Page 53 of Unmanageable

She doesn’t say anything for a long time as we navigate the winding local roads. She just watches the blurred green pines go by through the passenger window. But as we finally hit the entrance ramp to the interstate, I catch her reaching up with the back of her hand to quickly wipe a stray tear from her cheek.

“I know,” she says. “Now stop talking and drive. We have a film library to locate in the next town, and you still don’t know the mechanical difference between a standard butterfly slide and a post-to-post flare.”

“Hey! I absolutely know the difference!”

“Prove it during the video review tonight, O’Connell. Otherwise, I’m personally making you wear those googly eyes into the diner for dinner.”

“Deal,” I say. “But only if you agree to wear the light-up fan as a tiara.”

“In your dreams, Cash.”

“Exactly where you’ll be, Sharky. Exactly where you’ll be.”

***

2:43 PM

Me: how’s Greece?

Callie: Sunny. Peaceful. Nobody’s asked me to sign a hockey stick in four days.

Me: living the dream

Callie: Ivy bought six olive oil bottles.

14

Scottie Reed

8:03 AM

Ivy: Serious question.

Me: Why does that sound threatening?

Ivy: Have you slept with Cash yet?

Me: Ivy??

Ivy: Disappointing answer.

***

We have been in Philly for four days now, and I have never felt more like an actual, living human being and a high-functioning machine at the exact same time.

I’m standing behind the scratched, smudged plexiglass at the team bench, clutching a steaming paper cup of the world’s most mediocre convenience-store coffee. The cardboard sleeve is barely doing its job, the cup burning my fingertips through it, but I welcome the sting. It keeps me rooted while I watch Finnian O’Connell die a slow, intensely athletic death on the ice.

Herb Ganz is standing near the center face-off dot, looking like an incredibly angry, weathered potato stuffed into a vintage nylon tracksuit. He’s screaming things into the rafters that would make a seasoned sailor blush.

“You’re slow, O’Connell! My goddamn grandmother moves faster than that, and she’s been buried for years!”

Cash is down in a deep, agonizing crouch, heavy drops of sweat actively dripping from the white steel grill of his mask and splashing onto the shaved ice between his skates.

Miller, the lanky college kid we hired to act as a human pitching machine, hovers at the blue line, takes a breath, and lets another wrist shot fly.

Thwack.

Cash snaps his glove hand up, catching it cleanly in the webbing before it can clip the top right corner.