Being Sloane Jacobs (20 page)

I race back to my room and swap out my jeans and T-shirt for practice gear. I take out Sloane’s black varsity jersey, her name sewn on the back in thick yellow letters. I’m going to need it to get into character. I dash off a quick text to Sloane Devon before returning to the arena.

Scout here. Am skating. Will try not to suck.

A half hour later, I’m suited up and taking my first step onto the ice. I look up and see Mr. Rutherford, still parked next to Amber. Hannah has joined them, and the
two coaches give me covert thumbs-ups from the stands. Like that will help me.

I shake out my left foot, then my right, then my left arm, then my right, just like I do before my long program.
Gotta shake out the jitters
, Henry always used to say. Thinking about his voice makes me miss my home rink back in DC, where I could do
my
skating for an audience of zero. How the heck did I end up at hockey camp?

I shouldn’t be here.

But here I am. Mackenzie, the skater from check-in, is down here. There’s another skater I don’t recognize sitting in the goal. And Melody, of course. She skates up and skids to a stop intimidatingly close to me. Our helmets are nearly touching.

“Couch A says she wants us to do a little one-on-one for the scout,” Melody says. “BU is my first choice, so don’t make me look bad or I’ll make you pay.”

I don’t want to know what that means. “Back atcha,” I mutter, but she’s already adjusting her helmet and slapping the ice to get psyched up. I mentally curse the skating gods, hockey and otherwise, for putting me with Melody on what is already the worst ice experience of my life, other than my epic fail at junior nationals.

“All right, let’s have Mackenzie on defense. Melody and Sloane, I want to see some teamwork from you on offense,” Coach Amber shouts across the ice. Melody slaps her stick hard on the surface, and the ice splinters a little beneath her. I’m sure she’s none too happy to have to work with me.
But she looks over and nods. I nod back, hoping this means she won’t kill me.

Mackenzie skates off to center ice and faces us, her back to the goal. Coach Amber slides a shiny black puck across the ice. I stop it with my stick. Melody and I line up for our attempt. Mackenzie starts skating backward, her eyes locked on us. I start to charge, then quickly pass the puck to Melody. Mackenzie apparently anticipated that her efforts were better spent on Melody, because she’s already halfway to her, and Melody has no choice but to pass back to me. Mackenzie’s not quick enough, and I shoot. The puck skids past the goalkeeper and hits the net.

Oh my God. I actually scored.

We line up again. This time Melody starts with the puck. Mackenzie goes for her right away, but Melody executes a spinning juke, shoots, and scores.

For the third attempt, I start with the puck. Mackenzie has learned her lesson and doesn’t commit to either of us right away. I drive forward a few strides, then pass to Melody. Mackenzie charges her. There’s no time for Melody to take a clear shot. She passes back to me. I take a few more strides toward the goal, heart pounding, just managing to keep the puck in control. Mackenzie heads toward the goal to defend. Her eyes are locked on me, and I realize that the best chance to score is to pass to Melody.

With Mackenzie’s eyes glued to me, and her body turned to defend against my attack, I slap the puck left to Melody. She doesn’t even stop it, just winds up and
connects with the whizzing puck. It shifts direction and heads straight for the goal. Mackenzie wasn’t expecting it, and we score.

“Nice!” Melody shouts, and I can’t tell if she’s congratulating herself or congratulating me. I see both Mr. Rutherford and Coach Hannah clapping in the stands.

“One more,” Coach Amber calls, and we line it up again.

This time Mackenzie is all over Melody right from the start. I take a deep breath and skate. I drive straight for the goal, but in a flash, Mackenzie is on me. She was faking me out, just waiting for me to let my guard down. I look to pass, but I’d have to shoot the puck straight through Mackenzie. I move to her right at the last moment. She goes in to stop me.

And then something amazing happens. I pick up my left foot and spin fast on my right. I make it around her in one beautiful rotation, and then I’m off. She sprints after me. But just before she can get her leg in front of me, I execute a split jump and leap past her, giving the puck an extra push to go with me.
Swish, swish, swish
, and then I’m at the goal. I haul back in what I hope is a good approximation of all the YouTube videos I watched, and shoot. I score.

