Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders)

by Cate Cameron

  I was trying not to hate her for that.

  …

  “You’re not acting like yourself, son.” Coach leaned back in his ratty old chair and squinted up at me. He and Tyler were close and had a sort of father-son thing going on, but I’d never really felt too bonded.

  So I just said, “Yes, sir,” and waited for him to let me go.

  Instead, he kept squinting at me a little longer, then said, “You were doing great there for a month or so. Intensity like I’ve never seen out of you, and improved play to go with it.”

  “I’m still intense.”

  “You’re a bit too intense now.” Coach made a face as if he realized it was a strange sort of criticism, given the praise he’d just doled out. “In the last two days you’ve almost started three fights in practice, you’ve been late to both morning workouts and shown up looking like you already ran a half marathon, and your locker suddenly has a fist-sized dent in the door.” He shook his head. “There are guys on the team who do this crap all the time, Winslow. It’s annoying, but I’m not going to give you a hard time about it when I ignore them. So this conversation isn’t about you being in trouble. You understand that?”

  “So what is it about?”

  Another rueful face, another acknowledgment that he knew I wasn’t going to like what he said but he was going to say it anyway. “MacDonald says you’ve got girl troubles.”

  MacDonald had a big mouth. I shook my head anyway. “No, sir. No troubles.” No girl, so how could I have troubles with her?

  “Mrs. Davidson over at the high school says you were dating a nice girl, a good student. She said she thought that girl was helping you take things a bit more seriously.”

  Another person who should have been keeping her mouth shut. I mean, it’s a small town, and pretty much everyone knows pretty much everything, but there’s also a nice tradition of people pretending they don’t know some stuff, just to give the illusion of privacy. Apparently that system had been canceled and nobody had bothered to let me know. “We broke up,” I said. “It’s not a big thing. We weren’t even going out all that long.”

  He nodded like he’d heard the secret of the universe. “Still stings, though, doesn’t it?”

  “I can take it.”

  Another nod. “Yeah. You’re a tough kid, Winslow. Big, strong, tough, fast, good skills—sounds like a recipe for a great hockey player, doesn’t it?” He leaned back in his chair. “That’s what I’ve been planning to start pointing out to scouts when they come by. I know MacDonald’s getting most of the attention, but if you keep working like you have been, without the over-the-top crap, I think you’ve got a good shot at the show.”

  It should have made me happy. Should have made me way more than happy, really. Pretty much every kid in the country plays hockey, plus quite a few from the States and Europe, and the NHL drafts a couple hundred a year. That’s all, and I was being told I could maybe be one of them. Having the coach’s recommendation would mean a hell of a lot to the scouts, so it should mean a hell of a lot to me.

  But I just felt sort of numb. A few days ago, I’d have raced off and told Claudia about it, and she wouldn’t really have understood what a big deal it was but she’d have been happy for me anyway. “Thanks,” I mumbled. “Is there anything else?”

  Another damn squint. “I use you as a rubber wall—did you know that?”

  “A what?”

  “A rubber wall. Like, when people are crazy or upset or whatever, they get put in a room with rubber walls. The walls are soft enough that the people don’t get hurt if they slam into them, and strong enough that the wall doesn’t get damaged. I use you like that, with your teammates.”

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed that I got assigned to deal with the hotheads a lot, but I didn’t really like hearing myself described as “soft.” I don’t think any hockey player would. “So you think I’m not doing my job now?”

  “No, I’m just wondering…who do you get to slam into? You’re usually a happy guy, so you probably don’t have a lot of mechanisms in place for dealing with stuff. Does that make sense?”

  I sighed. “Everything makes sense in the little bits when you say it. But I get the feeling you want me to glue it together into something bigger, and I honestly have no idea how it fits together.”

  “Who have you talked to about all this?”

  Well, I’d talked to MacDonald, but obviously I wouldn’t be doing that again. “There is no ‘all this.’ I’m fine. I’ll make sure I’m on time tomorrow. I’ll dial back in practice. Everything’s good.”

  “Your parents coming to the game in London?” he asked.

  Jesus, was he planning to talk to my parents? “I don’t know. They were going to try to make it.”

  “You want to take some time off before or after the game? Go home for a visit?”

  More time to lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling and think about Claudia? “No, I don’t think so. I’m good here.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay, if you say so. But, son, if you need someone to talk to… I know I might not be your first choice, but I’m available. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and I got the hell out of there.

  Tyler was waiting in the locker room, reorganizing his gear like it was something important rather than just an excuse for sticking around and being nosy. I grabbed my bag and left. I didn’t want to deal with him, or with anyone else. I just wanted the whole mess to be over.

  …

  “Claudia!” my mother called from downstairs. I was tempted to roll over and pull my pillow over my head, but I knew she wouldn’t give up. She never gave up.

  So I swung my feet over the side of the bed and stumbled toward the door. It was Saturday, midmorning, and she was probably going to give me another talk about it being time to stop moping, and how I was wasting valuable time. I didn’t want to hear it, but I decided to get it over with.

