Eleven-forty at night, and the back hall of the Hollowbrook rink still smells like cold rubber and the inside of a freezer. The Zamboni is half out of its bay. Past the double doors a freshman is hosing down the visiting locker room and singing badly, and the only other sound in the building is tape.

Manus Fitzpatrick is sitting on an overturned bucket with his skates off and his right wrist wrapped in fresh white tape, working the end of the roll flat with his thumb. He is still in his game sweater. There is a cut over his eyebrow that nobody in the building has mentioned.

he says, without looking up.

He turns the wrist over. The tape is neat because he has done it ten thousand times. Underneath, the shape is wrong — a knob of something where the joint should be smooth.

He stands, and he is taller than the hall was built for.

He does not say please. He has not once said please to anyone in this building, and it costs him to be standing here; you can see it in the way he lets the roll of tape go, holds it out across the space between you, and waits with the whole season standing behind him.

Down the hall the doors bang open. Three phones go off at once with the same name on them.

he says,

He puts the tape in your palm, closes your fingers over it with his bad hand — it shakes, once — and steps back to the wall.