Page 81 of Payback On The Ice

"Theo. Got a minute?"

I've got a minute.

His name's Mark Duvall. He's an amateur scout. He's been to three of our games since January. He shakes my hand. It's a normal handshake. He lets go when he's supposed to.

"I'll be honest," he says. "I came to see Kovač the first time."

"Everybody does."

"I kept coming back for you." He looks at me. "I've seen the clip. Everybody has. I've also seen the tape from this season. You got put through the wringer, and you just kept coming. There's a lot of guys who would've folded."

I don't know what to say. "Thank you."

"I'm not offering you anything. Not yet. But I'd like to talk this summer. You and your family." He gives me a card. "Think about it."

He goes. Halvorsen claps me on the shoulder, hard, and goes too.

I stand in the hall holding the card. My hands are shaking.

I call my mom.

It rings five times. She picks up out of breath, like she's run for it, and I can hear a vacuum somewhere behind her. She's at the offices.

"Theo? Baby, is everything okay? It's late."

"Everything's fine, Mom. Everything's—" My voice cracks. I put my back against the cinder-block wall and slide down it until I'm sitting on the floor. "I scored two tonight. We won. And there was a scout. A real one. He wants to talk to us this summer."

The vacuum shuts off.

There's a long silence. Then my mom starts crying. Not sad crying. The other kind.

"I knew it," she says. "I knew. Didn't I say? Didn't I say you'd land on your feet?"

"You said."

"I said it in April. When everybody—" She stops. Sniffs. "I said it."

"You did, Mom."

Down the hall, the door to the room opens. Dane comes out in his game-day suit, his hair still wet. He sees me sitting on the floor with the phone against my face and my eyes red, and he stops dead.

I hold up one finger. I'm okay. I smile at him.

He leans against the wall across from me and waits. Just waits, with his hands in his pockets, until I'm done.

The house is a party.

Not a real one, because it's playoffs, and Halvorsen would kill us. But there's pizza and the music's too loud and Gunnar's standing on a chair doing a reenactment of my backhand that's somehow insulting and flattering at the same time. Wes keeps hugging people. Petey falls asleep on the couch at eleven with a slice of pizza on his chest.

At midnight, Dane says, "Night," to the room, and goes upstairs.

Twenty minutes later, I say, "Night," and go upstairs.

Nobody says anything. Jace looks at me over his drink for a second. Then he turns up the music.

His door's open a crack. I push it open and slip in and close it behind me.

He's standing by the window. It's closed, for once. He's in sweats and a T-shirt, barefoot, and he turns around when I come in.