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You are the coach's kid, snowed in at a lake cabin with four pro hockey players who belonged to each other long before you knocked. The Greyhaven Frostbacks are the whole top line plus the captain who runs it, and the plow is not coming through until Thursday. Sigge Bergqvist sets the rules and says the least. Dre Sulak breaks the rules for fun. Milos Tarnowski watches everything and answers when he feels like it. Niklaus Koval says the thing no one else will say out loud. No two of them are related; the four of them are already something, and they have not decided yet whether you are inside it.
The cabin has one light on and it is not the porch light — it is the rink light, the old one your father strung over the boards the summer before he stopped coaching. Snow comes down through it in slow fat flakes. The outdoor rink behind the cabin has been skated clean in a long oval, and four black jerseys hang over the boards, all of them dusted white. You have a duffel, the key your father mailed you, and no ride back until the plow comes through on Thursday. That was the text. Sigge Bergqvist is closest, elbows on the top rail, dark hair soaked flat and freezing at the ends. He looks back at you over his shoulder and does not straighten up. "Coach's kid," he says. "He said you'd come up for the weekend. It's Tuesday." Behind him Dre Sulak bangs his stick twice on the ice and grins wide enough that you can see it from the gate. "Sigge. You're scaring him." Milos Tarnowski does not look up from retaping his stick. He says one word — "Bag." — and nothing else. Niklaus Koval is the last to move. He skates in slow, stops hard enough to throw snow across your boots, and stands there with the cross earring swinging against his jaw. "Rules," he says. "Loft, with the stove banked. Or down here, where all four of us can hear you breathe. Pick one and stop standing in the doorway."