Where Do I Begin?

Chapter 77

Courtney

We were all on the field behind the ice rink for stretches the next morning. I was standing next to Charlie and Adam. Adam was benched but he still had to come to practices so he doesn't become unstable to play. He had a sling also so he can have his arm rest. I was stretching out my legs. "What are you doing?" I looked up and Dean was looking at me.

"Stretching." I replied. "Heard of it?"

"Well, you need to do what we're doing, babe." Dean demanded. I shot him a dirty look.

"Hey, her names Courtney, not babe." Adam snapped.

"Oh yeah, says who?" Dean asked.

"Says me." Adam snapped. They started to fight. Then, we all started to pick sides and fight. Even me. Adam and I were yelling and Dean, Dean yelling at us, Charlie was fighting with Les, Dwayne with Luis, Ken with Fulton, Goldberg with Julie (probably about goalie things), Connie and Guy where fighting with Jessie. It was a big mess.

"Hey!" We heard someone scream. We looked over and saw a guy, about our age, standing there. "Is this really Team USA's attitude?" He asked.

"Hey, that's the kid who was fighting with me the other day when I was in the penalty box!" Jesse yelled.

"If you want some real practice. Meet me at the basketball court." The kid said. Then, security started to push him out. We all looked at each other.

"I think we got challenged for street hockey." Fulton said. We all nodded.

"Well, what are we waitin' for? Let's go!"

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We all came with on our rollerblades and bags since right after this, we have a hockey game with Team China. We saw a group of guys standing at the court. We all looked at each other, then went in. "Hey look who showed up." The kid said. He skated over to us with his buddies. "Names Russ, and these are my two brothers and the rest are friends. We challenge you to a street hockey game, wanna play?" Russ asked.

"Yeah!" We all cheered.

"Great," Russ looked at Adam. "what happened to you?" Russ asked.

"Broke my wrist, I can't play sadly." Adam explained. Russ nodded.

"Ok, let's play, five on five." Russ suggested. We all nodded and started to slit up into teams. Charlie, Dwayne, Connie, Jesse and I went out. I went to the center. The puck was already there. "Body check." Russ demanded. We hit each other three times with our stick, then I got the puck.

I started to skate down the blacktop. Then, one of the other guys got the puck from me and passed it to Russ. "It's knuckle puck time!" Russ cheered. He flipped the puck were it was standing up, then shot it really hard. It was like one of Fultons shots. It made it in. We all skated to Russ.

"Woah." I said. Russ nodded.

"Hey, we are down one player for USA, wanna play for us?" Charlie asked Russ. He looked at us.

"Really?" Russ asked. We all nodded. "Yeah!" He cheered. We all cheered after him.

"Man, you guys are good, what team did you guys play for?" Les asked. He smiled us. Did he play for USA?

"Team USA! The bus is here!" We heard Coach yell. We a started to go down.

"Come on Russ." I said. We all went down to the bus. Coach had a clipboard and was checking us off.

"Dean, Fulton, Jesse, Guy, Connie, Julie, Greg, Dwayne, Ken, Luis, Les, Charlie, Adam, Courtney, new kid." Coach paused and looked up from his clipboard. "New kid?" He looked at Russ. "Who are you?" Coach asked. Charlie came back down.

"This is the backup for Adam. Coach, meet Russ." Charlie introduced.

"Charlie, we already have a backup. James is going to play for Adam." Coach stated. I rolled my eyes. James.

"But James is a backup, Russ wants to be a player again." Charlie implied. Coach stared at him.

"Fine. He can play today." Coach said. We all cheered.