Volcano

I.1

Say you’re eighteen, you’re in a new country, and your new city hails you as the newest celebrity.2

Say your overbearing, clingy girlfriend just moved back to Sweden because she couldn’t stand America.3

Then, say your friend Jared introduces you to this girl Gisela, a smokin’ hot redhead who does things to you that you never imagined would come from anyone less than a porn star. Afterwards, in true siren style, she vanishes in a cloud of Love Spell and afterglow, leaving you stunned on your dorm bed and muttering in Danish.4

You’ve got a road trip coming up. It’s Alaska, someplace with a little more ice, someplace that feels a little more like home but without the fjords. It might be nice to go out in a parka and stocking hat and watch the snow fly over the frozen lakes, but that redhead is still burning in the back of your mind, melting the tundra.5

Like the volcano. Coach told you a week ago that the trip could be canceled because a volcano a hundred miles north of Anchorage was on the verge of eruption. Apparently ash can be detrimental to airplane engines. Who knew?6

But you leave on Wednesday anyway. You take a novel that you know will provide a better distraction than your textbooks. And you land in Anchorage without an eruption.7

The games go well—the offense explodes and you sweep, 5-1 and 6-2. Best of all, you didn’t fuck up too bad on the blue line and you’re starting to look forward to staying in Minnesota for the acceleration camp this summer. She’ll be here, after all… and you’re pretty sure she’ll enjoy the new strength in your thighs.8

You’re on the plane again. Mount Redoubt—helluva name for a volcano—towers in the distance, but you still feel taller. You buckle your seatbelt and listen to the pilot give his speech, the same old bullshit about wind speed and approximate travel time, and why don’t they mention what the in-flight meal is?9

The meals are always better on international flights, you think, and then the earth shakes beneath you.10

II.11

“Gisela, he’s here.”12

I turned to see a six-foot-six Greek god ease through the doorframe. Downing the shot of vodka I held in my hand, I composed myself. “What am I even supposed to say?”13

Jared shrugged. “I don’t think you’ll have to say much of anything.”14

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”15

He smirked, weaving his way back into the crowd.16

I held my glass out, allowing Aaron to pour me another shot. Armed with my alcohol, I headed over, but chickened out at the last minute and went to sit on the couch. Moments later, I was engaged in a drunken lit-nerd conversation about why Charlotte Bronte is an overrated cunt. 17

But Jared would have none of that. He hauled me off the couch, threw me into the middle of the dining room, and switched the song to “Gasolina.”18

Insulting the Bronte sisters might be a forte of mine, but ass-shaking to dirty Spanish music is another, and I let myself go, drowning in the rhythm, letting the staccato purr of the language move my body, fluid, dynamic—19

And then I felt a pair of hands on my waist.20

I didn’t even need to turn around. 21

When the music ended, he held onto me. “Would you like a drink?”22

I held his gaze firmly. “No. I want to be sober enough to remember you fucking me.”23

24


Two hours later, I tipped back a glass of dessert wine in his dorm room. “I should really get home.”25

“You could stay.”26

“You could get in trouble. You need to play next weekend in Alaska.”27

He shrugged, rolling over. “We might not even play. There’s a volcano going to erupt.”28

I leaned over to whisper in his ear. “I think one just did.”29

III.30

Gisela plays with her cell phone, wondering if she ought to text Jared, just to see if they’re all okay, maybe to ask what Oliver’s doing. The taste never left her tongue, sweet wine and salt, and an emptiness rests between her legs.31


Thousands of miles away, the WCHA rules committee has convened. As it stands, the team won’t be able to travel home to play the series against Michigan Tech. There’s no time to make it up after the season; they’re weighing the options of a weekday series in March. Four points hang in the balance; they could make or break the season.32


In an apartment on the west side of town, a girl who has missed only one home game in eighteen years of hockey wonders if this series should count toward her total.33


Sartell’s paper plant spews white smoke into the sky, a man-made, ashless volcano. Robert Jensen glowers at the perpetual reminder that he cannot escape his house this weekend. He turns back to his wife, to her continual political drabble, to the emptiness of the chair where his hockey-loving daughter once sat before going to teach in France.34


No one knows where he lives; his family is paranoid and Mennonite. But Brandon inwardly curses nature with every four-letter word he’s learned from his friends, then turns around and asks forgiveness from God, thanking him. His high school team has a game in Wadena and he would have missed the Huskies’ series, but now, now he may be able to see it…35


Oliver sits on a wrought-iron park bench on the shores of a frozen Alaskan lake in a parka and stocking hat. Ash falls like snow from the sky, and while his teammates wonder if ice fishing would be safe, he pictures Gisela and envies the mountain.36