Chapter 1
Amara watches more hockey than anyone she knows.
Including her son.
Although that stat might be influenced by the fact that her son is
a lot of the hockey that she watches.
But nevertheless, she's addicted, as Grant might say.
And why shouldn't she be?
She was five when her dad strapped skates to her feet and pushed her out onto the frozen lake a mile down the road from their house.
She wobbled like a little deer, knocked kneed and trembling as she slid further from the shore with no way to stop.
Her breath curled up into clouds of mist as she panted, quads and calves aching from the effort to stay upright.
Her dad came to join her in what was seconds but felt like minutes later.
Amara, alone in the middle of the ice, heart pounding and hands cold.
When he caught up to her, he took one of her gloved hands in his, warming it up as he ensnared her tiny fingers in his big, calloused palms.
Then he let go and pushed off, legs steady and powerful.
"It's like flying, Amara," he told her, coaxing her to shuffle towards him.
The ice was hard and unforgiving that day as she fell, knocking bony elbows and bruised knees onto the frozen surface.
But when Amara is given a task, she never lets it go.
She got pulled in by her mother yelling about hot chocolate that first day, but she was back out on the ice the next day.
And the next.
By the end of that winter season, when the frost started to relent, and tiny pinpricks of green began to force their way through the freezing crust, she was skating faster than the older kids and the adults that would come join them on the lake.
It was like flying.
She could push off on one foot and cover so much distance, gliding on a knife's edge, the wind whipping past her face and making her eyes tear up.
She was weightless on the ice.
She was powerful on the ice.
Her mom loved that she loved something.
They upgraded their cable package to watch the full coverage of the winter Global Games next year; Linovia was even hosting.
Everyone kept putting on figure skating for Amara, talking about getting her into lessons and "did she want to twirl like that?"
Fuck no. In between figure skating and downhill skiing, Amara's father puts on ice hockey for the first time.
And Amara is hooked.
The ferocity, the hunger in the players' eyes, Amara wanted that.
Her family tittered about Albion not sending a team that year over the controversy of the ICL not allowing professional players in the Global Games, but Amara let that all wash over her.
She was hypnotized by the men slammed into boards and the puck skittering across the ice.
From that day on, Amara wanted to play hockey.
The twirling and the jumping in figure skating was beautiful, but that's not how Amara flew.
She streaked across the ice in her hockey skates with the wind howling at her ears, screaming at her to go faster, faster.
She could picture herself in the arena, the crowd just louder than the wind, hungry for her flight.
Hungry for her to win.
But there wasn't hockey for Amara.
She got figure skates the next year.
Grown-up skates everyone called them because the ratty hockey skates she learned in were just a temporary measure until she grew into the real deal for girls her age.
She face-planted each time the toe pick caught on the ice and felt like she was five years old again watching her dad sail away from her as she was stuck in the middle of the ice.
But figure skating was what the girls did.
Sure, there were hockey leagues where rich women got to putter around without pads on, but none of it paid.
None of it had the same hunger the men's teams did.
In the 80s, Amara watched the first ever women's ice hockey championship in Lakeshore.
It wasn't until the late 90s that women were allowed to play in the Global Games.
And Amara, sensible, determined, responsible, had long let that dream go by the time the women lined up in, coincidentally, Linovia.
Even after they reached the Global Games, ice hockey for women was a second-class promise compared to what the men got, and Amara couldn't give up everything for it.
There was no money, no glory, no fame in women's hockey, at least when she was young enough to still dream about playing.
So, Amara keeps the feeling of flying buried in her heart and puts her fight towards something else.
She learns to take comfort in the fact that the closest she will ever be to playing hockey is in being a mom.
It's funny, when they get interviewed, Grant always gets all the questions about hockey.
Or, at least, Amara tells herself it's funny.
They ask Grant about the first time Jay was out on the ice, the first time he held a stick, the first time he watched a hockey game.
When really, Grant was inside making the hot chocolate while Amara was coaxing Jay across the ice as he trembled and shook from the cold and the fear.
It was Amara who showed him how to tape his stick.
Amara who set up obstacles to make him practice his stick handling.
Amara who shed layers as she got hot flying back and forth across the ice, doing bagskates with him to build his endurance.
Amara who watched hours upon hours of hockey with him and only cried once about having to live out her dream through someone else when she had too strong of a drink in a hotel bar, creeping out of the room she was sharing with Jay during an elite tournament.
And it was fine.
Amara loved being a mom.
She loved watching her child fly.
She loved seeing him laugh.
Seeing him win.
Seeing him learn how to lose.
She loved every second of it.
She wouldn't trade Jay for anything in the world, she thinks.
That's not to say, though, that being a hockey mom is easy.
There are early mornings and long car rides to contend with.
And Jay is the perfect child, but even the perfect child cries at 6 and 7 and 8 because he doesn't want to sleep in another new hotel, and his best friend back home is having a birthday party that he's missing, and his routine is all messed up.
There are bumps and bruises and frustration and yelling.
Jay and Amara have their first fight over hockey.
Jay wanted to play through a fractured wrist and Amara told him he couldn't, and he yelled at her.
Proper yelled.
He snapped his mouth shut after his voice rose, embarrassed and worried.
She just shook her head and pointed to his room.
He went.
So, Jay could be difficult, and there was the stress, and the worry, and the disruption to daily life.
But the other part that made hockey hard was the other moms.
Hockey is a white sport.
It drips in privilege and microaggressions.
It's moms on the sidelines at a pro camp talking about the private schools they send their kids to named after colonizers, bragging but pretending they're not.
It's the moms wondering what in the world Amara could possibly be bringing to the team potluck after the last game of the season.
It's dads asking Grant where Amara is really from.
Fuck them all.
Her kid was better than those boys would ever be.
He was brought up by Amara and Amara knew how to fly.
All her work with Jay does pay off.
Amara cries tears of happiness and frustration for him when he's the second pick overall in the ICL draft.
She even pretends she doesn't hear him curse Darian Radek's name to hell and back for being the first pick.
Instead, she tells him not to worry.
He'll become better than Radek and make Norvale rue the day they didn't pick him first.
He had to become better.
She trained him herself.
Jay's career builds like a swelling wave, picking up steam and prestige as it goes and washing away the teams that play the Renegades.
And yet, he cannot shake Darian Radek who continues to lap at the edges of Jay's history making.
They're pitted against each other.
They're spoken about in the same breath, one right after the other.
Jay speaks of Radek like he's an annoying gnat buzzing in his ear all the time, but Amara can see the burbling anxiety swirling in him.
She doesn't know what to do with that anxiety.
She doesn't know where the superstitions came from – the order of the socks and skates, the habitual, repeating patterns, the control over his eating and health.
Amara can watch 100 hours of film with him and fix his backhand and make him the fastest skater on the ice, but she feels out of her depth when she finds him trembling on solid ground, off his skates.