Page 218 of On His Team

Benson gets maybe one stride toward the corner before Stanley tackles him. The rest of us pile in. I lose my stick somewhere. Somebody’s glove hits the back of my helmet. Benson disappears under Camden jerseys while Stanley is screaming directly into somebody’s shoulder.

Senior Night.

Michigan.

Overtime.

There are worse ways to play your last regular-season game in a building.

The locker room afterward is too loud for anybody to hear properly.

Parents come down once we’re dressed. There are cameras and phones everywhere, people trying to get pictures before somebody leaves. Tate is carrying the game puck around like he doesn’t trust anybody else with it. Stanley’s mother is crying harder than mine now.

Benson gets pulled into three separate family photos before he makes it ten feet from his stall.

I’m halfway through talking to my dad when I see Gianna in the hallway. She spots me at the same time. She doesn’t run over this time. She just walks toward me with this huge smile on her face, weaving around two parents and somebody carrying a garment bag.

“You won,” she says with a gigantic, proud smile.

I look at her mouth. “Yeah.”

“On Senior Night,” she adds, stopping in front of me and reaching up to fix the collar of my shirt.

There is nothing wrong with it. I let her anyway.

“You okay?”

I look past her for a second. My parents are talking with her parents. Her mom looks over at us and winks at me. I smile back. Stanley is still surrounded by people. Tate is showing somebody the puck. The door toward the rink is open farther down the hall, and I can see a strip of white ice through it.

“Yeah.”

I mean it.

Gianna watches my face long enough that I know she hears the part I didn’t say. She doesn’t make me say it. She just slips her hand into mine.

We stay a little longer because there are more pictures and more people who want to say congratulations. Eventually my parents leave, and the building starts emptying in pieces.

By the time Gianna and I head toward the exit, most of the noise is behind us.

That’s when it hits me. Not standing on the ice with my parents. Not the sign with my name on it. Not hearing the announcer call me a senior. Leaving.

I have walked out of this building after hundreds of practices and games. Usually I’m already thinking about food or film or whatever is next. Half the time I barely notice the hallway.

Tonight, I notice all of it.

The rubber floor under my shoes. The equipment-room door. The smell of the rink still hanging in the corridor. The sound of somebody dragging a bin somewhere behind us.

There could still be more hockey.

There should be.

But there might never be another home game.

I slow down near the doors without meaning to. I look back once. The hallway is almost empty now. Still, I look.

Then Gianna squeezes my hand. I turn back toward her. She doesn’t say anything. Neither do I.

We walk out together.