“This could be awkward,” I say to Justin.
We’ve just entered the nearly empty stands at the ice rink, and who do I see sitting there waiting for the game to start but Marissa.
“Awkward because …?”
How much do I tell Justin? Do I describe the original rift, where Marissa was angry about my rude behavior and I was angry about her attitude toward Adrian, only she didn’t know I was angry about her attitude toward Adrian? Or the phone call, with the strain over her strong feelings about illegal immigration and my strong feelings about her trying to guilt me into having strong feelings? This relationship—or whatever it is—with Justin is nice. I like him. He’s taller than me. He doesn’t seem to think I’m incompetent or boring or clueless about how you treat your friends. He doesn’t need every sordid detail.
So I just tell him that Marissa and I were friends but have grown apart.
There are so few people in the stands at 7:15 on a Sunday morning that I would be making some kind of pointed statement if I sat apart from her and the clump of hockey player parents clustered around the center line. So we go over.
“Hi, Marissa,” I say.
“Danielle!” She hugs me.
“It’s good to see you,” I say.
“Same here,” she says. “It’s been way too long.”
Marissa is a hugger. But she also gives me an extra squeeze at the end of our hug, like a punctuation mark. If hugs could speak, hers would be saying “Starting now, let’s not be mad,” and that works for me.
“Marissa, this is Justin,” I say. “Justin, this is Marissa.”
“Do you have a brother or someone in this game, Justin?” Marissa asks. “Because I can’t imagine why else anybody would be here at this ungodly hour.”
We explain that we came for Justin’s 7:45 a.m. game, but it’s been pushed back an hour. Trouble with the Zamboni messed up the league schedule today, only Justin didn’t know about it. So we’re here early. The younger teams, who were supposed to play at 6:20 a.m.—welcome to youth hockey—will play their game first, whenever the ice is ready.
“Is Marco still playing?” I ask. Marco is thirteen.
“That’s why I’ve been here since six o’clock,” Marissa says.
“Ouch,” Justin says.
“Do you play high school hockey, too?” Marissa asks Justin.
“No, just MHC,” he says. “I go to MacArthur. We don’t have a hockey team.”
MHC is Meigs Hockey Club. And although my high school, Western, has a hockey team, not all the schools around here do.
“Too bad,” Marissa says. “Neither does ours. But I love watching hockey.” She looks at me. “We used to go to Adrian’s games.”
There’s nothing meaningful in her look. Just—Remember. That was fun.
“And Malcolm’s baseball games,” I say. “And Manny’s soccer matches.”
“And Matt’s triumph last year as quarterback,” Marissa says.
“Wait a minute,” Justin says. “How long is this list?”
We explain about Marissa’s five brothers and how they all play different sports—hockey, soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse.
“Who’s the lacrosse player?” Justin asks. “I follow the high school and college teams.”
“That would be Martin,” Marissa says. “My twin. Who also plays basketball in the winter. I should say, he plays when he feels like playing.”
I look at her questioningly.
“Long story,” she says.
“Your twin, for real?” Justin asks.
“For real.”
“Do any of the older brothers play college sports?” Justin asks.
“Malcolm, who’s the oldest, is a D.C. police officer,” Marissa says. “He didn’t go to a traditional four-year college, so he kind of gave up baseball.”
“And he was awesome,” I say.
“A policeman?” Justin says.
“Yes, he is,” Marissa says proudly. She adds that Manny plays soccer at his college in Pennsylvania. Matt, who’s a freshman at the community college—living at home, so he and Martin can torment each other over sharing the car—was a fine high school player but not athletic-scholarship material. He’s playing club sports.
By now, the teams are on the ice warming up.
“How about you—do you do a sport?” Justin asks Marissa.
“Some tennis. I’m on my school’s team this year.”
I didn’t know that. “Marissa, you must have gotten really good!” I say. “We played a few times….”
“And you’re thinking, how is she good enough to be on a high school team, playing a varsity sport,” she says.
“No!” I object. But, yeah.
“I’m reading your mind, Danielle,” Marissa says. “And you’re right, and the answer is, when you go to a little private school, it’s a lot easier to make the team. Any team.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You’re being modest.”
“I’m better than I was,” she says, “but I don’t think I could be on Western’s team.”
