Page 54 of From A to Us

“What kind of sound effect would I be?” Sandbaker asked, incredulousness heavy in his tone. “Who writes this shit?” He paused for a beat. “What sound effect would you be?”

“I have no fucking clue.”

“They should let us write the questions.”

“Oh, yeah?” The elevator doors opened and they stepped out into a concrete hallway that smelled like ice. “What kind of questions would you ask?”

“Interesting ones. Like, how old were you when you lost your virginity? Who was your first kiss with?”

“Hate to break it to you,” Eli said as they entered the locker room, “but not everyone wants to talk about their sex life.”

“That’s probably why they don’t have me writing the questions.”

“No doubt.”

Eli kicked off his shoes, sat on the bench in his stall, and popped his earbuds in to quiet the sounds of his teammates coming and going. The game was in an hour. Once Cotton and Zanetti were done upstairs, Coach Madolora would come in, and there’d be some last-minute strategizing and possible line changes as well as pregame media interviews. Eli and his teammates had eaten their pregame meal already, and Eli had managed a nap at home before returning to the arena. With nothing to do but wait, he opened Instagram to kill an hour, because what better way to kill time than to watch reels to distract himself from sucking.

Wait, no. He needed a mental shift. He shouldn’t be thinking about not sucking. Like Nolan had said, he was anticipating failing—anticipating the future—instead of remaining present.

Okay, that wasn’t exactly what Nolan had said, but that was what Eli had gotten from it. Eli wasn’t afraid of failure. He’d failed tons in his life. Find him a professional athlete who hadn’t.

What he was afraid of was letting his team down. Compound that with a fear that everything he’d worked so hard for would be for nothing if he got demoted back to the AHL, and it was enough to make him want to bury his head in his stall.

But he couldn’t think like that. Nolan was right—he wasn’t thinking about hockey.

So he opened YouTube instead and searched for LA Waves game highlights. If he could study their weaknesses and strengths, Eli could use that to his advantage in tonight’s game.

Ten minutes later, Eli was frowning at his phone. He’d been watching the same Waves defenseman for the past several clips, and what he’d learned was that this defenseman liked to chase offense. When he did, space opened up behind him, creating open ice and the potential for odd-man rushes.

Eli typed the defenseman’s name into the search bar, and for three clips in a row, the player pinched every chance he got.

Interesting. It was potentially something to exploit if the guy played the same way tonight.

And there was no reason to think he wouldn’t.

Zanetti and Cotton returned, and Eli removed his earbuds. “So? What sound effect are you?”

Zanetti let out a loud laugh. “I didn’t get that one. Cotton did.”