Checked Page 15

  I pack up and say, “See ya,” to Lucas and Jae-won. Outside, it’s dark—we’ve got an eight thirty start time. That might be hard during the school year, when I probably won’t get home until ten thirty. But the club has a full slate of young teams—they’re called squirts and mites—and they get priority for the earlier slots.

  In the car, I ask, “How did I do?”

  Dad starts the car and backs up, saying, “You looked a little lost out there at first, but you came on strong later. But what happened to your saucer pass?”

  I feel kind of disappointed, but I also know that Dad’s always honest when I ask him how I did. “I couldn’t get it to stop shaking in the air.”

  “All right, well, let’s go to Aleksei this week.”

  I can’t wait to go to Aleksei again, but I immediately worry about the money. Then I switch worries back to how I looked at practice.

  “Cool . . . Anything else? How did I look compared to everyone else?”

  “Most of them looked rusty. It’s always that way at the beginning.”

  “But do you think I’m as good as them?”

  “What? Yeah! Absolutely!”

  That’s all I wanted to hear, so I zone out for the ride home.

  At home Sinbad jumps around and whines at the door. “It’s too late. I’ll walk you three times tomorrow, okay?” I go right to my room, throw off my clothes, change my boxers, and climb into bed. I have literally fifty or sixty pairs of underwear, ’cause when I don’t feel like taking a shower, I just change my boxers instead. That would probably sound disgusting if I was a girl, but I’m not. When Jenny used to want me to take a shower after a late practice, and I just wanted to sleep, Dad would say, “He’s a boy, Jen, he’s a boy.”

  Sinbad hops onto the bed. He’s had good energy lately. Still, I get out of bed, kneel next to the mattress, and say softly, “Thank you for taking such good care of Sinbad. I still plan on rescuing lots of dogs someday.” Then I get back in bed. While I was kneeling, Sinbad slid over to my pillow. Since he’s feeling well, I push him out of the way. He doesn’t help—I have to push really hard.

  My phone dings: Jae-won. Dude, practice was lit. Let’s try to make first line.

  I text back Yeah! He doesn’t answer, but now he’s got me thinking. Except for my first season, I always tried out first for a better team than I made. So every year, I was one of the best players on the team that I did make. I think about how Dad made the NHL and was the worst player on the team. I hope that doesn’t happen to me this year. I gotta admit, I’m a little surprised how fast the AAAs skate. I’ve seen them play before, so I knew they were fast, but when you’re out there with them, you can really see how you’re at a whole new level. That makes me feel tired. Like I’ve been working for years, and now I gotta work even harder just to keep up. And then I’ve got a sick dog. . . . Life is tiring, man. I feel sorry for myself for a second. But Sinbad lets out a snort, and my whiny moment passes. I smile. Sinbad’s gonna make it! I’m a AAA! I’m gonna work like hell and make first line! I press my face in Sinbad’s neck. Life doesn’t get any better. It just doesn’t.

  CHAPTER 29

  * * *

  THE TEAM HAS three ice practices a week, an hour of theory, and three hours of dryland, plus everyone has various lessons and dryland that they do on their own. I work as hard as I can, but some practices I come home feeling like I’m barely keeping up. It seems like everybody else is better than me. I might be the actual weakest player on the team. Simple truth is I need to be getting on the ice more. Dad says Coach told him I’m doing great, but I don’t feel that’s true. I don’t want to be third line or even stuck on the bench, so I add an extra hundred squats a day, like that’ll change my fate.

  Jae-won comes over a couple of times and Dad discusses film with us, and then one day the three of us go jogging with Sinbad, except he quits early and just watches us, panting in the sun. Later, while Jae-won and I wait for his mom to come pick him up, we sit on the front stoop talking about Rocko. Jae-won has heard he quit hockey and then had some kind of breakdown.

  “Just like Coach Dusan was talking about with that player he had . . . What is a breakdown exactly?” I ask.

  “Not sure. I guess you have to go to a shrink.”

