Chapter Ten

What We Don’t Say

Jordan

“You make it work,” I said. “That’s what you do. That’s what you’ve always done.”

She didn’t answer right away. The parking lot lights buzzed overhead, throwing that flat orange glow over everything, over her car, over the slush piled at the curb, over the little cloud of breath hanging between us. October cold had come in fast this year. It was barely six-thirty and it already felt like midnight.

“You say that like it’s easy,” Nora said.

“I don’t think it’s easy. I think it’s just true.”

She pulled her jacket tighter and looked at me sideways, the way she did when she was deciding whether to let something go or push on it. I knew that look. I’d been on the other end of it for ten years.

“What if I’m not what they think I am,” she said. Quiet. Not a question really, more like something she’d been carrying around and finally set down where I could see it. “What if Coach K built me up in her head and the second I get there, they realize I’m just a decent goalie from a decent program who got lucky a few times.”

“You’re not decent. You’re terrifying. I’ve been trying to score on you since we were nine and I still can’t do it consistently.”

“You scored on me twice last spring.”

“See, I remember that like it was a personal tragedy and you remember the exact number. That’s the difference between us.”

That got the corner of her mouth up, just barely, and something in my chest loosened a little.

“I’m serious, Jordan.”

“I know you are.” I leaned back against her car next to her, close enough that our shoulders were almost touching, not quite. “So am I. You’re not decent. You’ve never been decent at anything in your life. You’re the most annoyingly overqualified person I know.”

“That’s not a real compliment.”

“It’s the realest compliment I’ve got tonight, take it or leave it.”

She laughed, short and surprised, like it had gotten out before she meant it to. For a second the parking lot didn’t feel so cold.

Then it dropped again, the way things did with her lately, quick, like ice cracking somewhere under the surface where you couldn’t see it yet.

“I keep thinking about all of this,” she said, gesturing vaguely, at the rink, at me, at nothing, at everything. “Not going. What if I don’t go?”

I went very still.

“What do you mean, what if you don’t go.”

“I mean what if I just… stay. Play out senior year here. Go somewhere normal after. Not chase the thing that scares me.”

“Nora.”

“What.”

“You’ve wanted this since you were eight years old in a net three sizes too big for you. You don’t get to throw that away because you’re scared. That’s not you making a choice, that’s you running from one.”

She looked at me like I’d said something she didn’t expect, and for a second I wondered if I’d overstepped, if I’d said too much, if the thing I’d been not-examining all summer had leaked out sideways in the shape of caring too hard about her future.

“You’d be fine,” she said finally. Careful. “If I stayed. You wouldn’t even—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” It came out sharper than I meant it to. She blinked. I softened it, tried to. “I would not be fine. I would be the opposite of fine. But that’s not the point. The point is you don’t get to make yourself smaller because leaving is hard. You’ve never done that. Don’t start now. Not for me.”

I hadn’t meant to say that last part. It hung there in the cold air between us, small and true and impossible to take back.

Nora went quiet. Really quiet, the kind of quiet where you can hear the Zamboni humming somewhere inside the building, doing its slow laps, getting the ice ready for tomorrow.

“Not for you,” she repeated.

“Or for anyone. I meant it generally.” Which was a lie, and we both knew it, and neither of us said so.

“Right,” she said. “Generally.”

We stood there a while longer, breath fogging, the orange lights buzzing, neither of us moving toward getting in the car or saying good night. It was the kind of silence I used to be good at not noticing. Lately I noticed everything about it — how long it lasted, what she did with her hands, whether she was looking at me or at the building or at nothing.

Tonight she was looking at me.

“I’m not scared of the academy,” she said eventually, like she’d finally found the true version of the sentence after trying out a few false ones. “I’m scared of what I’d be leaving. That’s different.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Nora.” I said her name like an answer. Maybe it was one.

She nodded slowly, like she’d gotten something out of that she needed, and reached for her car door.

“Four days till the game,” she said, not quite looking at me now.

“Four days.”

“Find me in warm-up?”

“Always do.”

She got in, started the engine, gave me a small wave through the windshield that didn’t match the size of everything we’d just almost said. I watched her taillights until they turned out of the lot, and then I stood there another minute by myself in the cold, replaying don’t start now, not for me and wondering how much longer I could keep almost saying things before one of us finally just said them.

Four days.

I got in my own car and didn’t turn the key right away.