“It’s great you’re on the team,” Justin says.
“Thanks,” she says. “It’s fun.”
There’s a face-off on the ice, and we watch the action.
“Marco is almost as tall as me now,” I say. He was always kind of little.
“Of course, three inches of that comes from his skates,” Marissa says.
“Even allowing for that,” I say. “He’s taller.”
“Bantam level hockey is kind of freaky,” Justin says. “I mean, look at the players—their sizes are all over the place. There are thirteen-year-olds who look like babies. Then there are fourteen-year-olds who are bigger than me.”
It’s true; there are guys out there who look like men, and guys who look like boys dressing up for Halloween in hockey uniforms. Marco is in between, but closer to the boy-boys than the man-boys.
Up and back they skate, chasing the puck. There are a few shot attempts, all failing. The first period ends with no score.
“Are your parents coming?” I ask Marissa. I like her mom and dad.
“They try to come to most games. But Manny has a match game up in Pennsylvania, and they left around the same time I did to come here, and it’s still preseason here at the hockey rink, so …”
“Sounds like it’s always game day at your house,” Justin says.
“Pretty much,” Marissa says. “Never a dull moment.” She stands and says, “I could use coffee. Would you like some?”
“I don’t think the snack bar’s open yet,” Justin says.
“There’s the machine,” Marissa says.
“Right.”
Justin and I both pass on coffee.
“Are we coffee snobs?” he says after Marissa leaves the stands.
“Guilty as charged,” I say.
“She seems nice,” Justin says.
“She is nice,” I say.
“No awkwardness that I noticed,” he says.
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m glad.”
Marissa returns with her steaming paper cup.
“Not terrible,” she says, and carefully takes a few sips. “Where did you say you go to school, Justin?”
“MacArthur,” he says.
“So how do you two know each other?” she asks.
“Well—” Justin begins.
“We met in the park,” I say. “The Quarry Road park.”
“Danielle can really toss a football,” Justin says.
“Aww,” Marissa says, “what a nice compliment.” She smiles and looks at Justin more carefully. “You remind me of someone I know from school,” she says. “He comes from South America. From Argentina.”
“Well, I’m not from Argentina,” Justin says. “And we don’t have any relatives from Argentina. But maybe your guy from school is my doppelgänger.”
“Your doppel-what?” Marissa laughs.
“My doppelgänger. My non-twin twin. The double that everyone in the world may or may not have.”
“Great word,” I say.
“Agreed,” Marissa says.
Justin shrugs, like he’s a little bit shy about showing off.
“So, but, Justin, is your family from here originally?”
I turn my head to look at Marissa more directly. This would strike me as a really strange question, except for Marissa’s undying interest in everyone’s heritage. So, instead, it strikes me as only a moderately strange question.
Justin pauses. “Originally … my family is from Colombia.”
Now I turn to look at him head-on. “As in, the country?” I say. “The country of Colombia? Or, like, a city in South Carolina?”
“As in South America,” he says.
“I didn’t know that,” I say.
“I don’t know where your family is from,” he says. “So we’re even.”
“My mother’s family is from some region of Eastern Europe that took turns being Russia and Poland back when they lived there a hundred years ago,” I say. “And my father’s family is from Hungary originally. And we feel absolutely no connection to either of these places.”
“I’ve told you, Danielle, you’re really missing out,” Marissa says. “Pierogi. Goulash. And let’s not forget the polkas!”
“Yes, I would not want to forget the polkas,” I say. “Because embedded in my DNA is a girl who just wants to bust out and dance the Polish polka.” I turn to Justin. “Marissa is unusually fascinated by the cultures and heritage of everyone she meets.”
“I am,” Marissa says. “So … Colombia. Fantastic prehistoric cave art. Home of Gabriel García Márquez. Two separate things, of course; I’m not saying his home was in a cave.”
Ha. Even I know who the famous writer is.
“Well, sort of the home of Gabriel García Márquez,” Justin says. “Since he mostly lived elsewhere once he was an adult.”
“Have you ever been there?” Marissa asks. “To Colombia?”
“Never traveled there,” he says.
“Hablas español?” Marissa asks.
“Some,” Justin says.
