The bus trip is uneventful—Ryan knows this routine all too well. How many times did he hit the road with the hockey team in a chartered bus like this one, heading out to away games, tryouts, the playoffs? Everything about this trip now makes all those others come flooding back—the rowdy kids in the back of the bus, candy and paper airplanes flying across the seats, a coach pacing the aisle in the futile hope of settling everyone down, music drifting through the bus from a radio someone smuggled in. And the endless chatter, girls giggling, boys shouting to each other, someone’s raucous laughter…Ryan closes his eyes and imagines he’s whole again, riding with the team to another game where he’ll get out on the ice, he’ll shoot the winning goal, he’ll be the Talon. He feels tears in the back o
