Page 1 of Forbidden Hockey

Prologue

Dirk, Age 15

“I’m going out,” I yell, so Hunter can hear me at the back of the house. I’m being an ass. He won’t like me going out so late, but it’s not like I’m going far, and I need to get out of here. I waited all fucking day for him to get home just so I could go out, because he doesn’t like it when I leave the house when he’s not home. And, yeah, Dash coulda just come here, but I wantoutof this house.

Did I mention that I want out?

I hate this house.

I’m down the creaky porch steps and six feet away when the front door’s thrust open. My older brother’s still wiping the sleep from his face, eyes adjusting to the brightness. He keeps it dark in the back room so he can sleep during the day, and when he got home, he stumbled there and crashed. There’s a little niggle in my chest. I shouldn’t have woken him up; he barely gets sleep, but I barely get to leave this fucking house. He would have been pissed if all I’d left was a note.

“D’you have a jacket?”

I hold it up and wag it for him. It’s the summertime, the sun’ll still be up for another three hours at least, I won’t need it, but I knew he’d give me shit if I didn’t bring one.

He nods. “Get your ass back here by dark, kid.”

I would roll my eyes at both things—because I’m notthatmuch younger than him, only seven years, and I’m just fine out in the dark—but he will drag my ass back in the house. You don’t fuck with Hunter. Just the sheer size of him! But also, he’s well practiced in fuck around and find out.

“Was plannin’ on it,” I say, even though I wasn’t.

“I mean it, Dirk. If I have to hunt you down, you won’t like the consequences.”

“Alright.Can I go?”

He nods, rubbing his eyes some more, making me feel bad for him. Not on purpose, but I do. I shouldn’t be such a shithead, but I have something important to do. Not only do I want out of this house, but I want out of this fucking life. My only ticket to a better life is hockey.

Freedom achieved, I book it three blocks down, through the park, and up the hill. Dash is already there, lying in the grass, staring at the clear blue sky. He didn’t bring a jacket. Bet nobody was on his ass about it.

“Sorry. Got held up. Hunter was at me,” I explain.

“Least someone cares, Dirk,” Dash says.

I frown. Yeah, I guess. I lie beside him and try to find what he’s looking at. There’s nothing special, just blue. Not even a cloud. Not a bird. Grass pokes at the bare skin at the nape of my neck, sending a shiver through.

“So, listen, I was thinking that we could get jobs,” I tell him. Since we were tiny mites, we were supported by TimTots Sports, a program through Tim Howards that subsidizes kids like us. But we’d outgrown the program now that we’re fifteen. If wewant to keep playing, we’ll need to come up with the money ourselves.

Dash snakes a hand over to mine and laces our fingers together. We’ve been friends for a long time. We were also each other’s first kiss, which is what it took to realize that we didn’t have that kind of chemistry.

He turns his head, there’s a rare smile on his face. A great big one. Brighter than the sun shining on us. “I have news.”

“Oh?” It looks like good news.Please say it’s good news.

“I told Mom about hockey.”

My stomach does a flip and a twist. Trusting his mom with anything’s a slippery slope. But I get it. It’s his mom. My mom’s barely around, and it pisses me the fuck off sometimes, but I’ll drop everything to spend five minutes with her.

“And?”

“She suggested I call my dad—she actually said I could call him.”

Dash’s dad lives on the other side of town. He says his mom doesn’t like him seeing his dad, but I think it’s Robin—his mom’s boyfriend—who doesn’t like it. Robin’s fucking weird with Dash. He gives me the creeps.

“Dad said he’d pay for us—both of us. I told him all about you, that we’re practically brothers.”

Rocks sink to the bottom of my stomach. “Your dad can’t pay for me, too. Hockey’s expensive. He rich or somethin’?” I’ve never met his dad, only heard about him.

“Well … no. But he’s opened a restaurant and says he can afford that much. We’d probably have to get secondhand stuff, but we can make it work.”