Chapter 19: Second Period

Somebody in the upper deck started it before the puck dropped.

"Ghost," he yelled, and a hundred voices took it up, and then a thousand.

I stood at center ice with the black visor down and heard my own secret name come back off the roof.

The Kings' center looked at me across the faceoff dot, and I saw him swallow.

"Drop it," I told the official.

He dropped it.

I won the draw clean and sent it back to our left wing, and I was already moving.

For the whole first period I had been the rich girl who couldn't hold a stick.

Now I skated the way I had skated in that bakery, with my head up and my knees low, and the Kings could not put a hand on me.

I slipped the first defender on the blue line without touching him.

I slipped the second, spun, and fed the puck across to our left wing, and he put it in the net.

The Garden exploded in noise.

Luca was screaming at the boards on one leg, and my father stood motionless on the bench with his lips moving.

The enforcer came for me on my next shift.

I saw him load up his shoulder from twenty feet away.

I stepped inside the hit and let him pass.

He went into the boards with a crash, and the glass shook.

He got up slowly, and he did not come for me again.

"That's her!" a kid shrieked in the front row. "That's Ghost!"

The crowd roared, and for the first time that night I let myself smile under the visor.

With six minutes left in the period, I took a pass at the Kings' blue line and went in alone.

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