𝐒𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐑, 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 [𝟏] ✓

2| The crowd goes wild

THE BRIGHT sunlight crept through Nova's curtains. she sighed with happiness as she remembered what happened at the rink the other day. she was a hockey player now and surprisingly, her parents were fine with it. the one thing was, her dad didn't want to go watch her games. he was strict like extremely strict when it came to sports and he knew about the district 5 team. he just didn't want to go watch her completely get embarrassed because of her teammates. she didn't care though. her mum said she was proud that she found another sport to love.

deep down, nova felt like an outsider. she was a soccer player, she didn't belong on the ice. yeah, she was considered a good player, she knew a lot about hockey, and she watched hockey games all the time, but she wasn't sure if she would be able to shine like she did on the field. she thought it was stupid but part of the thing that always made her love sports so much was the way she was always considered one of the greats. she ruled on the football field, soccer field, volleyball court, basketball court and all but hockey- she just wasn't sure.

i could use some practice nova thought. she decided to go out to the rink by her house. her parents didn't care anyway. they were off at work all the time.

just as she was about to walk out the door, she heard the phone ring.

"hello?" nova said as she picked it up.

"hey," it was connie, "so we have a game tomorrow, just so you know"

"yeah i know, Charlie told me. what jersey do i wear anyway, you never gave me one"

"oh..." Connie laughed awkwardly, "yeah we kinda don't really have any..."

"then what am i supposed to wear?"

"just find a big red jersey type shirt or something and tape your name on the back. you gotta have a number too"

"Charlie said i was number 24 now"

"yeah that's it"

"oh," nova stopped for a second, "alright. i can wear one of my brothers old red jerseys and tape my number on the back"

"ok" connie said, "say, do you wanna hang out today?"

Nova shrugged, "sure, maybe later Con. i was thinking to go for a skate. you can join if you want"

"okay... well i gotta go. Guy and Averman are throwing rocks at my window"

nova let out a laugh. "alright. bye Con"

She hung up the phone and quickly grabbed her skates and her stick. she put a couple hockey pucks in a small backpack, just incase there weren't any at the lake.

as she approached the familiar frozen lake, a small smile crept onto her face. she took a seat at the bench and dumped out all the hockey pucks she brought onto the ice. she put on her skates and began to skate around as a warm up. her hands were aimlessly shaking as she took one more lap. the thought of playing tomorrow was scaring her more than she thought. it wasn't as much the competition that worried her, it was herself. Nova was competitive. she was so competitive that it got out of hand. there were perks to it but man, if she got fired up and it got to the point where she was angry, getting near her was the last thing anyone should do. she hated to lose. it was the worst. she wasn't sure why, it's always been like that. cheaters too. she hated them. nova was just scared that at the game, she could possibly get so mad at her team that she would take it too far. it's only ever happened once, when she played soccer. they were losing by two and the ref wasn't calling a thing for them. she got so mad that she got into an argument with the ref after he didn't call something that made her teammate literally bleed. he then gave her a red card and she had to leave. her parents, luckily, didn't watch that game but man, did she get it at practice.

Nova skated towards the piled up pucks before looking up at the goal. whenever she was stressed before a game, she would shoot soccer balls until she felt better. so that's what she did. she shot the puck from the halfway line and it soared in. she remembers when she used to play with her older brother. she missed that. she always skated around with him and they'd play all kinds of sports. but now, he was just August Collins, the famous hockey player.

Nova kept shooting the pucks and only missed about two times. she decided to play around with it. she kicked the puck slightly before beginning to skate towards the goal. she pushed it right, then left,  then she went around the net and scored.

she smiled and kept going.

"Collins gets the puck," Nova began to say to herself, "she pushes right, now left, through the legs and past the defender! oh, will she take the shot?"

nova raised her stick back as if she were shooting before faking and pushing right again.

"oh! collins fakes the shot and goes around the goal. she sneaks past the back post and slides the puck around. she scores! super nova collins does it again! The crowd goes wild!"

she skated around and did a fake celebration to herself before she heard a series of laughter from the road. she glanced up and saw three boys, two of which were laughing. she recognised them from school. they were hockey players- Hawks as everyone liked to label them. they saw her look at them and they immediately stopped their laughs as they pushed each other to keep walking- nearly stumbling over one another. the last boy- the one that wasn't laughing, smiled at her. She knew him too. he had dirty blonde hair that was styled to the side. his bright blue eyes held eye contact with her green ones. in the boys mind, he saw an amazing hockey player. in Nova's mind, she saw a familiar stranger.