I hear applause and even a long whistle from the stands. Amber, Hannah, and Mr. Rutherford are on their feet. Inside my head, an entire marching band is playing a
Jock Jams
soundtrack. Holy crap, did I just do that? Melody skates over and gives me a high five.

“Nice moves, Jacobs,” she says, grinning. I realize I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile.

“Thanks!” I say, and my smile beams out like a spotlight across the ice.

“Calm down, it was one shot, rook.” Okay, so same old Melody.

The rest of the practice goes fine. Nothing spectacular. We switch up positions. When I’m on defense, I only keep Melody from scoring once, but I hope Mr. Rutherford chalks that up to Sloane Devon’s experience as a predominantly offensive player and the fact that Melody is damn good. When Melody is on D, we score about three-quarters of the time. Each shot gets Melody more and more riled until I’m afraid she’s going to lay me out from behind. I’m actually semi-disappointed that she doesn’t.

When we’re done, Mr. Rutherford shakes my hand and tells me he’ll be in touch, which I take as a decent sign.

As I make my way back to my room to shower, I’m all smiles, until I step off the elevator and see a tall guy folded up on the floor in front of my door. It’s Matt, his back to the door, his legs bent and still taking up most of the hallway. I glance at the clock by the elevator: 4:00.

“I’m sorry,” I say. But Matt just shakes his head.

“Sloane, look, I know what you think about me. But people make mistakes. And people change.” He actually looks wounded. “Blowing me off was not cool. You said we could be friends.”

“I know. I’m so sorry,” I say again.

“So you said.” He stands up and walks away from me, heading toward the stairs at the end of the hall. He stops and looks back to me. “I want to tell you that you’re wrong about me. Because you are.”

Before I can speak, he turns on his heel and heads straight for the stairs.

CHAPTER 16

SLOANE DEVON

“Thirty-three … thirty-four … thirty-five.”

My fingers sink into the plush white carpeting. I huff and puff out the count, trying to ignore the burn that’s starting in my biceps.

“Thirty-six … thirty-seven.”

“Give it a rest, GI Jane,” Ivy says from the bed, where she’s lazily filing her nails (probably into razor-sharp points).

“Shut. Up.” I suck air as I snap back at her.

“Sleep. I need it.” She tosses her file onto the nightstand and fluffs her pillow. Her pink cami and matching booty shorts are so tiny and so bright, they’re practically offensive.

“Almost. Done,” I say. I shake a bead of sweat off my forehead before it rolls into my eye. “Forty-two. Forty-three.”

With the Pilates and the yoga and the morning runs around the grounds and the water aerobics, plus all the skating, I’m working out just as hard as I ever did back home. But it doesn’t matter how long I can hold warrior pose if I can’t still crank out fifty push-ups. Coach Butler will have me doing morning workouts for sure if I come home and can only get through twenty.

If I’m still playing when I get back, that is. None of it will matter when Coach Butler gets a crappy report from that scout. I texted Sloane Emily to find out what happened, but she never wrote back, which must mean it didn’t go well. How
could
it? The girl only learned to play hockey two weeks ago.

I increase my speed and pound out the last few. When I hit fifty, I drop flat on the ground, my nose buried in the rug.

“Finally. Gold star for you.” Ivy yanks the chain on the lamp by her bed, plunging the room into darkness, never mind the fact that I still have to shower and change into my pajamas.

I roll over onto my back and breathe quietly in the dark. I haven’t done fifty push-ups since I left Philly over two weeks ago. I used to be able to get at least seventy-five no problem, but tonight was tough. I’m out of practice. I wonder what else is getting rusty while I perform camel spins and arabesques.

When my breathing returns to normal, I creep into the bathroom and close the door as quietly as I can before flipping
on the light. I spot myself in the mirror. I’m wearing one of Sloane’s black leotards with the puckering in the chest and a pair of pink knit leggings rolled at the waist. My long black hair is gathered in a messy bun, but a sheer pink scarf tied around my head mostly hides the frizzies. I don’t look like someone who spends her evening doing fifty push-ups.

I yank the scarf off, strip out of the rest of my borrowed clothes, and climb into a steamy hot shower. I let the water run down my face in fat streams, and my mind goes where it always goes as soon as I get in the shower: to the game. This time it’s the scrimmage with Nando and his buddies. I was okay. Not my best, but definitely not my worst. Not until that missed shot, that is. With my eyes closed, the steam closing in, I start to feel the tingles again. The humiliation climbs up my spine like a persistent inchworm of misery.

