Jerkbait (18 page)

32

R
obbie refused to speak to me. Not for a week, not even before the big game, even though I knew how nervous he was. He’d go out of his way to not look at me at meals, wear his headphones in the room at all times, texting furiously any time he wasn’t on the computer or doing push-ups or free weights downstairs. He practiced in the morning with Dad, leaving me by myself in the room with no company except for the sound of my tap shoes on the hardwood floor and “Cold Feets” playing on repeat. In the afternoons, when I’d drive him to practice, he’d stare out the window.

Really, what did he expect me to do? Running off with some guy he met online was insane. Sure, people met through dating sites, but one grainy avatar? Messages not even via text but AIM?

The day of the big game, Robbie asked Dad to drive him for morning skate and to just let him stay there so he could get in game mode, and if he could have fifty dollars for food just in case.

I counted the minutes between us. I got up and went to my computer, back to the dolphin story I’d started and never finished.

They were imprisoned in water, not knowing how to swim despite their appearance and their newly formed gills, which weren’t dolphin-like at all. They were more like sharks. Lungfish. Ones who had feet and didn’t know how to swim. They kicked their legs to stay at the top of their tank, taking turns sleeping while the other supported their weight. The survivors kicked and struggled, mouths gaping for breath, not knowing they could breathe with their gills. One of the black beasts began fishing above the tank. The dolphin people strained, tried to resist temptation of the food on the hook. Desperately, one of the dolphin people wrapped his mouth around the jerk bait. The metal pierced through his lower lip. Blood dribbled down his gray chin. He was reeled up, dangling helplessly like an ornament at Christmas.

The other dolphin person, unable to make the top, started to sink beneath the water. Too tired to keep fighting to make the surface, he submitted his soul to the murky depths. He waited for death, but it never came. Just a consistent drowning. He sank lower into the open shell of an oyster, which swallowed him and closed up, then turned into a pearl. The oyster was cracked, the fleshy meat sucked from the shell by the black beasts. The pearl was held in front of the dolphin person, dangling from jerk bait. The captive swallowed the pearl, it disintegrated in his stomach acids, and the dolphin people became one. Their souls fused into one. Their minds one. And when the dolphin person was placed on the chopping block, the black beast’s machete glinting as it came down fast; they died together as one.

I sat
next to Dad in the bleachers as the guys spilled onto the ice for warm-ups. They dragged their feet, heads hanging. I scanned for my brother: he wasn’t there. My eyes moved to the press box—it was full. One of them was a scout from the Devils. I knew because Dad had mentioned it exactly seventeen times in the past week, and couldn’t stop his eyes from darting over there every few minutes.

I got up quickly, scooted away from my parents, muttering, “Bathroom,” when Dad frowned. I headed straight for the locker room. Robbie’s bag sat outside his stall, still zipped. Next to it was a bag from
Subway
. I peeked inside it—the sub was cold, untouched. The drink next to it was a watery mess. His unopened hockey bag sat right there. Dead weight. I pulled out my phone and texted him:
Where the hell are you?

Half a minute later, my phone beeped:
nt comming.

My chest tightened. Robbie would never miss a game. Ever.
Especially
not this game. A no-show from Robbie meant dropping down the draft ratings, or not getting drafted altogether.

But I knew how Robbie had been playing, how his teammates had been treating him. This was my fault. His career was set until he outed himself to protect me. I started this by quitting hockey, and yet, I wouldn’t take it back.

When hockey sucked, it had been a fruitless pain. But everything I’d had to endure for the musical was a price that amounted to something. Suffering was worth it, because
this
was what I loved.

And hockey was what Robbie loved.

Of course, I’d seen the cracks, a thousand tiny lines spreading over him as we got deeper into the season. Only one goal after a losing drought. The final game that would determine whether they’d make playoffs or not. I understood why he was hiding from this, but I also knew he’d be heartbroken if he never played hockey again. This game was everything.

I took a deep breath, and rooted through my brother’s hockey bag. I changed as quickly as I could into his uniform, which fit, of course. Robbie was a little bigger than me, but with the padding and a helmet covering the non-bleached color of my hair, you couldn’t tell. Certainly not from the press box.

I charged through the tunnel and out onto the ice. “Margarine!” Coach snapped from the bench. “You’re late!”

He was pissed, but not enough to pull Robbie. That punishment would come later, after Robbie had won them the game.
If
he did.

I skated over to my old teammates. Obviously, helmet or not, I wasn’t going to fool them long. Durrell was the first to notice as I fumbled in warm ups with the 2-on-1. “What the hell, Tristan?”

“Butter?” Beau asked, skating up to us. “Is this some sort of joke?”

“Depends on if you think it’s funny that your hazing drove my twin away after all the shit he did for you.”

Beau reached out to shove me, but I skated just out of reach. “Seriously, how many times was he clutch for you? Playmaker, sniper, two-way forward, faceoff master—whatever you needed.”

“
Yet he’s not here for our most important game,” Beau argued.

“Maybe because a stupid game isn’t worth his life!”

Beau opened his mouth, but I drove to a hard stop in front of him, ice dusting the front of his skates. “Robbie tried to kill himself.”

Beau was silent.

“What did he say?” Durrell asked. Beau gestured for the team to move in. They circled around us, confused.

“Butter,” Beau began, “tell them what you just told me.”

“Which part?” I snorted. “The part about you guys driving him off a team he’s put his soul into for years, or that he tried to kill himself
three times?”

“He didn’t!” Raiden spluttered. “He would have told me.”

I looked at Raiden with cold eyes. “From what I understand, he didn’t tell you a lot of things, did he?”

Raiden shrunk back. Coward.

I turned in a circle, looking at the guys around me. Over their heads, on the opposite side of the ice, the away team looked at us, shrugging at each other.

