Before I could believe what I was doing; I headed down to the locker room, laced up my skates, and made my way out onto the ice. None of the coaches or parents said anything to me, but I felthereyes as I skated past the glass.
Frankie’s eyes.
I couldn’t pay attention to that though, as I neared her mini-me daughter skating herself dizzily around the net.
“Hey.”
The girl stopped skating with a fast turn and stood tall and still, like she hadn’t been doing circles for the last half hour. “Sup, Saw?”
The little girl calling me by my hockey name took me back, but I guessed it shouldn’t. She was her mother’s daughter, after all. Getting closer, her bright green eyes — identical to her mom's — burned into mine through the dark lens of her helmet.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
With an unimpressed shrug, she looked around. “Same thing I do every practice at this wasteland.”
I looked out over the chaos, trying to see it through her point of view, and almost shuddered at the pointlessness of it.
“What exactly is skating in circles going to do for you?”
With another shrug, she resumed her same path around the net. “What are speed drills going to do for me?” she countered, “I’m a goalie, and we don’t have a goalie coach.”
“You don’t have a single coach at all,” I muttered, and she clapped back with a grunt.
“No shit.”
I could feel her mother’s stare burning holes through my skin, and I glanced back at her over my shoulder. Frankie held her hands up in awhat’s going on motion, and I looked back down at her daughter.
“Grab your stick,” I told her, picking up an extra stick off the top of the net and collecting lost pucks from the boards, long ago forgotten by the other players now wrestling on the other side of the ice.
“What for?” Emmie questioned, even as she picked up her stick.
“Goalie drills.” I skated out of the crease and stood waiting for her to get ready. “Defend.”
She dropped into a stance and blocked the first shot, caught the second in her regular hockey glove, and then missed the third. I hadn’t expected her to block any of them, given that she didn’t have any actual goalie gear on.
Standing up out of her crouch, she stared at me, blinking, waiting for me to say something.
“Carter!” I bellowed over the chaos, catching the attention of the head coach for the Tiny Tots league. The ice went silent, and for the first time since the first kid put skates down, everything was still. “Where is her gear?”
The man glanced over at Emmie and then at me, looking dumb as shit. “She’s wearing it.”
“Her goalie gear!” I snapped in frustration. “She’s a goalie!”
The man shrugged half-heartedly. “We don’t need another goalie, we have one,” he said, nodding to a kid on the bottom of adog pile, screaming for his mommy, before turning away, giving his attention to the kids he deemed worthy. The boys.
I could almost feel Frankie’s mind boiling as I locked eyes with her through the scuffed glass.
This was what she meant when she said her daughter needed her.
She was risking physical pain to protect her daughter from the bullshit she knew Emmie would face.
Not on my watch. No fucking way.
Turning back to the small girl standing in the crease, I put my hands on my hips. “Do you want to play with these kids?”
Emmie looked up at me and blinked. “They’re the only team for my age.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
