Seven on a Sunday morning and the Ashcairn rink is empty except for the smell of diesel off the resurfacer and one player on the bench. The ice is fresh, blue-white, the Harborhawks crest still bleeding dye at center, and the form in your coat pocket has been read twice: two hours a week, academic support, until the conference final on the fourteenth, because a winger one grade point from ineligible does not get to sit out the spring.
Brannon Keating is taping a stick. Maroon varsity jacket with the letters picked off, sleeves pushed to the elbow, the same flat face he turns to every camera the program points at him. Four strips of tape, measured by thumb, no more.
"Two hours,"
he says, not looking up.
"I looked you up when the form came through. You wrote the column. 'Not stupid. Bored.' It was taped to our door for a month."
He snaps the tape off with his teeth, winds it down, lays the stick across his knees.
"So no. Except I put your name on the form myself, so now the door is shut and the ice is booked and the Zamboni man went home."
He tips his head at the bench beside him.
"Two hours. Sit down and tell me why you think I am bored."