As we’re talking, we’re watching the ice. The second period has started. Justin hasn’t asked Marissa about her own ethno-geo-anthro-cultural profile—because who but Marissa asks about these things—and I’m about to tell him about her Mexican great-grandparents as a way of explaining her questions, but we’re all suddenly distracted by the game.
“Oh, look! Go, Marco!” Marissa calls out.
Marco just stole the puck from the other team, which is a good thing, since they’re dangerously close to his own team’s goal. He passes to a teammate, who heads toward the center line, but then the teammate stumbles and a player from the opposing team gets it. Marco is still back, a few feet in front of his own goalkeeper. The boy with the puck, who’s one of the man-boys, turns and gets off a quick slap shot.
“Wide!” Justin says. The puck is airborne.
“Yes!” Marissa says.
“Breakaway!” yells a parent behind us as Marco recovers the ricocheting puck and makes for the other end of the rink.
“Go, Marco!” Marissa yells.
There aren’t enough people here to say that the crowd roars at the goal that Marco scores, but there are cheers.
“Score!” Marissa cries. “Marco scored!”
“Great breakaway,” Justin says.
“Way to go, Marco,” I say.
On the ice, the players aren’t lining up as usual for a face-off.
“Huh,” Justin says.
I look where he’s looking.
“That ref is down,” Justin says.
“I think he might have caught the puck in the chest,” says the same person behind us who first cheered Marco’s breakaway. “The puck from the other team’s missed slap shot.”
“That can really sting,” Justin says.
There’s another referee in the game; he’s standing over the man on the ice. One of the coaches has slid out on the ice and is bending over the downed referee.
The other referee skates over to the stands. “Is there a doctor here?”
No, there isn’t.
“Should we call 911?” someone calls.
“Everything seems okay,” the ref says. “Just want to be on the safe side.”
But now the coach is waving the ref over, and the coach does not look like a man who thinks everything is okay.
“Call 911!” the coach yells.
I see, or sense, a dozen hands reaching into pockets and purses for cell phones. But what I feel is Justin clambering over my legs to get to the aisle. He jumps over benches to get down on the ice. I watch him run-slide over to the injured referee, and practically fall on the ice next to him. Justin elbows the coach aside and starts pushing down on the referee’s chest. I may not know how to do CPR (thanks to the Red Cross babysitting class that I did not take), but I can definitely recognize it. I turn to Marissa to tell her, but now she’s down on the rink, too; she slips at first, but then gets the hang of running on a sheet of ice and is soon by Justin’s side. I remember—she knows CPR, too. She took a class in it.
I can’t go over there. I can’t go and kneel by another person who’s been hit by a moving object. Besides, what good would I be?
In what seems like forever, but really isn’t, a man and a woman who work at the rink—they’re wearing matching bright blue jackets—rush onto the ice. The woman is carrying a small machine. She speaks briefly to Justin. The man takes over from Justin. The woman attaches the machine’s pads to the ref’s chest, the man stops the compressions, and then the woman presses something on the machine. I see the ref kind of twitch, and the man gets back to doing CPR on him. After a few more compressions, he stops.
The ref lifts his head. The people in the bright blue jackets speak with him; the woman squeezes his hand. He bends his knees as if he wants to sit up, but the woman says something to him and he relaxes his legs again. Soon a crew from the Meigs County Fire Department bounds onto the ice. A couple of police officers have arrived, too, but they seem to know that there’s no need for them and they don’t enter the rink.
Marissa comes over to where I’m standing, which is in the front row right next to the boards.
“I’ve never seen that happen,” she says. “The ref was completely out—but Justin—”
Where is Justin?
“If he hadn’t started CPR so quickly …” She doesn’t finish her thought. “He reacted so quickly. Meanwhile, I sat here on the bench …,” she says. The EMTs are moving the ref onto a stretcher. “Where did Justin go?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“He must be talking to someone about what went on,” Marissa says.
But we don’t see him on the ice or in the stands. We go to the waiting room to look for him, but he’s not there, either. After a while, Marco and his team come out. The remainder of their game has been called off.
“My goal probably won’t even count,” Marco says glumly.
“Hi, Marco,” I say.
“It was a beauty,” Marissa says. “But don’t you think we should just be praying for that poor referee who got hit?”
“Yeah,” Marco says. “Sorry. He’s a good referee. Everyone likes him.”
