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Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada – 2008
Yuna Hollander was a woman of action. She was not given much to introspection. She made decisions, and she adhered to them. Her husband, David, often reminded her that first impressions could be misleading, that she should not judge a book by its cover, but, well, Yuna Hollander was also a person who liked to pick books based on how cool the cover looked.
But it was David’s gentle reminders not to be too hasty in her judgments that pushed her out of the hotel in Regina and toward the arena that held the International Prospect Cup, the meeting of the top junior hockey players in the world. Her son, Shane Hollander, was Canada’s top prospect, and captain of the junior national team. She was immensely, incandescently, proud of him. There was just one nagging annoyance around what should be Shane’s moment in the spotlight, and that was a kid from Russia, touted to be every bit as good as her son.
Shane worked so hard and gave up so much to become Canada’s top junior project. There were no science fairs in Shane’s life, no sleepovers, no proms, hell, Shane didn’t even have friends. Not real ones, not ones who would love him if he stopped playing hockey. He sacrificed his childhood on the altar of greatness, and she let him, encouraged him, because she could see that for Shane, it wasn’t a sacrifice. He loved hockey so much, he wanted to be the best, he knew he could be the best, and so Yuna helped him burn his childhood in pursuit of that greatness.
Sometimes, she doubted herself, but she never doubted Shane. Not even when she suspected that he was giving up something he didn’t fully understand, when she saw a long, lonely future ahead of him, when she saw the sacrifice he would yet have to make, because hockey would never accept him, not fully. Hockey would take his half-Asian self and make it useful to the sport, but the other thing…
Maybe she was wrong. It was really hard to tell, Shane was so focused and driven, maybe the other thing was just a product of his goal-oriented, results-driven way of thinking. Maybe it was part of that nagging suspicion that Shane had a diagnosis lurking that no one wanted to name because all his preferences and peculiarities and his love of routines worked for a highly competitive young athlete. Coaches loved him, and it wasn’t like he was sick. He was just a creature of extremely specific routines and so what if he didn’t like maintaining eye contact? Yuna didn’t like it, either. People were invasive. Eyes were private. Westerners could be rude about insisting they have all your attention, all the time. Shane was special, he was unique, everything about him seemed built to excel at the highest levels of sport. And he seemed to like it that way, there wasn’t room for anything in his life but hockey. Everything was hockey, hockey, hockey. The other thing…maybe that was just hockey taking up even more space.
Well, anyway.
She wanted to scope the competition, to see the Russian wunderkind in person, for herself.
Ilya Rozanov.
She had to admit, there was something about that name. It had a quality to it. She had chosen Shane’s name because she did not want him to stand out. She wanted her child to have an aggressively normal name, a name no one could make assumptions from, a name he could make his own through his talent and his hard work. Shane Hollander was a holding space for whatever her son decided to fill it with.
Ilya Rozanov’s mother, however, had given her son a poem of a name. With that name, she wondered if Mama Rozanova ever thought her son might grow up to be an internationally ranked athlete. Ilya Rozanov sounded like a moody poet, or a sad-eyed musician, or maybe an actor. He did not sound like a hockey player. His name was just…too pretty for hockey.
Maybe that was why he was such an asshole of a player.
She read the scouting reports, saw some grainy footage from arenas in Moscow and around Europe, she knew Rozanov was tall, had curly, dark blonde hair, a distinctive beauty mark, and that he was handsome. He actually looked like his name should be Ilya Rozanov. He looked like a moody, sad-eyed poet. But she also knew he was an asshole, the kind of player who lived to bait his competition. The Canadian scouting reports wrote him off as a pest, but Yuna knew a true competitor when she saw one, even when she was just seeing him through someone else’s impressions. Ilya Rozanov loved to win but he hated to lose more, and he played one hell of a mental game, even as a kid. If he wasn’t touted as Shane’s number one rival for the draft, he was the kind of player she would love to watch, to trace his career as he developed from prospect to full-time hockey menace.
He was being held up as Shane’s top competition, though, so Yuna wanted to see him in action for herself. She wanted to know what they were up against. Shane was resting in the hotel, he was going to have to get better at travelling, and soon, but for now, he was just seventeen and she let her son rest when he wanted to. There were still so many sacrifices waiting to be made, let him have his naps. She went to the barn, where she knew Team Russia was drilling, slipping inside and sitting in the darkened stands, outside the spill of light overrunning the ice. Rozanov was easy to pick out, she didn’t even need to see that fancy name on his sweater to find him. He was the tallest boy on the ice, but more importantly…
The fastest.