“You guys treated him like shit after he came out. Maybe that’s why he didn’t tell anyone until he felt he had to. Maybe that’s why he isn’t here at our most important game.”

Durrell was the first to speak. “T’s right. Robbie saved our asses a few times.”

“I don’t want to play with some homo,” Henry said, nose wrinkling. “He’s an abomination of God.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped. “You think anyone would voluntarily
choose
to be gay with the way you assholes treat them?”

“It’s been a distraction,” Beau said.

“Because you’re making it one! Listen to yourself! Is that the way a team captain should speak?”

The guys were quiet. They glanced at each other, waiting, not wanting to be the one to break the silence.

After a few seconds that felt like hours, Janek said, “I might not understand it fully, but I’m willing to try.”

“I don’t want him to die,” Smitty said. “I don’t think any of us do.”

“And he’s a damn good hockey player,” said Ray-Ray.

Henry shook his head. “I don’t agree with his life choice. I think it’s a sin. And a waste of a draft pick.”

“Is it really about religion or you wanting to knock out competition?” I spat.

Silence passed over us. People looked to Beau for an answer. He finally said, “Why’d you wear Robbie’s jersey? You didn’t think you’d pass as him, did you?”

My shoulders rounded in. “Maybe he’s not here right now, but if he doesn’t play, there’s no way he’s getting drafted. And I know my brother. He loves hockey more than anything. I might suck, but at least he’d be here. At least he could go in a low round.”

“We can still save the game,” Raiden said, voice almost inaudible. Even though Raiden was just shy of 6’1, he looked so small. “We just need to make Tristan look good. Coach can spread the word that Robbie’s sick. Then we do what we can. Get him in the slot, feed him the puck. Sooner or later, it’s gotta go in.”

“We’ll be a wall in front of Janek,” Durrell said of the defensemen. “As long as we score, Janek can pull it off.”

Beau thought about it, face in a deep grimace. It was down to him, the final vote. He nodded and he touched the C on his jersey. He looked me in the eye. “You stay quick on those damn dancer feet.”

“
I will,” I promised as the buzzer rang. We skated confidently toward the bench. When we got close, Coach narrowed his eyes at me. There was no way he missed our impromptu pow-wow. But he pressed his mouth into a grim line and nodded.

After Beau revved us up in the locker room and we got a last minute pep talk from Coach, Janek bolted onto the ice, followed by Beau. Raiden shoved me out there, pressing me on. “You’ve got this,” he said.

“For Robbie,” I said.

“For Robbie,” he agreed.

I went up to the face-off circle and got in position. Crouched, stick poised, ready. It wasn’t like I never took a face-off, but I was still scared shitless. As I lifted my head, the ice changed. Lines dotted the ice like a grid in a video game. Angles, spaces. I caught my breath. Felt a harder thud in my chest. Was this what Robbie saw every time he stepped on the ice?

The puck dropped, and my stick snaked out of its own accord. I passed the puck behind me blindly as I raced ahead in a play I was all too familiar with. Within thirty seconds, Beau had a good chance but the goalie blocked it. We skated back to the ice for a line change. Even as I watched from the bench, the grid remained with all its lines and angles. Opportunities.

And suddenly, it was there. I saw it.

I got on my feet, leg already over the boards in preparation of the next line change. The second Henry was over, I was off, cutting off one of their forwards as I stole the puck and forced a turnover. Durrell and Smitty slammed defenders against the wall; the other team hadn’t even gotten in range of our goal yet.

The crowd began to make a noise, like a hissing sea. I paid no attention. Everything became white noise. The goalie slipped forward from his crease, glove up, knees bent. I drew my stick up to take a slapshot when I heard a loud, “No.”

Robbie.

I felt my body pull to the side, scooping the puck up on the blade and firing it 5-hole.

I didn’t even hear the goal horn.

I turned around in a circle, watching the packed arena on their feet screaming. I pounded my fists and did a little boogie the way Robbie always did his celly as my teammates patted me on the helmet and clapped me on the back. I led them back to the bench, fist closed as I bumped all of the players.

“Freaking phenomenal, Margarine,” Coach Benoit said without thinking as he moved me to the front of the bench to take the next shift.

“Butter,” I said as I faced him on the bench. “I’m Butter.”

Coach gazed at me. A grin broke out on his crooked face. “Butter tastes better.”

At the beginning of the second period, I scored again off of one of Raiden’s rebounds. I’d never scored a two-goal game in my life.

The third period was more brutal, our opponents gaining momentum as we lost two penalty kills. They tied us up within minutes. As we got closer to the end of the third, and I took each shift, the grid was there but I couldn’t see the angles. Like Robbie couldn’t see the play.

With a minute to go, I took off, weaving through traffic. Another move presented itself. Risky, not to pass, but it could work. I hesitated—I was moving so fast—but my body careened into the play on its own. Like it was a puppet.

I circled their net, fast, one of their d-men all over me. And, as I twisted, I held onto the puck a second longer than I normally would have. Their goalie went down, falling for the trick. Robbie’s trick. I flipped the puck up seconds before their D-man crushed me on the ice and the buzzer sounded. Before I could get up, Raiden was already on top of the guy, yanking him off, spitting, “Get the hell off him!”

My ribs ached as I looked at the referee and stood up. I ignored the pain. There was a hushed silence as I waited for the verdict. Did I beat the clock?

He moved his hands.

Goal.

I screamed.

My scream was swallowed by the crowd as my teammates launched themselves onto the ice, helmets and gloves flying. Over the glass, a sea of hats rained on me.

We won the game.

I got my first hat trick.

I was practically paraded back to the locker room and barely could get two feet without one of the guys’ hugging me or shaking my shoulders with delighted screams. Even in the showers, the guys were screaming.