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Then I open my eyes. “Thank you for being here, Tess.”

She kisses me.

My father is in the lobby at two in a gray suit with his folder. He looks at me when I come out of the elevator. At the suit. At the tie, which Tessa just redid a third time in the elevator because she said the knot was off-center by a quarter inch and it was going to make her crazy on TV. He looks at me for a long time.

“You ready?” he says.

That’s all.

Not here’s the plan. Not Sato says. Not remember to look at the camera when. Just you ready.

“Yeah,” I say.

He nods. He opens the folder. He closes it again without looking at anything.

My mom comes out of the salon with her hair done and immediately starts crying again. My dad mutters for God’s sake. She tells him to hush. She fixes my collar, which is already fixed. She fixes Tessa’s hair, which is also already fixed, and Tessa lets her. The sight does something to me in the middle of a hotel lobby that I don’t have time for.

“Both of you,” I say. “Stop.”

They don’t stop.

Tessa stands next to me in the green dress with the thin straps and her hands folded in front of her and the corner of her mouth going, watching all three of us like we’re free entertainment.

Sato meets us at the arena. She’s in a black suit with her earpiece in and her paper notebook under her arm. She shakes my father’s hand. She shakes my mother’s. She shakes Tessa’s, and says you must be Tessa, and Tessa goes pink. Then Sato looks at me.

“Four teams I think are real,” she says. “Two in the late first. Two in the second. I’ll know more as it goes. Don’t watch the board. Don’t watch the camera guys. They’re going to put a camera on everybody in this section at some point and it’s going to feel like it’s on you. It isn’t. Just sit there.”

“Okay.”

“And if it’s not tonight, it’s tomorrow,” she says. “It’s probably tomorrow. Remember that around pick twenty.”

The arena is huge, cold, and full of people in suits.

There’s a stage at one end with a podium on it and a backdrop with the league logo, lights everywhere, and tables on the floor for every team with men in polos at laptops. Round tables. Thirty-two of them. I find the Sentinels’ table without trying. Morley’s at it on the end.

The prospects sit in a section along the side with their families, close to the floor. Kids in suits. Kids from Sweden, from Saskatchewan, from Minnesota. The one who said I slew-footed him is two rows down with his parents and a girl in a yellow dress. He turns around and nods at me. I nod back.

We sit. Me on the aisle. My mother. My father. Tessa on my other side, against the wall.

At seven, the commissioner walks out, and the building goes loud, and it starts.

The first ten go fast. Everybody knows who the first ten are. You hear their names. Stanley Ermington. Everybody knows who he is. His father’s a legend. I hear the families stand up screaming with each name called, and they go down the steps, shake hands, and put on a jersey and a hat that doesn’t fit. The cameras follow them, and then the next team walks up.

Eleven. Twelve. Fifteen.

I don’t watch the board. I watch the floor.

Twenty. One of Sato’s four is on the clock.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe much. My dad’s hand is flat on his own knee. He’s holding very still. My mom has a tissue balled up in her fist.

They take a defenseman from Sweden.

And I feel it. I tell myself I don’t, and I do. A small thing. A drop, somewhere in my stomach, like missing a stair in the dark.

Second round, I tell myself. Sato said second round.

Tessa’s hand is on my leg. I don’t know when she put it there. She isn’t squeezing. She isn’t patting. She isn’t looking at me with any face that says it’s okay. She’s watching the stage. Her hand is just there.