Rebel Glory by Sigmund Brouwer Read Free Book Online

two hours.
    “Yes, sir?”
    “How are you feeling?”
    “Fine.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. Had someone already called him with the lie about me beating up a girl?
    “Good,” he said. “The team needs you.”
    “I’ll do my best,” I said.
    “Could you go a little farther than that?” he asked.
    “My best is my best,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be rude. “I always work as hard as I can.”
    “I don’t mean that,” he told me. He looked me straight in the eyes. “I mean, can you go a little farther off the ice?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “With fifteen games left, we need to win eleven more. You know that. I also think you know we can do it. Except for the final two games of the season against Lethbridge, we play some easy teams.”
    I nodded.
    He kept going, still looking me in the eyes. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I like you. You’re a good kid. But I think you should try to get more involved with the team off the ice. You’re a natural leader, if you want to be.”
    “Me?”
    “You. Loosen up a bit. Don’t make such an effort to be a loner. The guys on this team look up to you. They’d like it if you’d let them become friends. And it would sure help us as a team. I think if we make the playoffs, we’d have as good a chance as anyone at going all the way.”
    All I could do was nod. It hadn’t occurred to me that the guys would like to be myfriends. Maybe if I just tried a little.
    “That’s all,” Coach Blair finished. “See what you can do about bringing the guys together in our final stretch of games. All right?”
    I nodded again.
    “Good. See you in the dressing room.”
    He skated to get his clipboard where he’d left it on top of one of the nets.
    The zamboni tractor rolled onto the ice.
    I skated off and went straight to the dressing room, walking along the long rubber mat that protected our skate blades from the concrete.
    When I got to the dressing room, I looked around as if I’d never been in it before, proud of what Coach Blair had said about some of these guys looking up to me. It almost took away some of the bad feelings I had from my lunch with the Henrys.
    As I looked around, I realized that the guys really were looking up at me. All of them. They were sitting on the benches, staring at me, not saying a word.
    “It’s all right, guys. I’m still on the team,” I joked. “Coach Blair didn’t yell too much.”
    My first joke in two months didn’t bring much laughter. The guys kept staring at me.
    “McElhaney,” Jason said from where he was sitting, half undressed, skates unlaced but not yet taken off his feet.
    “Yeah?”
    “Check your duffel bag,” he said. “I think there was a mix-up. You might have my bag.”
    “No problem,” I said. “I’ll check.”
    The dressing room was very, very quiet as I went to my stall. I pulled a duffel bag from my locker. The white number 3 on the side of the bag was plain against its black nylon.
    “Nope,” I said. “This is mine.”
    “Look closer,” Jason said. “Mine used to have two threes on it. But last week one of them fell off and I haven’t fixed it yet.”
    I looked closer. Then I understood. There was the faint outline of another three where it had peeled away from the black nylon. Jason’s number 33 had become a 3.
    “You’ve got my bag?” I asked.
    Jason held up the duffel bag at his stall, showing my number 3 on it.
    “Nuts,” I said, “that explains why my equipment felt weird. We must have gotten them mixed up last night.”
    If there had been a mix-up in skates, we would have noticed it right away because skates fit the way they’ve broken in to your feet. Put on someone else’s skates, and you know it right away. But one of the things Teddy always did in the morning before practice was pull out our sweaters to clean them and take our skates to sharpen them. Teddy, of course, would have taken Jason’s skates from the duffel bag in my stall and my skates