Mood Ring

Mari gets injured, and sees the things around her go away.

Mari Lennox sat alone in the locker room with her head down.  Her elbows were propped on her knees, pushing her shoulders back as she leaned forward with most of her weight.  She was without a jersey, but still wearing the majority of her hockey pads from practice.  Her hair pulled back, she was staring at the school logo on the carpet. 

Since practice had ended, she had stayed on the ice to fire a few more one-timer shots with Kalyn and Andrea.  Then, Kalyn and Andrea had left, and Mari stayed even longer, skating gently up and down the ice, occasionally deking the puck between her skates, off the boards, and anywhere else her mind could dream up.  An onlooker might have thought she was an ice dancer if not for the pads, stick, and puck; her helmet off, she occasionally would build to full speed and spray snow against the end boards behind the goals.  She even stood at the center line and tried to hit the crossbar of the goal with the puck.  She succeeded a few times, each one pulling further on the mass of courage inside of her that was submerged in water and blood.

Mom was home.  Mom was waiting.

Mostly, as she was sitting in the locker room after leaving the ice, Mari thought of the game the following day.  Coach Rayne had given the girls a rather light day, not wanting to tire his squad out the night before the first game of the season.  They played in full pads, but not at full speed.  After the drills, he had even allowed the girls to have a bit of fun on the ice, playing pickup games without a full rule set.  She tried to picture herself blading up and down the ice, the sound of the blades on ice reminiscent of a TV chef chopping green onions and sliding them into a mixing bowl.  She envisioned line changes, darting over the boards with all the speed she could find.  Her stick tapped the ice quickly�"once, twice, in succession�"as she called for a pass.  Skates turned parallel to her zone line, she waited for the puck to dart behind the defense on an attack.  She jabbed her stick at an opposing player carrying the puck like a spatula, turning over the puck and sliding it across the ice to a passing teammate.  She could daydream about each of these occurrences because she had done them before.

Mari Lennox was the most highly-touted girls’ hockey player in the state of Illinois.  Usually, it was odd for such a player to come from outside the realm of Chicago, looming large on Lake Michigan with its rich tradition of the frozen pond sport.  Without realizing it, almost, Mari had become an object of desire for a number of programs and schools who would have her be the scoring winger needed to propel their college teams into a brighter future.  At her home, the scholarship letters stacked up from schools all over the northern Midwest and the Northeast, worded strangely and vaguely.

“We would like to extend to you…”

“I can see you in our colors now…”

“Making your college decision is difficult…”

The words passed, and Mari’s eyes scanned each one, speeding across her face like a racecar. 

Somewhere, back in the reality of the locker room, she lifted her stick over the bench she was sitting on and placed it in the locker behind her.  Refocusing on the logo�"a stylized Valkyrie, mid-flight�"she closed her eyes.

For half a second�"less than that�"all she saw was Dmitri.  Unwanted.  Wrong time.  She discarded the thought and leaned forward again.

                  He would be in the stands. 

                  Don’t care.

                  He wanted to hang out after the game.

                  Tough.  Not thinking about it.

                  Yes, you are.

                  Dmitri passed her a puck.  He was standing on the ice, in skates and a helmet.  No pads.  “Just have fun.”  His words from the couch conversation a couple of weeks ago echoed.

                  Thanks, but…just leave.

                  She took the puck in her mind and began skating with it again, across the center line, into her zone, driving straight toward the net.  Her dream was beyond her control.  It rushed over her brain in a torrent, flooding the grey matter and sweeping it under its spell.  The ice and snow from her blades became more furious as the rink seemingly lengthened, and she continued skating full-speed toward a goal that never approached; it always sat at the end of the rink, far away, unreachable.  She lifted her stick at full speed and blasted a slap shot, as hard as she could.  The puck only traveled a few feet in front of her and then paused, lifted into the air by some unseen force.  Mari looked left and right�"the boards and the crowd behind them was a rush, the fastest blur she had ever seen.  She was skating quicker than she ever had before, and the puck lifted to her eye level, spinning like a dervish but stuck in some kind of invisible molasses.  The goal taunted her, a speck at the end of her tunnel.

                  Back on the bench in the locker room, she opened her eyes again.  She was lying on the floor.  Which was odd to her, because she didn’t remember lying down on her back.  Mari sat up, quickly.

                  There room was dark, and only the nearly inaudible rustle of the ventilation system sounded for ambiance. 

                  Is there someone here?

                  “Hello?” Mari called.  No answer.  She looked down.  She was still wearing all her pads.  “Hello?!”  Louder this time, in earnest.  Still, nothing echoed a reply.

                  Mari realized she was breathing heavily.  Her heart leapt with every beat.  Something large and invisible was in her mouth; she swallowed it, difficultly.  Sweat gleamed on her forehead and neck. 

