Jasmine
I get to the rink at 6:15am, the way I always do. Forty-five minutes before practice starts. My dad's old team-issued hoodie hangs off my shoulders like it belongs to a bigger person, which it does. The ratty sleeves cover my hands, but I like it that way. It feels comfy.
My father’s assistant, Wendy, who sometimes works the front desk of the rink too, waves at me without looking up from her laptop. I nod at her. I have nodded at Wendy every morning for three years. Some relationships don't require words, and it’s one of the few relationships I can depend on.
The break room coffee tastes like burnt asphalt, but I drink it anyway, in the same chipped mug I've been using since sophomore year. The mug has a faded VCU logo on one side and a hairline crack near the rim that gets bigger every semester. Eventually, it will explode in my hand. I'll deal with it then. I’m not anything like those vapid Stanley mug girls. Like, who needs ten Stanley Cups? This one mug is all a girl needs.
Needless to say, I’m not an Instagram baddie. I’m just a basic girl with a clipboard, a coffee, a hoodie, and a system for VCU hockey that works.
The system is this:
I get to the rink first. I check the practice plan against my father's calendar, against the maintenance schedule, against the broadcast obligations, and against the academic eligibility list. I cross-reference. I flag. I email. Then I disappear.
I do this so well that nobody notices when it's done because nobody noticed it had to be done in the first place. This is the job that keeps my dad from losing his mind and his program in the same week.
This is also, I’m not above admitting to myself, the reason I exist on this campus.
If I’m useful to him, I am here.
If I’m not useful, I am…well. I don't say what I think out loud.
* * *
The first players to come in are the freshmen, the way it always is. They show up Red Bull caffeinated and loud as hell, dressed in matching VCU sweats, joking about some inappropriate online video or some new pussy they were fortunate enough to bag.
Those poor girls. There’s no way in hell I would ever sleep with a hockey player. That’s like begging for a broken heart and a case of chlamydia.
I’ve been watching incoming VCU hockey freshmen do this for three Septembers in a row. They start out loud, hyped to be a part of our program, but by December, they’re quiet, tired, and humbled. Nobody on this campus knows my dad like a freshman who’s just been put through five months of his infamous Ice Mafia practice plan.
The captain of the team, Neo, walks in at six-thirty. He doesn't say anything to anyone. He never does, at least not at this time of day. Neo Major is built like a person who has a single thought and intends to act on it without apologizing. He nods at Wendy. He nods at me. But what he hasn’t done, in three years, is know my name.
That's not unkind. That's just Neo.
Shane follows him five minutes later, already mid-conversation with somebody on his phone. Shane Sullivan is another leader on the team, and he’s louder than Neo.
He flirts with the front desk girls. He flirts with the women in the staff break room. He probably flirted with my dad's secretary, and she’s sixty-three years old and recently widowed. Honestly, I find him hilarious. He’s a charming menace in the world and on the ice.
But he walks past me without even looking up. That's fine, though, because that's the deal. I wouldn’t expect anything different from him. I’m not the kind of girl someone like him would choose to flirt with…or acknowledge.
Bass comes in last. He always comes in last. He’s the one who is somehow always five to ten minutes late, despite living in the same house as the other players. He’s also the one who, today, looks up at me with an expression that is, for the first time in three years, slightly less than completely blank.
"Morning," he says.
I almost drop my coffee.
Bass has spoken to me approximately five times in three years. And before you ask, yes, I’ve counted. I do pathetic shit like that.
"Morning, Bass," I say back.
He nods at me. He nods as a normal person would nod at another person because in his world, it makes complete sense that I know his name and he doesn’t know mine. Then he heads toward the locker room.
I stand there with my chipped mug halfway to my mouth, wondering what the hell just happened, and try to remember if anything is unusual about today.
Then I remember.
Ah, yes, Bass is probably happier than usual. Today is the day the new transfer kid reports, and he loves fucking with the new guys.
* * *
