Body Checked by My Straight Captain novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Banner

At five on Monday morning, Ty was driving the ice resurfacer around Ingram Arena in a borrowed orange jacket.

The rink manager had hired him on Sunday night, in a hallway, on a handshake.

It was six dollars over minimum wage and four shifts a week. It would cover about a third of his tuition.

Ty had signed the form with a hand that would not stop shaking, and then he had gone home and laughed for an hour.

It was the first money he had ever earned that his father could not take back.

The machine hummed along the boards, laying down a sheet of wet shine.

Up above, two workers on a lift were scraping the north wall.

The letters had been painted on the concrete over the goal, six feet tall. INGRAM, in blue.

The first letter was already gone, and the second was coming off in strips.

Ty watched the paint fall into a plastic bin, and he felt a hundred things and none of them was loss.

He parked the machine at the gate and was shutting it down when a voice behind him said, "You're good at that."

Ty turned.

Richard Ingram stood by the boards in his charcoal coat, with his hands in his pockets.

He looked tired.

"Dad," Ty said.

"I came to see them take it down."

"It's coming down."

"I told them to start at the front." His father almost smiled. "It seemed right."

They stood there for a while with the scraping going on overhead.

"I came Saturday," Richard said at last. "You saw me."

"I saw you."

"I didn't clap."

"I noticed."

"I didn't know how." Richard looked at the floor. "I haven't been in a building where I couldn't read the scoreboard in years. Your mother used to explain things to me. I never listened."

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