Page 277 of On His Team

The whole room breaks when Benson tilts his head towards him then shoves his face away.

“Get the hell away from me,” Benson laughs.

I laugh my head off. Mackey is next to me, belly laughing. Stanley lifted the mood immediately and knows it. It’s exactly what we needed. The tension goes out of the room just enough that everybody can breathe again.

Then Benson looks around. “One more game, Wolves.”

Stanley slaps both hands onto the table. “Let’s win the fucking thing!”

The bus leaves at one, and the arena is nothing like it was when we practiced here.

There are people outside at two in the afternoon. Michigan has turned one side maize. Camden has a section on the other side with a barrier between them. There is a band somewhere. Somebody has a giant sign with Stanley’s face on it, which Stanley spots through the bus window and immediately starts drawing attention to. Then we turn the corner and see a line of guys with C-A-M-D-E-N painted across their chests.

The bus loses it.

Guys are yelling, pounding the windows, laughing.

I look at Blue beside me. “This is fucking good.”

He nods once.

It is.

Camden showed up.

We go in through the loading dock the way we always do, walk down a concrete hallway, and enter the locker room.

Then we get ready for our last hockey game.

I see Gianna during warmups.

I’m coming out of the far corner between reps and coast along the boards toward our end. I glance up on the way past. Her mom is on one side of her. Lucy is on the other. Her hair’s down, and she’s swaying slightly to whatever music is playing through the arena. When she sees me, she smiles. Then she holds up one finger. One.

I laugh into my cage and get back in line.

Benson lines up for the opening draw with Michigan’s center bent across from him. The official looks once in each direction and drops the puck.

Benson gets tied up, and Michigan comes away with it. Their winger puts the puck behind us before I’ve even finished turning, with the first forechecker already coming hard. I get there below the goal line with him on my back, and he finishes the hit hard enough that my shoulder goes into the glass. The puck keeps moving.

Mackey gets to it, but Michigan has another guy on him before he can turn. He sends it around the wall, and they keep that in too. Twenty seconds into the game, all five of us are below the tops of the circles and Michigan still has possession.

A shot comes through traffic. Percy catches it and holds.

I skate toward the faceoff circle while Mackey passes me on his way into position.

“Again.”

I nod.

Michigan wins that draw too.

This one turns into another forty seconds in our end before we finally get the puck out, change, and do almost the exact same thing on the next shift. Michigan is getting two guys below our goal line before we can establish anything, and every time we try to move the puck up the wall, somebody in white is already there.

At 3:40, Percy has to kick out a shot from the slot after we lose a puck we should have gotten out. Less than two minutes later, he stops another one after Michigan turns a harmless dump-in into thirty seconds of possession.

When I finally get back to the bench, I’m breathing harder than I should be six minutes into a game. I grab my water and lean forward while Fuller comes down behind us.

“Quit forcing the wall.”