I Burned The Hockey Star Down novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Ninety-Four Kids

I came down the loading dock steps with the sticky note still in my hand.

"What is this?"

"It's a banner," the bug's mother said. "My daughter did the S's. She does them backward, so we let her do two."

"I mean why."

"Because thirty of us stood in that lobby and heard every word." She set down her paint bucket. "Nobody asked us. So we're telling."

A dad with a ladder rack on his truck held up his phone.

"I posted what I heard. So did my wife. So did about twenty people."

"Did it help?"

"Not much," he said cheerfully. "My cousin in Bend believes us."

Somebody laughed.

Then the bug's mother pulled a clipboard out of her van.

"Here's what we came to say. Saturday, we're doing a skate-a-thon. Pledges per lap. Bake sale on the ice. We're bringing every kid on your list."

"Twenty-six kids came last week."

"Ninety-four are on the list." She tapped the clipboard. "We called every one of them. We split it up by street."

I looked at the clipboard.

Ninety-four names, with check marks down the side in four different pens.

Some of the check marks had little notes beside them. Coming. Coming w/ cousins. Mom says sorry.

"I don't know what to say," I said.

"Say yes. And tell your grandmother we need her oven."

Peg was already on the dock behind me.

"Two ovens," she said. "And somebody's going to have to watch my pie crust, because I don't share the recipe."

On Saturday, I got to the rink at five-thirty.

The parking lot was already half full.

By eight, it was full.

By eight-thirty, there were cars parked down 92nd Avenue past the tire shop, and the tire shop owner was out front in his coveralls waving them into his own bays.

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