My toes are frozen solid for no reason. I check my email before I can make the same mistake again and find messages from my professors canceling my later classes, too. Apparently canceling all classes was what the bell was for, and I’m too much of a freshman to have known that. I’d almost forgotten how good a snow day felt. I just wish I hadn’t come all the way out here for nothing.
I stop at the dining hall for coffee and a bagel, and I’m on my way back to my room when Zero messages the team group chat.
Luca Cicero: Lax team heading to fall ball in twenty minutes
It’s snowing
You all know what this means
I have literally no idea what that means. I watch the replies come in as I change out of my wet socks and jeans and after a few minutes, Barbie’s the one to speak up.
David Barboza: Anyone wanna explain whats going on to us noobs?
Maverick Kovachis: Get your asses to the hockey house and prepare for battle.
Apparently, battle means pelting the men’s lacrosse team with snowballs as they leave the lax house. It’s a full-blown war within seconds, and they have the advantage of lacrosse sticks to launch their snowballs farther and harder.
“We’ve made a terrible mistake!” Kovy shouts in this awful British accent. “Retreat!”
We all scramble to fall back, but my foot gets stuck in a mound of snow. I fall face-first, sinking so low into the powder, it feels like I’m in quicksand. I watch my teammates leave me behind, spitting snow out of my mouth and trying to push myself up to my knees. Dorian’s a few steps ahead before he notices and comes back to grab my wrist and yank me to my feet, screaming and pulling me along behind him. Sid and Karim are on us a second later, tackling us both back into the snow.
“Should’ve saved yourself, Hidalgo,” Sid says, pinning Dorian down.
“Just ’cause you laxers are disloyal doesn’t mean we are,” Dorian says. He gets a handful of snow shoved in his face in response.
By the time we make it back to the hockey house, we’re soaked to the bone and shaking from the cold, but the boys are piling into the cars, giving us no time to recover. Cauler’s standing by Zero’s SUV with the back door open.
“Don’t worry, Cauler, I went back to save him,” Dorian says, jabbing a thumb at me. He doesn’t see the dirty look Cauler shoots him as he climbs into the car.
I stand in front of Cauler, shivering so bad my teeth are chattering. My hair’s frozen solid against my forehead, and I feel every change in the wind as it pummels me. “You left me to die,” I say.
Cauler scoffs. “You really expect me to go back for my mortal enemy?”
“That’s what I am to you?”
“You’re a little shit, that’s what you are.” He grins as he grabs me by the shoulder and pushes me into the car.
I don’t know what we’re doing until we get to the rink and I see the women’s team out on the ice. I practically run to the locker room for my skates and stick. Pond hockey with my sisters was a highlight of my childhood. We had a pond out back, fed by flooding from the creek that snaked through the woods behind our house and curved into our yard. It was a few feet deep, smaller than a standard rink, but good enough for us. In the summer it was full of frogs and turtles and enough mosquitoes that we didn’t get to swim in it much. But in the dead of winter, it froze solid and clear, enclosed by snow drifts and backdropped by white-dusted pine trees. A picture so perfect it ended up on postcards in local grocery stores and a western New York calendar or two.
Back then, I’d wake up before the sun just to get out there in my skates with my sisters. They feel like the memories of a completely different person.
The lake here is too big to freeze and I don’t have all my sisters here and things aren’t perfect. But I don’t get to be on the ice with Delilah often, so I’ll take it.
Delilah, Barbie, and I are all picked by the women’s team captain, but Cauler and Dorian end up with Zero. I kind of wish I could play against Delilah so we could battle for points like we have been all season, but I’m happy to dominate the ice with her instead. We played together often enough growing up to know exactly where to put the puck for the other to appear in its path, no matter how long it’s been or how much we’ve changed as players.
Now we skate circles around our teammates and make impossible passes to one another, burying goals that make everyone scream in frustration and astonishment.
“Okay, who the hell thought it was a good idea to put the Jameses on a team together?” one of the girls on Zero’s team asks after a set of filthy passes and a goal by Delilah.