The most powerful.
With the deadliest accuracy in his slapshot.
And an absolutely brutal backhand.
Yuna had to admit, he was as good as Shane. Her son’s equal, in every regard. Maybe Shane was a hair faster, but Rozanov danced across the ice, his technical skating so good she just knew he had some of that old USSR figure skating training drilled into him sometime in the past. And maybe Shane had a slightly better slapshot, but admittedly, his backhand was his weakest point of attack on the puck. Rozanov, though, had that absolutely crushing backhand. Yuna immediately and deeply pitied every goalie in the MLH. In a few years, Rozanov’s backhand would be the bane of their collective existence, and he was only seventeen.
Yuna pictured Rozanov in a decade, in his prime, and almost felt faint. Shane was a hockey monster because of his intelligence and his dedication, he was devoted to the game in a way that sometimes astounded her, approaching hockey with the thoroughness of a chess grandmaster. The more he played, the better he got, that big brain of his absorbing information and storing it for the next time he faced that team, that opponent, the next time he had that opportunity to score, or assist, or build a play on the ice. Shane was unstoppable like a computer virus was unstoppable, once he got in your system, he fucked it up and left it fucked forever.
But Rozanov was a hockey monster because at the raw age of seventeen he had the skill kit of a player twice his age, and a body that was only going to get more powerful. He was unstoppable in a different but equally scary way. Rozanov was relentless, a shark constantly circling, taking bite after bite until he destroyed his opponent’s will to keep trying. He would drown his opponents mentally and wear them out on the ice and make them pay for every tiny mistake or misjudgment on the ice. Christ, he was going to be so fucking fun to watch.
Except when he played Shane, of course.
Team Russia’s practice wound down, and the other kids vacated the ice, trailed by coaches and assistants. Rozanov, however, stayed behind, skating patterns and drills alone, giving that extra inch that distinguished pros from men who remembered their junior careers fondly. Shane was like that, always early, always staying late, running one more drill than everyone else. Yuna felt inexplicable fondness for Rozanov. She recognized him. He was like her son. They were made of the same stuff.
She looked around the barn, looking for Rozanov’s family, but there was no one. There was just the tall boy on the ice, still a little ungainly, not quite grown into the length of his limbs yet, and her, his rival’s mother, watching him silently from the dark. Well, that was creepy, and if Rozanov’s parents weren’t able to make the trip, a parent should tell him what a good job he’d done in practice. So, Yuna stood and made her way to the boards. She knew the moment Rozanov spotted her, but he didn’t stop his drill, skating a complicated pattern she’d never seen before. She wanted to take notes and share it with Shane, but that felt a little rude, given she shouldn’t technically be at his practice.
“Good practice today, Rozanov,” she called, and the boy finally stopped at the far side of the ice. His head tilted as if he was curious, and she wondered if he spoke English. “You look great. Ready.”
He drifted closer, head still tilted curiously. Bizarrely, Yuna remembered a stray cat she tried to lure into the house when she was a girl. It took over a year to earn that cat’s trust.
“I’m—”
“Yuna Hollander,” he said, stopping sharp and clean at the boards. His voice was deep, deeper than Shane’s, his accent thick. “You are Shane Hollander’s mama.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I wanted to see the second-best junior player in the world in action.”
Rozanov’s smile was wide and breathtaking. She could see all the ways his lyrical name fit him; she could see the outline of the life his mother wished for him with that name.
But she could also see all the ways his lovely name didn’t fit him. It was there in the deep sadness in his eyes, and she wondered if Rozanov realized how much he gave away in those pale eyes of his. She didn’t think so, something about him suggested he would not like anyone to know his secrets. But she could see one secret, that he was deeply, profoundly sad. Hockey made Shane happy, it was pure joy for him. Even after a tough loss, he was ready to go the next day, anxious to skate, to play, to have nothing and no one but hockey in front of him. It was the only reason Yuna let Shane pursue the sport at the level he did, rather than keeping him in normal schools, on normal developmental timelines. Hockey was the sun around which her son orbited. She would never take his sun away.
