Page 1 of Gravity
ChapterOne
Bryce
There’s a brisk energy in our dressing room this morning, as if we’re still in the middle of last night's game. Voices bounce off the concrete walls. Stick tape rolls across the floor. Slava Molnárová kicks the tape back to Etienne Leroux while MacKenzie Vaillancourt and Janne Mäkinen talk a mile a minute past each other.
“And then—” Janne looks up at me, a wicked grin curling over his boyish face. “Bunny, you with that breakaway.”
“Tabernak,” I groan. In English, profanities arise from body functions. Shit. Fuck. Among the French Canadians here in Quebec, most profanities aresacres, and they arose out of old nineteenth century frustrations with the Catholic Church in the province.Tabernak. Tabernacle.Calisse. Chalice.Esti. Host.Oui,thathost. Leave it to usQuébécoisto turn the sacraments of the church into prolific curses.
“Bunny, this is hockey, not baseball.” MacKenzie winks at me as he laces up his skates.
MacKenzie was on the ice last night during my third breakaway of the game. On my first breakaway, one of the other team’s defensemen deflected my shot, but Slava was there to gobble up the rebound for a score. On the second, I faked out the goalie with a flick of my eyes, as if I were about to pass to center ice, then sank a wrister over the goalie's shoulder to put the puck in back of the net.
Of course, no one is talking about those two. No, they're giving me hellfor my third, when I uncharacteristically slammed the puck wide off the ice and over the glass.“I was pushed!”I protest.
It's no use. My teammates roar. Tape, old skate laces, and socks fly my way, along with cries of “Sureyou were” and “Of course!” and “Calisse, you're not trying to get a home run out there, Bunny!”
Bunnyhas been my nickname since five minutes after I started in the NHL. During my first practice seven years ago, after the whistle blew, I hopped up between plays to stretch my back. The captain of the Montréal Étoiles at the time grinned, pointed his stick my way, and said, “Nice. You're Bunny.” And that was that.
Now, I'm the captain.
The Montréal Étoiles are a team of ravenous dreamers. None of us were stars or standouts, and we were all second best in our junior or high school leagues. We were picked in the middle of our drafts. No one predicted we would be great when we started playing in the league. But, brought together, and fueled by hunger and hope, we've become something more.
We've made it to the playoffs the last two years, going further each time. Last year, we lost in the semifinals while our rivals in New York stormed their way through Los Angeles and swept the Stanley Cup. When I watched the New York players heft the Cup over their heads, I saw champions. Victory sang through their veins. They were bellowing, screaming, making circuit after circuit on the ice.
I want that. I want that feeling to live inside of me, and I want to bring that feeling to my teammates, too.
This is our year. Our energy is building. We are in the hunt. It's why all of us are here the morning after a late-night game to suit up for an optional practice. We could be at home. We could be sleeping. But we'rehere. Together.
I rise, and my team follows. Our chatter is fever-pitched, the electric zing of twenty men hyped up on victory.It's only practice, but we take the rink like we're world champions. We turn forward, flip backward, push to our top speeds on the straightaways before digging hard into tight curves around the goal net.
I split off from the pack and drift to center ice, stick in a white-knuckled hold across my thighs. The arena spotlights are on, and I turn my face upward, like I'm staring into the sun.
Dark spots loop and swirl around the edges of my vision, black holes popping open to swallow everything outside of those blinding white circles. My eyes close, and I whip around in a tight arc, tipping my head to my chin to breathe inle parfumof the rink—artificial ice, refrigerant, the blade-like scent ofcold. It's a smell that runs right down into my childhood memories. The crisp, sharp sting of the first freeze, and the playful mornings my brothers and I would check to see if our breath froze into puffy clouds in front of our faces. Watching lace ice form and stretch across the river running behind our village, and listening to the water shift and change from gentle burbles and rumbling eddies to groans and snaps and creaks as the deep freeze took hold and time seemed to slow, then still. I remember testing the thickness every day, hoping—with my hand-me-down skates and my duct-taped hockey stick—that it would finally be the day I could skate out, all the way out, past the crust along the river edge. Out to the center, where I could really skate like the wind.
I lived for the months between October and March, when the world was gray sky and gray ice and the air was so frigid and fragile it was crystalline. For those months, it seemed like it was just me and my skates and mybeaux rêves.
Today, I live for the same months—the NHL season—but instead of being alone, I have my team. And this team, our team, the Montréal Étoiles, is the most storied in all of the NHL. In our long history, we have the most wins, the most championships, the most retired players in the Hall of Fame. This team is defined by greatness. By dynasties and destinies.True,oui, we haven't brought home the Stanley Cup in over two decades, but that's going to change. It will change this year,calisse, if I can write our history.
My teammates whip by, figure-eighting around me as they call out, “Bunny, Bunny,allez!Calisse,allez,allez!” Everyone's impatient. Everyone wants to skate, to play.
Before practice, Coach Eza Richelieu dumps a pile of pucks on the ice, but no one touches any of them until I deliver the first pass. It's part of our unwritten rulebook: thecapitanestarts the play. It's superstition, and part of the reason we cling to these rituals is to use them as justification for any good or ill fortune that may befall us. Last year, the team believed we won a game because I shot an amazing pass to Etienne in our pre-game practice, when he was streaking up the wing and I hit his tape at full speed as he crossed the blue line. We did that again during the game and scored. A week ago, we struggled, and the team loudly protested it was because Slava bobbled my pass during warmups, which made our good luck wobble.
I sayc'est faire semblant. We are good because we aregood. On and off the ice, we believe in each other, and what we do on the ice proves that. When we play badly, one or more of us are hanging on to fears—about ourselves, about our play, about our futures or our pasts or our worth—and then we carry those doubts and darkened thoughts into our games. Those games go poorly.
My teammates are streaks of color against the boards and the blinding ice as I pull a puck out and bat it back and forth. They chant “Bun-ny!Bun-ny!”as their sticks slam rhythmically on the ice.
Who will start us off right? Who is hungriest for this puck?I sling a pass to Etienne, coming in hot up the wing. He grins, and he stick-handles through Janne and Karel Levesque before he splits on a breakaway toward the goal.
Valery Mikhailov is in the net. It's one on one, Etienne—a ferocious defenseman with a powerful stride and an even more powerful shot—against Valery, our goalie who has been steadily climbing the ranks. Nearly every game he's played in the past month has been a shutout or held to one goal against.
Etienne fakes right and pulls back like he's going to slap the puck into the goal.
Half the team clenches.I smile.
Valery skates forward, calling Etienne's bluff and choking his angles.
Etienne's committed, and he can't pull back from his fake. He spins and jerks to the left in an attempt to backhand his shot over Valery's blocker—
