“
Everybody fucking helps out the
D
,” Jonny added. “No one gets caught watching.”
The zebras skated over to get Scotty to send out his players. There’s no time-out in hockey when you have an injury replacement, not like in some other sports. Each team only gets a single thirty-second time-out per game, too, so it’s not like using that would get Nate more time to warm up.
“
RJ, Eller, Kally,” Scotty said. “Get out there and set the fucking tone.”
The three of us jumped over the boards and lined up on the dot to Nate’s right. Keith Burns and Andrew Jensen, our top defensive pairing, joined us.
I glanced behind me at Nate for a second but immediately wished I hadn’t. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a human being look so green. We’d be lucky if he didn’t puke all over us.
I circled over to RJ, waved Eller over to join us, and held my glove up to my mouth so none of the Sharks players could read my lips. “Go forward with it. Get it out and as far away from Nate as you can. Eller or me, one of us will catch up to it so it isn’t icing.” The best defense, in this situation, was going to be a hell of a lot of offense. We had to get control of the puck and keep it in the other end as much as possible.
RJ took a quick look back at Nate and nodded. “You’d better turn on your fucking jets. Both of you. Scotty’ll be pissed if we fuck this up.”
“
You just worry about beating that son of a bitch on the dot,” Eller said, skating away. Out of the three of us, he was easily the fastest—but the Sharks knew that and would try harder to get in his way. It would probably have to be me to catch up to the puck.
We got into position and the linesman dropped the puck. I didn’t wait to see if RJ won the face-off; I didn’t have time to. Both Eller and I took off, surprising the Sharks’
D
enough that we got past them.
I was just about to turn my head so I could see the puck coming my way when I heard RJ shout, “Fuck! Kally!”
The Sharks had won the draw, and with Eller and me both already out of the zone, it was a five-on-three situation. I spun around and buried my head, skating as fast as I could to get back and defend. Eller made it into our zone just before me, but we were too late to do any good. They’d cycled the puck again and pulled Nate out of position, and Logan Couture had an easy tap-in at the side of the net.
Completely winded, I bent over and rested my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. When I looked up again, Scotty’s face was purple as he yelled obscenities in my direction. I didn’t need to hear them to have a pretty good idea of what he was saying.
I skated over to circle around behind Nate. “Sorry. We fucked you over on that. We’ll get it back. We’re not going to leave you out to dry like that, okay?” With the blade of my stick, I tapped him on the pads.
He looked even greener than he had before, but he nodded his head.
This looked like it was going to turn into a miserable fucking night.
We lost the
game against the Sharks five to three in the end, which wasn’t anywhere close to as bad as I think a lot of us expected it to be once Hunter went down. We weren’t happy about the loss—losing never felt good—but I think most of us were relieved that we’d managed to keep it as close as we did.
I was really unhappy with myself, mainly because my points-scoring streak—the one that had started when Noelle came into my life—had come to an end. I didn’t get on the score sheet in any way. No goals. No assists. A big, fat, minus three for being on the ice when the Sharks scored so often.
She may not think she was my lucky charm, but she was wrong.
Bobby’s flight arrived in San Jose just in time for him to board the team charter to Anaheim, meaning we could thank Nate for his efforts and leave him to lick his wounds in private. I reminded him to think about the positives. There are a lot more hockey players who’ve never skated a single shift in an NHL game than there are who have. He got to live the dream for a little while even if it was more of a nightmare.
By the time we were heading out of town, Nicky had been released from the hospital, and so he got to fly with us. He still didn’t have any idea who had drugged him or why, he’d said, but he would likely get cleared to play again before our game against the Ducks in two nights.
X-rays on Hunter came back negative for any sort of break. It was just a high-ankle sprain, but that would still keep him out through the end of the regular season probably, and maybe a little bit into the playoffs. We would be heading home again after the Anaheim game, and since Hunter didn’t need surgery, he stayed with us instead of getting sent back to Portland.
This injury to Hunter, though, meant Nicky absolutely had to be on top of his game, and it also meant that we needed Bobby with us and ready for whatever may come. We didn’t need to face any more games where some untried guy like Nate Smith was between the pipes. We still hadn’t clinched our playoff spot. We were in a good position to do so, but I’d been around this league long enough to know that a few injuries piling up was all it would take for an epic collapse.
This was just the time of year when injuries tended to start plaguing teams and fluke things like Bobby’s flight delays tended to happen. I knew to expect it, but the Portland Storm was a pretty young team, in general. There were quite a few guys who were a lot closer to Babs’s age than there were to my age—and we had a lot of guys without much playoff experience.
Even some of the older guys on the team—the leaders like Zee and Soupy—hadn’t spent much, if any, time in the playoffs. Zee had in his first couple of years. Soupy was just getting to be a regular in the NHL instead of playing in the AHL. Monty had quite a bit of playoff experience, but he was out with a broken arm.
Hell, even RJ, Eller, and I hadn’t seen a ton of playoff action. RJ and I missed the postseason as often as we got in with the Islanders. Eller had played for the Jets, who had rabid fans but rarely made it beyond the regular season to thank those fans. Now that I thought about it, Webs was probably the only guy on the team who’d seen much playoff action in his career. He might have played as many playoff games as the rest of the guys on this team combined.
All of that meant that we might get into the show this year, but that didn’t mean we were ready to do much damage once we got there. But it also reinforced that this was exactly where my focus needed to be. I still had two years left on my current contract. As long as I could get myself back on track, whether Noelle was part of my life or not, I was going to be here for a while. With these guys. I needed to step up and play the role that Jim Sutter brought me here to play.