  “I had to go twice, once family therapy with my dad and stepmom. And another time I had to go ’cause I was sitting with my chair tilted, and the teacher thought I was going to fall and hurt myself. I did it three times even though the teacher told me to stop. The vice principal made me stay in her office during recess and lunch, and then when I kept doing that with my chair, she made me go to a therapist one time to help me think about my life.”

  “Wow, she sounds like a freak,” Jae-won says.

  “She was evil, like, I really think she was some kind of secret Satanist or something.”

  “Scary. What was the shrink like?”

  “Sucked. He just asks you these questions in a really calm voice. He kept saying, ‘How do you feel about that?’ ”

  “Did it help you stop tilting your chair?”

  “Nah, man.”

  “I had to go to a therapist three times, because I wasn’t conceptualizing what I was doing before I did it, or something like that. The vice principal said I was supposed to conceptualize, take three big breaths, then walk away. Instead, I guess I threw bread at another boy during lunch because he was bothering my friend. Then another time all of us got in a fight because the other boy tripped my friend on the stairs. But his parents gave a ton of money to the school, so they believed everything he ever said. It was a charter school, and they were always begging the parents for money.”

  “So did the therapist help?”

  “Nah, my parents just put me in a different school. We’re using my cousin’s address for my home address, and I’m going to a school in their area.”

  “I didn’t know that. Glad you got away!”

  “I like this school a lot better. The principal’s, like, totally sane. I went from Cs and Ds to straight Bs. I even got an A once.”

  Sinbad’s sitting next to us, Jae-won petting him. “You really don’t need a shrink if you have a dog,” I say.

  “I wish we could have one in our apartment. Someday when we get a house, I’m gonna get a German shepherd or a Doberman.” Sinbad seems to understand and places a paw on Jae-won’s knee.

  “He’s psychic,” I explain. My mind goes back to Rocko. “Hope he’s okay.” I take out my phone and text him. I have his number ’cause we had exactly one playdate earlier this year. Hey, Rock, it’s Conor. ’Sup, I heard you quit hockey.

  He texts back immediately. I freakin’ hate hockey.

  Glad you quit then. You okay?

  I am now. Thanks for asking. But my therapist says I’m not supposed to be in contact with hockey players anymore.

  How come?

  She says they’re a bad influence. Too competitive. Bye forever.

  Bye, good luck!

  Jae-won is looking over my shoulder.

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Jae-won asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Kang pulls up, and the twins jump out of the car and run full speed at us. Sinbad looks alarmed, so I hold his leash and say, “It’s okay, boy.”

  The twins fall all over Sinbad, petting and nuzzling him. He lets out a low rumble—he hates it when anyone besides me puts their head near his head. It’s just a thing of his. “Cut it out!” Jae-won says.

  “He’s getting annoyed, be careful,” I say, and the kids fall back.

  Mrs. Kang walks up and says, “How is dog?”

  “He’s doing better, thank you.”

  “Good, good, you take good care, I know you make good father someday.” She laughs like she’s really happy she said that, and I smile.

  Then Jae-won’s brothers each take one of his hands and pull him away. “Sit in back with us!” one of them says. Even though he yells at them sometimes, he’s their hero. They know he’s got
magic hands. He’s a legend in his own home.

  I get up and walk Sinbad around the neighborhood. We haven’t been to the hills lately, ’cause one day I took him up a hill and down the other side, like I used to do a lot. But he got tired on the bottom, and we still had to climb up again to get home. I’m waiting for him to get back to a 100 percent, but it hasn’t happened yet. The last couple of weeks, he’s probably at 85 or 90 percent compared to a year ago. Dr. Pierre says that may be the best we can hope for him. She said it super nice-like, but it made me sad. At the same time, when I take him off leash and hear his paws go ka-thump ka-thump on the sidewalk, it makes me so happy I can hardly stand it. It’s such a fantastic sound!

  Phone dings—Rocko again. Good luck with your hockey, you’re really amazing at it. Bye, don’t text me back.