                  She reached up and removed her ponytail holder, but didn’t straighten her hair.  It stretched just past her shoulders, with a noticeable bend at the point her holder had been.  It spread over her shoulder pads like a virus.  Standing up on her blades, she sat back down on the bench, still not able to recall what had happened or how she ended her dream on the floor.

                  Deep breath.  You’re fine.

                  She reached up and untied her shoulder pads, lifting them over her head before unlacing her skates.

*     *     *     *

                  “Let’s get after them tonight, girls,” Coach Rayne said as the room erupted into a series of cheers, whoops, and yells.  He left the room as the girls each returned and put their helmets on, picking up their skates, ready to fly.

                  Mari was the last to put her helmet on, as she glanced around the room at her teammates.  In the corner, the five freshman girls shared three lockers to themselves, away from the team as a rite of passage.  Their eyes were all blinks.  Mari could see their skin crawling beneath their jerseys, nervous and goosebumped.  Kalyn walked over to them and began speaking to them.  Mari couldn’t tell what she was saying, but more than likely, it was the same thing Diane�"the team captain before her, last year�"had told the freshmen last year.  They would be fine.  Just don’t fall down.

                  “Ready to do this?” Andrea asked, standing in front of Mari.  She was shorter, and her brown eyes looked up at her fellow winger.  Mari looked down.

                  “As I’ll ever be.”  Her words were quiet in the din of the locker room, with the clacking of equipment and the quacking of the girls. 

                  “No pressure.  Game one.  Plenty of time to get it right,” Andrea continued, sensing something in Mari that she hadn’t revealed.

                  Mari nodded, silently. 

                  “You all right?”  Andrea asked now, where only the two of them could hear.  The other girls began to file out of the locker room.

                  “Yeah, why?”

                  “You’re usually the one pumping me up about now.”

                  Mari smirked, flashing her game face.  “Your turn.”

                  Andrea snorted, clearing her nose.  So elegant, for the rich girl.

                  “Let’s go, girl.”  Andrea clapped Mari hard on the shoulder as Mari slid the helmet on over her hair.  The girls caught up with the team, waiting to be told to take the ice. 

                  The line was long, with 22 girls single-file behind their goaltender.  Sticks tapped on the cinderblock walls, some kind of percussive tribe beginning their war dance.  Mari Lennox stood in the back, the tallest member of the team, and watched the girls in front of her.  The tops of their helmets swayed back and forth as their weight shifted from leg to leg, with a head shaking periodically to ward off invisible cobwebs.  Some of the girls still hollered and whooped, loud in the hallway and echoing out on to the ice.  Coach Rayne appeared at the end of the hall, ready to walk out to the bench.  He turned to the girls in the hallway.

                  “Stand tall!” he yelled.

                  “Fly high!” the girls responded, as they had done since before any of them had been on the team.

                  With that, the line skated onto the ice.  Fans cheered.  Proud parents began taking pictures.  Empty seats dotted the upper sections of the gymnasium, but one really couldn’t tell from the sound.  Mari’s high school had always been passionate about their sports teams, fortunate in that regard.

                  Mari could have sworn that the cheers bumped slightly as her skate first touched the ice, a hometown crowd responding to its star player.  Skating a half-lap around the ice, she located everyone in the stands that she knew.  Candace was near the front row, cheering wildly with Connor Reynolds beside her, looking like he smelled something foul.  Some of the teachers dotted the bottom of the upper section, including Mr. Larkin.  And in the middle of the cheering section, a large and particularly rowdy bunch of guys sitting close to the ice on the home end, was Dmitri, his shirt off and chest painted for the first game of the season with a few others boys.  They spelled “Valks.”  He was the V.

                  Mari skated to the bench.  “Jacobs-Meyer-Lennox, ladies.  Let’s get it done,” Coach Rayne said, clapping to punctuate his sentence.  The girls huddled together.

                  “No matter what happens, we’re winning this game, girls.  They can’t match us, they can’t skate with us, and they’re not gonna score on us,” Kalyn started for her routine. 

                  Mari glanced up.  Dmitri was still cheering, talking to the other letters in the stands.  Back to the huddle.

                  “Own the ice, girls.  We’re getting it done this year, and it all starts tonight, right here,” Andrea psyched the team up further.

                  Another glance.  No sign of Evelyn.  She was supposed to come.

                  The huddle fell silent, as Mari’s eyes cut back into the pile.  The girls were looking at her.  Waiting on something from their silent leader. 

                  For Mari, the crowd dimmed.

                  “We can do it all, girls.  We’re going to skate faster, we’re going to score more, and we’re going to win this game.”  Some unseen leviathan of power surged in Mari’s stomach, churning.  “Follow us, get your teammate’s back, and win this hockey game.  One at a time,” she continued.  “It’s sitting there�"time to take it!”  The girls whooped once.  Mari’s voice became nearly guttural:  “Fly high on three--onetwothree!”

                  “Fly high!”

