Page 7 of Forbidden Hockey

“Stop it.” He gives me a light shove, but he’s laughing. “Seriously, though. He’s so cool. Do you know he draws those tattoos? Like, he doesn’t ink them on himself, but he comes up with the designs in a sketchbook he let me look at. You think he’ll draw one for me? You think he’ll take me to get a tattoo if I ask?”

That is pretty damn cool that he draws them. But let Dash get one? Hard to say. I don’t have much experience with dads. I try to picture Hunt if I asked him about a tattoo, he’d flip. I should for fun later, just to watch him have a mild heart attack. He can get tattoos, of course, but not me for some reason. He deserves a little poking for the hypocrisy alone.

“He’s given you everything you’ve asked for so far. Seems like there’s no harm in asking.” And I’m curious myself. His dad doesn’t exactly look like a dad. He looks like he’d feed you your own innards for breakfast. He’s tall, too—gotta be over six feet—and built like a brawler with the kind of body that’s built from fights, not gyms. But then here he is, dropping his son off at hockey practice at an hour reserved for owls and truck drivers.

And, I guess, hockey players.

But anyway, what a damn conundrum that man is.

“Yeah, I’m gonna ask. I’ll ask for you, too. It’ll be so great. Let’s get skulls with snakes coming out of the eyes. Let’s start a skull-lover’s club!”

That’s why I love Dashie. He takes a small idea and goes waaaaaay too far with it. “Whatever you want, Dashie. I’ll get a skull with snakes for eyes for you—we should get hockey sticks in the background.”

“Oh my god, why didn’t I think of that? It’ll be our club logo! Know what? Let’s put Boulder and Nolan at the bottom, so people know we’re the club leaders.”

Hunter’s a fucking tornado charging through the house. “Pack your shit, Dirk. We’re leaving.”

“Hang on. What?”

He doesn’t wait for me to respond. He beelines to my room and pulls out my duffel bag.

“Hunter,” I plead.

He freezes mid-stuffing my clothes into my bag. “I can’t do it anymore, Dirk. I can’t do her anymore.”

Her is Mom. I get it. I get that. But. “We can’t just leave her, Hunter.”

Hunter tosses the bag on the bed. “I’m leaving. You can stay if you want.”

That should make my choice easy, but it doesn’t. As much as I know I can’t handle Mom, that Hunter’s been doing all the handling of her, I don’t want to leave her for the pure and irrational reason that she’s Mom.

“She just needs our help, Hunter. You said that. That’s what you said,” I repeat as if saying it in different ways will halt whatever crazy train he’s jumped on.

“Fucking Christ, she doesn’t want to be helped, Dirk,” he rasps. My lip trembles as it does when he says things that like. Why is that? Why does Hunter spark marrow-deep pain? He softens, new lines appearing on his young face. “It’s not what I want either, but I can’t do this anymore. She’s a drowning ship,and all that’s going to happen is us drowning with her. Old Mom, the mom we can’t stop remembering, would want us to get out while we could. And I’m afraid, so fucking afraid, that if I don’t leave now, I never will.”

There’s something on his face I’ve seen a few times, but it’s taken till now for me to figure out what it means. He needs this. Hunter doesn’t do a lot for himself. He sacrifices for me. He’s strong for me. He shields me from the worst of Mom as often as he can. He does what’s best for me, period.

But this is his breaking point. He’s on the precipice of having it all—a good job, a normal-ish life—but he’ll lose it all if he doesn’t do this. It’s time for me to do something for him.

I nod. “Okay. I’m coming with you, but does it have to be now? Why now?”

“Yeah, it has to be now. I’m too afraid I’ll talk myself out of it again. Don’t … please don’t talk me out of it.”

Which means he has before. Many times. Talked himself out of it, I mean.

“I’ll finish this. Get your stuff, I’ll meet you at the truck.”

We don’t take much. Just my hockey gear and some clothes. We leave Mom a note, an envelope with a pile of money, and the keys to the truck he had fixed up for me. Never even got to drive it.

“Were you actually going to leave me if I insisted on staying?” I ask once we’re in his truck because that’s doubtful at best. Wild wolves couldn’t pull my brother from me.

He laughs. “Not a fucking chance. I would have dragged your ass into the truck.”

We move to another part of the city that’s further from the high school I go to, but the people are nice, and we find a place that seems to overlook the fact that we’re brothers, young ones, and there’s not a parent between us. All the landlord wants to know is: Can we pay the rent? Hunter drops the name Moretti Construction, and the man rolls out a welcome mat for us. We’re closer to Hunter’s work now, and when I finally get my license, he can walk on the days I have practice or hitch a ride with a coworker.

“Just until I can get us another vehicle,” he reminds me when I wince because of his tired eyes. He still won’t let me get a job. Not until I’m out of high school, he said.

The rink’s not too far a drive early in the morning, so I can stick with the same hockey team. I can still see Dash.