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“Cool. Sounds like a plan,” I said just as Kingston pulled into the parking lot of an ice rink that looked a little worse for wear. The pavement was riddled with cracks, and the grey paint on the building was faded and chipping. It wasn’t anything some good TLC wouldn’t fix, and I hoped the icewas okay.
After gathering our bags from the bed of the truck, we went up to the doors, but they were locked. Kingston banged on the plexiglass, making it rattle alarmingly. The doors looked a second away from falling off their hinges. Thankfully, it held.
We were only waiting outside for a few moments before I heard rushed, muffled footsteps and looked through the dirty glass door to see a middle-aged man rushingtoward us.
He slipped a key into the lock and let us in. The man was sweating through his henley and was out of breath. “Sorry,” he heaved out then wiped his oil-covered hand on his jeans and held it out to Kingston. “Sebastian Kingston, nice to meet you, I’m Mick Leland, the coach for the Pucks.” He shook hands with Kingston then turned to me.
“Riley Warren,” I introduced myself and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Coach Leland.”
“You too, Miss. Warren.” His Bronx accent was strong and comforting. He reminded me of my own pee-wee goalie coach, Coach Davidson. He was the first person outside of my family and Mason that believed me when I said I was going to join the NHL.
“I hope it’s okay that Warren tagged along with me,” Kingston said.
“Of course. The kids will be happy to meet you, Ms. Warren. But … we have a bit of a problem.” Coach Leland turned, gesturing for us to follow him into thebuilding.
“What kind of problem?” Kingston asked.
Coach Leland came to a stop beside the rink and turned around, a harried look on his face. “We lost power for an hour or so this morning. It came back on about thirty minutes ago, but the cooling system isn’t running. I don’t know how to reset it, and the owner can’t get here for another hour. If I can’t get it up and running immediately, the ice will startmelting.”
I looked out onto the ice, squinting. The surface wasn’t sweating and didn’t look too glossy, but the plexiglass surrounding the rink was starting to fog up. Coach Leland was right; we didn’t have much time before the rink became too bad toskate on.
“Is practice going to be canceled? Or we can try to find another rink in the area,” I suggested, not seeing any other solutions. There wasn’t anything we could do if the owner couldn’t get here in time. We couldn’t exactly skate on water. Been there, tried that, almost broke my ankle for my efforts.
Leland was nodding at me, a pinched look on his face, when Kingston jumped in. “Let me take a look at the cooling system.”
Leland and I turned to him in surprise. “You know how to fix an ice rink?” I asked.
He shrugged. “My parents own an ice rink, and I learned a thing or two about the equipment. I can’t promise I’ll know how to fix it, but Ican try.”
A look of hope came onto Leland’s face, and he pointed deeper into the building. “I’ll show you where the cooling system is.”
Kingston and I dropped our bags in the stands on the side of the rink and followed Coach Leland through a door labeled “employees only.” He took us down some stairs to another door and opened it to reveal a room filled with giant, blue machines. I looked around in awe. I’d never seen this part of an ice rink before. The machinery took up more space than the entire first floor of my brownstone.
Leland pointed at a wall of metal panels. “The breakers are over there.”
Kingston moved forward and popped open a couple panels. I slid off to the side, not wanting to get in their way. After a careful check of the breakers, Kingston took a quick lap around the room, inspecting the large pumps and pipes. When he was done, he came to a stop in front of us. “I can fix it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Really?” Leland asked.
“Sure. It’s not that complicated. I can have it up and running in twenty-thirty minutes tops. Plenty of time to stop the rink frommelting.”
What the hell? Who was this guy? NHL assistant captain, philanthropist, and now ice rinkmechanic?
“Great! I’ll go let the owner know.” Leland ran outexcitedly.
Kingston immediately got to work, went up to a large panel on a machine, and poked a few buttons. I had no idea what hewas doing.
“Your parents run an ice rink?” I asked.
“Yeah. They opened one up together after they got married. I helped out around the place when I was a kid, and when I turned fourteen, I officially got paid for my work. It was my only job before I got drafted.” He returned to the breakers and flipped a switch. A humming started to emanate from one of the big pipes running along the walls and ceiling.
I leaned against a clean spot on the wall to watch him work. “That must have been cool. Did you get to skate a lot?”
“Yeah. I was out there every day, messing around with a puck.”
I was so jealous. What I wouldn’t have given to be out on the ice every day as a kid. I had tried to go to our local rink as often as I could. But as supportive as my parents were, they were both busy lawyers and couldn’t take me all the time. Especially when I wanted to travel to Brooklyn to skate with Mason. Drew babysat me in my parents’ absence until he was older and it wasn’t cool for him to hang out with his baby sister anymore. I went less then, until Mason and I reached high school and were allowed to take the subway by ourselves, and we’ve dominated the ice together ever since.
“No wonder you’re so damn good at hockey,” I said.
