Page 57 of Unmanageable

15

Finn O’Connell

11:05 PM

Me: Scottie called me “insufferable”

Dean: Congrats. That’s basically foreplay for you two.

Me: i knew it

***

The silver whistle hanging around Scottie’s neck looks ridiculous. It’s a jarring, neon-bright contrast to her sleek, professional coat, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

The clock on the wall reads 4:58 AM, and the air in the rink is so piercingly cold that my breath forms thick, white plumes inside my goalie mask, fogging up the cage until I have to scrub it clear with the back of my blocker.

“Alright, O’Connell,” she shouts, her voice bouncing off the empty rafters. “Drop and give me… whatever it is goalies do when they’re warming up. The hip thing. Do the hip thing.”

I lean on my stick, a slow, lazy grin spreading across my face. “The hip thing? You mean butterfly stretches, Coach?”

“Yes. Those.” She flips a page on her clipboard with the focused intensity of someone who has absolutely no idea what she’s looking at. “Then we’re working on lateral recovery mechanics today.”

I stare at her for a heartbeat, my eyebrows arching beneath the helmet. “You mean side-to-side movement?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Those were not even the same number of syllables, Scottie.”

She points the whistle at me like a loaded weapon. “Get stretching, O’Connell. I’m not paying for the ice just to be critiqued on my vocabulary.”

Miller, the lanky college shooter I hired to blast pucks at me, is leaning against the boards near the blue line. He’s trying so hard not to laugh that he’s practically choking on his mouth guard.

He looks at me, then at Scottie, then back at me, silently asking if this is some kind of elaborate prank or if he’s really supposed to take professional tactical orders from a woman wearing high-end leather boots on a hockey bench.

“Just do what she says, kid,” I tell him, pushing out into the crease.

I drop into the butterfly, stretching out my groin, feeling the ice bite into the hard plastic of my pads. The movement is fluid, a relief after the lingering, dull stiffness of the last few days.

“Yes. That. Do your weird goalie warm up thing,” she commands, pacing the narrow wooden walkway of the bench. “And don’t give me attitude or I’ll make you do laps. I know what laps are. I’ve seen The Mighty Ducks.”

I snort, but I do as I’m told.

My shoulder feels loose. The persistent, nagging ache from Tuesday has faded, replaced by a clean, predictable tightness that tells me the joint is actually holding together.

I look up at Scottie. She’s blowing the whistle just to hear the sound.

“Excellent,” she says, tapping her pen against the plastic of her clipboard. “Now, we are going to work on the… high-danger situations. I reviewed the data from last season. Usually, you get scored on when the puck goes into the net. We need to prevent that.”

“That is groundbreaking analysis, Scottie. Truly. The entire hockey world isn’t ready for this kind of tactical genius. Have you considered a keynote speech at the league meetings?”

“Shut up and get in position, Cash.” She gestures toward Miller. “You. Tall boy. Go to the circle. The left one. The one that looks like a giant target. Shoot the puck at his feet. Not the face.”

Miller shrugs, skates to the dot, and pulls a puck from the pile. He waits for the signal. Scottie puts the whistle in her mouth and blows a blast that could wake the dead.

Thwack.

Miller lets a wrister fly. It’s a low, sliding shot aimed at my five-hole. I drop my stick, close my knees, and the puck clacks off my pad, skittering into the corner.