Ten years

I have a theory about best friends.

Not all best friends, I'm not qualified to speak for everyone, and Danny would probably have a lot to say if I tried. I mean specifically the kind of best friend you've had since you were small enough that you don't fully remember meeting them. The kind where, if someone asked you to describe your earliest memory, they'd be in it somehow, hovering at the edge of the frame.

My theory is this, those friendships don't start. They accumulate.

Nora and I didn't become best friends on a specific day. It wasn't like a switch flipping. It was more like you know how ice forms on a lake? Not all at once. Slow, from the edges in, one layer at a time, until one day you test it and it holds.

I've been thinking about this a lot since last night. Since the drive home and the texts and the thing I've decided not to examine.

Mom made pancakes this morning, which she only does on Saturdays and occasionally when she can tell something is going on with me and she's trying to communicate love without asking questions. So either it was a pancake Saturday, or she'd noticed something in my face last night that I thought I'd been hiding.

I ate three pancakes and didn't say anything, she didn't ask anything and we watched the news together.

But now I'm in my room with the door closed and my old Millbrook Mites jersey on my desk… I keep it there, I don't know why, it doesn't fit anymore, and I'm thinking about ten years of Nora, and how you can know someone so completely that you forget to actually see them.

The first time I remember her, we were seven.

Millbrook Ice Complex did a Saturday morning learn-to-skate program for kids… still does, actually, I've seen them out there on the main rink while we practice, tiny people in huge helmets doing their determined little shuffles along the boards. I was in it, and so was Danny, and so was a girl with two braids and a purple helmet who fell down approximately once every four minutes and got back up every single time with this expression on her face like falling was personally offensive to her and she intended to have words with gravity at the earliest opportunity.

I don't remember talking to her that day, only remember watching her get up.

The second time,  and I know it was a different session because I had a different color practice jersey, she skated into me from behind because she was looking the wrong way and we both went down in a pile. She said 'sorry' about six times before I could say anything. I said 'it's fine' about six times back. Then we both just sat there on the ice for a second, which is a very specific kind of bonding experience.

She told me her name was Nora while we were still sitting on the ice, like it was important to establish immediately.

I told her mine. She already knew, because apparently Danny had been talking. I didn't know what Danny had been saying and honestly I'm not sure I want to.

That's it. That's the whole beginning. Two kids sitting on the ice because they ran into each other.

Ten years later and I still think about how we probably would have been strangers if she'd been looking where she was going.

We were eight when we figured out we went to the same school and just hadn't overlapped yet, because she was in Mrs. Farkas's class and I was in Mr. Oyelaran's and they had separate recesses like it was some kind of social experiment. We started sitting near each other at lunch. By December of that year, 'near each other' had become 'at the same table' and then 'at the same end of the table' and eventually just 'next to each other, obviously, where else.'

We were nine when she decided she wanted to be a goalie. I remember this clearly because she announced it like a verdict, not 'I was thinking maybe' or 'could I try,' just 'I'm going to play goal.' Her parents got her pads for Christmas. They were too big but she wore them anyway.

I asked her once, years later, why goalie. She thought about it for a second and said 'Because I like being the last line. I like that it's on me.'

I understood that even when I was nine. I think that's when I knew we were going to be the kind of friends who actually made sense to each other.

We were ten when we started doing the hot chocolate thing, though it wasn't a 'thing' yet, it was just a vending machine and two kids who didn't want to go home yet. We were eleven when we realized we'd done it enough times in a row that it had become a ritual. We were twelve when her league schedule synced with mine for the first time and suddenly we were at the rink at the same time every week, and the ritual got formalized. First practice, every season, bad hot chocolate, the broken clock, whatever needed to be said.

It's funny what becomes sacred when you're not trying to make anything sacred. You're just doing a thing, and then you keep doing it, and then one day you realize you'd notice if it stopped.

We were thirteen when Danny said, for the first time, 'you guys are basically already dating.' We both told him to shut up with the exact same energy at the exact same time, which he pointed to as evidence. We argued about the logic of this for twenty minutes but he still wasn’t convinced.

We were fourteen when her grandmother got sick and she didn't tell anyone except me, and I sat with her in the hospital parking lot for two hours while she talked and I listened, and I understood then that there's a specific kind of trust that only exists when someone lets you see them in a waiting room. It's different from regular trust. It's heavier.

Her grandmother recovered but Nora cried a little when she found out. She made me swear not to tell anyone she cried, which I said was ridiculous because crying in a hospital parking lot was completely normal, and she said she knew that, she just didn't want it 'out there,' and I said okay and I never told anyone. Including Danny. That was a sacrifice.

We were fifteen when I had my first genuinely bad hockey season. Nothing catastrophic, just off, everything slightly wrong, my reads a half-second behind, my shot flat,  and Nora spent three separate practice sessions working with me on things that had nothing to do with goaltending and everything to do with just... reminding me what it felt like to love the game. She never said that's what she was doing. She just showed up.

I don't think I ever told her what those sessions meant to me. I should probably do that at some point.

We were sixteen when I started noticing that other people noticed her, which sounds bad when I put it that way, but what I mean is I'd always known she was funny and smart and fierce in this quiet way that could catch you off guard. I'd known that for years. But at some point I started watching other people clock it too, and I had a feeling about that which I also decided not to examine.

I've decided not to examine a lot of things, it turns out. I'm starting to think that's not as sustainable as I believed.

My phone buzzed.

[Nora]: are you awake

[Jordan]: it's 10am

[Nora]: that doesn't answer the question

[Jordan]: yes I'm awake

[Nora]: good. what are you doing

I looked at the Mites jersey on my desk. Looked at the ceiling. Considered saying 'absolutely nothing productive' and decided honesty was overrated.

