All Chapters of On Thin Ice : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

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 try

— 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

Jordan The thing about getting the A is that it doesn’t feel like you think it will. In my head it was supposed to be this big moment... fireworks, maybe a slow-motion skate under the lights, Coach clapping me on the shoulder while the guys cheered. Reality was quieter. Just Coach’s flat voice in an empty locker room and the sudden weight of responsibility I wasn’t sure I was ready to carry.I drove home with the text thread to Nora still open on my phone. Her excitement had been loud and immediate, the way she gets when something good happens to someone she cares about. It made the whole thing feel more real.But now it was Thursday night, two days later, and the season was starting to feel like more than just hockey. Practices were ramping up. Schedules were tightening. And Nora had been… distant. Not in a way anyone else would notice. Just small things. She stayed later after our joint sessions. Her texts took longer to come back. That thing we do where we can read each other’s si

Jordan The whistle cut through the air like a blade on fresh ice, sharp and final. Coach Rimer stood at center ice, clipboard tucked under one arm, his face the usual mask of mild disappointment mixed with something that might have been calculation. Practice had been brutal today, full contact drills, power play setups, and suicide sprints that left half the team sucking wind by the third round. My legs burned, but it was the good kind of burn, the one that reminded me why I loved this game even when it tried to break me.“Ellis!” Coach barked. “Center the next rush. Let’s see if that A means anything yet.”I nodded, tapping my stick on the ice twice, our team’s old signal for “got it” and skated back to the face-off dot. The guys were scattered across the neutral zone, jerseys soaked with sweat despite the cold. Danny lined up on my wing, grinning like an idiot even though his face was red from the last sprint. Cho took the other side, quiet and focused as always. And back in net, N

What We Don’t SayJordan“You make it work,” I said. “That’s what you do. That’s what you’ve always done.”She didn’t answer right away. The parking lot lights buzzed overhead, throwing that flat orange glow over everything, over her car, over the slush piled at the curb, over the little cloud of breath hanging between us. October cold had come in fast this year. It was barely six-thirty and it already felt like midnight.“You say that like it’s easy,” Nora said.“I don’t think it’s easy. I think it’s just true.”She pulled her jacket tighter and looked at me sideways, the way she did when she was deciding whether to let something go or push on it. I knew that look. I’d been on the other end of it for ten years.“What if I’m not what they think I am,” she said. Quiet. Not a question really, more like something she’d been carrying around and finally set down where I could see it. “What if Coach K built me up in her head and the second I get there, they realize I’m just a decent goalie