He doesn't even look up. “You've kept it your whole life, kid. You keep it from me.” He says it warmly, like he’s giving me an actual compliment. He has no idea it's the loneliest sentence anyone has ever said to me. “Which is why you're perfect for this.”
“Understood.”
“Good.” He adds more. “This matters, Jazz.” My father rarely uses his nickname for me. Now I know it’s serious. “If Carolina takes Caleb, it only makes things better for the other boys. Real scouts start showing up. Recruits start returning my calls. Then the VCU program finally gets the respect we deserve.” He takes a beat. “I've spent twenty years clawing at a career like the one this kid could hand me on a silver platter, so don't let him torch it. We all need this to work.”
“No pressure,” I say sarcastically.
“All of the pressure. That's the assignment.” He finally looks at me. “You were invisible in this building for three years. That’s what you wanted, and I allowed it. But for the next eight weeks, I need you to step out of that box. You're the most important person in VCU ice. Don't waste the opportunity to prove it.”
And the part I'm ashamed of, the part I will never say out loud to anyone, is that some thin, half-starved corner of me sits up at being told I’m important and that I matter to him.
Even now.
There's a note waiting at my cubicle when I get back to it. One page, time-stamped 6:14 that morning, from one of the assistants who runs the early skating group. It’s the kind of routine flag that crosses my desk twice a week and goes into the log without a thought.
It’s from a late session yesterday. Adams and a kid named Petrov went into the boards. There were words. Petrov said some random thing about Adams' family, but the assistant didn't catch what. Adams had two fistfuls of Petrov's jersey and his glove cocked back before anyone got between them. No punch landed. He apologized to the room, skated it off, and sat out the last drill on his own. The assistant wrote it up because that's the rule. Minor. Resolved on the ice. It’s so minor that I guess that’s why Caleb didn’t tell me about it.
I read it three times.
A week ago, this was nothing. A shove, no contact, an apology. I'd log it in with two lines and forget it by lunch, because recording everything these jugheads do is the entire point of me. I am the person who writes things down. Accurately. Always. That is not a job I do; it’s the job.
But this isn't a week ago.
It's eight weeks before a commitment to Carolina, and there's a man in Charlotte who told my father, twice, that they want a drama-free investment. One conduct note is one line in a log that my father reads every Friday. One line invites a second look. A second look invites a phone call. And I’m the one holding the pen.
I sit with the page for a long time.
This is exactly why my father assigned me to Caleb, except the request has come a little too late. This is a trap that my father built without knowing he built it. He trusts the log because he trusts me, and he trusts me because, as of this morning, he believes I'm the one person on earth who would never bend it.
He's right about the first part.
I find Caleb at the east stairwell at lunch.
“There's a report on Petrov,” I say, sitting two steps above him. “From yesterday. The boards.”
He stops chewing. “That was nothing. He said something about my fucking my mother. I grabbed his jersey, I let go, I sat the drill. I didn't touch him.”
“I know. It's in the report. None of that's the problem.” I hand him the part that is. “It's a conduct note that has to go in the log. My father reads the log on Fridays.”
“I don’t see what the problem is. Coach wants me to get the Carolina job just as much as I do.”
“I realize that, but because of your…history, Carolina is asking to see the logs.”
I watch him do the mental arithmetic I already did.
“So don't log it,” he says, easy, like he's wiping a crumb off a counter. “You said it's nothing. You're the one who writes it down. So don't.”
“Right,” I say. “I just don't write it down.”
“Yeah.”
“Caleb.” I keep my voice even, because the thing in my chest is not. “Do you understand what you're asking me to do?”
“Skip a note about a shove that didn't land.” He takes another casual bite of his food.
“Falsify a compliance record.” It comes out colder than I mean it. “I have done this job for three years, and I have never once shaded a thing in either direction. Not to protect a player, not to bury a problem, not to make my father's program look cleaner than it is. That's not a rule I follow. It's the only reason I'm allowed in this building. He keeps me because I'm the one who doesn't bend.”
“He keeps you because you’re his fucking daughter.”