[Jordan]: thinking

[Nora]: uh oh

[Jordan]: what does that mean

[Nora]: it means you only 'think' when something's wrong. you normally just do stuff

I stared at that for a second and the accuracy was kind of annoying.

[Jordan]: I'm fine. just post-first-practice brain

[Nora]: mm

[Jordan]: what does 'mm' mean

[Nora]: it means I don't believe you but I'm not going to push it

[Jordan]: that's very mature of you

[Nora]: I know. I'm working on a lot of things

Then, a minute later:

[Nora]: do you want to come to the rink? I'm going to do some extra work this afternoon. Priya bailed on me

I picked up the jersey off my desk. Turned it over in my hands. Number 11, the name ELLIS ironed across the back in peeling letters. I'd been so proud of this thing when I got it. Wore it everywhere for like a month.

[Jordan]: yeah. give me an hour

[Nora]: I'll get you a hot chocolate

[Jordan]: from the machine?

[Nora]: obviously from the machine

[Jordan]: it's going to be terrible

[Nora]: obviously

I put the jersey back on the desk, got up and found my bag.

The thing about Nora on ice when no one's watching is different from Nora on ice when everyone's watching.

Game-Nora is locked in, quiet and still and massive in the net the way good goalies get massive. It’s not physical size, it's something about presence, about taking up space that doesn't exist. She tracks everything and gives nothing away. I've watched her stare down shooters who have four inches and thirty pounds on her and not blink once. It's genuinely intimidating and I've known her since we were falling over each other on the learn-to-skate rink.

Practice-Nora is different. Not less serious, if anything she's more serious, because she's working, and working is where the real version of anyone lives. But she talks to herself a little. Makes small sounds of frustration when something doesn't land right. Laughs occasionally at her own mistakes the way you only do when no one's grading you.

I've always liked practice-Nora. I've always liked having access to the version of her that doesn't perform anything.

I fed her shots for an hour. Mixed bag, high glove, blocker side, low short side, some dekes that she read before I even committed. She stopped most of them and the ones she didn't, she'd stand there for a second, reconstructing what happened, like she was filing it somewhere. Then: 'Again.'

We took a water break by the boards after about forty-five minutes. She pulled off her helmet and her hair was everywhere and she was breathing hard and looked exactly like she'd looked at eight years old getting back up off the ice, that same expression, not frustrated, just committed.

'You're shooting different,' she said.

'Different how?'

'More wrist on the release. It's harder to read.'

'Is that bad?'

She considered. 'For you it's good. For me it's annoying. Which means it's good.'

I laughed and she smiled into her water bottle. “Danny thinks I was off yesterday,” I said, because I apparently just say things now.

'Danny thinks everyone's off until he's had his post-practice snack.' She shrugged. 'You seemed fine to me. You were in your head a little on the third line rush, but you found it.'

'How could you tell I was in my head? You were at the other end of the ice.'

She looked at me like I'd said something very naive. 'Jordan. I've been watching you play hockey for ten years. I can tell when you're in your head from a parking lot.'

I didn't say anything to that. There wasn't much to say.

She put her helmet back on. 'One more set. Mix in some rebounds.'

'Yes, Coach.'

'Don't.' She pointed at me. 'Don't call me that.'

'Wouldn't dream of it, Coach.'

She turned around and skated back to her net, and I could tell from her shoulders that she was trying not to laugh, which was basically the best possible outcome of any interaction.

After, we did the hot chocolate thing even though it wasn't the first practice anymore, because sometimes the ritual expands. The machine was just as bad as the night before. Possibly worse. I wasn't sure how it got worse.

We sat under the broken clock. 4:47, same as always.

'Can I ask you something?' she said.

'You don't usually ask if you can ask.'

'I'm trying something new.' She turned her cup in her hands. 'Do you ever think about the fact that we've been doing this for six years? This exact thing. Same machine, same bench.'

'I was literally thinking about that this morning.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. About how things become rituals without you deciding to make them rituals. You're just doing a thing and then suddenly it's load-bearing.'

She was quiet for a second. The Zamboni hummed distantly.

'Load-bearing,' she repeated. 'That's a good way to put it.'

'I have my moments.'

'You do.' She looked at the clock. 4:47. 'Do you think it'll still feel the same? Next year? When things are... different?'

The question sat there and I knew what 'different' meant. I knew which different she was talking about. And I had about three possible answers, ranging from honest to cowardly, and I went with something in the middle, which was probably the worst choice.

'Things have been different before,' I said. 'We always figure it out.'

She nodded slowly. Not like she agreed, exactly. More like she was filing that answer away somewhere too, the same way she filed missed shots…  noting it, moving on, trying again later.

'Yeah,' she said. 'We do.'

We finished the hot chocolate and walked out to the parking lot. The afternoon had gone gray while we were inside, the sky doing that flat September thing where it can't decide if it wants to be autumn yet.

'Same time Thursday?' she asked.

'I'll bring snacks,' I said. 'In case you want to be Danny about it.'

'If you bring a protein bar I will check you into the boards.'

'Noted. Real food.'

'Real food,' she confirmed.

She got in her car and I got in mine. I watched her pull out of the parking lot, not in a weird way, just in the way you watch someone leave when you've been with them all afternoon and then suddenly you're not.

Load-bearing, I'd said.

I sat in my car for a second and thought about what it meant when something load-bearing moved. What happened to the structure around it. Whether it held.

Then I started the engine, because sitting in parking lots thinking about structural metaphors was not going to get me home in time for dinner.

But I thought about it the whole drive back.