“We’re going to head out,” Marissa says to me. “Tell Justin I think he’s a hero.”
“Who’s Justin?” Marco asks.
“The guy who did CPR. He’s Danielle’s friend.”
“Wow,” Marco says. “Super-quick thinking.”
“Make that a superhero,” Marissa says to me. “Tell him.”
The appearance of the Zamboni seems almost offensive after what’s happened, but I guess the show must go on. Marco’s game may have been called off, but there’s a whole lineup of games waiting to be played today, including Justin’s. It’s funny how an event can totally leave a small group of people in shock—please, no pun intended—and yet be completely invisible and irrelevant to the rest of the world. The EMTs and the cops are gone. A small knot of parents from the game are still standing around, no doubt rehashing what we all just witnessed. But basically the rink is back to normal.
I go back to the rink looking for Justin. He’s not there. Then out into the main waiting room again, where I sit among its rows of benches and lockers. There are more people here than when we first arrived, but still not many. The rink doesn’t open for free skating for a few hours—I think not until 11:00 a.m. on Sunday. The parents have moved to the door of the main office. Now they’re reliving the drama with the man and woman who took over from Justin.
“There have been a few cases where a puck, if it hits really hard just beneath the chest protectors, has basically caused cardiac arrest,” the woman is saying.
“Is that what happened?” one of the parents says. “That’s horrendous!”
“I can’t say for sure,” she says. “By the time Tim and I got there, that young man—”
“He plays in the rec league, but I don’t know his name,” the guy named Tim says. “And Cindy has seen him around, too, but doesn’t really know him, either.”
“Well, that young man had begun CPR,” the woman, Cindy, continues. “Jerry had a faint pulse by the time we got there. Did he lose it after the puck hit him? Don’t know. But the fact that the defibrillator, when I attached it, determined the need to administer a shock, that tells me he may very well have gone into cardiac arrest. Which would mean the CPR kept him from slipping away until we got there with the machine.”
Maybe Justin needed to go to the bathroom to pull himself together after such an upsetting experience. Should I go into the men’s room? Maybe he went home. But without telling me? Sure, if he’s shaken up enough. I’m about to text him when he plops down next to me, dropping his hockey bag on the floor.
“You were a hero!” I say. “And then you disappeared. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “I needed to get ready for my game.”
The team changing rooms are down a corridor off this main area. But—the thing is, he didn’t get ready for his game. He’s still dressed in his regular clothes, and his bag is still stuffed with his gear.
“But, Justin, you didn’t change into your hockey gear,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I decided not to after all.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” he says again.
Maybe he’s feeling disoriented. I decide to take a different approach.
“You’re amazing!” I say. “You may have saved that referee’s life.”
“I know CPR,” he says.
“Knowing CPR and springing into action are two different things,” I say. “And you sprang!”
“Like some sort of action figure, right?” he says.
He seems unusually tense, but how should a person feel after something like this?
“Do you know him?” I ask. “Does he referee at your games?”
He’s not really listening. “Look, let’s get out of here,” Justin says.
“But your game?”
“I’m going to skip it,” he says.
As we’re walking out, Tim and Cindy see us. They hurry out of the office, both extending their hands as they approach.
“Great work, my man,” Tim says, pumping Justin’s hand.
“Really quick thinking,” Cindy says, shaking Justin’s other hand. “You may have saved a life here.”
Justin hems and haws. But every modest denial on his part stimulates a new recitation by Tim and Cindy of his wonderfulness. After a few rounds of this, he seems to figure out that if he just accepts their praise, this conversation will actually end. And it does.
“Marissa wants me to tell you that you’re a superhero,” I say once we’re outside.
“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Like Superman,” I say. “Complete with disappearing into a phone booth after the heroics.”
“Thanks.”
“Actually, she didn’t say that. About the phone booth. That was me. Please ignore me.”
We walk toward the bus stop without speaking.
“Look, I need to get home,” Justin says. “Can we talk later? Or tomorrow or something?”
“Sure,” I say, thinking that “or something” can have a wide variety of meanings, including “or never.”
“Great.”
His bus comes first. He drags his bag up the steps. He doesn’t turn to wave or say good-bye.
I guess this is how a superhero acts in real life.