So maybe it’s not such a bad thing that Sloane Emily was the one skating for the scout. It’s not like I could have made a shot. I couldn’t even make a shot while playing a pickup game in front of an old friend and a bunch of weekend warriors.

I spin the faucet and the water stops all at once. It’s totally silent except for the sound of a million missed shots all in my head. And suddenly all I want is to make a shot. Just one. I need to hear the puck connect with the net so that maybe the sound of a million defeats will go away.

I creep back into the bedroom and feel my way to the
wardrobe. I find my cell phone in the back and use its illuminated face as a flashlight, digging around until I find a pair of black sweatpants—flared-leg fleece things with
PRINCETON
printed down the leg in bright orange, but still, sweatpants—and a plain white tee. I wiggle into them, then pad toward the door, throwing Sloane Emily’s skates over my shoulder.

The practice rink is inside a barn, outside the main building and down a little grassy hill on the back of the property. For most of our classes and lessons we’re down the block at a large, professional-looking arena. The practice rink is smaller, about half the size of a regular rink, and mostly used for one-on-one lessons and voluntary extra practice.

Inside, I fumble for the switch on the wall that illuminates the ice. The rink is very plain: a concrete perimeter and a two-foot-high wooden barrier encircle the ice. They must have Zambonied it before the end of the day, because it’s smooth as glass.

I lace up Sloane’s skates, then step over the barrier, testing the ice. It’s perfect. I push off with my left foot, my right leg straight, my left extending behind me in a perfect arabesque. But after only one stride, I drop my butt and bend my knees. My arms go to my sides, and I push out hard with my left foot. I shoot forward, then push with my right. Left, right, left, right, my arms rising and falling just like I learned in my very first speed skating lesson when I was a kid. When I approach the end of the rink, I cross my right foot over and push deep with my left. In only two
strides I’ve made the turn and am flying back down the straightaway. Midway through, I flip around so I’m skating backward, crossing over into the opposite turn. Then I’m cutting across center ice in a quick two-step. Then I’m back in the other direction. Step, step, step, slide. Step, step, step, slide. It’s harder in these ridiculous skates with their ridiculous heel, but I’ve used them enough that I know how to make it work.

Soon I’m holding a phantom hockey stick, taking an invisible puck up and down the ice. As I drive to the end of the rink, I imagine a roaring crowd, the way it was before. I wind up, I eye the imaginary goalie, I shoot, I score. No tingles. Just cheers.

I skid to a stop and spin fast, holding the imaginary hockey stick high over my head.

“Nice moves, ice princess.”

The voice comes out of nowhere and sends me spinning right onto my butt. I look up and around and spot Andy leaning in the doorway. His arms are crossed, and though I can’t quite see him that well in the dim light, I can imagine his left eyebrow is arched high.

“How long have you been there?” I have to work to control my breathing.

“Long enough to see you win the invisible Stanley Cup,” he says. He walks to the edge of the ice, and I see he has his skates slung over one shoulder. “And I thought I was the only one doing secret midnight workouts. You got something you want to tell me?”

My heart is pounding. I climb to my feet and start gliding, my legs out straight. “What do you mean?”

“Girl, don’t mess with me. I know you’re hiding something.” He takes one tentative step out on the ice in his sneakers, and once he’s confident of his footing, he strides over to center ice. “You do all right, but your posture is garbage, you eat like a trucker, you can’t execute a simple lift, and you dyed Ivy pink. But obviously you
can
skate. After seeing this little display, I’m inclined to think maybe you’re not the pretty princess you’re pretending to be.”

I rack my brain for an excuse. Maybe I can tell him I had a traumatic brain injury that caused amnesia as the result of a plane crash, and so I forgot how to skate.

As if he can read my mind, Andy holds up a hand. “Don’t even think about trying to lie to me,” he says.

Just like that, I know I have to tell him the truth.

“You figured right,” I reply. I feel like Zdeno Chara, the biggest, scariest Boston Bruin, has just climbed off my shoulders. I breathe deep and don’t feel afraid. He knows. I don’t have to hide. “Please don’t tell anyone.”