personal enjoyment

losing control

Part One

I'm Not Sick

Settling into the window seat, Corbin Meadows lifted the heavy plastic barrier and examined the baggage loaders below.  They moved quickly, efficiently, stowing the team's hockey equipment and luggage.  Corbin pressed his cheek to the window, his soft brown hair falling in loose curls almost to his chin.

Eli, one of the centers, joined him, taking the aisle seat and leaving the middle open between them.  Corbin barely noticed his teammate, who was deep in conversation with one of the defenseman, Bry, in the row directly behind them.  Corbin reached up and adjusted the air; even in March, the Texas heat had raked itself over the players as they jostled through the Jetway and onto the plane.

            Lightly, almost experimentally, Corbin sniffed. 

Must be the airplane air.  I'm not getting sick.  I pretty much never get sick.

As the flight attendant began the safety information, Corbin tuned out, and by the time the beverage cart came around, he was asleep, still leaning against the double-paned window.

A few hours later, he woke himself up with a sneeze, a rather forceful Heh-ETTchuu! that sounded abnormally loud in the confines of the airplane cabin, perhaps even more so with the interior lights dimmed and the quiet darkness cushioning the aircraft.

"Bless you, man," Eli replied, almost automatically.  He ran a hand over his spiky black hair, checking to make sure the gel still held.

"Thanks."

Peering through the window, Corbin could make out the hundreds of pinpoint lights below through a thin layer of cloud.

"We almost there?" he asked.

"Yeah.  Coach says it's a tight turn around to make our connection."

Herding twenty teenage guys and their belongings through the Seattle airport was not an undertaking for the faint of heart.  Even with a couple of parent chaperones, Coach Kissel felt more than a little overwhelmed.  By some stroke of luck, however, the Alamo Blue Jays made it to the right gate and onto the plane.  A mere three and a half hours later, they touched down in Anchorage.

It was nearly midnight by the time they arrived at their hotel and got settled into their rooms.  Corbin was rooming with Eli, Liam (a winger), and Bry: two double beds and two trundles.  They flipped a coin; Bry and Corbin got the trundles. 

Corbin felt more tired than he should, even with the long flight.  Eli, Liam, and Bry were wide awake, trading stats about the Alaska Aces players and speculating on the possibility of meeting any girls during the trip. 

Liam Hathaway had longish, dark blond hair and light brown eyes, and tended to be a little accident-prone and graceless everywhere except on the ice.  Put a hockey stick in his hands and skates on his feet, and suddenly he figured out how to not bump into everything.  Bryan Torres, on the other hand, intentionally bumped into things on the ice.  The defenseman was shorter than both Liam and Corbin; at 5'7", Bry was one of the shortest members on the whole team, but his stocky frame lent itself well to smashing his opponents into the boards.  He kept his dark brown hair short but slightly messy, and spoke with a lilting Mexican accent.  Bry was also the only one of the four who was still 17; the others had already celebrated their recent adulthood and sometimes teased him about being the "baby" of the group.