Confessions of a Teenage Caffeine Addict

8 // Toe Drags with a Side of Reality

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Special thanks and dedication goes to GraceGurlO for making this amazing cover for me! (see sidebar). P.S. I love getting covers soooo with that being said, enjoy your reading.

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Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future,

but from wanting to control it.

—Kahlil Gibran

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JAKE 

DECEMBER // WEEK 2

Nothing felt real. Not the my scrimmage against Mansfield tomorrow night. Not my practice earlier today. Not the Skills Session I was leading tonight. And it definitely didn't feel real that Jules was pregnant. But at 6:27pm, I stepped onto the ice with a sigh of relief, feeling like an immense weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The sound my skates made as I glided across the ice and the pure joy of having the entire rink to myself... that felt real.

I was early for Skills Session. Thirty-three minutes of freedom to be exact — No baby. No Jules. No rules. For a little while tonight, I would no longer carry the world on my shoulders. I would be a normal teenager, and I had to say, that felt pretty damn good. I always tried to get to Skills Sessions early just so I could have the ice to myself for a little while. Sometimes, a few of my teammates had the same idea, but today I was alone. I looked around the familiar rink: scuffed white boards, shiny glass, and rows and rows of purple seats. Scintillating white lights made precise circles on the glossy ice.

I pushed a beaten up, white milk crate full of black hockey pucks towards the goal at the far end. I tipped the crate onto its side and pulled a few scuffed up pucks out with my stick and moved behind the red goal, pretending that it was me against the world. Essentially, it was me against an imaginary defender that was bigger, stronger and faster than I would ever be. Though, soon enough, it would be me against the world, and that was a truly scary thought. I waited behind the goal and let the scenes from past games play out in my head and imagined what I could have done differently.

I was working on a new move involving a stutter step and a toe drag with my left skate. A toe drag is pretty self explanatory, hence its name; your back foot drags across the ice, changing your speed; in hockey, a toe drag is used to lose a defender and create space. Pretty text book stuff right there. A hockey player would refer to a toe drag, as a "dangle" which meant that a player had good stick handling skills. Sometimes after practice, if coach is in a good mood, he'll initiate a dangle competition to see who has the best stick skills. Usually, it's me, but I guess Derek has been paying attention in practice lately because he has given me a run for my money the past few times. Dangle hard. Celly for days — That was my team's motto. The word celly, of course, is the abbreviated form of the word celebration.

My team didn't call me Jake "The Dangle Master" Roswell for nothing. Whenever I pulled any sort of toe drag move on an opponent, it would be with my right skate because I was a lefty, but I felt that was getting too predictable and I couldn't afford to be predictable with Mansfield tomorrow night. They had this one defender, Georgie O'Sullivan, who I have never liked since I could skate.

I came around the left side of the net and wove the puck between my legs, but got so focused on perfecting my toe drag and change of direction, that I forgot to stutter step. If this was a game, Georgie O'Sullivan would have flattened me like a Sunday morning pancake and I would not allow that to happen. The thought of being touched by Georgie O'Sullivan made my skin crawl. I did the move again and again until after about nine tries, it started to look like I might only be swatted out of the air like an annoying fly.