  But when I got to the top of the stairs and looked down toward the front door, there was an unfamiliar woman standing in the foyer with my mother. I wished I’d taken the time to brush my hair or maybe even get dressed, but she’d already seen me, so it was a bit too late.

  “This is Paula Hillroy,” my mother said. “She’s Ms. Coyne’s partner, and wanted to drop something off for you.”

  “Hi, Claudia,” the woman said. She was pretty, with short dark hair that curled around her face. I noticed the bruise on her temple for the first time, and was tempted to turn around and run back to bed. Ms. Coyne had wanted this woman to eat more interesting food, and now Ms. Coyne was dead. Because of some stupid idea I’d come up with.

  Ms. Hillroy stepped toward the stairs, limping a little, and I felt guilty about making her move. If she wanted to yell at me, I should go down and let her do it.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, shuffling down the stairs.

  “Thank you. I miss her.” Then she forced a smile. “I’m trying to work through some things. We had the funeral out in Vancouver with Steph’s family, but there are people here who cared about her, too.” She peered at me. “Right?”

  “Yes,” I said numbly. I’d mostly been wallowing in my grief over losing Chris, but Ms. Coyne had definitely been in my thoughts as well. “She was a great teacher.”

  “I know she cared about you.” She pulled a little black bar out of her pocket. A thumb drive. “She was so excited about the Sisterhood. This is the work she did before she—” She stopped, frowned as if surprised she wasn’t able to say the word, then forced another smile. “This is what she was working on. And I’ve talked to the other sisters, and we’re going to keep it going. We’re going to keep trying to be awesome, in her memory.”

  “But—the accident—it happened because you were trying to be awesome.”

  “The accident was an accident. It happened because of bad luck and an unexpected cold snap. That’s all.” She sounded almost fierce, and I realized she might be fighting her own battle with guilt. We stood silently for a mome
nt, then she said, “She was so proud of you. Talked about you all the time, you and Karen. She said you were both blossoming. Said it was a privilege to get to see you growing.”

  I stared at her, then at my mother. Blossoming. Growing. I had been doing that. And now I was back to being dormant.

  Ms. Hillroy brushed impatiently at her eyes and said, “Sorry. I have to get going. I just wanted to drop that off, and let you know—I’m not sure. Let you know how excited she was about you, I guess. I wanted you to know you touched her.”

  “She touched me, too,” I managed.

  “Good.” She was crying now, and she made a quick, embarrassed good-bye to my mom and then was out the door and practically jogging down the walkway to the street.

  I turned to my mother. “I made a mistake,” I said.

  She shook her head. “When you got off track, maybe. But it wasn’t a mistake to get on track again. No.”

  “It was if I don’t like the track. If it’s not going where I want, it’s a mistake.”

  “It is going where you want! Nanotechnology is—”

  “I want a life!” I screamed. I knew I wasn’t supposed to raise my voice. I knew I was supposed to be calm and logical and keep myself under control. I knew all that, but I didn’t care. I whirled and headed for the stairs. I needed to get out of my pajamas and out of that house. I was still alive; I couldn’t waste that gift.

  …

  Saturday morning practice had scouts from the Big League and the national hockey body. The NHL scouts were important, obviously, but the Hockey Canada guys were almost a bigger deal, because they were the ones who invited players to the World Juniors, coming up in a few weeks. I figured Tyler was in for sure, and probably Cooper, but the rest of the team was just wishing for miracles.

  But I didn’t seem to care at all. I kept the coach’s warning in mind and practiced hard, but with control. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone in the stands, though. I just wanted to smash into people, wanted to push my body to its limits and exhaust myself and not have any energy left for thinking, or remembering. Or wishing things were different.

  After the practice, a couple scouts came down to talk to us and I managed to be polite, but I got out of there as soon as possible. Tyler wanted me to go to Sullivan’s for a while, but I didn’t feel like hanging out with the guys. Or with Tyler, really. I was pretty sick of the way he was watching me all the time, like he thought I was going to break into pieces and he’d have to scoop me up and put me back together.

  So I ducked out of the arena while he was still putting on the Tyler MacDonald show for the agents and headed for my truck. When I saw someone waiting there in the bright sunlight—someone smaller, someone female—I froze. I wasn’t ready for this. I didn’t have my defenses up. I knew a clean break was best, and I didn’t want to fight anymore or hear more justifications. I didn’t want to look at Claudia and think about how I used to be able to touch her and now I couldn’t, how she used to smile when she saw me coming, and how the smile I gave her in return seemed to come from way inside me, not just from my face.

  She stepped forward as if she knew what I was thinking. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was a bit shaky, and I guess I’m an asshole because that made me glad. I wanted this to be hard for her, too. “I know I… I know it was me.” She came a little closer, and I didn’t seem to be able to do the smart thing and move away.

  “I made a mistake,” she said. She was talking faster now, as if she had a lot to say and wanted to get it out before I left. Or maybe before she lost her courage. “I got scared. After all that lecturing about you trying, I was the one who quit as soon as things got hard. I know that.” She looked at me as if she was hoping for, or maybe even expecting, some encouragement. But I just didn’t have it to give, and after a moment, she gave up and started talking again.

