearing down, script unravelling in my limbs, legs coiling and then boneless, not thinking, feeling Hal’s hard bones against my shoulder, all of Hal’s bones at once against the boards, and then I was looking down, spine still buzzing.
    Hal sprawled, her gloves and stick littering the ice in a circumference appropriate to impact, like a plane wreck.
    ‘Yard sale!’ someone shouted across the ice.
    Hal lay on her stomach, hands clutching at her helmet, ragged gasps. She rolled on to her back.
    ‘I’m – I’m sorry – I forgot– I played hockey with guys, and – ’ I couldn’t breathe, Hal’s face red and crumpled. Moon sprinted over.
    ‘Jesus Christ! What’s wrong with – ?’ She saw my face. ‘Oh – well, there’s no hitting – Hal, are you okay?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Hal said and hoisted herself up off the ice with a sharp breath.
    ‘I’m really sorry. I – ’
    Hal turned her back and skated away. I looked to Moon, throat tight.
    ‘Hey, no,’ Moon said, as though reprimanding a puppy. ‘No. You injure one of our players and that’s – Hal’s our captain – if she got bumped off pre-season, I don’t – ’ Tears elbowed the backs of my eyes. Moon touched my arm with her glove and tilted her head slightly. ‘Hey, I know – listen. It’s like this. Just don’t do it again.’
    I glided back to the line at the boards.
    ‘You okay, buddy?’ Toad asked Hal. I slouched behind them, making myself small. I could see the muscle in Hal’s jaw clenching through the side of her cage.
    ‘I was just laid out by a fucking Barbie doll. Other than that, I’m great,’ she said.
    I cleared my throat and looked over into Pelly’s stall where she hid, face red and wet, her braces exposed in a pained grimace, silver gleaming from the vague shadow cast by the shelves above. Her shoulder pads spun slowly on their hook, like a mobile, shrouding half her face.
    ‘Are you okay?’ I asked. Pelly shook her head, hopeless. Toad came over and sat on the other side of her, nudging her to make room.
    ‘I won’t steal your tape any more, champ. You don’t have to cry about it.’ She smiled into the stall.
    ‘I sucked.’ An echo.
    ‘If you sucked, Pelter, then we all did. It was a fucking gong show. Mooner got a heinous haircut, and she’s taking it out on us.’
    ‘I’m going to get cut.’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘I am, Toad. You don’t know.’
    ‘I do know. And, anyways, it’s just the first day. You can get better, but Mooner’s mullet won’t improve for a long time, unless she shaves her head. And that’s a good thing, you know?’
    Silence.
    ‘It is a mullet,’ Pelly said.
    Toad hit her on the knee. ‘It really is. Boz says no, but it is. Heinous Hall of Fame material. Just don’t worry about stuff right now, Pelter, okay? Seriously.’
    Toad went back to her stall. Pelly’s head emerged after a bit