Free Twenty Miles by Cara Hedley

minutes, twenty miles,’ she said loudly. She looked at me.
    The path from the dressing room to the ice went like this: down the hall, a right turn, and there was the door that opened onto the rink itself. Tillsy pushed through, a wide-legged stride in her goalie pads, and we walked into a corridor like a mountain tunnel, the stands high above.
    As soon as Tillsy reached the gate to the ice she stopped, all of us held in the thrumming tension of our line. The lights dimmed like it was our birthday and they were bringing in the cake and then the music began. ‘Thunderstruck,’ by AC/DC . The crazed moaning sound at the beginning that got louder and louder, like the band was creeping up behind you and then the first hit of
THUN-DER!,
a crack felt in the knees.
    Hal’s gloves still beating inside my chest. Pelly, in front of me, bounced her shoulders up and down, she shook her head from side to side like a horse.
    THUN-DER!
    Alberta circled their end of the ice, green and yellow, picking up pucks from a spilled pile of them in front of their box, where a suited coach paced the bench, pissed-off face, studying a clipboard.Players began to sprint arcs up around the red line, coming around the boards and slowing down. Hard slow hard slow.
    ‘’S go, White!’ Heezer shouted near the front. ‘Showtime, White!’
    ‘C’mon, Scarlets!’ someone yelled behind. ‘’S do this!’
    Hal, ahead of Pelly, horked out the side of her cage onto the floor. When she turned her head to the side, her face was tight.
    The announcer cleared his throat into the microphone and then he yelled in a talk-show-host baritone above the AC / DC : ‘Here. Come. Your Winnipeg University Scarrrr-lettttts!’ And the beat jumped into my throat and cracked open.
    One of the Events guys, dressed like a Puck Bunny in a Scarlet Hockey T-shirt, flung open the gate for us like it was a rodeo and we were the bulls, and my team began to waddle-sprint down the hallway, and soon I was leaping through the gate into light and the thick applause of a crowd in mitts and the manic screech of AC / DC and I skated the fastest warm-up circle I ever had because if I stopped skating I would throw up.
    S ig sat in an empty row near the back of the stands and searched for Iz on the ice. She found her in the other team’s end, pinning a girl against the boards, the two trapped in the tangle of their bodies, writhing for the puck hidden between their feet. Sig was surprised: Iz, her back leg dug in strong, had the girl caught like a fly by the wings.
    She was used to seeing Iz knocked around. The games played out fast when Iz was a teenager, and the boys sometimes didn’t realize they were hitting a girl until she was crumpled on the ice, head curled into her body, trying to disguise the pain. The boys’ bodies slumped when they realized what they’d done, and they’d crouch next to her on the ice, suddenly gentle, offering a hand up. Iz refused. The regret of those boys was what she hated most about hockey. She’d rather have her ribs cracked than hear their sheepish apologies.
    The whistle went and Iz skated to the bench. Sig watched her move to the middle, lean an arm over the boards, the other bracingher upside-down stick. The player next to her poked her with an elbow and gestured at the ref, her helmet moving up and down as she spoke. Iz nodded.
    They didn’t look so different from the boys, Sig thought. A bit shorter, but they still had that bulky, square-shouldered look about them, the same loping stride. Ponytails whipping around in their wake.
    A gust of perfume, and a woman sat down on the seat next to Sig. Sig looked over briefly, caught the bones in the woman’s face, purple scarf wound like a turban around her sharp head, the red lipstick that arrowed from her lips into the outskirts of her mouth. A man in the row ahead of them twisted stiffly. He’d smelled the perfume, no doubt, the exotic scent moving uneasily among the worn rink seats.
    ‘How are