Page 181 of On His Team

A very small boy steps in front of him while Rowan is finishing another skate. The kid says something I cannot hear. Rowan looks up, then he crouches all the way down so they are eye level.

The boy talks. Rowan listens. Seriously. Whatever the question is, Rowan answers it like it matters. I have to physically keep walking.

“Gianna!”

I turn.

Lisa is holding the schedule. “Photo time at eleven-fifteen?”

“Yes.”

“We might need to push ten.”

“No.”

She looks at me.

I look at the ice. Two stations are running behind. The second group has more children.

I recalculate. “Actually, yes. Ten.”

Lisa smiles.

The photograph becomes the most difficult fourteen minutes of the entire event. I gave it eight minutes, which is adorable on my part. Apparently getting forty-eight children into three rows on ice is incredibly impossible. Two fall over. One starts crying. Three keep turning around to wave at their parents. A row at one end refuses to stay straight because one boy is deliberately sliding sideways every time the photographer turns away.

Someone’s grandmother gets onto the ice in shoes. I do not know why. I do not know how. By the time I notice her, Gary is already helping her back toward the gate.

“Everybody look here!”

The photographer raises one hand.

Twenty-six kids look.

“Here!”

Thirty-five.

“One more!”

Someone falls.

I put both hands over my face.

Rowan laughs somewhere behind me.

I turn around and see him and Mackey standing by the boards.

“I thought this was going to take eight minutes,” I say, rolling my eyes at myself.

That makes him smile. Eventually, somehow, the picture happens. Forty-eight kids. Coaches. Volunteers. Sponsor banner. Everybody in one frame. Half the children are making faces. One jersey is practically down to a kid’s knees. It is the best photograph I have ever been part of.

By twelve-thirty, the lobby is empty. Parents collect bags. Kids drag sticks. Somebody comes back because they forgot a water bottle. Another family wants one more picture. Then the doors close behind the last group. The silence that replaces them is shocking.

I stand in the middle of the lobby and take a deep breath.

Cole walks past carrying a bin. “We alive?”

I look at him. “I think so.”