Chapter 1 The Call

My brother's acceptance letter was still taped to our fridge when the hospital called.

It was laminated. Mom had laminated it with that little machine she bought for her nursing files.

Hargrove Academy is pleased to offer Ethan J. Hayes a full athletic scholarship for the 2026-2027 academic year as starting varsity goaltender, contingent upon his arrival in good standing on the first day of pre-season.

Full ride. Sixty-five thousand dollars a year that we did not have. She had cried when she taped it up. Ethan had acted too cool to care, but I saw him take a picture of it when he thought no one was looking. He zoomed in on the Hargrove crest.

That was three days ago.

Now Mom was standing in our kitchen in New Hampshire with the phone pressed to her ear, and her hand was shaking so badly the cheap laminate on the counter was rattling. There was flour on her hands from baking. She didn't wipe it off.

"What hospital? Which hospital?" Her voice was flat. That scared me more than screaming would have.

I was at the sink. I had just come in from running on the back road, hair still wet with sweat, wearing my old Exeter Jr. Eagles t-shirt that was too big for me now because I quit.

"Ethan?" I said.

Mom didn't look at me. "Yes, that's my son. Yes. We're coming. We're coming right now."

She hung up. Her eyes were already red.

"Keys," she said. "Emery, keys."

"What happened?"

"A truck. He was driving back from Proctor's late-summer skate. His old team. He's alive. He's alive, but—get your shoes. Now."

Dad was already at work, the early shift at the plant in Concord. Mom called him on speaker while she backed the Subaru out of the driveway. She hit the trash can. She didn't stop.

Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center was an hour away. Mom drove ninety the whole way. She didn't say a word for the first forty minutes. Then she started talking, fast, like she needed to fill the air so she wouldn't have to think.

"They said he was wearing his seatbelt. The truck driver fell asleep. Ethan swerved. He swerved to miss him and—"

"Mom. Stop. Breathe."

She didn't breathe.

When we got there, they made us wait. White walls, white lights, that smell of cleaning product that makes your nose burn. Dad showed up ten minutes after us, still in his work shirt, grease under his nails.

A doctor came out. Young guy, tired eyes, hair that looked like he'd been pulling at it.

"Mr. and Mrs. Hayes? Your son is stable. That's the good news. He has a severe concussion, two broken ribs, a fractured right wrist, and a brain injury. We've put him in a medically induced coma to bring the swelling down."

The word coma just sat in the air between us. Nobody picked it up.

"How long?" Dad said. His voice cracked.

"We don't know. Days. Weeks. Possibly months. The next forty-eight hours are critical. You can see him, but only a few minutes at a time."

Mom grabbed my hand so hard my knuckles went white.

He looked smaller. That was my first thought, and I hated myself for it. My twin brother has always been bigger than me. Six foot, shoulders like a doorframe from hauling goalie gear since he was ten. In the bed, with the tubes and the bandage around his head, he looked twelve.

His right arm was in a cast. His blocker hand. The hand he uses to punch pucks away.

Mom started crying finally. No sound. Just tears down her face. Dad put his hand on the bed rail and didn't say anything.

I stared at the heart monitor. Beep. Beep. Beep.

We stayed until a nurse with kind eyes and a firm voice sent us out. In the hallway, she handed Mom a clear plastic bag. Ethan's wallet. His keys. His phone, the screen cracked into a spiderweb. It was still lit up in the bag, buzzing against the plastic. A group chat called HARGROVE HOCKEY with forty-one unread messages.

Then Mom's own phone rang. She looked at the screen and her face did something strange.

HARGROVE ACADEMY – ATHLETICS.

"Don't tell them," I whispered. "Mom, if you tell them, they'll take it away."

She stared at the phone. It rang again.

"The contract says arrive in good standing," I said. "If he's in a coma, he's not in good standing. They'll give it to the waitlist kid."

Mom answered on the fourth ring. She cleared her throat. I heard her slide into her work voice, the calm nurse voice she uses on scared patients.

"Hello? This is Diane Hayes, Ethan's mother... Yes, hello... Yes, we're so excited for Monday..."

She closed her eyes hard.

"About Monday. I wanted to call you before you heard it from someone else. Ethan came down with a very bad flu. High fever, and the doctor says it's highly contagious. We don't want to bring that onto campus and get the whole team sick before camp..."

She was lying. My mom, who makes us say a prayer before dinner, who grounded me for a month for lying about my math grade, was lying to a prestigious prep school in a hospital hallway while her son lay in a coma.

"No, no, he will absolutely report. We'll drive him ourselves as soon as he's cleared. Wednesday, Thursday at the latest... He's so sorry to miss the first physicals... Yes. Yes, thank you for understanding."

She hung up. Her hand was shaking so badly she almost dropped the phone.

"Flu?" Dad whispered.

"What else was I supposed to say?" Her voice broke. "That my son is in a coma and might not wake up for a month, and please hold his sixty-five-thousand-dollar spot? They'd give it to the kid from Minnesota by noon. You know they would."

"Then we tell them the truth," Dad said. "We ask for a deferral."

"There is no deferral. I read that contract twelve times, Mike. Miss pre-season and the spot goes down the waitlist. Coach Lachlan said it to our faces at the visit. He said Hargrove doesn't hold beds."

Dad didn't answer. He looked at the floor.

A food cart rattled by. Someone coughed two rooms down.

Then Mom turned to me. Not just her head. Her whole body.

"Emery."

I knew that tone. It was the same one she used when she asked me to cover her diner shift at sixteen because we needed the money.

"No," I said immediately.

"Just listen to me."

"No. Mom. No."

"Who at Hargrove has ever seen you?" she said. "You've stood behind a camera at every one of his games since you were eleven. Every photo he's ever posted, you're the one who took it. Coach Lachlan met your brother once, for twenty minutes at a showcase, and Ethan was in full gear for most of that. You look like him. You skate like him. You were better than him until you were fifteen and you know it."

"I'm five-seven. He's six foot."

"Goalies crouch," she said. "In the crease nobody sees six foot. They see pads."

"I'm a girl."

"So you wear a binder. So you cut your hair." She lifted the plastic bag. "His phone is in here. His team chat is on it. You answer for him. You have laryngitis from the flu, so you whisper, so nobody hears your voice. I'm a nurse, Emery. I know where the forms go. I'll handle the paperwork. The roster gets finalized in two weeks. Two weeks. Just until Ethan wakes up."

The doctor had said weeks. He'd said possibly months. Nobody in that hallway believed in two.

"Diane," Dad said quietly. "That's not a plan. That's fraud."

"It's two weeks, Mike."

Dad looked at me. He didn't say yes. He didn't say no either.

Through the little window in the door I could see my brother. The monitor was still beeping.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I thought about his letter on our fridge. Laminated.

I thought about me at fifteen, in net, stopping a slapshot from a sixteen-year-old boy and hearing his dad yell from the stands, "Fucking girl playing goalie?"

I had taken off my mask that day and walked out and never gone back.

"Two weeks," Mom whispered. "Just be him for two weeks."

I didn't say yes.

I didn't say no either.

I just kept looking at my brother, who was supposed to be Hargrove Academy's starting goalie, number 31, and who couldn't even open his eyes.