I made up my mind on the flight that since I was one of the older, veteran guys on this team, one of the ones who knew what a grind the playoffs could be, I needed to spend as much time as I could making sure that the younger, less-experienced guys kept their heads on straight and stayed calm. That seemed like a better use of my time and energy for the next few weeks than obsessing over what was going on with Noelle.
That didn’t stop me from calling and leaving her messages at least a few times a day and sending her a text message here and there, just in case she eventually turned on her phone or went back to the condo. In case she decided to give me another chance to sort out how to give her what she needed.
I just couldn’t let her be my only focus. Or even my primary focus.
There was a point in the middle of the second period when the game was tied at two that Ducks forward Corey Perry was getting under the skin of a bunch of our guys. After Perry steamrollered into Nicky on a breakaway, Razor lost his cool and tried to draw Perry into a fight. That didn’t exactly work out. Razor got sent to the box for roughing and Perry didn’t get a penalty on the play, and then Razor went nuts—throwing his stick against the glass and screaming all sorts of obscenities at the refs. A couple of seconds into the penalty kill, our guys got distracted and we took another minor for having too many men on the ice.
Scotty took a look down the bench and settled on me to serve the penalty. “Kally, go calm him the fuck down.”
I wasn’t usually part of the PK group anyway, so it wasn’t all that surprising that he would send me. I made the eighty-foot skate across from the team bench to the penalty box and sat down next to Razor, who was still going berserk.
“
Yeah, let that fucking pansy-ass douche canoe run all over our fucking guy and don’t do a fucking thing about that and then you call me, ref! He’s been diving all fucking game and you keep letting him off.”
The penalty box attendant shut the door and looked at me before taking his seat.
“
You’ve got to let it go, Razor,” I said.
“
The fuck I do.”
“
You do. We need you to play with your head the rest of the game.” Not just Razor, but all of us. Perry was getting in the heads of a lot of our boys, and it had to stop or our game was going to completely come off the tracks.
“
But the fucking refs—”
“
Don’t worry about the refs. Worry about yourself. You let Perry get past you, and then he ran into Nicky. If you’d done your fucking job better, then none of this would have happened and it wouldn’t matter what the refs did or didn’t do.”
“
Fuck you,” he shot back. “I don’t see you scoring out there.”
“
Never said I was perfect. We all need to play better. Including me, and including you.”
Razor glared at me, but he shut up after that.
We sat and watched our PK team successfully kill off the Ducks five-on-three advantage, and with each second that ticked by, I could feel Razor’s mood shifting and his focus returning.
By the time the attendant opened the door to let Razor out, I had the sense that his head was back where it needed to be, even if he was pissed at me for calling him out. That was okay. I’d done it one-on-one, not in front of anyone else. And he knew it was the truth.
I got to leave the box a few seconds later, and the team as a whole settled in for a hard-fought game. But now we were more worried about ourselves and what we were doing than about Perry and his antics. I didn’t get a point in the game, and we lost—but we hung on until overtime to do it, getting the extra point in the standings by doing so.
It could have been a lot worse. Bergy pulled me aside in the locker room after the game and gave me both a literal and a metaphorical pat on the back. “I don’t know what you said to Razor in the box, but whatever it was, you said the right thing.”
“
I just told him what I would have needed to hear when I was his age.” There wasn’t any reason I needed to tell Bergy or anyone else that I’d handed Razor his ass on a platter in there. That was between me and him.
Bergy nodded. “Well, nice work. We need more of that from you, you know.”
“
I know. You’ll get it.” It was a hell of a lot easier for me to promise something like that than to promise I’d keep scoring like I had while Noelle was around.
We flew back to PDX after the game because we had to play at home against the Stars the next night. They were already in Portland and waiting for us. It was after one in the morning by the time Babs and I walked through the door to the condo, and I’d been filled with a mixed sense of dread and anticipation ever since the game ended and I didn’t have that to distract me.
She was gone. I’d known, deep in my gut, that she had left, but now there was no more room for doubt. Her cell phone was sitting on the bar in the kitchen with the charger and life-proof case right next to it, the credit card beneath it all.
“
I’m sorry, Kally,” Babs said. He shuffled inside the apartment with his suitcase, shutting the door behind us.
I nodded, but that was all I could do for a moment other than stand where I was and try not to break down.
She’d left most of the clothes I’d bought for her behind, but at least she had had the sense to take the waterproof gear I’d brought her right before she left. She might be in a shelter somewhere, or maybe she’d gone to stay with a friend, but if not something like that then she was bound to be out on the streets.
The thought of it made me sick. I’d seen plenty of homeless people around Portland since I arrived here. They stretched out on park benches to sleep or in the covered entryway to businesses downtown after hours or anywhere they could find that they could catch a few hours in relative peace. They went around panhandling, begging for anything you could give them. Some used it for drugs, sure, but others just wanted to put a decent meal in their bellies. She’d already been too skinny from not eating enough when I’d met her. It wouldn’t take long for the little bit of weight she’d put on since then to waste away.
I wanted to go out looking for her, but I didn’t have a clue where to start. And what would I say when I found her? How would I convince her to come back to me?
Babs had already unpacked his bag and changed for the night, and I was still standing there staring at her cell phone and the credit card. Part of me had hoped she would have taken the card even if she’d left the phone, but that was about as unlikely as unicorns showing up to the next Storm game. Noelle didn’t want anything I knew how to give her. Babs came back out, his hair sticking up wildly after washing his face. “Get some rest, Kally. We can’t come up with a plan without sleep.”
“
We?” My voice was a frog croak.
“
Yeah. We.” He went to the fridge and took out a bottle of water. “You don’t know the city very well yet, so you’re going to need some help finding her. But there’s nothing we can do right now.”