My Hockey Alpha

Enzo

I had only just woken up after a mostly sleepless night of wishing I could just explain everything to Nina without either scaring her or pushing her away, when I heard banging on my front door. Groaning, I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door to a surprise: Luke.

“She’s up to something,” he said, without so much as a greeting, and pushed his way past me into my living room.

“What? Nina?” I asked, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I watched the anxious skeleton pace back and forth across my apartment. It was times like this that I was glad to not have roommates.

“I don’t know exactly what she’s doing, but she’s definitely up to something that is very much notgood,” he said, a little too quickly for me to fully comprehend exactly what was going on in my tired mind.

“Wait… Luke, slow down. What’s happening?” I asked.

Luke stormed over to me and took me by both shoulders, shaking me back and forth.

“Nina is being lured into a trap!” he shouted.

There were a few moments of silence as we stared at each other, the reality of the situation slowly sinking in.

Finally, I understood what was going on; panic mode started to set in.

“Where is she? How do you know? Is she alone? Is she hurt? Tell me what’s happening, god dammit!” I shouted as I ran around my apartment like a madman, throwing on yesterday’s dirty clothes as images of Nina being brutally murdered or kidnapped by a crazy person flashed through my mind.

“If you would give me a chance, I would tell you!” Luke shouted, his usual monotone voice now bellowing so loudly it shook the glass of water on my nightstand.

I stopped and took a deep breath. Luke was right; running around like a chicken with its head cut off wouldn’t solve anything.

“I saw a strange guy in a beat up pickup truck pull up to the diner last night while she was at work,” Luke said. “He sat down in a window booth. When she went over to him, she looked terrified; he gave her a piece of paper, they talked, then he left. This morning, she drove to the gun shop outside of town — that’s right, a gun shop and walked out with a shotgun. The last I saw of her, she was driving out of town with her roommates with a car full of camping supplies.”

Nina with a shotgun… Why on earth would she need

my sole purpose was to find Nina and protect her

know where she went?” I asked, grabbing a duffel bag from my

exactly,” Luke replied, pulling a folded up piece of newspaper out of his hoodie pocket, “but I broke into her dorm after she left and I found this. The newspaper that the guy

and snatched the newspaper away from

“This is…”

where I had him and they did him in. I’m not sure why, exactly, but my only guess is that that guy who showed up to the diner last night had something

asked. “Why would he have given her

I saw how terrified Nina looked, I got suspicious,” Luke replied. “So I looked through the windows

stuffing the newspaper article in my pocket and continuing to pack.

Luke said. “If we go soon, we might be able to catch

my camping supplies, formulating a plan as I did so. I couldn’t just randomly show up in the woods and drag Nina home; for starters, I didn’t want to get shot, and secondly, I couldn’t have her friends getting suspicious. I

hockey team once I finished packing — he was the only one on the team who I knew would agree to a last-minute camping trip like this,

be out there in, like, ten minutes. Oh, and is it alright if I bring my roommate? He’s going through some stuff so he could use a camping

my eyes,

the quad when I saw Matt and his

I recognized his roommate immediately. It was

is my roommate James,”

his hand. ” Nice to

forced a smile and shook

throttle this guy for stealing Nina away from me, I didn’t have the time right now to be dealing with this. It looked like I’d just have to grin and bear it

— and started to head toward Newburgh. I knew exactly where Luke had kept the asshole who drugged Nina;

driving at breakneck speeds around the back roads, much to Matt’s dismay, and soon enough we were