Free Going Places by Fran Hurcomb Page B

hearts weren’t exactly broken.
    As he promised, Curtis got us some games with the Peewees. The first game was a disaster. We must have set some sort of record for the most offsides in one game. After the first period, the scorekeeper stoppedposting the score. Alice must have stopped a hundred shots, but quite a few got past her. Curtis wouldn’t let us get depressed about it. In fact, we had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot and after the game, the Peewee coach, Joe, said he had never seen such a polite team. He told us that we really didn’t have to apologize if we bumped into someone. We’re still working on that.
    During the Christmas holidays, we really started to come together. New hockey equipment had turned up under most of our Christmas trees, so we were even beginning to look like hockey players. I got a great pair of new skates, size eights, and some bright pink stick tape. Everyone was figuring out how to play their positions, and more and more often, the newer girls were carrying the puck and making plays. Opal and Ruby on defense were awesome. They worked together perfectly and nobody could get by them with a puck anymore. But the real star was Alice. She was unbelievable. Now that she was used to the heavy equipment, she was like Superwoman. All those years of stopping soccer balls had paid off. She neversaid a single word about Cory. Maybe she was too embarrassed. Although she was older than us and a major soccer hero, Alice was pretty shy and not at all stuck up. If she didn’t want to talk about Cory, that was fine with us. In the dressing room, we showed off our new bruises, and Sam brought a cd player so that we could play really loud music to get us pumped up.
    Fort Desperation’s community arena is really old. According to local legend, it was built in the 1950s beside the old residential school, which housed three hundred students from up and down the river. The school is long gone, but the arena is still standing. It’s a long Quonset hut that looks a bit like an oil drum cut in half lengthwise. An old trailer attached to one side houses the two dressing rooms. They’re incredibly cold, even with the extra electric heaters going, but for us girls, just getting a whole dressing room to ourselves was a major step forward.
    After Christmas, a special hockey night was announced, with games starting at four o’clock and going till midnight. The snack bar would be up andrunning, with hot dogs, pop and other assorted health foods. The whole lobby was decorated for the event with people’s rejected Christmas decorations: old strings of lights with big bulbs, those long twisty ropes of tinsel and unmatched faded ornaments. Christmas carols crackled over the pa system, even at our practices.
    The games were arranged according to age, and our team was going to play the Peewee boys team at 5:30 pm. We were nervous. It was our first game in public, and we were desperate not to get blown out of the arena.
    We all got to the arena good and early so we’d have time to do our stretches and other professional stuff like retaping our sticks. After we were dressed, Curtis came into the dressing room to give us a little pep talk. Tara, who was now our official assistant coach, came too.
    â€œWell, are you ready for this?” he asked. We stayed quiet. This was going to be embarrassing. We could just feel it in our bones. We knew that the arena was starting to fill up out there. What if they laughed at us?
    â€œThis is your chance to show your families just how far you’ve come,” he continued. “Just think back two months, to when you started this team, and how muchbetter you are today. If you skate hard and play your best game, you’ll do fine. Those boys are a bit cocky. I think you’re going to surprise them.”
    Finally, Opal broke the silence. “I’d really like to beat them. They are so arrogant. They deserve to lose,” she said