Failure

There was so much crowd in the arena that I could hardly make out where the entrance was. Billboards of sponsors and partners decorated the area in a colourful spree, and the air was filled with a jolly-like tension, mixed with the voices of people and sounds from speakers. I felt totally lost.

After several minutes of boring my way through the crowd, I made it to the backstage, where players were either dressing, or warming up for the game, or both. I didn’t know how I entered the room. It felt like there was a flood of people in different directions, and I had only been pushed here, swept in by a continuous flowing wave. There were players fastening their gear; some were putting on their jerseys, some their skates, some shoulder pads, gloves, mouthguards. They were all so huge, and I felt like I was in the midst of giants with how small I was. They didn’t even notice when I entered because the room was too rowdy, and everyone too busy.

I felt like I had mistakenly stepped into a den of lions, and I was scared what they would do to me once they all came to notice me. I might just become a stress-relief puppet. The thought haunted me and I turned back quickly to leave. I hit someone hard on the chest, and I almost fell before he caught me from the waist and pulled me back up.

“I’m so sorry, I—I didn’t see you coming,” I said, with my eyes half shut as I expected a scowl.

“You came.” I heard that unmistakable baritone voice, and when I looked up, it was Riley.

“Oh… it’s you…” I said with a relieved sigh. I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. But he replied, “It’s me.”

How he got a reservation even when he wasn’t watching the match remained a mystery to me, but I was seated at the very front row of the arena, having the very best view.

I took a picture of it and wanted to send it to Henry and Erica, but I decided not to. Shortly after, Kimberly came sitting next to me. I felt her eyes on me for a long time, and I wasn’t sure if it was me she was looking at or she was just looking in my direction, but when I turned to look at her, our eyes met, and I quickly turned back to face the rink.

In a short time the match started. First the team that called themselves The Golden Copper skated in like a swarm of bees, causing an uproar of applause from the audience. Many students from different schools were in the crowd; if not so, it would have been crickets. I also knew that many of them wanted so badly for the Beaumont Wolves to lose because they believed they had won too much and needed some humbling. When the Wolves skated in, in all their choreographic glory, aligning themselves in circles until they formed a wolf-like head and then dispersed into their positions, the crowd went absolutely bananas. There were cheers and whistling, and when the camera focused on Riley Beaumont and he was projected onto the big screen, they literally lost their minds. I found myself screaming too, so loudly I surprised myself.

The cheerleaders were giving an entrance performance, in their bright pink dresses, shaking their pom-poms theatrically and in sync. I felt my limbs shaking to their choreographed movements.

My ears had slowly adjusted themselves into the noise, accepting it as merely background sound.

The speakers had announced the start of the match and soon the puck was sliding with angry force from stick to stick. Players were hitting each other to lose balance, sometimes so rough that the referee would blow a whistle, ushering penalties. Sometimes the crowd would argue. They would boo and scream.

My eyes were intently fixated on Riley, following him from end to end as he played with exceptional skill and strength, sometimes deking his opponents so they would fall. And the referee would blow, as if to penalize his skill. It was annoying. When the cameras projected Riley on the screen, he looked feral. Like he was an entirely new person on ice. I shivered, not from the cold, but from looking at the scoreboard. 11–12, and then 11–13, 11–16. I felt my heart slump to my chest. We were losing.

There was this doom that lurked over the arena. It was cold and piercing. One player hit Riley from the side, and another from the same team set a foot, and Riley’s limb twisted on it and he crashed onto the ice. The camera projected him reeling in pain on the cold ice. But what surprised me most was that the referee deferred and called it not a foul but a legal tackle. I felt a hot shooting pain from the guts of my stomach. That’s a foul! That’s an obvious foul! I didn’t know that I was shouting it out until someone responded close to me in a similar angry tone, “There’s something really fishy going on, I tell you.”

After a break, they returned to the rink. I caught Riley standing a bit off-balance. His knee must have been badly injured. But he still carried on with the game fiercely. The scoreboard moved from 11–16 to 12–16 and then 13–16, 14–16. They were equalizing. The crowd was cheering crazy. Riley had been the one to score consistent goals with a broken limb. I was part of the cheering crowd. The time was already about to elapse. 2:00 minutes left.

My eyes moved obsessively between the time and the goal display screen, back and forth, back and forth. 15–16, 0:56. My fingers were deep in my mouth and I was biting anxiously at them, and at exactly 7 seconds left, another goal from the Beaumont Wolves. We equalized. I felt a chill of relief wash over me, and I released a withheld sigh.

But Riley. I couldn’t stop thinking of him, his leg. I dashed out of the crowd to look for him, even though I knew he would be surrounded by interviewers looking for the next spicy story.