  That was nice of him. I text him back anyway. Be happy, man. He doesn’t answer, so I guess I won’t be hearing from him ever again. That happens in sports. Old guys drop out, new ones join the club. I’ve known Jae-won for three years, though, so I think we’re friends for life. But then I think about how my mother died, my grandparents abandoned me, Jenny left, I barely talk to kids I was friends with just two years ago, Rocko and I used to be good friends, etc. Dad keeps in touch with people he knew from elementary school, but he’s not good friends with them. He does stay in close touch with some of the guys from his first juniors team when he was sixteen. He also keeps in touch with a bunch of the cops he knew early in his career. Once, not many months after we got Sinbad, we drove up to Oregon with him for the funeral of Dad’s very first partner. He’d moved up to Portland and gotten killed there during a domestic disturbance call. After the funeral, we took Sinbad to the Oregon coast, and I let him off leash. He ran around bothering everybody and wouldn’t come when I called. But when he finally let me catch him, he started licking and licking my face, and after that and for the first time, he was really mine.

  Dad had sat with Jenny in the sand, talking to the widow. I didn’t want to sit with them, just ’cause, I don’t know, that was one of the first times I realized that sometimes I didn’t want to be around it, the sad part of a cop’s life. I remember how Sinbad’s scars were almost faded, and his fur looked smooth and jet-black and shiny in the sun. He kept licking, even though today he’s not a big licker. It was like he was suddenly overwhelmed that he actually loved me. I wish we could go back to that day, but we can’t. It was a sad day, yet a happy day for me and Sinbad. Dad was still really into Jenny then, kind of doing whatever she said she wanted him to do. That day it felt like me and Sinbad against the world. But it felt good.

  CHAPTER 30

  * * *

  MY BUSINESS SEEMS to have slowed down. Basically, everybody’s car is clean. There are people who like to keep their car constantly clean, but apparently not many in my neighborhood. But I have six hundred dollars, and one evening as Dad’s having a poker game, Aunt Mo picks me up for Aleksei. Aunt Mo actually wants us to ask her for help more, but Dad doesn’t like to bother her too much. Plus, he wants to watch me skate.

  “Work hard!” Dad calls as I leave, even though I always work hard. People who don’t understand sports might think that’s annoying, but for an athlete, it’s no big deal to hear stuff like that. I do work harder sometimes, don’t know why that is.

  And some games I play great, and some games I don’t. I guess it’s true of any athlete, but some are more consistent than others. I notice that a lot of the kids my age can be inconsistent. It drives all the parents crazy, especially the fathers . . . though there are a couple of mothers who are absolutely insane.

  Every so often when you’re on the ice during a game, suddenly you can hear one of the parents yelling at the top of their lungs at the refs—you can actually get suspended for that. And of course, they’re all cheering during the game, but sometimes they cheer especially loud. And then there’s Nikita’s mom—Nikita and I played squirt A together. One game, there was a quiet moment in the rink, and then suddenly we all heard, “NIKITA, YOUR MOTHER LOVES YOU!!!” That made the whole team smile. You gotta love those Russian moms.

  “So what are you doing today with Sasha?” Aunt Mo asks when I get in the car.

  “Aleksei,” I say. “I’m doing power skating and then stick time.” She puts her hair behind her ears, and I realize half her hair’s been cut off. To me, it doesn’t look better or worse, but I say, “Nice haircut.”

  “Thank you!” she says. “I just felt like I needed a change.”

  She actually says that pretty often, so I only say, “Cool.”

  “Isn’t it all stick time? What’s the difference between stick time and power skating again?”

  “Stick time, or coaches’ time, is an hour-long workout with sticks, and it’s not regular practice.” “Stick time” also means when the rink lets a bunch of random players practice casually, but why confuse her?

  We’re waiting in the car ’cause Mr. Reynolds has stopped his car right in front of our driveway for some reason. Aunt Mo watches him in the rearview mirror. I turn around and watch as well. He’s got a big sheet of his blue plastic that he’s messing with. I swear that stuff is like his pet dog. Then he pushes it all into the backseat and starts driving slowly down the street. “He’s really into his blue plastic,” I say. “He’s obsessed with it.”

  She laughs. “Some people like movies, and I guess some people like blue plastic.”

