Page 139 of Wild Card 13

“High school sporting events should not require communication technology normally used by the Secret Service.”

A laugh escaped me, brief and visible in the freezing air.

Naomi looked at me instantly. Not because the joke had been particularly funny. Because she had been monitoring me since she picked me up.

She had not called it monitoring. Naomi would have described it as driving her emotionally compromised best friend to a hockey game because allowing me behind the wheel while my mother dismantled our home seemed irresponsible.

I had called her dramatic. Then I had checked my phone eleven times during the drive. The screen remained dark inside my coat pocket now. No missed calls. No new messages. Nothing from my mother telling me she had changed her mind. Nothing from her explaining why she had chosen this weekend, while Dad was traveling with the Frosthawks, to begin moving her things into an apartment across town.

She had told me that morning. Not asked me to sit down. Not tried to soften it. She had stood at the kitchen counter with both hands wrapped around a mug she was not drinking from and said she and Dad had been having problems for a long time. She said they had tried. She said nobody had done anything wrong.

Then my mother explained she would be gone before he returned Sunday night. I had nodded because she kept looking at me like she needed permission.

Afterward, I had gone upstairs and stared at Ty’s name on my phone for almost ten minutes.

He had sent me a message before his team meeting:

Big night. Try not to miss me too much before warmups.

Then another thirty seconds later:

Actually you can miss me a normal amount. Builds character.

I had typed three different responses before settling.

Focus on hockey, Burns.

Bossy. Hot. Motivating.

Two days ago, he had held me in the dark inside Betsy and told me he had loved me since he was fifteen.

This morning, my mother had told me love was not always enough to make people stay.

I had not known how to place those two truths inside the same body.

So I had told Naomi.

Because Ty had spent his entire life preparing for nights like this, even before any of us understood they were coming. I could tell him tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or after Dad came home and our family officially became whatever it was becoming.

Tonight belonged to him. I could survive one night without asking him to hold something that had nothing to do with hockey.

Naomi bumped her shoulder carefully against mine. “You’re doing it again.”

I dragged my attention back to the entrance. “Doing what?”

“Leaving without physically going anywhere.”

“I’m standing right beside you.”

“Your body is. The rest of you has been staring off into the nether since Maple Grove.”

“I’m fine.”

We reached the arena doors nearly twenty minutes before warmups. The moment they opened, sound slammed into us.

Voices rose toward steel rafters in one continuous roar. The Northbend pep band played somewhere beyond the concourse, brassnotes colliding with the Eden Prairie drumline at the opposite end of the building. The Zamboni rumbled behind the closed rink doors. Vendors shouted over one another while students rushed past carrying signs, foam fingers, and enormous paper bags of popcorn that arena staff were pretending not to notice.

Blue-and-white streamers hung from the second-level railing on one side of the building. Black and red covered the other. Every section appeared full.