Page 153 of The Fall
Blair brought me here. The mess of that sits inside my chest. I turn sideways, stretch my arm out, and grab the pillow next to me to curl around it.
I lie there too long. Every part of me feels heavy except for my thoughts. They skid, veer, snap back to Blair, until my phone buzzes with a text.
Meet me in the visitor’s equipment room in 20.
Twenty minutes later, I’m walking down the quiet hallway of Dallas’s arena, carrying two coffees from the hotel café. When I reach the equipment room, the door is cracked. I nudge it open with my shoulder.
“Special delivery.”
Blair looks up from where he’s sorting through a box of toddler-size jerseys. That’s his prank: he’s replacing everyone’s jersey with a two-year-old’s. His hair is still damp from the shower, and he’s wearing jeans and a Mutineers hoodie. “Perfect timing.” He takes one of the coffees. “I needed this.”
“How’d you get these?” I pick up one of the toddler jerseys. It’s Hawks’s, and it’s perfect in every detail, including the name and number on the back.
“NHL store sells them for kids.” Blair sips his coffee. “I ordered a whole team set last month.”
“You know Hawks is going to try to wear it anyway.”
“Guaranteed.” Blair taps his cardboard cup against mine. “Pete is grabbing the hangers.”
“Think they’ll figure out it was us?” I ask.
“Hayes will.” Blair hands me Hollow’s jersey. “He knows it’s my tradition.”
“But he doesn’t know I helped.”
Blair’s eyes meet mine. “No. That’s new.”
Hawks stops dead in his tracks at the door to the room. “What the actual fuck?”
Hollow holds up his tiny jersey on its hanger, squinting like he can’t figure out what he’s seeing. “Did the washing machine shrink them?”
“It’s a kid’s jersey, dumbass.” Divot punches Hollow’s arm. “Someone switched them out.”
Confusion gives way to laughter. The sound rolls through the room in waves, bouncing off concrete walls and metal lockers. Even Coach cracks a grin before he catches himself and schools his expression back to a scowl.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Hawks says, but he’s laughing too, holding up the tiny jersey like evidence in a crime. “Who even makes these this small?”
“For babies, you giant,” Divot says. “Normal human babies, not whatever you were.”
When Hollow attempts to pull the jersey over his head and gets stuck halfway, Blair’s composure cracks. A laugh escapes, quick and bright, before he seals his lips together.
“Someone help me,” Hollow’s muffled voice comes from inside the fabric prison he’s created. His arms wave above his head.
“Whoever did this,” Hawks announces, “is a genius and also dead to me.”
Blair catches my eye. The corner of his mouth twitches.
Hayes wanders over and leans in, dropping his voice. “Annual Captain’s prank, right on schedule, but I’m sensing a new influence this year.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” I say. Blair maintains a perfect poker face.
“Sure.” Hayes looks between Blair and me. “Nothing suspicious about you two at all.”
Practice itself is loose and playful. As expected, half the team tries to squeeze into their mini-jerseys. Hawks plays bare-chested beneath his pads, his baby jersey around his neck. Hayes wears his dress shirt over his pads and the jersey like a headband.
Everyone’s riding the high of last night’s win and this morning’s surprise through the whole of skate. After, in the showers, Hawks belts out “Auld Lang Syne”.
At lunch, Blair sits next to me.
