“If he’s only skating now, though,” Cade said. “He’s probably not going to be back for awhile yet, if he returns this season at all.”
“Well, I don’t know,” KJ said. “They could be keeping it all under wraps like they did with his return.”
“Don’t we know it,” Cannon said.
“Oh, yeah, it was… ‘us’ wasn’t it?” KJ asked.
“Without you, but yeah,” Ricky replied.
“That was the only time they deserved to beat us all season,” Chalmers said.
“Yeah, otherwise we should’ve totally won,” Cannon agreed.
“I heard the call of the radio guy afterwards,” KJ said. “I just about cried.”
“Yeah, we heard he didn’t even get told,” Cade said. “Considering we got a little bit of forewarning, I was a little surprised.”
“He was screaming for people to pull over, stop what they were doing, sit down, anything, because he was back,” KJ said. “I’m just about wanting to cry thinking about it.”
“Yeah, yeah, actually,” Cade said, rubbing one of his eyes too.
“Just to think about it hits you right here,” Ricky said, putting his fist against his heart. “Because it’s like, ‘could’ve been me’.”
Chalmers nodded, a lump of anxiety swelling within him at the thought of what might happen to Grandma if he were to suffer the same sort of accident. He was sure Matt would be right by his side to help him find something else to do with his life because Matt had been destined for the NHL until he’d taken a high stick in the eyeball, so he knew what it was like.
Grandma, though, needed him to stay fit, healthy, and make it to the NHL, because if he didn’t make it to the NHL she was doomed to even more time yet living with Uncle Sterling and Aunt Jean, and so was he.
The thoughts upset Chalmers and, since he was dressed ahead of the rest, owing to his head start, he left the room. He needed to clear his head. He didn’t want to think those kinds of thoughts, especially not in his draft season when he was so close to the NHL he could just about touch it — in fact, he already had.
When they’d gone to Winnipeg to play the Ice for the first time in Chalmers’ WHL career, he and some teammates had taken a walk down to Bell MTS Place, the Winnipeg Jets’ home arena, and had toured around the part they didn’t need tickets to access, and last season, because one of the guys had been drafted by the Jets — in fact, he was playing for them this season — he’d taken them to the Jets’ practise rink where they’d watched the practise and even been able to chat with a couple of the guys, particularly WHL grads.
Chalmers stepped out onto the ice, which was clean and pristine, having been freshly treated by the Zamboni, and surged around the ice as fast as he could, as if by doing so he could outrun his fears and anxieties despite the fact that they existed within him, and weren’t ghostly spectres hovering outside of him.
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