Page 52 of Finding Her
I strongly believed that hockey was the best sport out there and I loved it more than anything in the world, but I would be lying if I said it was the only thing I ever thought about. And I didn’t think that was wrong for me to do, even if Dad constantly made me feel like it was.
“What else would you want to do?” he asked. He “sounded genuinely confused, like he couldn’t imagine it at all. “What else is there?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled. My voice echoed across the empty rink. “I don’t know because you have never given me the chance to find out. All it’s ever been is hockey. The only thing I’ve ever been allowed to talk about is hockey. And I don’t want to.” My voice cracked as I repeated, “I don’t want to.”
Dad looked horrified. “What do you mean youdon’t want to?”
“I mean…” I chewed on my lip for a minute, wondering if I was ready to say this. I could still backtrack. I could take this back and say I was just surprised by his arrival, that I was angry about something else and decided to take it out on him. I could go back to being the good kid, the one who did everything his Dad told him to do. But then I thought of Poppy and her eternal happiness, of the way she looked at me with all the love in the world. Doing what he wanted meant letting go of her. Was I willing to do that? For him? “I mean that I want to explore options for college that aren’t just based on their hockey teams. I want to pick a major that I think will be fun, not because it will be the thing that gets the least in the way of hockey practices. I want to have my future open to me. I want to be more than a future professional player.” I stared at him and had a long breath. “I want to live, Dad.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He pointed a finger at me and I felt like he was accusing me of committing some crime. Maybe, in his mind, I was. “”You don’t know a single thing of what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do,” I said flatly. “I’m in my last year of high school. I know what I’m doing. I’ve gotten this far. And I’m going to be okay.”
“You’re a hockey player,” he said. “Nothing else. You’re not?—”
“And why can’t I be more?” I yelled. “Why does it have to be one or another?”
“This girl is putting ideas in your head. You never felt this way until?—”
“No, she’s not!” Anger flooded through me at him accusing Poppy of anything. As if she had been the one to hurt me instead of him. Poppy didn’t do anything to ruin me—she’d been the oneto save me. “This is me. All me. If you can’t deal with that, then you can go.”
He just stared at me, breathing hard. Then he said, “Fine. You want to quit? You want to throw it all away? Do it. See if I care.”
He turned and stormed off, leaving me there, alone.
CHAPTER 34
bear
“I wonderedif I’d find you here.” I jumped at the sound of the voice and looked up to see Coach walking down the steps of the bleachers, with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He was dressed more casually than I’d ever seen him before, but I guess that made sense given it was a Sunday evening and he was supposed to be off the clock.
I looked forward again as he came to sit beside me, resting casually in the seat.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting here. It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. After my dad has stormed off, I’d practically collapsed here and even though I knew I needed to go find Poppy, I’d bee unable to get myself to stand up and do it.
“The custodian called me,” Coach said. “He said he heard some yelling, and I thought I’d check it out. When I saw your dad speeding out of the parking lot, I put two and two together.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, still staring out onto the ice. The idea of bringing Poppy here had just been fun. A cute date idea. Something we could do to celebrate everything that happened in the past couple of days. I never expected that Dad would show up. And, maybe naively, I never expected that Clairewould send him that photo. Everything she and I had done to each had always remained contained to just us. When she was mad at me, she retaliated, but neither one of us escalated it to the point of our families finding out. I guess she thought this was her trump card. That when my dad found out I’d kissed another girl, he would come and set me straight, and I would go back to Claire, begging on my knees. Maybe that was the whole purpose of starting the bet in the first place, in her mind. It was always about forcing my hand.
It was a new low, even for her. And I had to wonder where we could go from here. Not just her and me, but our families. What had she told her parents? What would my dad say to them? Would they collectively shut me out and give up on me, or would he defend me against them if it came down to it?
“Can I be frank with you, Barrett?” Coach asked.
“When are you not?” I mumbled.
He snorted, but then we grew serious again and said, “This is different. It’s not about hockey or school. It’s about your family—and if you don’t want to hear it, I don’t have to say it.”
I finally looked at him, my curiosity piqued by what he was saying. He’d never talked to any of us about our family lives beyond the occasional check-in to make sure we were adjusting to boarding school life and everything okay. I wasn’t sure why he would be changing that now.
“What is it?” I asked, too curious not to know.
“Your father.”
“What about him?” I asked, immediately on edge. There were many things he could say about my father, but I was worried that he was going to go the route of defending him. That was what most adults did. They told me about how he just had his best intentions in mind for me and how he pushed me because he wanted me to succeed. One guidance counsellor had overheard me complaining about it to Crossy and pulled me in to her officetell me how parents just wanted to give their children the chance to have a better life than they’d gotten themselves. But she didn’t understand—he wasn’t trying to give me a better life than his, he wanted to give me the exact same life as his. He wanted me to be his little clone so he could relive his glory days through me, and he couldn’t stand the idea that I didn’t want it.
“Your father,” Coach said, “knows what he’s talking about when it comes to hockey. He’s a damn good player and the whole world knows it.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Here we go, the speech I’d heard from almost every adult in my life at some point or another. How lucky I was to have him as my dad and how I was going to grow up to be an exceptional hockey player because of his influence in my life. Sometimes, I wondered if there would ever be an accomplishment in my life that I wouldn’t have to give him the credit for.
