Page 17 of Enemies in Paradise

Since Grandpa’s property line goes almost all the way to Lynette’s pond, I can’t build a shelter without it. But the parcel isn’t big enough to meet setback requirements for two structures and too small to be split into two parcels—at least that’s how Zach explained the local zoning laws.

The shop isn’t worth maintaining. It’s far enough from the pond that spectators don’t have a good view—especially with the tree line blocking half the pond from sight. Plus, it would be in the middle of the park and cost a lot of money to rehab into something else. That’s why I want to tear it down.

I thought Grandpa was on my side, but now he’s going back on his agreement to wait for the council’s decision… thanks toCassie’s interest in the shop. He would have been fine taking a little less for his property if she hadn’t shown an interest in buying it. Lynette and Grandpa both know they’ll get more for their properties from a private buyer than from an eminent domain agreement, but Lynette is the only one who doesn’t care. She’s more interested than my own grandfather in what happens to my team.

Without the pond, my girls have nowhere to practice. There’s no indoor rink in Paradise, and little interest in building one.

But that’s not the only reason I have to fight to keep this pond for them. Pond hockey is harder than rink hockey. Players aren’t just up against each other; they’re fighting the ice too. The wind-formed ripples in it can trip them up at any time. The puck doesn’t always slide straight, and the kids never know what to expect.

Maybe I should want an indoor rink with smooth ice that could be used for a longer period during the year. But this pond ice makes the players tougher. They learn to play hard in any circumstance. They learn to take whatever comes their way and use it to their advantage.

“Coach. Coach. Coach!”

Janie’s voice breaks into my thoughts, and I glance down the bench at her.

“You didn’t answer Hazel’s question. Who’s the lady in the field?” Janie puts her hand on her hip. The cage on her helmet covers most of her face, but her stare sends a trickle of sweat down my back.

“Just a lady hitting golf balls,” I mumble.

Nobody messes with Janie. She’s a grinder on and off the ice who fights hard to get where and what she wants, even when it means fisticuffs. (That’s hockey slang for fights—something else I’m teaching my girls. The slang. Not how to fight.) Her five older brothers have taught her well. She knows the rules, andshe already knows how to skate. She’d be playing on a team in Florence, but her parents work full time. They don’t have spare hours to take her all the way to Florence a couple times a week—similar to mine when I was her age. The difference then was Florence only had a boys’ team, so I still got to play. Britta didn’t.

“Golfing in the winter? That’s weird. How does she find the balls if they land in snow?”

Janie snaps her gum between questions while Hazel pipes in with, “Is she pretty? She looks like she might be. And tall too. Do you like her?”

I answer her questions in the order she asked. “Yes. Very weird. I don’t care. Yes, she’s tall. And not even a little bit.”

“Ouch! Coach… too tight!” Cora cries out as I yank her laces.

“Sorry.” I quickly loosen the laces, then gaze down the line of girls still waiting for help with their skates. The sun is threatening to set before Janie and I are done. And Janie’s losing interest fast.

“Hazel! Janie! Go set up the cones for skate skills. Five feet apart,” I order, then wave Cora off the bench and move on to the next girl’s skates.

It takes another ten minutes to get the rest of the girls on the ice, and I still have to get my own skates on. By the time I join them, Janie is at the other end of the pond, hitting rocks into an imaginary net. Hazel is ordering half the girls to skate circles around the cones, Cora is hacking a hole in the ice with her hockey stick, and Aspen and Brighton are arguing over who gets to play goalie, even though we’re nowhere near needing a goalie.

The other five girls are holding onto each other for dear life, trying not to fall.

And Molly is barking her head off because every time she steps on the ice, she slips.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

I thought I knew what I was getting into when Britta told me about a group of girls who’d come into her coffee shop saying they wished there was a girls’ team in Paradise, not just a boys’ team whose moms were organized enough to drive them to Florence to practice.

Britta had wished the same thing when we were kids. Everyone in town knows that, including the girls’ moms. That’s why they’d sent their daughters to Britta when they started asking questions about playing hockey.

They must have remembered how Britta would sit for hours on the old plank bench next to the pond watching me play. Mom had taught her to skate along with me and my brothers, so she knew how to do that. But after my practice was over, I’d teach Britta the skills I’d learned. And she was awesome. She could have played in college—maybe even gone pro—if she’d had the opportunity.

Mom tried to drum up interest with other moms for their girls to play, but she couldn’t get enough players to make a full team or find anyone to coach. And my coach didn’t want to risk putting a girl on a team of boys that ranged in age from nine to thirteen. Some of the older boys were twice Britta’s size.

There was a girls’ team in Florence, but Mom and Dad didn’t have time to drive her an hour or more each way to practice two or three times a week. Same reason I couldn’t play on Florence’s better-equipped and sponsored teams that kept recruiting me.

And weekend games were a no-go, too. Saturday was the busiest day for Mom’s restaurant and Dad’s store, and Sunday, the one day they had off, was for church and catching up on all the things that needed to be done at home.

Not that they didn’t want to give Britta and me the opportunity to play “real” hockey. They just had to prioritize more important things. That didn’t keep me from making Florence StateUniversity’s team for the one year I was there. But Britta didn’t have the same opportunity.

So Britta and I decided we could give these girls the chance she never had to play hockey on a real team.

That was two years ago. Britta did all the recruiting for our first little team of four that’s grown to twelve. Now she’s working on getting teams started in the towns surrounding Paradise, so we have someone to play… someday. The coaching is all me.

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