  We back out and start driving slowly behind Mr. Reynolds. He brakes every three seconds, literally. “I wonder if he should be driving,” Aunt Mo says.

  “He only goes to the store a few blocks away. He drives really slow on side streets, but he takes it up to twenty miles an hour on the bigger streets.”

  When we’re free of Mr. Reynolds, my aunt steps on it. For a low-key person, she drives a little fast. You wouldn’t expect it from her. She’s a great driver, though. She and her old boyfriend used to do some kind of race-car driving. I don’t know much about it, but supposedly you get to drive fast around a track, and some people think it’s a lot of fun.

  We drive quietly for a few minutes, and then she asks, “So did you have any more thoughts about your grandparents?”

  “No,” I say honestly. “I mean, I’ve had some thoughts, but I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you want to tell me what your thoughts were?”

  “I don’t really know. I don’t mean I was having specific thoughts. I was just more kind of having it in the back of my head.”

  “Okay.” She screeches around a corner. “That’s fair.” She talks about why some Star Wars movies are better than other Star Wars movies. Then she sighs. “But it’s kind of sad. Lately, I don’t like the movies as much as I used to. I don’t know if they’re not as good, or if I’m just changing.”

  That’s about as shocking as my dad not feeling the same about work anymore. It seems like things must change all the time when you get to be a grown-up. I don’t know why, but I would have thought your personality basically stayed the same when you got older. My aunt is quiet for the rest of the way, just concentrating on her driving, since it’s one of her favorite things to do.

  When we reach Ice House, she asks, “Now what’s power skating again?”

  “It’s to get your thighs strong so that you can skate faster. You do all these boring, really hard exercises up and down the ice until your legs burn so much you can hardly stand up.”

  Aleksei is arriving as we walk up to the rink. He doesn’t say hi, just says, “Next two week I take off. My girlfriend will be here from Russia. She says I have to take off lessons. Who am I to argue?” He looks at Aunt Mo like she’s here all the time.

  He’s one of my favorite coaches, and I used to get nervous when he took time off. My puck-handling gets rusty when I don’t skate with him for a while.

  “It’s always nice to get away from hockey sometimes,” Aunt Mo says.

  “You talk to me?” Aleksei says. “I never get away from hockey. It is my desti
ny.”

  “I mean, just to take a break,” she explains.

  He points to his head. “In here, I never take break. This drive my girlfriend crazy. Natalia.” Then he looks annoyed. “Conor! Go change, late again!”

  When I’m changed, Aleksei is his usual yelling self. As soon as we get onto the ice, he barks out, “Work hard! You need to work hard!!” He beats his stick on the ice. “Conor, did you hear me?! I AM GOING TO HAVE HEART ATTACK!!”

  We start out with me going up and down the ice twice on my left leg only, and then I go up and down the ice twice with my right leg only. I don’t see what skating on one leg has to do with hockey, but I have to admit that since I’ve been taking power skating, my skating has gotten faster and stronger. Then I go up and down the ice kneeling on alternate legs. On and on. At one point I exclaim, “Aren’t we done yet?” As soon as I ask that, I look at the clock and see there are ten minutes left. Aleksei shakes his head at me like he pities me.

  He says, “If I teach you the way they teach in Russia, I will get arrested for torture.”

  Every year a Russian team flies over to play against our best Grizzlies bantam team, and every year the Russians win. The Russian players are flat-out amazing. They’re beautiful to behold, that’s the only way to put it. They’re creative, like they just do things that you totally don’t expect but that make so much sense after they do it. I’m a total Russian fanboy.

  “Do they do power skating in Russia?” I ask.

  “Five time a week for hour!” Aleksei exclaims. “You done resting?”

  “Yeah, I’m ready.” I never know if he’s telling the truth to me about how they train in Russia, but judging from the kids who play against us every year, they’re obviously training hard. I didn’t mention it earlier ’cause these days you kind of forget about Aleksei’s past, but before immigrating here, he played for the Red Army team that was one of the best hockey teams the world has ever seen. So he understands training like nobody else.