Page 32 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I pull my foot back out. Slow. Diagnostic. My sock is a brown-red color, like a crime scene.

I peel the skate over and a little paper packet drops out, squashed flat, red letters still perfectly readable: Diablo Sauce. Then another. Then, when I actually tip the whole boot upside down over the bench, an honest-to-goodness avalanche. Packet after packet after packet, a full, glorious cascade of Taco Bell hot sauce packets thumping down like the world’s worst piñata, until there’s a pile of about forty packets on the bench.

I check. Every last one is Diablo. Every last one has the same exact quote under the logo in that cheerful sauce-packet font.

ZESTY AND DANGEROUS

Whoever did this didn’t grab a handful. They curated. Somebody, somewhere, gathered a truly heroic number of hot sauce packets for this, who visited several Taco Bell locations, and stood at a condiment rack sorting sauce packets by flavor like they were building a museum exhibit. The exhibit is absolutely called Jeremiah Precio’s Feet.

I check the other skate. Loaded. I check my gloves out of pure morbid curiosity and, yep. Stuffed to the fingertips. My stall smells like a burrito cart.

Someone had a plan. Someone had a hit list. Someone with way too much free time thought about me, specifically, and decided, this man needs to suffer.

Bryce Chambers, halfway across the room, taps a couple guys on the shoulder as he cuts toward his own stall and says, “Who brought tacos to practice?”

I am not equipped to answer him right now. I am peeling off my sock, which is soaked through.

This is fine. This is a completely normal Wednesday. I am a professional athlete.

A couple of guys tease that it’s his breath. My toes are too covered in hot sauce to say otherwise. He shrugs, drops into his stall, laces up, and eventually disappears down the tunnel.

I spend the next few minutes finding a new sock, wiping my hands with a towel, and cleaning up the inside of my skate of hot sauce residue.

Finally, I stand, holding a fistful of Diablo packets like it's evidence from a crime scene. "Okay, who did this?"

Nobody even pretends to look innocent. The room just laughs. Levi folds clean over his own knees, Neal’s wheezing into his gloves, and Jason is laughing so hard behind his half-on mask that it comes out as this strange tinny echo, like the cage itself is in on the joke. Whatever this is, everybody must have known it was coming. I’ll bet they’ve been holding it in all morning just to watch my face when it landed.

Dante Leinecker is laughing hardest of anyone in the room, which, in my professional opinion, makes him suspect number one.

“It was you.”

“Wasn’t me.” He says it instantly, still cackling, both hands up like he’s got nothing to hide, which is exactly the move of a man who has everything to hide. “I wish it was, honestly.”

“You don’t laugh like an innocent man.”

“I’m laughing like it’s a funny prank, Precio.” He wipes an actual tear from one eye, and plucks one sauce packet out of my hand. “Or should I call you Zesty?” he adds, with real ceremony.

“You may not.”

“Nobody agrees to a nickname,” Levi says, still laughing. “It just happens to you. Like zits. You’re Zesty now, my friend."

I don’t fully buy Dante’s denial, but I don’t fully doubt it either, because two practices into this roster, I’ve already learned this team doesn’t really do amateur pranks. They run campaigns. Two days before I even set foot on this ice, somebody sewed Tyson Lane’s jersey shut. Small, neat stitches at both armholes and the head hole, so that when Tyson went to put it on before our first practice together, he made it exactly as far as his own forehead before realizing he was now a prisoner inside his own sweater. He had to cut himself free with scissors, one stitch at a time. He blamed Taz Houlihan on the spot (East’s captain, sworn tournament rival) with no evidence whatsoever, purely on principle.

The next day it escalated. Somebody flipped his practice jersey inside out and covered every square inch of it in fifty rocket-shaped stickers, each one printed with an extreme close-up of Houlihan’s face. Tyson had to skate the entire session with them still stuck on.

Nobody has ever confessed to either one. So roughly a hundred Diablo packets and a ruined sock is, comparatively, a slow news day. I know I’m not getting an answer today. Nobody in this locker room has an honest bone left in their body. I find this weirdly beautiful. In a deeply annoying way.

I don’t have a comeback for Levi’s comment, mostly because there isn’t one, and shove the ruined sock wrapped in a towel to the bottom of my bag to deal with later.

Colt finally peels his eyes off the ceiling long enough to offer, “In their defense, it’s a genuinely impressive haul. Somebody really believed in this.”

“I suppose I should be impressed?”

He shrugs, being completely unhelpful.

Dash strolls by mid-lace, inhales deeply like he’s walking past an actual taqueria, and announces to no one, “Somebody should call Taco Bell and get you a brand deal.”

Colt guffaws. “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”