Priya’s warning

— Nora —

The thing about being a goalie is that everyone thinks it's a lonely position.

That's true. Because yes, technically, while the other ten members of your team are out there doing things at the other end of the ice, you're standing at one end all by yourself, trying to be the last line of defense from whatever might shoot at you. So, yeah, sure.

But they don't really get that goalies see everything. They have to. While the other players are focused on where the puck is going to go, the goalie has to focus on not only the puck but on the players, the angles, the empty spots, and about fourteen other things all at once. You can see the entire ice rink. The goalie sees everything that's happening even before it happens.

Which is helpful when playing hockey.

Sometimes, less so off the ice.

I was sure of my feelings towards Jordan Ellis somewhere around two years, four months, and some days ago. But what I didn't know is when exactly my feelings had changed, because now I know and cannot pretend it was gradual anymore.

It arrived with full visibility and I saw it coming from across the ice and I made a choice to stand very still and hope it went wide.

It did not go wide.

It never does.

Priya Mehta had been my best friend since fifth grade, when she sat next to me in science class and informed me that my hypothesis was wrong but my handwriting was excellent, which was such a specific combination of criticism and compliment that I immediately liked her. She was like that... precise, a little blunt, never mean about it. She said what she saw. It was one of her best qualities and occasionally her most exhausting one.

She was sitting on my bed on Thursday evening, supposedly helping me study for our bio exam, actually watching me fold the same practice jersey for the third time.

'You've folded that four times,' she said.

'Three times.'

'The first one was a refold. Four.' She put her highlighter down. 'What's going on with you?'

'Nothing. Bio exam. Focusing.'

'You're not focusing, you're laundry-ing.' She pulled her knees up. 'Is it the Jordan thing?'

I put the jersey down. 'There's no Jordan thing.'

'Nora.'

'There isn't.'

'You texted me this morning at six forty-seven AM to tell me he got the assistant captain role,' she said. 'Six forty-seven. I was asleep. You woke me up because you were so excited about something that happened to someone else that you couldn't wait until a normal hour.'

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

'There's a Jordan thing,' Priya said, not unkindly.

I sat down on the floor with my back against the bed and looked at the ceiling, which was easier than looking at her face right now. My ceiling had a small water stain in the corner that had been there since I was twelve. I'd always meant to tell my parents about it and somehow never did.

'It doesn't matter,' I said.

'It clearly matters quite a lot, given the six forty-seven...'

'I mean it doesn't matter because I'm leaving.' I said it flatly, the way you say things when you've rehearsed them enough that they've stopped feeling like anything. 'The academy is decided. I sent the forms. Whatever the Jordan thing is or isn't, it doesn't change that.'

Priya was quiet for a second. This was rare. When Priya was quiet it usually meant she was organizing her thoughts into the most effective possible order, which was slightly terrifying.

'Can I say something?' she asked.

'You're going to anyway.'

'True.' She leaned over the edge of the bed so I could see her face upside down, which was objectively funny and which I refused to smile at. 'I think you've decided that because you're leaving, the feelings don't count. Like you've already closed the tab.'

'That's not...'

'And I think,' she continued, ignoring me with the serenity of someone who had been ignoring me for six years and had gotten very good at it, 'that Jordan has not closed the tab. And I think you know that. And I think that's actually the problem.'

I stared at the water stain.

'He got the A,' I said. 'He texted me first. Before his parents. Before Danny.'

'I know. You told me. At six forty-seven.'

'He always tells me first.' I pulled my knees up. 'Every time something happens, good or bad, I'm the first person he goes to. And I...' I stopped. 'I do the same thing. When the academy offer came through I wanted to tell him before anyone. Before my parents. I had to actively stop myself.'

'Why did you stop yourself?'

'Because telling him first would have meant something. And I couldn't afford for it to mean something when I'd already decided to go.'

Priya sat back up. I heard her shift on the bed, the familiar creak of my mattress. Outside my window the street was doing its quiet Thursday evening thing, a car going past, someone's dog, the distant sound of a neighbour's TV.

'Nora,' she said. 'You can go and it can still mean something. Those aren't mutually exclusive.'

'It's easier if they are.'

'Easier for who?'

I didn't answer that.

Here's the moment I knew. The exact one.

It was February of last year. We'd had a brutal loss, the Wolves boys and our girls' program both played the same night, different results, and while Jordan's team had won I'd let in four goals in what was objectively my worst game of the season. I wasn't injured, wasn't sick. I was just off, the way you're sometimes off, the way the ice doesn't explain.

I'd sat in the locker room after everyone else left because I needed a minute and I didn't have the energy to perform being fine in the parking lot. I was still in full gear. I was sitting on the floor with my back against the bench and my helmet in my lap, and I was not crying, I want to be clear about that, I was just still and waiting for the feeling to pass.

The door opened. I expected Priya. It was Jordan.

He'd come from his own game, still had his bag, still had his jacket on with the collar up the way he wore it in winter. He looked at me on the floor and he didn't say anything. Didn't ask if I was okay, didn't do the thing where you list all the reasons someone should feel better. He just put his bag down, sat down on the floor next to me, and was there.