Pucking Romane & Geschichten

She'd said it was the correct outcome and moved on. It was, I thought now, the most adult conversation we'd had in thirty-one years. The second notification arrived at two forty, from the pack disciplinary review board. Kenneth Petty's case had concluded. The findings: sustained provision of sensitive territorial and personal information to parties with demonstrated hostile intent toward pack members, over a period of fourteen months. The outcome: formal revocation of standing within the Blackwood-affiliated pack territory. Banishment, effective immediately, from all territories under Blackwood governance jurisdiction for a period of not less than five years, subject to review.

He had been kicked out of his last school for fighting, and now he played for our biggest rival. Derek hated Ryan. Ryan hated Derek. They had been enemies since junior league. "No, no, no," I breathed, watching Derek move toward Ryan like a shark smelling blood. In one swift, brutal move, Derek stole the puck right from Ryan's stick. The crowd gasped. My heart stopped beating. "DEREK STONE HAS THE PUCK!" the announcer roared. "HE'S FLYING DOWN THE ICE LIKE A MAN POSSESSED!" Time slowed down. I watched Derek dance around our defenders like they were standing still. He was fast, graceful, and completely unstoppable.

Coach barked after I missed a clean pass. I didn’t answer. “Eyes up!” he snapped. I skated back into position, jaw tight, chest burning with irritation that had nowhere to go. Lyon skated up beside me during a water break, nudging my shoulder with his glove. “You good, man?” “Fine.” “That’s your third ‘fine’ today.” I shot him a look. “Drop it.” He raised both hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Just don’t bite my head off.”

Eight. As he was falling to one knee under the crushing weight of the two defenders, Julian did something that completely shocked the sports world. With his body nearly parallel to the ice and his balance completely lost, he used a single, powerful hand to hook his hockey stick around the puck. With a desperate, explosive snap of his wrist from a completely impossible, blind angle, he flicked the puck upward. The puck launched into the air like a bullet, rising high above the ice, completely sailing over the heads of the confused defenders and zooming directly toward the top shelf of the goal.

“Then I’m a bad liar and so are you.” --- The puck bunny appeared at 11:07. She materialized the way puck bunnies always materialized at hockey-house parties—not walking, not approaching, just *arriving*, as if the building had a ventilation system that pumped them in through the ducts when the alcohol level reached a certain threshold. Blonde. Tight black dress that was more suggestion than garment. Heels that made no sense in a basement with a piss pool. Eyes that moved across the room with the practiced efficiency of a scanner looking for the highest-value target.

"The campus gossip pages are already reposting it everywhere. Half the athletic boards are calling you a total homewrecker, and the hockey groupies are basically labeling you a puck-bunny who manipulated her way into the captain’s penthouse apartment." Puck-bunny. Homewrecker. Manipulator. Let's pretend that I do know what the word puck-bunny means. I already have a label— a dozen labels— on my back barely one week into resumption. I stared at the video loop as it restarted, watching myself look so small and trapped between the two look-alike brothers. These people didn't know the truth. They didn't know about Caleb's disgusting behavior, or the fact that I was completely broke, or the fake

He pulls his stick back and buries the puck top shelf with a violent crack that echoes like a gunshot off the rafters. He always buries it. That's the only thing he knows how to do.

A puck. I sit up slowly. Turn it over in my hands. It's regulation size and weight, no different from the hundreds of pucks I've handled in my life, except for the fact that it is clearly old worn at the edges in a way that speaks to years of handling, the rubber surface smooth in places from contact, the NAHL stamp on the face so faded it's barely legible anymore. Not mine.

With a quick, effortless flick of my blade, I lifted the black puck straight over his glove, tucking it into the roof of the net with absolute, beautiful precision. PING! The puck struck the top iron with a loud, ringing note before bouncing violently into the white mesh. The red light behind the glass flashed to life instantly. The game clock on the giant screen showed that exactly eight seconds had passed since the puck was dropped at the center circle. BUZZZZZZ! The stadium horn blasted a long note through the rafters. I had just tied the game 1-1, but more importantly, the giant screen above the ice began to flash a series of bright, golden letters:

_*]:min-w-0 gap-3"> Neither of them looked away first. _*]:min-w-0 gap-3"> The puck dropped.