I opened my mouth to tell her so, but I didn’t get the chance. The power was definitely going to her head. This would be the first season that Bella was with us in an official capacity, as our student manager. There weren’t exact figures, but I was pretty sure she’d slept with 75 percent of the team. Her lust for hockey was exceeded only by her lust for the players. Nobody knew where Bella came by her enthusiasm for the sport. A rich girl from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, she was the most rabid hockey fan I’d ever met, though her snooty parents (and I’d met them) had never seen a game, let alone the inside of a locker room. “Why don’t you practice now? Say, ‘thank you, Oh Great One.’”īella was a strange bird, but in the best possible way. “Graham, you’re supposed to call me Oh Great One this year,” she said. She kicked me in the ass, hard enough to feel it through my pads.
And when I turned to face her, she gave me her trademarked apple-cheeked grin. “Now you’re sorted.” Both the voice and the assistance came from my friend Bella. After I struggled for a moment, someone yanked it into place from behind. I was almost done suiting up, but my practice jersey snagged on an exposed patch of Velcro on my shoulder pad. And it looked like we were just going to call the other one Frenchie. We’d known them for all of a half hour, and already one of them had earned himself the nickname Pepé, like the cartoon character Pepé le Pew. There were a couple of enormous Canadian recruits, with thick French accents and even thicker beards. We were all banging around in the locker room, feeling lucky. That afternoon was the first hockey practice of the season. So you can be sure that I didn’t see it coming. He saw a sign, or felt a disturbance in the force. In all my favorite movies, when something bad was going happen, the protagonist usually sensed it. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.įaceoff: the start of play, in which the referee drops the puck between two opposing players. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Names, brands, organizations, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. The Understatement of the Year is a work of fiction.
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