Chapter 5: Opening Night

At the start of the second period my father put his hand on my shoulder and said I would not be going out there.

At the end of it he said the opposite.

We were down one to nothing against the Harbor Kings, and every seat in the Garden was full.

I sat on the bench in a team jacket, number 31, with the white skates under me and my stick across my knees.

Paolo was out there playing with taped ribs.

Luca stood behind the bench on his crutches, calling the line changes.

My father had made him assistant coach to keep him busy.

"Stay down," my father said to me. "Whatever happens, stay down."

"I will."

"I mean it."

"I know, Dad."

The Kings' enforcer was back, with a purple bruise across one cheek from the bench he had fallen on.

He looked at me every time he skated by.

Lev played the left wing and talked the whole game.

He talked to the refs, to the crowd, and to the little camera clipped to his collar.

"Don't worry," he said into it, every time my brother touched the puck. "He's got a bad rib. Watch."

Paolo took a pass in the corner with two minutes left in the period.

Lev came from behind him.

I saw it before anyone, because I had seen that kind of hit in a warehouse a hundred times.

Lev did not go for the puck.

He lowered his stick across the back of Paolo's knees and drove him face first into the boards.

The sound went through the whole arena.

Paolo lay on the ice and did not get up.

The crowd stopped yelling.

The refs blew the whistle, and they gave Lev two minutes for roughing, and Lev threw both hands up and said he had slipped.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Thought I Was Weak, I Am Their Only Hope from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.