Rozanov looked like he had not seen the sun in a very, very long time.
“Where are your parents?” she questioned the Russian boy. “I’d love to meet them.”
“Father could not come,” he said shortly, sharply. And there, more secrets bleeding out in his voice. Rozanov’s father was a wound the son carried.
“And your mother?” she asked softly, almost afraid.
“Dead.” Rozanov’s voice was hushed, his eyes downcast. His shoulders sagged under a grief a child should never know.
Yuna would be the first to admit she was not an overly emotional person. But just knowing Rozanov traveled halfway around the world, alone, that he was on the cusp of a greatness very, very few people ever touched and there was no one to share that with him…
She reached over the boards and pulled the boy into a hug.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, rubbing his back, as if he were a small child.
Rozanov didn’t embrace her, but he folded his arms like bird’s wings into her, sagging slightly in her embrace.
“Well.” She set him back and smiled at him, smoothing her hand across his sweaty brow and down his cheek like she did for Shane. “You skate beautifully and that backhand is a waking nightmare. I’m sure she would be proud of you.”
Rozanov’s eyes welled but tears never quite fell.
“Good luck, Rozanov,” she said, patting his shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard when my son beats you.”
As she walked away, Rozanov’s voice rang behind her, confident in a way that belied his gloomy posture.
“He will not beat me; team is no good.”
Yuna didn’t say anything to that, but…
He wasn’t wrong.
As they headed to their rental car after practice the next day, Yuna saw a tall boy with curling blonde hair protruding from his toque standing outside a service entrance for the arena. He was smoking. Ugh, Mama Rozanova would not like her son smoking. She knew attitudes toward smoking were different in other parts of the world, but Ilya Rozanov was a top-tier athlete, she just knew his mother wouldn’t approve.
“There’s Ilya Rozanov,” she said, nudging Shane.
He stopped and looked at the figure by the service doors.
“Go say hi.”
“What?” Shane looked at her, confused.
“It’s good…sportsmanship,” she decided. “You’re the best players here. You’ll be drafted together, assuming he doesn’t go into the KHL.”
It struck her suddenly that Ilya Rozanov, with his poet’s name and his sad eyes, absolutely could not stay in Russia. Where the conviction came from, she did not know, but it was like she felt something in the sharp winter wind, some cold insistence that Rozanov not be left in Russia.
He will die there.
That was a very strange thought, and Yuna shook it off.
“Go say hi,” she repeated. “Introduce yourself.”
Shane blinked at her. Socializing was not his strong suit.
“If anyone can understand,” she said gently, adjusting Shane’s toque over his ears, “it’s him. He knows what it’s like to be the best. Maybe he doesn’t know all the same pressures, but he knows some of them. You two should be…friends.”
Shane looked at her like she’d lost her damn mind, but he obeyed, tucking his hands in his pockets and heading for the stairs leading to the service entrance.
“And tell him not to smoke!” she called after him.
She went to the car, contented to wait and let Shane handle making a friend on his own. He really needed to master that skill before he became a professional athlete. It would be much harder to make real friends once that kind of money started rolling in.
That night, in their hotel room, over a specially prepared, high-protein meal, Yuna asked Shane about Rozanov. A faint pink blush dusted his cheeks and Shane talked for twenty minutes straight. Half of it was complaining about how stuck up and annoying Rozanov was, but…
He was smiling the whole time.
Yuna looked at David, eyebrows raised.
David shrugged slightly.
Maybe this was an answer to that question, though it saddened Yuna to think it was true, if so. She didn’t care if Shane was gay, she only hoped he someday fell in love with someone who saw who he truly was and valued him for all the little ways he was so special. But if he was gay, it would not be an easy road, not in hockey. It was an unforgiving sport in every possible way. It would be a long, long time before Shane could find a happy ending; he would never be able to have that as long as he played hockey.
Yuna lapsed into silence for the rest of the meal, contemplating her son and hockey. She decided not to borrow trouble. Maybe Shane was gay, maybe not, maybe he had a crush on Rozanov, maybe he was just riding high on making a friend.
Yes. Don’t borrow trouble. Shane was only seventeen. There was so much time for him to figure out love and romance at some later, nebulous date.