Page 1 of Power Play

CHAPTER1

JESSA

“I’ve got to be honest…”Andrew said with a sigh. “I’m not sure how much longer we can keep this up.”

Power Play’s financials were scattered across his desk, comprised mostly of overdue invoices and equipment quotes that we couldn’t afford. Fall was quickly approaching, and the number of applications we had received was increasing daily. I couldn’t think about what I would need to do if we couldn’t afford to keep Power Play going.

“They really screwed us, huh?” I leaned forward to grab the partnership with Taylor Shore Minor Hockey Association that I knew Andrew was searching for.

“No shit, kiddo,” Andrew scoffed, and peered up at me over his reading glasses.

They were his spare pair with light blue frames. I knew his black pair of glasses were his favorite, but he had misplaced them because he was just as frazzled as I was.

“Every damn year, the Stags have covered the cost of our hockey camps. Every.” My boss slammed his fists against his desk to punctuate his words. “Damn. Year.”

I grabbed his worn Power Play mug that he had used every morning since I had started. The red and blue logo with a puck and hockey stick hadn’t changed in twenty years.

Power Play Program had been running for twenty years. And it was all about to come to an end. The non-profit had placed overtwo thousandchildren and youth into local minor hockey programs, provided every single piece of equipment, and even offered transportation to get families to hockey rinks just so their kids could play.

And here we were, set to face the inevitable.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Andrew sighed, pushing his glasses onto the top of his head.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to steady his breathing.

“Diane said this would help reduce stress or some bullshit,” he mumbled, but his wife’s advice clearly wasn’t working. My boss’s face was increasingly turning redder.

“It’s okay,” I replied with a shrug. “Kind of feel like it’s my fault.”

My boss blew out a soft chuckle. “Nah. Just the nature of the beast, I’m afraid. We’ve had a few years that were close calls, and we’ve always managed to pull it out of our asses—excuse my French—but this year…it’s all so…”

“Different?” I offered.

“Different,” Andrew echoed with a sigh, and placed his glasses on the crooked bridge of his nose.

I had known of Andrew Hall before I interviewed for the program operator position with Power Play. He had been an AHL all-star who made one hell of an NHL entrance and exit on the same night when he was called up. Winning the game with a hat trick and a career-ending injury in the last fifteen seconds of overtime was legendary.

I remembered watching that game on the edge of my seat with my dad in the rec room that was practically a mini hockey hall of fame. We had screamed and yelled and woken up my baby sister, but Mom didn’t get mad. She never got mad. She was just too dang happy for that.

She would have been able to sit across from my former semi-pro boss with a grin on her face and a chipper response of, “We’ll work it out, I know we will.” Because she would have. My mom was an incredibly crafty person, and she had more connections than she knew what to do with.

I would have reached out to her if she still lived in Hartford. I couldn’t remember where she was now.

“How many applications have we received so far?” Andrew questioned, holding his hand out.

I placed the stack of pre-screened applications in his waiting palm, hating the way he sighed at the weight of the documents.

“Seventy-two.”

“Seventy-two?Jesus H…” He paused and began flipping through. “Carter… Nicholson…Damn it, not Richards too. I can’t turn these kids away. They’re just getting started.”

I didn’t want to turn any of them away. I’d had a hard enough time when I started last year and learned how the entire process worked. The man who had been the program operator before me, Stanley, didn’t care about the families who submitted applications, not the way I did. He told me how we screened the applications, making sure they were filled out properly, and that the main focus was how much money the families made. They needed to be classified as low income, and we used a chart that he had pulled from some statistical data about income in our area.

It was black and white. But as I had started sifting through the applications, it all blended and becamegray.

Some of the parents were trying to better themselves and were being funded to go to school, so their reported income was higher than it had been in previous years. That extra income wasn’t going toward the family, though. It was used to cover the cost of tuition and books and other supplies they needed. It was obvious, but Stanley hadn’t cared. He had said those families didn’t qualify and gave me the difficult task of breaking the news to the single mom of three who desperately needed the assistance.

“The Rays charge us four hundred dollars a kid…and the goddamn Stags partnership hasn’t been renewed, so there’s a good chance they won’t take any of our kids.”