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Sato told me what to say. I say it, word for word. I’m going to development camp, and then we’ll sit down with the organization and figure out what’s best for my development. It’s true.

“Would you like to sign? Turn pro?”

“Yes,” I say. No pause at all.

The light goes off. She thanks me.

And I stand there in the gray hallway in a jersey over a suit, a little stunned.

All spring it’s been if. If they want me. If it’s right. If I want to. I’ve said if so long I thought it was the answer. It isn’t. I really fucking want this. A locker with my name over it in a building where they pay you to play. Men who are better than me, so I can find out if I’m as good as I think. I want to start now.

The Sentinels have a room down another hallway. A long table, like Buffalo, except now I’m on the same side of it.

Morley. The GM. A woman from player development with a binder. Sato, who sits down next to me without being asked. My dad, who stops in the doorway, looks at the room, then sits in a chair against the wall. Not at the table. Against the wall.

The woman with the binder talks. Development camp. Their practice facility. A week of skating, testing, meetings. What they want me working on this summer: my first three steps, my defensive positioning, and, she says without looking up, discipline.

“After camp,” the GM says, “we’ll sit down with Dana. There’s a version where you go back to Woodbury and we keep watching. There’s a version where we sign you and you start in our system this fall.” He looks at me. “I’ll be honest with you. We didn’t take you at forty-four to wait three years. We think you can turn pro sooner rather than later.”

It lands right in the middle of me.

The woman with the binder asks about travel. Which airport I’ll fly out of. Whether anybody’s coming with me.

And my father starts to answer.

I hear the breath. I hear him lean forward in his chair against the wall and open his mouth, the way he’s opened it for me in every room since I was six. He’ll fly out of—

And he stops.

He sits back. He looks at me across the room.

“Rafe?” he says.

One word. Your question. Not mine.

I look at him for a long second. Then I turn back to the woman with the binder and tell her which airport.

It’s after four when I get Tess alone. We’re in an elevator of all places going up with my parents gone ahead to call everybody they’ve ever met and Sato on the phone in the lobby.

I’m still wearing the hat. Crooked, with the tags hanging off the back.

She looks at me. Her eyes are still red.

“You got drafted,” she says.

“Apparently.”

She reaches up and traces the logo on the hat with one finger. A sentinel. A figure in a tower holding a light.

“Do you like them?”

“Yeah.”

“Because of Morley?”

“Because he asked me what I wanted,” I say. “In Buffalo. And then he took me anyway.”

She puts her hand flat on my chest.