Page 284 of On His Team

Michigan still has the puck.

Five seconds.

Their winger looks up.

There is nowhere left for him to go.

And I know.

Not because the horn has sounded.

Not because anybody has thrown a glove.

Because there is not enough ice left between them and Percy.

Three seconds.

There is not enough time.

We’re going to win.

Two.

The thought lands whole.

One.

The horn goes.

Our bench comes over the boards before I can move.

Gloves fly. Somebody throws a stick high enough that I lose it against the lights. Percy drops to both knees in the crease with his arms over his head, and Marsh reaches him first, hitting him hard enough to take both of them onto the ice.

Mackey gets me from behind. I drop onto one knee. Pain tears through my thigh so sharply that my whole leg jerks, but it barely registers underneath everything else.

I’m yelling. I have no idea what I am saying. Maybe nothing. The sound coming out of me does not feel like a word.

Then Stanley is there. He grabs the back of my helmet with both hands and screams directly into my cage, his face red, eyes wide, every word disappearing into the noise around us. I grab his jersey because I need something to hold onto, and he shakes me hard enough that my teeth click together.

Blue crashes into us from the side. Blue, who barely celebrates anything, is screaming too.

I start laughing.

Percy gets pulled out of the pile near the crease with his mask gone and his hair plastered flat against his forehead. He makes it maybe three feet before somebody else grabs him and he disappears again.

Then Benson gets through.

I see his face before he reaches me.

He’s crying.

Not trying not to. Not wiping it away. Just crying in the middle of the ice with seventeen thousand people around us and a national championship horn still echoing through the building.

He grabs both sides of my helmet and presses his forehead against mine. His mouth moves. I can’t hear him. I grab the front of his jersey.

Then Stanley hits us. Blue does. Percy next.

The whole group tips sideways, and suddenly I’m on the ice with bodies on top of me, somebody’s elbow in my ribs, a skate jammed against my shin pad and Stanley laughing so hard he can barely breathe.