  “Before, it was like I was sleeping, and then I woke up. You woke me up. You and Ms. Coyne and Karen and the Sisterhood, but mostly you. And I liked it. I loved it. But…” She frowned now, and I could tell she was trying not to cry. It would have been the most natural thing to go over and wrap my arms around her, but I forced myself to stay away. After a shaky breath, she kept going. “I got scared. Being awake was great, but it was scary. Living my own life, growing up, living now instead of storing up for some future—I panicked. And when Ms. Coyne—when she died, it should have made it more clear to me that I needed to live now. But it didn’t. I don’t know why. I guess because it hurt? Because living out here, with people, not numbers—sometimes I’m going to get hurt. And instead of accepting that, I hated it and I wanted to run away.”

  She’d shuffled closer now, close enough that I could have reached out and touched her if I dared. I kept my hands locked tight around the straps of my gear bag.

  “And I hurt you when I did it. I didn’t mean to, but I was too chicken not to. And I’m really, really sorry. I made a mistake. I don’t want to be asleep anymore.” She took a deep breath and then lifted her chin, and right there in the parking lot, the sun caught her eyes and made them bright and fierce, and she was Dia. “I’m not going to be asleep anymore. I think that’s important, for me and maybe for you. I—I hope you’ll give me another chance. I really, really hope you will. But even if you don’t, I’m going to do this. I’m going to keep going, and keep living. I’m going to keep trying, even though it’s scary.” She nodded as if she’d convinced herself.

  “Tomorrow night is the poetry jam, and I’m going to do it. I know you have a game, so you couldn’t be there even if you wanted to, and probably you don’t really want to, and I don’t blame you. But I’m going to do it, for me and for Ms. Coyne and for you, and for my mom, in a kind of backward way. I want her to understand that the choices I’m making are mine. They’re not about you…not directly. Not just about you. I mean, I want to be with you because I want to be alive, but the wanting to be alive part is coming from me, not from you. Does that make any kind of sense?”

  I nodded slowly. I was pretty sure I understood, but I wasn’t really sure I trusted her to follow through.

  She nodded like I’d said that aloud. “I know I have no right to ask you this, Chris, but please give me another chance.” She made a weird half-laugh, half-sob sound. “I challenge you to give me another chance. A Sisterhood challenge, so you can turn it down if you want to. But if you could take the challenge, even if you were being really cautious and careful about it? That would be really awesome. For me. And I’d try to make it awesome for you, too. I won’t let you down again. I promise.”

  I heard noise from behind me, then. Familiar voices, coming closer, and I didn’t want to be around the guys right then. I felt like Claudia had ripped all my skin off and I was just a bunch of exposed nerves. Joking that normally would have bounced off me like—well, like I was a rubber wall—would have been too much.

  “I get a night, right?” I said quickly. “That’s the deal? You give the challenge, and I get a night to decide if I take it?”

  She nodded. “But it’s not a real challenge. I mean, the Sisterhood challenges are supposed to be about suggesting ways to make you more awesome. Really, I’m being selfish about this. I want you to do it for me, not for you. You’re already awesome.”

  I sure didn’t feel awesome. She stepped away from my truck and I practically ran to it, diving inside and shutting the door without saying good-bye to her, or nodding at the guys who were walking by, watching us curiously, or doing anything else that would remind me that the cab of the truck was mostly transparent and it really wasn’t my safe den where I could hide from all the confusion. I peeled out of the parking lot as if I were running away from something, but of course it all came along with me. There was no escape. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There were about twenty participants in the poetry jam. Twenty poets, I guess, but that sounded weird. There wasn’t a backstage area or anything glamorous, just some seats in the front re
served for us.

  I keep turning around to look behind me at the audience. Maybe a hundred people? I know, that’s not a lot, really, but it was about four times bigger than my English class, which made it four times more people than I’d ever spoken in front of before.

  And I was committed to doing it right. At least, I wanted to be committed. I knew my poem wasn’t all that great, as usual, so it was only going to work if I could really perform it. I needed to use my voice and my body to convey the emotions that were too much for my useless words.

  Another peek behind me. Karen and Oliver, Karen’s half sisters and their mom, which was a bit weird, Dawn, a couple people from my English class…and they’d all driven hours on the highway to come down and see me. I had to do it, and I had to do it right. I felt like this event was the test of my new life; if I wasn’t strong enough to do this, maybe I wasn’t strong enough to do the rest of it, either.

  The first three poets were good. Powerful words, and they seemed totally confident, like they owned the stage. The fourth poet totally crashed, like he lost his nerve from the start and his mind from the middle. He ended up quitting before his poem really seemed over, just finishing one sentence, saying thank you, and jogging off the stage.

  I stopped turning around to look at the audience at that point. I didn’t want to freak myself out any more than I already was.

  Three more poets, all solid, and then my turn. My hands were shaking, and my gray flannel dress, the one Chris had said was practically a schoolgirl outfit, felt horribly unsophisticated. I should have grunged it up like some of the others, or dressed up more, or—I should have been different.