Then I think better of it. This could be worse, I think, gathering the stack. He could’ve taken something. He could’ve done anything, and this is what he chose to do.
I bring all six inside and walk straight to my room. I don’t crumple them, and I don’t throw them out. I stack them, square the edges, and set the little pile on my desk — right next to the framed photo of my father with the Cup over his head.
And I stand there a second and look at his stick, leaning by the wall. Then my eyes dart to six of his grinning faces on my desk.
I sit down on the edge of my bed and breathe.
I wonder, for one honest second, whether I went too far. Whether the stick was a mistake.
Then I remember the way he played last night — the points, the new stick, the two fingers he pointed at it across the ice like he was thanking me — and I stop wondering. He isn’t bothered. He has never been bothered by anything in his entire charmed life. The stick didn’t wound him; it apparently upgraded him.
So we’re even on that. Maybe.
I pick up my phone from the nightstand.
Four unread from Ermington.
Ermington: How’s my new tenant settling in?
Ermington: Take notes for me, princess. There’s gonna be a quiz.
Ermington: For your reports.
Ermington: Linwood_Game1_FullTape.mp4
I stare at the file for a long moment.
I don’t open it. I don’t respond, and not because I can’t think of anything cutting. I could write three sentences right now that would ruin his whole Sunday. Silence is the better weapon. He’s a man who lives on attention the way the rest of us live on oxygen, and the single most devastating thing I can do is give him none of it. Let him sit three doors down with absolute certainty that he’s winning and let the quiet do the work.
I chug the rest of my coffee and decide I need more if I’m going to function properly today. The kitchen smells like coffee and the day is truly ordinary. Kirra’s at the counter with a bowl of oatmeal, and Bree’s beside her with her laptop open. We have another roommate, but she has a boyfriend, so she’s never home. I pour myself a second cup of coffee and set my own oats going in the microwave.
“So,” Bree says, closing her laptop. “Last night.”
I shake my head. “No.”
Kirra lifts her spoon and points it at me. “Was that Stanley Ermington standing in your bedroom at midnight, or did I dream it?”
“He was leaving.”
“What happened?”
“He was drunk.” I take my oatmeal out and stir it. “And bored.”
Bree laughs into her coffee. Kirra raises her eyebrows.
“What’re you guys working on today?” I ask, changing the subject.
Bree’s group project is being held hostage by a man named Tyler who hasn’t opened the shared doc in nine days. Kirra’s going to Sunday yoga at eleven and wants to know if the studio validates parking.
“Oh —” Kirra turns to me. “There’s a thing next weekend. My cousin’s friend knows the people throwing it. It’s supposed to be huge. You should come, it’ll actually be fun.”
“No, thanks,” I say, before the sentence is even finished.
Kirra shrugs and lets it go, and the morning rolls on.
Back in my room, I have my laptop open. I focus on work next. I clear my paid assignment first — an hour of tagging, zone entries, type and side and result, clean and fast. Then I open the file I actually dread, which is the one my father wants. The Ermington report.
And there’s the irony, sitting right in my lap: the man who laminated his own face and taped it to my window before sunrise is now, for the next twenty minutes, my professional subject. I have been assigned to watch Stanley Ermington by my father, who loves him, and Stanley –– knows. Take notes for me, princess. There’s gonna be a quiz. For your reports. He knows exactly why I’m at every game. I haven’t told him, so I wonder if he speaks to my dad often. I actually haven’t asked. That would be weird. Wait, would it be weird? He trained Stanley over thesummer, so maybe it wouldn’t be weird if they talked. I don’t know.
