A Sneak Peak at The Wolfpack

By the time the music starts, the rink already smells like beer. Not a lot. Just enough to hover over the usual scents of cold air and wet rubber and the sour tang of hockey gear that has lived too long inside closed bags and locker rooms. One of the boys has set up a speaker on the bench, and a playlist thumps through the building, bass vibrating through the empty bleachers.

On the ice, the boys are still skating. Not practice skating. Not drills. Just the loose, sloppy chaos of a team that’s already played its game, and won it. Helmets are off. Some of the boys have even shed their jerseys, and skate in chest protectors over black base layers with their sleeves cut off. Sticks clatter as they chase pucks, no one really trying that hard to control them.

Parents stand in clusters around the glass. Phones out. Aluminum cans in hand. Voices a little louder than they need to be to rise above the hum of the air compressor. 

The Merrimack Valley Wolfpack are going to the playoffs.

Jacqueline Jones stands near the boards with her arms folded, hands empty, watching her son Lincoln circle the zone with the other boys. His hair is wet with sweat and spiked into a lopsided mullet. His face gleams, red and happy, under the arena lights. His stride is longer now than it was at the start of the season. Stronger, too. Every once in a while he glances toward the stands, checking to make sure she’s still there. 

She lifts one hand when he looks. He grins and skates faster. In the open Zamboni doors, Jack spots Tommy, the rink maintenance guy, leaning against his machine and tapping an unlit cigarette against the back of his hand. His face is unreadable, but she knows he must be irritated, eager to clear the ice and get home. But for once he lets the boys skate.

The other parents talk over one another.

“I told you they had it tonight!”

“…that second goal, unbelievable.”

“…think we have a shot at going all the way?”

Someone behind her pops open a fresh can.

Jack exhales slowly.

Six months of this.

It’s been six months of late drives from Portsmouth, of traffic on 495 and lukewarm coffee and the smell of damp hockey bags filling the back seat of her car. Six months of bleachers and writing in rink lobbies and the unrelenting intensity of this group of youth hockey parents who have all somehow, over the course of years, convinced themselves that their children are participating in something more important than reality.

It’s been possibly the hardest six months of her life, and that’s counting when Link was born and she was all alone, only twenty-one years old and grieving the death of the first and only love of her life. Okay, not that hard. But harder than she ever could have imagined when she signed the Wolfpack contract.

She knows the hardest part isn’t over yet. 

But this makes it all worth it.

The Wolfpack are going to the playoffs.

Then, after it’s over…Jack takes a deep breath. She doesn’t want to think about what happens when it’s over.

On the ice, the puck skitters around the boards and Link chases it down, grinning at his teammate Fitzpatrick as he wins the race to the blue line. Someone shouts his name, calling for a pass. Jack glances up and sees the Zamboni doors empty. Tommy’s gone off somewhere. Hopefully to get a beer of his own. God knows he deserves it.

Someone touches Jack’s elbow.

“Hey.”

Eric Anderson stands beside her, jacket zipped halfway, coffee cup in hand.

“Quite a season.” He nods toward the ice. “Your kid had a hell of a game tonight.”

Jack watches Link pass the puck back to Eric’s son, Jacob. “He had help.”

Eric smiles. “They really came together.” 

For a moment they stand there quietly, watching the boys skate.

Then there’s a whistle from the bench — Keith Hardaway, the assistant coach, circles his hand in the air. Time to wrap it up. There’s no sign of the head coach, Mark Bingham. That’s for the best. If Jack never has to see Bing again, it’ll be too soon.

Bing’s son, Connor, is missing as well. He took a stick to the face in the third period. He must be off icing it, or else he and his mother have already left.

The rest of the boys start collecting pucks and gear and sticks and head off to the locker room, jabbing elbows into ribs and hooting at each other. Jack scans the ice for Link but doesn’t see him. He must have skated off early. Strange. He’s usually the last one in the locker room. The last one out, too. He must be tired from the game. One of his teammates grabs the speaker, still blaring.

Jack checks the clock above the scoreboard. Almost ten. Tommy’s back, climbing onto the Zamboni and starting up the engine. No beer. His loss. 

“Bathroom break before the drive home,” she says.

Eric nods. “Great minds.”

She pushes through the swinging doors into the lobby, trying to keep her mind on the game and off of…everything else. The bathroom is warm after the rink, and she lets the hot water run over her hands for a few minutes. They’ve gone practically numb.

She’s drying her hands when she hears the first shout. Then another, louder, more urgent. She opens the door to see the crowd of parents moving confusedly around the lobby. The shout comes again, from down the hall near the rink administration offices and the equipment room. 

Janet Shadowen, Caleb’s mom, is the first to the hallway. She almost runs into Tony Caruso’s dad, coming back the other direction, white-faced and wide-eyed.

“Oh, God.” Janet stops in her tracks. “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

Jack shoulders past her.

She sees it in pieces, the way her mind breaks down things it doesn’t want to process all at once. 

A shape on the floor.

Something dark spreading slowly over the laminate floor.

A hockey stick lying a few feet away. 

Coach Mark Bingham lies on his back in the middle of the hallway, one arm twisted awkwardly beneath him. His face is turned to the wall. The back of his head is clotted with something dark. Jack covers her mouth and turns away when she thinks she sees bone, and something worse than bone, in the tangles of his hair. 

Blood spreads across the floor, dark and glossy against the pale laminate.

No.

Bing is always moving.

Whistle in his mouth. Standing on the bench like the whole team belongs to him. He is not supposed to be lying on the floor.

Someone swears.

Someone else says, “Call 911.”

Jack can’t move.

The music from the locker room echoes faintly through the walls, absurdly cheerful. 

Then another voice — sharper, in control.

“Everybody back up.”

Sean Dwyer, a doctor whose son Max plays D, pushes through the growing cluster of parents. Even in jeans and a rink coat instead of his scrubs, he carries the same quiet authority he always does.

He kneels beside Bing and checks for a pulse. His expression tightens.

“Jesus. He’s dead.”

More parents crowd the hallway. Someone says Link’s name behind her. Jack barely hears it. Then Sean glances up from the body. His gaze shifts to Jack, then back to the rest of the parents and the few boys who’ve come out of the locker room in their sweats. Link is one of them, his face creased with confusion. He stands on his toes to see over the crowd. 

He hasn’t seen Bing. Jack can’t let him see Bing. She steps towards him. 

“Jack,” says Sean softly. “You’re going to need to stay.” 

The hallway tilts slightly. Jack looks down at Bing again.

At the blood. The hockey stick. This time she doesn’t flinch when she sees the mess at the back of his head.

Sean raises his voice. “Everyone. In the lobby. You’re all going to need to stay right here until the police come.”

And suddenly it washes over her. Bing is dead. She’s going to have to talk to the police. She’s going to have to sit, and listen to their questions, and tell them things she’d rather they didn’t know. She closes her eyes for a second.

Not again.