“Well?” my mom said, beaming at me. “Aren’t you going to open it?” I ripped off the paper. I was right. It wasn’t a games system. It was hockey equipment. “Well, what do you say?” Neil said. Neil is my mom’s boyfriend. He’s an accountant, plus he coaches hockey. I hated that he lived with us. “It’s not what I asked for,” I said. The smile disappeared from my mom’s face. “But you used to love hockey,” she said. “You used to play all the time.” “I used to play with Dad,” I said. My mom and dad split up a couple of years back, not long after I got out of the hospital. I saw my dad exactly twice after that. Then my mom got custody of me, and she wouldn’t let me see him anymore. She blamed him for what had happened. “Your mom put a lot of thought into that gift,” Neil said. “I think you should apologize to her, Sport.” “I don’t want to play hockey,” I said. Phys ed was bad enough. There was no way I wanted to spend more time in a locker room with a bunch of guys who would only stare at me.