                  The huddle broke, and Mari skated to her position for the faceoff.  The puck dropped, and she heeded her own words, a tornado of speed and puckhandling prowess.  By the end of the first period of the play, the Valkyries were leading the game handily, with Mari’s scoring touch making itself evident early and often. 

                  During the first intermission, Mari was planted in the locker room, helmet sitting in her lap.  She surveyed these friends, her teammates.  For the first time in a long time, everything else in her life had the volume turned down.  She wasn’t worried about the mound of scholarship letters, a couple more by the day piling up on her desk.  The dots and crosses marking the calendar in her drawer had been swept away.  Evelyn’s bickering, too much makeup and fake blond hair.  Dmitri, in all of his glory. 

Returning to the ice, she skated as if her feet were themselves bladed, an evolutionary feature that guided her and straightened her path after every curve and every collision.  She felt the nagging tap of opponent’s sticks on her legs, her back, her behind, her feet, like firecrackers exploding softly against an armored vehicle. 

She sat on the bench, glancing up.  Eight minutes left, second period.  She leaned forward, putting her arm up on the top of the half boards separating the bench from the ice.  There had been a stoppage in play while the opposing team’s trainer attended to a player who had been hurt.  It didn’t look serious�"it was a play away from the puck.  Maybe she just got the wind knocked out of her.

Coach Rayne walked over to his star player, putting his hand on her shoulder.  “You’re flying, Mari.” 

She leaned back to sit up straight, not giving acknowledgement to Coach Rayne’s remark.  He simply patted Mari’s shoulder one more time, for encouragement.  Mari nodded.

Mari’s next shift started.  She tumbled over the boards, the winds surrounding her�"encircling her�"and the twister whirled again.  Mari received the puck on her stick and drove deep in the opposing zone, behind the other team’s goal, going for a behind-the-net play.

Then, her feet swung behind her.  Simultaneously, as if they were pulled. 

Mari skidded into the corner boards as the referee’s arm went up to signal the tripping call.  From across the ice, Andrea was incensed at the opposing team’s trip.  Mari, sprawled face down on the ice, slid next to the boards in time to see her shove an opposing player�"she couldn’t see which one�"up against the board in front of her.

Mari’s arm was extended above her head, along the base of the boards.

Protect.

Mari tried to curl her arm back into her core.  But before she could, all in an instant, it was just pain, shooting and terrible, in her shoulder.  Mari writhed and looked.

The girl’s skate was on her shoulder.  Her weight pressed into it.  Coach Rayne heard the scream from across the ice.  Mari began to see the blood darkening her jersey.  The skate lifted, and Mari’s jersey was ripped along the seam, a snarling gash cut into her shoulder joint. 

Mari stared across the ice.

No.  No.

The pile in the corner became a mass of legs.  Mari stared into a forest of sorts, jostling and moving around, padded legs like tree trunks.  The crowd was incensed, the rambling growing louder.  In an instant, Mari pulled her arm forward and into her abdomen.  It didn’t hurt as much as it burned, feeling impossible like it was approaching paralysis.  Mari’s hot blood fell onto the ice around her head.  She stared at it, forming a picture like a Rorschach test.  She yelled again, all the girls crowded around her muffling the sound.  Gradually, the forest thinned as the referees attempted to regain control. 

Mari heard Andrea’s voice above the commotion, echoed by the glass and boards.  “You b***h!  A*****e!”  She was screaming at the girl, but Mari couldn’t see what was going on.  Just Andrea’s skate, a little letter “A” drawn on the front in silver marker.  Other players’ skates had started to drift away, but Andrea’s stayed there, toe-to-toe with the bloody skate that stood on the ice.

“Get off me!”  Must have been the other girl.

Mari could see three of the referees, with two on either side of Andrea, pulling her away.  The other was standing in between Andrea and the other girl, most likely for the opponent’s protection. 

Mari tried to push herself up off the ice with her good arm, but trainers appeared in an instant, voices overlapping. “No, no, just lay there.  Don’t move, Mari.”

“Don’t move.”

“Stay there.”

“Does anything else hurt?”

“Roll on your back.  Don’t move.”

“Easy, now.”

“Mari, can you hear us?”

“Mari?”

“Talk to us, Mari.”

She looked at the blood on the ice, one last time.  Then, her eyes closed.  She didn’t know if it was involuntary or not. 

The next two hours were strange for Mari Lennox.  They were slow and they were fast.  They were intense and they were cool.  There was a machine, round and loud.  There was a white coat, glasses clipped to its pocket.  There was Dmitri.  There was Coach Rayne.  There was Candace.  People talked, and Mari thought she answered.  It felt how her wedding day would be, or so she had been told:  so many faces emerging and fading back into a crowd, back into a faceless mass that she could no longer acknowledge or recognize.  There was a headache.  There were needles.  Then, there was a windowed room, with a curtain.  And then, she fell asleep.

Author's Note

Another "deleted scene" from the novel. The hockey game is still in the book, but was completely re-written.