Chapter 22: Visor Off

The ice was full of people, and I stood in the middle of them with the visor still down.

Players, trainers, reporters and a hundred cameras had come out onto the ice, and every one of them was looking at me.

The commissioner put a microphone in my hand.

"I think you owe the city one thing," he said.

I looked up at the second tier, where forty kids held up forty black visors on poles.

I reached up and unclipped mine.

It came off with a small click, and the lights hit my face.

I had never taken it off in front of anyone who didn't know me.

My hair was stuck to my forehead, and the scar through my left eyebrow showed white.

"My name is Mara Brescia," I said into the microphone. "I'm twenty-four years old."

My voice shook, and I let it.

"For ten years I played on illegal rinks under a black visor, and I never lost. I paid for school with it. I paid my mother's last bills with it."

The Garden was so quiet that I heard a flag rustle somewhere.

"People kept asking who Ghost was. I'm her."

I lifted my chin.

"I'm also the useless rich girl who couldn't hold a stick."

A laugh went up, a big one, from the whole arena at once.

"I lied about that part for a year. I let my family think it. I let myself think it. That's over."

The noise came down on me.

I don't remember the next minute.

Somebody had my arm, and I was being turned.

Then Paolo wrapped both arms around me from behind, and my feet left the ice.

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