The clock ticks down as once again, I chase an Orcas player down the ice.
He bum-rushes Ren, who doesn’t back down or give any ground—just screams as the Orcas player crashes into him, rolling on the goalie’s head. Bramms slams into the Orcas player, punching him with that big right hook.
“Power play,” Jovi says as we ready.
Except the ref doesn’t call it.
Carlsson is scuffling with another Orcas defender, and the ref pushes them apart and gives my teammate a warning. Ren’s shaking out his arm, rolling his neck, and hauling himself up.
“You motherfucker!” Ellie screams at the ref. “That’s a penalty! That’s a roughing penalty! Do not ignore me! I know you can hear me!”
She’s red-faced, and her hair’s messy. She pulls off her headband and throws it on the ice.
“Shit.” I rush over and grab her just as she’s about to jump over the boards and attack the ref.
“Put me down, Fletcher! I’m going to rip his face off!” I dump the angry girl into the box and toss her headband in after her.
Ren skates over, rubbing his shoulder to get checked out while the Orcas players skate around on the ice, laughing at the replay of Ellie trying to jump onto the ice looping over and over on the jumbotrons above.
“I’m fine.” Ren waves us away.
“We need you for the game next week.” Ellie sounds furious as she runs her hands all over Ren’s shoulder.
He takes a swig from a bottle of what smells like kerosene that her granny gives him.
“Got some pills too,” the old woman offers. “If you want to play roulette. Why not? Live a little.”
He shrugs and takes two from her palm.
“We’re not putting you back in.” Ellie says angrily.
“Are you putting in Braxton?” I ask.
We look at the kid eating a granola bar and scrolling on his phone at the other end of the bench.
“We have four minutes, and we need two goals to make it to overtime,” she says. “We’re not putting a goalie in.”
“So a Hail Mary.” I blink.
“Pulling the goalie is a legitimate strategy.”
“Four minutes, boys,” Zayne says. “A lot can happen in four minutes.”
The Orcas see the six of us forwards on the ice and Ren sitting on the bench. They dump in all their defenders. It’s going to be a bloodbath.
“Swan Lake,” Jovi says, calling one of the plays we looked at last night.
“Doesn’t the chick die at the end of that movie?”
“It’s a ballet.”
“And yeah. Jumps off a cliff.”
“Yeah, but the music is killer at the end.”
On the loudspeakers, the Barbie song starts screeching. We’re going out in style. I hear Jovi singing along behind me as we face off.
I dig in—we all do, to the last of our reserves.
