District-5

I Help You, You Help Me

Jesse knocked Bella down to the ground when she was skating. I stood up from where I was on the bench drinking some water before going back on and coach held me back, "She'll be fine." He told me. I wasn't so sure. Bella was smaller then most of us here. Not in height by like strength wise I guess you can say. Bella didn't get up off the ground, I still worried a little. I don't know why I was worrying so much about her, why was I? "Cole! Get up off the ice and get back in the game!" Coach yelled at her. I have a feeling it will take awhile before coach has patience with us.

Averman skated over to her and helped her off the ground. She spoke with him and then they skated off. Averman, Guy, Peter, Bella and Karp were on one team while Connie, Goldberg, Terry, Jesse and I were on another. Bella went back to her side with her team and coach came and told us everything we needed to work on.

"Okay, all of you need to learn how to skate better, except Cole of course. And Goldberg, you need to do net. We'll work on that next time and then we all have to learn how to play a little better and lower the smack talk and gibberish talk." He told us, we nodded in agreement.

"Who talks smack?" Terry asked.

"Mostly Jesse, Peter and sometimes Averman has an input that ain't smack." Connie replied. The her and everyone else left, even coach left and I stayed there with Bella on the ice since her and I were going to practice some more before we left.

"What now?" She asked, I turned to her and she looked at me.

"What?" I asked.

"You're covered in sweat. Look at that head of yours." She said and pointed to my hair, I smirked and touched my hair, skating over to her and placing some sweat on her forehead.

"Better, now you're covered in sweat."

"Haha, let's play or teach each other."

"Okay, wanna start with learning basics for hockey?" She shrugged her shoulders. I skated to the middle of the rink and placed some pucks in a pile and signaled for her to come over here. "Watch closely." She nodded and watched as I slashed some pucks into the net. Whether some went in or not, didn't matter. "Now you try, get them in the net. But try to slash it with a the force you got."

Bella's POV

I fetched all the pucks from the net and dropped in the center of the rink. I shot some pucks and as I got to the fifth one exact, Charlie came over and stopped me. Moving my hands on the stick to where they're suppose to be. But I kept moving them down the stick and was hunched over like the hunchback of notre dame.

"No no no. Here, keep your hands here. If not, I'll have to result to something far worse." He told me and laughed. I tried, but I was so use to keeping my hands lower down the stick that I wasn't really able to place them in the proper spots. Charlie put my hands where they're suppose to be, stood behind me and took his gloves off. Mine were already off, he placed his hands on top of mine and gripped the stick a little with my hand. "Now, pretend to shoot but, don't hit the puck." I nodded and pulled the stick up next time and pretended to shoot, his hands still on the stick as well.

"Woah."

"See, you just gotta keep them in the right place."

"Thanks, Charlie."

"No problem, Bella." I smiled, man, how was it possible that he could actually make me smile a real smile? It took my brother great efforts to try and make me smile, but Charlie did it just like that!

He and practiced some more with shooting and the technique too. Then it was my turn to coach him how to skate a little better. He was pretty good, but wanted to skate just as good as I could. The others skated like crap but, Charlie and I are taking the time to each other some techniques to become better then ever before. I mean, I stunk before and with a new coach here. I think this will be our year, they never won in the past years, maybe this is our shot. New faces and skills, we could change it.

"So, since you know how to somewhat skate already, we'll go a little higher in skating." He nodded and stood there, trying to understand what I was horribly telling him. "Pretend you're a duck, waddle a little too." He nodded and started. Then he picked up his pace and I skated next to him, a little in front of him too so he would pick up his speed and catch up to me.

"Now, skate backwards!" I shouted from across the rink. He gave me a thumbs up and stopped at the one end and went slowly backwards, picking up his speed each time and eventually he came to me, but he wasn't looking and was going so fast. He crashed into me and we both went into the net falling to the ground. Good thing we left our gear on.

"Ow." He said.

"You? I am the one who was the carpeting of that fall!" I told him. He chuckled and got up rubbing the back of his neck and then pulling me off the ground. We decided to go back to what we were doing.

"Okay, well, we covered some basic bases already. Thank you. So do you want to do a game, me versus you? We play at our own limits and strengths?" He asked. He was pretty good with telling us and or me what to do. I think he'd make a great captain or co captain for this team one day. But who knows, it could go to anyone of the boys or even Connie. Certainly not me, these boys barely know me, let alone would listen to me too.

Casey (Charlie's mom)'s POV

I walked into the rink looking for Charlie since he hadn't arrived home yet from practice. I stopped at the boards and looked through the glass at him and a girl skating around. Looked they were playing a game against each other. I smiled and watched for a little bit, she had taken the puck from Charlie and skated down the rink to net, but Charlie caught up to her and stole it. She shook her head playfully.

"Hey!" I jumped and turned around to see a 16 or 17 year old boy walk up behind me.

"Um, hi. You are?" I asked. He pointed to the girl on the ice.

"Her brother and I assume you're his girlfriend?" He asked being stupid and pointing to my son.

"You're an idiot."

"I was joking!" He yelled a little too loud and caught Charlie and the girl's attention. They skated off the ice and walked over to me and the girl's brother. "Hey, B! This your boyfriend?" The girl shook her head as Charlie laughed a little, but then noticed me looking at him and then he shook his head and I chuckled.

"We better go." I said.

"Okay, bye Bella. See you at practice or school!" Charlie called as he went into the locker room grabbing his bag. The boy had already grabbed the girl, I mean, Bella's bag from the locker room.

"Who's the girl?" I asked Charlie.

"Just a friend, mom."

"Un hun."

"Mom! I was teaching her hockey and she was showing me how to skate a little better. That's all, now can we drop it?" He asked. I nodded and took his bag walking outside into the cold winter's breeze. The tips of Charlie's hair froze since it was wet from sweating. We drove off and before we got home, my son was asleep against the window next to me. I smiled once more before waking him and walking inside behind him.