Page 10 of On Thin Ice

Maybe we could have been friends.

I loved the school library—huge oak shelving and a mess of nooks and crannies meant the library was my safe place, about the only spot where I could sit and study with no one to bother me. No one messed around in the library, mostly due to the beady gaze of Ms. Collymore, the resident librarian, who ruled the space with a rod of iron and saw everything. No one chatted loudly in the library, no one dared to mess about at all, no one took books and didn’t return them, and she knew all of us by name. At least the kids who spent a lot of time in the stacks. I had a favorite table, right at the back in the corner, in the autobiography section—a desk big enough for one person to lay out their books and get ahead with homework in every available break, plus a leather chair so comfortable I’d often thought I might try to wheel it out under Ms. Collymore’s nose.

“Mr. Corrigan,” the voice was a whisper, and when I’d first heard it, way back, I’d imagined it was one of the infamous Chesterford ghosts, but soon came to learn it was only one snooping librarian who wanted to get up in my face about things.

At first, I’d hated her for all of the questions she threw at me. How are you? Do you need help? Is that a bruise on your face? Was that from hockey? Why was your mom crying when she dropped you off this morning… that kind of thing. It was as if she could see through the mask of pink hair and smiles to the hurt kid inside, and when the bullying had started, she’d been the one person I could rely on. One particularly bad day, she’d been the one to close the library door, barring anyone from coming in, so I had space to breathe.

“Hey, Ms. Collymore,” I whispered back, and glanced up to see her with an arm full of books, smiling down at me.

“How did your geology project work out for you?”

“An A. Mr. Eghan said it was the best project on plate tectonics he’d seen.” I’d been so stoked to get that plaudit, knowing how many hours I’d put into the work, and also, that it was a ton of research that had paid off.

“I’m so pleased.”

“Thank you for your help in finding the resources.”

“Always,” she murmured, then juggled the books in her arms, sliding one onto my desk. “I think you might need this.”

I tugged the book toward me, “environmental science and sustainability,” I read out.

“That’s the next component of earth sciences you’ll be studying.”

“Thank you.” She inclined her head and took a step away, but I called her name softly, and she turned back. “How do you know what’s on every part of the curriculum?” It was a question I’d been meaning to ask for a while, but somehow this was the perfect opportunity.

“Who do you think they go to for resources themselves?”

“Google?” I teased, aware that the darkness from lunch was slipping away, one gentle encouraging smile at a time.

“Wash your mouth out, Mr. Corrigan,” she teased, then vanished around the corner back to her desk at the front of the room.

My stomach grumbled; I wished I’d finished my food, but there’d been no Felix at the table, so I’d let my guard down, and when Soren invited Jonah to sit with us, I’d lost my appetite, which had now come back with a vengeance. What had Soren been thinking bringing Jonah over to us? It didn’t make any sense at all. It was hard enough having Jonah at every practice, taking photos, chatting with some others on the team, and generally pretending to be all kinds of nice. I’d caught him smiling at me, and it made my chest tight.

Horribly tight.

I couldn’t see good in him right now, and with what I’d faced at home, I wasn’t sure I ever would. It would take an incredible leap of faith for me to ever trust myself to talk to him, let alone smile back at him.

“Hey,” someone approached me, and I stiffened and stopped reading. I knew that voice. I didn’t want him here. I’d left the cafeteria to avoid him, and this was my safe space. I glanced up to see Jonah, his ever present camera around his neck, his dark eyes a hundred kinds of serious. He was holding out a banana to me. “You didn’t eat much, and you left when I … look… I didn’t mean to… no… I just don’t want you hungry… so I got you this.”

I stared at the offering, then up at him, and back at the banana, waiting for what, I didn’t know.

“Anyway,” he whispered, as he glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t let Colly see, okay?” I was completely aware that he was talking about Ms. Collymore. I knew that I was here at the desk and that there was a banana, but was this what an out-of-body experience felt like? He placed the yellow offering on top of the book that Ms. Collymore had given me. “Later.”

I watched him leave. He didn’t look back. If anything, he tripped over himself to get away from me, and disappeared down the side stack before I could even think to react.

What the hell was that all about?

Needless to say, I didn’t eat the banana, got a warning from Ms. Collymore that there was no food allowed in the library, and headed off to my next class with an unsettled feeling ofwhat the fuck.

I didn’t seeanything of Jonah before the Hershey game. We didn’t have classes together on a Friday, and then, there was a closed meeting before the game that the photographer extraordinaire wasn’t allowed into. In fact, between the banana incident and the moment he caught my gaze from the seats by the Coyotes bench, there had been a Jonah-free zone—enough for me to get my head around the second offering of food. Or at least try.

I mean… what? I almost had affectionate thoughts about the gift… almost. After all, he’d given me a banana, and he tried smiling at me, and maybe that was something I needed to talk to a therapist about. I still saw someone every other week, a gentle man called Steven who’d attempted to unpick some of the things I’d seen and done. Secrets I would never tell anyone else.

“What’s up?” Soren asked as we settled down next to each other. We were third line and wouldn’t be out on the ice taking first shift. That was up to Shaun, our captain, with his wingmen and our first defense pairing, who were out there waiting for puck drop, which was less than two minutes away.

“Nothing,” I said, focusing on trying to find my mom in the crowd of supporters, as opposed to worrying about Jonah and his freaking banana offering. I couldn’t see her at first, but then, since Soren started at Chesterford and there was the slim chance his NHL-linked fathers would be here, it was difficult to find a seat, so much so that Coach had suggested ticketing, which seemed to amuse him. I finally found Mom, and I waited until she looked at me, and waved, something I always did, even when it caused Felix to sneer at me.

Not that he sneered at me now that he was good and shiny-in-love Felix, but still.

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