Behind the Ice Wall

SKY’S POV I could hear my own heartbeat over the crowd. That never happened. Not to me. Forty thousand people were screaming, and somehow the loudest thing in the building was the blood moving through my own ears. Two minutes left. One goal in it. Win this, and we were going to the finals. I set myself in front of the net the way I always did. Watch the puck. Read the man holding it. Don’t think. Thinking was how you got scored on. The winger cut toward the middle. I saw the pass coming before he made it. I dropped down and threw my glove out and the puck smacked into it, hard enough to sting all the way up my arm. I held on. Didn’t let it bounce free. My teammate skated by and tapped his stick against my pads. “Wall’s still standing.” I didn’t answer him. I never did during a game. Talking took something out of me I needed for other things. Everyone called me that. The Ice Wall. Like nothing got through. Like I didn’t feel any of it. I felt all of it. I’d just gotten good at not showing it. That was the whole job, really. Nobody talks about that part. You can play sixty minutes of perfect hockey and it won’t matter if you let in the wrong goal at the wrong time. Fans don’t remember the thirty saves. They remember the one you missed. Forty seconds left. The other team lined up for a face-off. I watched the play build, the same way I’d watched it a hundred times on video that week. Their center liked to draw it back to the point, then send it across for a one-timer. I already knew where the shot was going to go before it left anybody’s stick. Then something happened that had never happened to me before. I couldn’t breathe. It came out of nowhere. One second I was fine. The next, my ribs wouldn’t move, like something had clamped down and forgotten to let go. The ice under my skates didn’t feel solid anymore. The crowd noise turned into something else, something that sounded like my mother’s voice from fifteen years ago. You’re never going to be good enough. I knew the shot was coming. I knew exactly where it was going. My body wouldn’t move. I didn’t move. The puck went in. The horn went off. Then the sound in the building dropped out all at once, like somebody had cut the feed. I dropped to my knees in front of the net and tried to remember how to breathe. I finished the game somehow. My body kept playing while the rest of me sat somewhere far away, watching. I stopped the next three shots. I don’t remember any of them. We lost by one goal. That one goal. The locker room was quiet after. Too quiet. Guys nodded at me as they went past, but nobody said much. Somebody had turned off the TV in the corner, but I could still hear it in my head, because I’d heard it a hundred times already that season. What happened to Wilson on that last shot Is he okay? We’ll have to see if he can bounce back before the playoffs. I sat at my stall and pulled off my gear one piece at a time. Pads. Chest protector. The jersey stuck to my back with sweat. Nobody sat next to me. I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t have known what to say to me either. I got up before I finished changing and walked out to the hallway, because I couldn’t sit in that quiet anymore. Coach Reyes found me there, alone, my mask still in my hand. My hands were shaking. I pressed my back against the wall and tried the breathing thing a doctor had taught me years ago, back when I never thought I’d need it for four seconds. Hold for four. Out for four. It didn’t help much. I thought Reyes would yell. I wanted him to yell. Yelling meant he still thought I was worth fixing. He didn’t yell. He just looked at me, and he looked tired. “We can’t have another night like that, Sky.” “It won’t happen again.” “You said that after the last one.” He rubbed his face with one hand. “You’re the best goalie in this league for fifty-nine minutes. Then something happens in the sixtieth. I need to know what, and so does the front office. This isn’t just about tonight anymore. It’s about whether you’re ready for the playoffs.” I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound like an excuse. “Starting tomorrow, you’re seeing the team psychologist. It’s already decided.” His voice got quieter. “This isn’t a request. Let someone help you carry this.” He walked away before I could argue back. I stood there a while longer, listening to the building empty out around me. Chairs being stacked somewhere. A door closing far off. My own breathing, finally starting to slow down. ​ My apartment was dark when I got home. I liked it that way. No noise, no messages waiting, nothing asking anything of me. I sat on the edge of my bed still wearing my suit and looked at my phone. The team had already sent the appointment. Tomorrow, 10:00 AM — Dr. Amira Frank, Sports Psychologist. I thought about every counselor my mother had ever taken me to as a kid. All of them nodding at me like they already had me figured out before I said a word. Like silence was a puzzle and they already knew the answer. Therapy. Mandatory. I’d spent my whole life making sure nobody saw what was underneath the Wall. Six years in this league, and not one person had seen what happened tonight. Not until tonight. Tomorrow I had to sit in a room with some psychologist who thought she could fix what I’d worked that hard to hide. Dr. Amira Frank. I didn’t believe it would work. Nothing had, before. Why would this be different? But I didn’t have a choice. I set the phone down on the nightstand and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The city outside my window kept moving the way it always did, lights and noise that had nothing to do with me. Somewhere under the dread, a smaller thought pushed through, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. Who was she? And why did anyone think she could reach me when nobody else ever had?