Caleb Adams skates onto the ice at seven o'clock sharp.
He’s not what I expected.
I’ve read his file, so that my dad doesn’t have to. It’s an unofficial part of my job. My father coaches based on vibes rather than paperwork.
Immediately, a red flag goes up for me.
This kid has had three transfers in four years. Two minor disciplinary suspensions. One assault charge that didn't stick. And a VCU scholarship contingent on conduct. This is his last chance as a college hockey player.
Damn.
With this kind of paper trail, I expected someone bigger, louder, or someone who seems more of an obvious problem. What walks onto the ice instead is a tall, quiet kid with dark hair wet at the ends.
He’s wearing a black practice jersey. Number fourteen. And he moves with a specific kind of stillness that, in my experience, guys have when they are one bad day away from a total meltdown.
He doesn't look at the bench.
He doesn't look at the boards.
He doesn't look at anybody.
He skates one slow lap and starts working a puck along the wall like he’s been on this ice for years.
I have to admit, there’s something about the way he moves on the ice. It’s hypnotic. Is it confidence? Is it anger? I’m not sure. But it’s kind of sexy in a very odd way.
My dad has him paired against Bass for the scrimmage, and this is probably why Bass was so cheerful this morning. Pairing them together, and I want to be very clear about this, is a deeply unsubtle move on my father’s part.
Bass is a scrapper. Bass talks shit. Bass tests. And more than likely, Bass is going to do something within the first three minutes to see what kind of transfer he just got handed. Of course, that’s the point. My father has set this up because that’s exactly what he wants to find out too.
I should have warned the kid.
But I won’t.
A girl barely seen and never heard doesn’t give new players a “heads up”, especially if she wants to stay that way.
That's also part of my system.
* * *
The whistle blows.
The scrimmage is fast and ugly, the way scrimmages always are. Bodies hitting the ice hard, sticks slapping, somebody's mouthguard already lost. Bass takes the first run at Caleb in the corner. Clean check, more or less. Caleb absorbs it without changing his face.
Two shifts later, Caleb takes a run at Bass.
Also clean.
And they do this, back and forth, for about six minutes, but I can see Caleb getting wound tighter behind the eyes, even though nothing about him gives it away. His face is doing nothing. His shoulders are doing nothing. But there is something coiled inside the stillness of his cold, dark eyes that I’ve seen before. And I understand before anybody else does that this is going to end somewhere it shouldn't.
The whistle blows.
A beat passes.
And Caleb finishes the hit anyway.
The rink goes silent in a way where you can hear the air handlers, where you can hear somebody's stick clatter against the boards, where you can hear, in the very back of the bleachers, somebody's water bottle drop.
In the middle of the ice, on his ass, Bass exhales loud enough to be heard. "Yeah," he says, half under his breath, half not. "That's gonna leave a mark."
