Page 15

He picks up his fork. He looks at me before he takes the first bite, a quick flick of the eyes, checking. Then he eats like somebody who's done it fast his whole life. Like somebody's going to take it.

I look away.

Nico calls at ten. FaceTime, like always. He's propped up on the couch at our parents' place in Duluth with his feet up on the coffee table, and behind him I can see the edge of the stupid quilt Mom puts on the back of everything.

"There he is," he says. "The wall."

"Hey."

"You look like crap."

"Thanks."

"No, seriously. Are you sleeping?"

"I'm sleeping."

"You've got bags under your eyes like a raccoon." He leans in close to the phone. "Priya, come here, look at his bags."

Priya's face crowds into the frame. "Hi, Dane! Oh. Yeah. Those are bags."

"Thank you, Priya."

She disappears. Nico leans back. He tells me about physio, about twenty-two seconds on one leg on the foam pad, about how his physio says maybe public skate in January, and he's trying to play it cool and not doing a good job, and I let him talk. I listen. It's the best part of my week, when he's like this, when his face is just his face.

"Mom wants to know if you're coming home for Thanksgiving," he says.

"If we don't have a game."

"You never have a game on Thanksgiving."

"Then I'm coming."

"Good." He shifts on the couch. "So. How's everything. How's the room."

"Lindqvist moved into the house."

It comes out flatter than I mean it to.

Nico's face changes. It's a small thing. If I didn't know his face better than my own, I might not see it.

"Oh," he says. "Into the house."

"Coach's call."

"Which room?"

I don't answer that.

He knows. I watch him know. He puts a hand over his mouth and rubs it, slow, and looks off to the side of the phone, at something I can't see.

"Okay," he says.

"It's not okay. But it's Coach's call."

"No, I mean." He stops. Starts again. "Is he—how's he doing? With it all?"

"Why would you care how he's doing?"