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I'm fucked. Done. My career is over. I'll be the laughing stock of the league. Nobody's gonna take me seriously anymore. I'll never hear the end of it on the ice – all the guys I ribbed? All the insults I lobbed? All they have to do is look at me and laugh. That's it. And I'll know exactly what they mean.
And that's if a team even lets me play on their squad in the first place ... which is a big if at this point. Once word gets around? Yeah. Forget it. I'll be black listed from this league. No team will want me, no room will ever accept me.
I'm so stupid, is all I can think. My mind's numb.
I'm sitting around my apartment. Trying to pack. I don't have to do this right now, since I don't even know where I'm going. But I don't know what else to do. It feels like it's time to start moving on with my life. So, okay. Get out the boxes. Start packing up. Away I go.
I should've listened to Grams, I think as I throw a pile of dirty laundry into a moving box. Should've finished school.
But school was so ... boring. And hard. I always felt different in school. Scratch that, I was different, and the kids knew it too. And that made me a target.
At school, my response to the stupid idiots and their playground insults – Hey Jones, where's your parents? – was often a fist to their face.
But a fist to the face always got me in trouble. And trouble broke Grams' heart. And then I felt bad as hell.
But the one place I didn't get in trouble for acting like that, was on the ice. Suppose a guy tells you straight to your face that he thinks you're an ugly dumb-shit. You tell me: in what other hobby, or sport, or job, or any walk in life – can you throw your body into a guy at 20 MPH and crush him into a wall? Where else can you agree to a fight and punch each other until someone falls down without getting in some kind of serious trouble for it?
That's right – nowhere else.
So that's how it all started for me. Hockey was the only place I felt like an equal, where I could take my frustrations out on people. My first few years, it's true, all I cared about was crushing other kids. The physicality of hockey, the hits!, that was my favorite part.
I grew up in Toronto and spent all my time at my local outdoor rink. Skating and skating and skating until long after the Sun went down and the temperature dropped and my feet like frozen solid bricks, and still I kept playing until that rink was empty.
Grams thought I might benefit from playing organized hockey, where I might learn some skills besides how to punch a guy in the face. She'd hoped to get me away from the violent part of the game. (The piano lessons certainly weren't making me any less angry, even if I was pretty damned good.)
Hell, getting to play more hockey? Of course I agreed. I was getting a late start – far behind most Canadian boys, who start with private lessons before they even start grade school. But I was angry and determined to catch up.
Some kids were fueled by some childish dream to 'be a famous sports star.' Others were fueled by their parents, who were still miserable about their own failed hockey career. Me? I was fueled by ... getting to crush people.
It was great at first. But then my hockey skills had to improve to keep playing. The coaches didn't just want a loose cannon out there. They wanted a guy who could skate, pass, and shoot. So I worked at those, too. Just so I could stick around.
Everybody's gone through that awful time when life rears its ugly head and says, “hey, you aren't good enough and this isn't your path, go do something else instead.” And believe me, I was no exception with hockey. I had coaches who told me I was dog shit. That I was a talentless goon, who wouldn't ever be anything else. I was cut from travel teams, forced to scramble to find a team that would take me last-minute. My career was on death-watch more times than I can remember.
During those early years, everywhere I turned, people had a laundry list of reasons why I'd never amount to shit as a hockey player.
And after every failure, Grandma would give me that sagely look and ask, “So what do you wanna do with your life now, Callan? You can't play hockey forever ... look at the signs. Look what God is telling you. Why keep struggling at this, when you're already so good at piano ...”
But I'd just lower my head and say I wasn't done yet. I still had more to prove. She thought I was crazy. Delusional even, who knows.
I don't hold it against her. She's one smart lady, and practical, too. Technically speaking, she's absolutely right – the odds were stacked against me. She didn't wanna see me put my life on the back-burner just to chase some fantasy.
But ... it wasn't a fantasy. Hockey was the only place I felt like I could be myself and I didn't wanna give it up. Couldn't give it up.
So I never, ever let a failure hold me back. I never believed the things people said about me. I always bounced back from failures, from rejections. Everything they said I sucked at, that I just couldn't do because I didn't have the tools or the smarts? I practiced those things. Obsessively. Until I turned a weakness into a strength.
Grandma watched my budding career with a kind of horrified interest. It began to dawn on her that it wasn't going away. Hockey was making me confident, and I stopped having fights at school. Actually, I'd turned into quite the popular kid at school.
And then I dropped out of school the day I turned 16 so I could play Junior hockey. Grandma was devastated. She felt like a failure as a parent – even though she never should've been in that position in the first place. My parents were the real failures.
“Callan, please,” she begged me. “Get your diploma! Then you can play college hockey ... if you work hard, you can still make the NHL, but at least you'll have an education in case things don't work out ...”
But I could only shake my head. “Doesn't work like that, Grams.” Our high school wasn't good enough. I wouldn't face the quality of opponent I needed to raise my game. I wouldn't get noticed, wouldn't get a scholarship. It'd be over before it started. I had to go elsewhere to play.
So I dropped out of school and joined a Junior team. I signed with a team in Ontario, left home, and moved in with a billet family.
And there, in Junior, I kept getting told I wasn't good enough.
But I kept working. Kept skating, and stick handling, and practicing, and lifting weights. And doing everything I could to make an impact on the game. To stand out.
That's how I got to be so goddamn cocky. I didn't think anyone could stop me. I really, truly thought I was invincible.
And then ... one small mistake ... and I feel like it's finally all caught up to me. I finally stood out – too much.
I am a good enough hockey player to stick around the NHL. That's the crazy part. But who I am, what I like, is the part that ruined me in the end. How fucking tragic, eh.
Grandma was right. The signs were all there. You can only run for so long – eventually, you're gonna slip up. And it'll all catch up to you.
Oh well. Maybe I'll get my GED and become a mechanic or something.
***
IT'S A LITTLE AFTER midnight when my phone rings. It's my GM. I answer.
“Hello?”
“Callan,” he says. “It'll be Chicago. I'm sending you your itinerary.”
Wha? I think. Chicago of all places wants me? I think of all the players on that team that hate me. Donovan, Emerson, Dufresne ... hell, all of 'em, really, except maybe Vance – and he's probably just too polite to show me how much he hates me.
And once they find out what I've done? Then they'll really be done with me.
“Do – do they know why?” I stammer nervously.
“No,” he grunts, and I can tell he doesn't want to speak any more of it. I realize that this is part of my punishment: not knowing when word will get around. Because it surely will. It's a ticking time bomb.
“Okay,” I swallow. “Um, I just wanna say thanks for the opportunity, I really enjoyed playing in Winni—”
Click. He hangs up and the dial tone screeches back at me.
“Well ... okay,” I mumble to myself. Welp.
My phone dings to let me know that I've got an email. It's from the GM. I open it and see my flight information. I've got a flight in two days to join my new team, the Chicago Hawks, in Tampa Bay.
I wonder if the TSA will let me board an airplane with this time bomb strapped around my neck?
Maybe I just won't report to my new team. What's the point, anyway? I could save myself the grief. I already know it's over. Might as well make it official.
Sigh. What to do.