Original Love. J.J. Murray

won’t,” Chad said.

      Chad lied. The Bruins slashed the P-Street Rangers to death with their sticks, hacking at shins until the Rangers spent more time limping than running. The Rangers were down seven to two in less than ten minutes, Eddie flinching and turning sideways every time a Bruin took a shot, Eric whiffing on the puck, Mark fussing and cussing, yelling, “I’m open! I’m open! Pass me the damn puck, you guys!” Peter did the best he could, but he was so much smaller than the Bruin players and often got pushed away from the action.

      Mickey called a time-out. “Okay, Petey, you play goal for a while, give Eddie a break.”

      “Thank you, Peter-eater,” Eddie said, and he took off his pads. “I’m sweating to death.”

      “Eric, you stay back with Petey,” Mickey said. “We’re gonna have to cherry-pick a little to get back in the game, so Mark, you hang out near their goal. Me and Eddie will try to feed you.”

      Eddie tied the pads to Peter, the tops nearly reaching Peter’s chest. The pads definitely smelled like garlic. He handed Peter his goalie stick and first baseman’s mitt and slapped the catcher’s mask on Peter’s head.

      “Don’t lose it for us,” Eddie said. “And whatever you do, don’t be a pussy and flinch.”

      And Peter didn’t. That little orange puck hurt like hell when it hit Peter where the pads weren’t, and he would have to ice down his shoulder afterward, but Peter didn’t duck or turn away at all. They bounced one between his black high-topped Chuck Taylor sneakers, and squeezed one in behind him after he made a nice first save, but that was all.

      Peter held them to nine.

      Meanwhile, Mickey’s plan was working, because Mark was an excellent shot, using his bony elbows to get the bigger boys out of the way. And whatever bounced off the Bruins’ goalie, Mickey slammed home. Eddie simply got in the way of their players, and Eric tried to stay out of sight so Peter could see the shots better.

      Just as Mickey scored the tying goal, Peter noticed a black girl walking toward the action. He had never seen her before, and he knew just about everyone in the neighborhood by sight after months spent perched at his window seat.

      “What the hell’s she doin’ here?” Mark asked Mickey.

      Mickey shrugged. “Free country.”

      “It’s like we’re having an eclipse or something,” Eddie said with a laugh.

      Ebony was dark, but she moved onto that cul-de-sac just like the poet said: “in beauty like the night.” Peter was smitten with Ebony Mills from the second he saw her. She wore an oversized New York Knicks jersey that hung down to her knees, straight-legged Levi’s rolled up at the bottoms, and Adidas sneakers, and her hair was in tight braids wrapped in a circle around her head.

      And instead of being shy and waiting to be spoken to, Ebony marched right up and said, “Y’all need another player?”

      I sit back from the computer and relive that moment. Mark looked at Mickey. Eddie looked at Mickey. Eric looked at Mickey. The Bruins looked at Mickey. I looked at Ebony. What must have been going through their minds! I only saw a shapely girl with a dynamite smile and more guts than I’d ever have. And that Mickey—damn, I wonder what he’s doing now. I need to thank him for what he said and did next:

      “Sure. Eric, take a break.”

      “I ain’t givin’ her my stick!” Eric shouted.

      Mickey snatched Eric’s stick in a flash and held it out to Ebony. “You good on defense?”

      Ebony rolled her neck, her chin making a constant circle in the air in front of her. “What, you think cuz I’m a girl that I can’t score?”

      Mickey’s eyes got big. “Okay, you play forward. Eddie, you drop back.”

      “Nah, nah,” Eddie said, puffing out his chest. “I ain’t gonna.”

      Ebony stared him down. “Boy, you so fat that pigs be followin’ you home lookin’ for a date.”

      And though Eddie was his teammate, Peter laughed out loud. This girl wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody. And her accent—somewhere between deep South and Brooklyn or maybe even South Brooklyn—was cool and beat the snot out of the dull “Lawn GUY-land” accents in Peter’s neighborhood.

      I found out later that Ebony’s family had been part of the northern migration from Virginia after what Ebony’s mother, Candace, called the “first Emancipation.” They lived in Brooklyn until the “second Emancipation” in the late sixties and early seventies that brought them east to Huntington. Ebony was a mixture of street and country, African and a little Cherokee, and the overall result was honey with a heavy dose of vinegar and salt.

      Eddie, who normally had a comeback for everything since he read those little paperbacks full of mean jokes, backed off to play defense without another word.

      “Let’s play,” Ebony said…and the girl could play. She was almost as good as Mickey, stealing the orange puck away from one of the Bruins and scoring on her very first shot.

      “What’s the score?” she asked.

      “Ten-nine us,” Mickey told her.

      Chad got up in Mickey’s face. “That don’t count. She ain’t on your team. She ain’t from your neighborhood.”

      Ebony stepped over to Chad. “What don’t count?”

      Chad ignored her. “It’s still tied nine to nine, and you gotta put Eric back in.”

      “Excuse me?” Ebony said. “You sayin’ cuz I ain’t from this neighborhood that it don’t count?”

      Chad turned to her. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

      “Well,” she said, with a dynamite smile, “I am from this neighborhood. I just moved in over on Grace Lane.”

      Which meant she’d be at Simpson once the holiday break was over. Peter hoped that she was in the seventh grade, but her body was definitely eighth or ninth grade, because of her breasts.

      “Grace Lane ain’t Preston Street,” Chad said.

      “And you ain’t shit playin’ hockey, boy,” Ebony said. “All the cool shit you got on, and you can’t play a lick. You just mad a girl scored on you. And you just scared I’m gonna score on y’all again.”

      “I ain’t scared.”

      “Prove it then,” she said.

      We were all in that nowhere land between puberty and manhood, and to let a girl beat you—in anything—was like losing your penis. Chad didn’t know what to do or say that day, and I just had to say something.

      “Why don’t you let her play?” Peter asked, though it came out more as a statement.

      “You shut up,” Chad yelled at Peter.

      Ebony then pushed Chad back. “Who you tellin’ to shut up, boy? You talking to”—she looked back at Peter and smiled—“what’s your name?”

      “Peter.”

      She put a finger on Chad’s chest. “You talkin’ to Peter, and he’s my boy. You don’t tell any of my boys to shut up.” Chad didn’t make a sound. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. “Now are we gonna play or what?”

      “It still doesn’t count,” Chad said. “It’s still tied, nine to nine.”

      “Whatever,” Ebony said. “Let’s play.”

      They played on, but for only a few minutes more. Ebony bulled her way in for a stuff shot to put the P-Street Rangers up by one, and when the Bruins brought up the puck after that, Ebony stole it, fed Mickey through Chad’s legs,