Page 10 of The Faceoff

“She’s been there fifteen years.” He shrugs, which is Cash’s version of emotion — not that he doesn’t have it, just that it travels sideways rather than up. “She was never going to leave, you know? Whether they promoted her or not. But still.”

“Still,” I agree.

He picks his phone back up. “Theo’s being weird.”

“Theo’s always weird.”

“Weirder. He’s in his room and he hasn’t said more than twelve words since we got back.”

I think about the summer. Theo was in Providence through July for training, and then he went quiet in a way that meant something had happened and he wasn’t telling anyone what. He texted back in single sentences for about three weeks. Then he went back to normal, which for Theo means a scowl and the occasional grunt of acknowledgment. I let it sit. You let things sit with Theo until he decides to tell you, because pushing gets you exactly nothing, which I’ve known since freshman year.

“He’ll come out when he’s hungry,” I say.

“This is what I’m counting on.”

Heavy footsteps on the stairs. Then Wyatt appears in the kitchen doorway, six-four, sandy hair, his favorite Whitmore practice shirt, still carrying his phone. From Alabama, somehow the nicest person I know, which I say with full awareness that it sounds patronizing but which is true — Wyatt Calloway has a quality of attention that would be unnerving if it weren’t so clearly warm, like he has decided in advance to think well of whatever you’re about to say.

He spent the summer running a hockey camp for foster kids in Montgomery. He does this every year. He never makes a big deal of it.

“Are we eating?” he asks.

“Trying to figure that out,” I reply.

“I could make something.”

“We have no food.”

“I could make something from the no food.”

Cash and I both look at him. He surveys the open refrigerator with the calm of someone who has, in fact, previously made something from a less promising situation.

“The cheese,” he says. “And there’s pasta in the cabinet.”

“That’s not dinner, that’s a cry for help,” Cash says.

“It’s cacio e pepe.”

“Cash-ay what?”

“Cacio e pepe. Pasta. Cheese. Pepper.” Wyatt is already opening the cabinet. “It’s Italian.”

“I know it’s Italian, I’m saying it sounds like a disease.”

Wyatt pulls out the pasta with the unhurried manner of someone who has already committed to this. “Theo eats pasta.”

“Theo eats anything.”

“Then problem solved.”

I’m about to agree with this, which would make it simple, except my phone buzzes on the counter. I glance at it.

Bella

Heard you’re back. missed you

The buzzing has been going on for three days. Since the day we got back to campus, actually, which is either a coincidence or it isn’t. She knew we were coming back for preseason — everyone on campus knows when preseason starts, the hockey calendar isn’t a secret.

I put the phone face-down.