Page 22 of Puck Shots
I participated in it, but took the blame for the whole thing, so might as well have been all me.
JOHN:
That sounds more like it. So what punishment did you get?
ME:
No punishment. They actually thought it was pretty funny. When they knew it wasn’t Cosmo, anyway.
JOHN:
Glad to hear it’s going well. I made lifelong friends in that house and had the most fun in my life. Well, until I started playing B-Ball. Be sure to have some fun, too, okay?
ME:
I will.
I pop my phone on the book stack bedside. This last week has actually been lots of fun, for the most part, and when I think of all the things that made it that way, Cosmo is right there, in every memory, smiling at me with those bright eyes and smelling of iced coffee, vanilla, and peppermint.
7
Cosmo
“Who gives a quiz in week three?” I ask, stomping through the house, staring down at my phone still loaded on the blackboard app. The marks for a pop quiz Mr. Ericsson held yesterday in basic statistics stare back at me. I didn’t do well. I did really fucking terribly if I am being honest. Dead last in the whole class and it’s right there on a fucking shared backboard. Why is it that part, makes it so much worse?
“Relax, man. It doesn’t count toward your final grade. They just wanted to get a baseline for where everyone is up to,” Luka says, trying his best to reassure me.
“Then why post the grades on the blackboard for everyone to see?”
“It’s only our class and the faculty that can see it. You’re fine. Like you said, it’s week three, no one expects you to be across it already, that’s why we’re in the class, to learn this shit.”
“Thanks, man,” I say, hoping to end the conversation. Luka is my best friend, and I know he means well, but like he said, the faculty can see this and I know for sure the coaches will be checking up on us to make sure we’re keeping up with our studies or they’ll sit us on the bench, and no way I get drafted to the NHL from the bench. I need to study. But fuck, I hate studying. I try to focus on the words on the page, and it’s like five minutes and my brain is all nope, time to replay in detail the last twenty minutes of The Real Housewives of the NHL. Fuck, that show’s good. The sex, the drama, the sneak peeks into the lives of the guys who are living the life I want. A life I have zero hope of getting if I don’t play.
I was sure I would have been drafted already given my speed, but speed isn’t enough. I’ve been focused on every other aspect of my game all summer. My stick handling has improved heaps, but my passing accuracy still needs work, and my shot variety is meh. I’ve been working on a super-speed slap shot, but when I’m going that fast, I struggle to maintain control of the puck and usually miss it when I go for the shot. I also was a little more into partying last year than I should have been. Almost got me kicked out of the team on a couple of occasions when I’d miss a practice or two or three. I like to think that if I stand out in every game this year, then I can undo any prior bad opinions of me and start setting new good ones. Great ones, even. I need them to see that the party-hard playboy of last year is gone and I am fully committed to making my dream come true.
“You ready?” Eli asks, standing from my bed the second I walk through the door, a chessboard laid out on the covers.
How do I expect to learn how to play chess when I can’t even get a passing grade on a basic pop quiz?
“Are you sure this is easy?”
“It is easy to learn the basics, winning the game can be hard, or impossible depending on who you are playing. You look stressed. What’s up?”
Luka walks past me to the bathroom.
“He thinks he’s stupid. Maybe you can convince him otherwise. My words seem to be doing nothing to change his mind,” Luka says before closing the bathroom door. The shower sounds a few seconds later.
“He’s not right, is he?” Eli asks, and I pass him my phone and plonk onto the end of the bed. It jostles the board, and more than a few pieces topple onto their sides.
“Oh, shit, sorry. Umm, I think this is… wait, what are these?” I ask, holding up something tall that sort of looks like a part of a castle. Like a tower of a castle, but its base is a light ash grey wood, and the main castle tower piece was cut from a section of a soda can, thin black rubber lining the sharp edges.
“That would be a rook. It can move both vertically and horizontally on the board and as many spaces as it wants on a turn as long as your fingers are still holding it. As soon as you let go, the turn is over.”
He passes me back my phone, the screen dark. He gently sits on the bed on the other side of the board and helps me return the pieces to their positions. I notice now all the ones on my side have the same light wooden bases, carved to make up part of each piece, but topped with various objects like shells, colored glass, and bent copper wire to name a few.
“You know there are lots of statistics in chess,” he says.
“So you saw the grade then.”
