They Thought I Was Weak, I Am Their Only Hope novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Twenty Thousand for a Name

Aldo can't take Mara's name off the roster and hands her the black card again. In Allston she buys the worst skates in the shop, then learns Lev has posted a $20,000 reward for Ghost's name.

My father called the league commissioner at midnight to take my name back.

I sat on the kitchen island in Brookline with a glass of water and listened to him lose.

"It's filed," the commissioner said through the speaker. "Signed by the owner, stamped at 9:14. A player stays on the sheet for two games, Aldo. You know the rule. You wrote half of it."

My father put his forehead against the fridge.

"Then she sits," he said. "Two games on the bench, in a jacket."

"Fine by me," the commissioner said. "Tell Vasko."

The line went dead.

Paolo came in from the garage with a bag of frozen peas held against his ribs.

"She doesn't dress for the Kings," he said. "I'll talk to the coach."

"I'm the coach," my father said.

"Then you talk to him."

Luca swung into the kitchen on his crutches and dropped into a chair.

"I'll teach her to skate tonight," he said. "Basement, an hour. She'll look decent in the warmup and nobody gets hurt."

I had never told them how I skated.

They had seen me wobble through the family lessons for six months, and I had let them.

It was easier than the questions.

"You're all being very sweet," I said.

"Sweet is the plan," Paolo said. "You stand there, you wave, you look pretty for the cameras."

"I'm right here," I said.

"We know," Luca said. "That's why we're doing this."

My father opened the drawer by the stove and took out a black card.

It was the same card he had pushed into my hand the day he brought me home, and I had never used it.

He held it out again.

"Buy whatever you need for tomorrow," he said. "Gear, skates, a coat for the bench. Anything. Don't ask the price."

I looked at the card.

For ten years every dollar I had came from a purse in a bakery warehouse.

I had never learned how to spend money that came easily.

"I don't need anything, Dad."

"Then buy something you don't need."

He said it quietly.

It was the closest he had ever come to saying he was sorry.

I took the card.

When I picked up my mother's grey case from the floor beside the stool, my father's eyes went to it and straight away to the window.

I had seen him do it before.

I carried the case upstairs.

At seven the next morning I took the train to Allston and walked into the skate shop with the card in my pocket.

The shop smelled like tape and floor wax.

The man behind the counter had known me for six years as a girl with a student ID who paid in cash and never gave a name.

Now he looked at the black card, and then at my face, and he did not say one word about the news.

"Skates?" he said.

"Not the pair I always buy."

"Right," he said. "Because you're a Brescia."

"I'm trying not to be one for a few hours."

He nodded slowly.

I bought a cheap pair of white figure-style rental skates off the shelf and a stick with a bad curve.

It was the opposite of everything I owned.

"Those won't hold an edge," he said.

"I know."

"You're going to look terrible on that ice."

"That's the idea."

He rang it up on the black card, and the screen said approved without a pause.

The total was less than a pair of my father's gloves.

I put the bag over my shoulder and stood outside in the cold looking at the card.

I still did not know what to buy with it.

My phone buzzed.

It was the account I only ever opened in the dark.

A boy from the rinks had written to me, the one who had asked for money for his sister's inhaler in the spring.

I read it standing on the sidewalk.

Ghost, you need to see this. Lev Vasko just posted it. Everybody at the rink is sharing it.

Under the message was a screenshot.

It showed Lev in his car, grinning, holding up a stack of cash and a handwritten sign.

The sign said: $20,000 to whoever tells me the name behind the black visor. I'll be at the Garden at ten.

The post had already been shared nine thousand times.

Lev did not know who Ghost was.

He had just told every person in Boston to look for her.

At ten o'clock he would be standing in the Garden with his phone out.

I thought about the man he had been a year ago, bald and shouting on a folding chair.

I thought about my father's face over the sink the night before.

If Lev wanted to catch Ghost, he could watch a Brescia girl who could not skate.

I would give him the worst skater he had ever filmed.

Then I walked to the train.

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