Hockey Is My Boyfriend: Part Two (9 page)

M
y week was pretty uneventful
. There hadn’t been any more free time on the schedule, so Jimmy and I hadn’t had any more “dates.” But we were the talk of the camp, with lots of giggling when Jimmy draped an arm around me during movie night or when he walked me up to the cabin and kissed me goodnight. I found it all a little embarrassing until I finally decided to roll with it. Jimmy was so happy, and it was contagious. And it seemed like everyone else was happy for us; Trudy had beamed at me, and Loreal was ecstatic.

On Thursday, I got called out of dryland training with the younger kids for a phone call. I was thinking the worst, so when I heard April’s voice on the office phone instead of my dad’s, I was relieved.

“April, are you here or something?”

“No, I’m still in Vancouver. There’s this miracle called long distance. Speaking of which, do you ever have your cellphone on?”

“I forget. Nobody ever calls me here. Is everything okay?”

“Fine. Well, sort of. Listen, I found out something you should know. I don’t know exactly what to do about it or if we can do anything at all.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know if you know, but there are these on-line discussion boards where people speculate on the love lives of hockey players, especially cute young guys.”

“They need to get a life.”

“Yeah, probs, but here’s the thing. Do you know a hockey player named James Frechette?”

“Yessss.” My stomach dropped to the floor.

“Okay, I can hear in your voice that something’s up, but maybe you can’t talk there.”

“That’s correct.”

“Anyway, there are photos of you and him on one of these sites. They’re kind of… graphic. At first I thought they might be photoshopped, but it sounds to me like they could be real.”

“That’s correct.”

“Having quite the summer?” That April could be funny at a time like this was a bit of a relief. “Anyway, I’m sending you the website in an email. You need to get to a computer and check things out. You need to get these down. Like yesterday.”

“April, who else knows about this?” Sports sites were the last place April hung out in, so I was pretty shocked she was the one telling me about this.

“Oh, um, just me. But your name is written right there.”

“Oh man. Well, I better go.”

“Bye, Kelly. Don’t worry, it will work out.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. So much for a secret fling in the middle of nowhere.

I turned to Trudy Iverson who had been hovering with concern in the background.

“Is everything all right at home?” she asked.

“Yes, but I need to get to town, just for half an hour. To see about… some things.”

“No problem, I’ll get one of the boys to drive you.”

I waited in a daze. When Trudy came back, she sat across from me. I had noticed that she was a smart woman and the organizational brains behind the camp. And now she had me in her sights. I sat up straighter.

“Kelly dear,” she began. “I’ve known Jimmy since he was eight years old. All he’s ever thought about is hockey. So, for him to have a girlfriend is a big deal.”

“Uh,” I stammered. I didn’t know what to say here.

Trudy continued talking. “Everyone hoped he’d start dating a nice girl from around here, but he’s barely home enough. You seem like a nice girl to me. The kids like you; that’s always a good sign. And if you weren’t, I would have taken steps.”

Steps? What the hell did that mean? Everything was happening to me at once. I felt like I was being kicked when I was already down. With skates. Trudy rose up, and I involuntarily flinched, but she only patted me on the shoulder. “I know you won’t hurt him. He’s so trusting.”

Okay, great. I hadn’t wanted a big deal relationship and now not only was I in one, but everyone in the world could see it,
and
I wasn’t allowed to get out of it. Could Thursday get any better?

There was a honk outside. Naturally, Trudy had gotten Jimmy to drive the pick up truck. He had a mile-wide grin when he pushed open the passenger side door. I hopped in.

“This is a sweet surprise,” Jimmy began. “Maybe we can stop at the drugstore and get some—” He stopped at the sight of my tense expression. “What is it?”

“Someone has posted photos of us on the internet.”

“Photos of us? Doing what?”

“Playing scrabble? Skating? I haven’t seen them yet, but I assume they’re bad or my friend April wouldn’t have called to tell me about them.”

“So we’re going into town to see them?”

“Yeah, Loreal mentioned there’s an internet café there. It might be better than pulling them up on Burt’s PC.”

“Jeez.”

“Yeah. Who could do something like this?”

“I don’t know.” He was looking towards the highway and not at me. I got the feeling he was lying.

We didn’t say much more until we got to the café. We went to a terminal at the very back. I pulled up my email account, April’s message, and then the site. It was totally primitive: message after message speculating on hockey players and who they were with. Girls suggesting possible girlfriends and then tearing them down. “And a total lack of grammar and correct spelling,” said the voice of my grade eight English teacher.

It didn’t take long to find Jimmy’s page. He wasn’t a full NHL’er yet, but he had been noticed at the draft and the World Juniors.

There were only two photos of us. One was a grainy close-up where you could tell we were French-kissing. You couldn’t tell it was either of us, unless you knew us well. Or unless you read the comment underneath which had our names in it. Shit.

But the other photo was worse. We were lying on the beach and kissing. I had only my bikini bottoms on, and his hand was on my breast.

We both gaped at the second photo.

“Well, at least my hand is covering you up.”

Did he actually say that? Oh my God. “Yeah, explain that to my dad when he comes to kill you.”

“Your dad is going to kill me?”

Actually it was pretty funny to imagine my slender dad taking on Jimmy. If someone did sock him, it would probably be Phil. Phil, shit, if he saw this he would already be on a plane here to kill someone. Whether it would be Jimmy or me, I wasn’t sure. The horrible feeling in my stomach returned.

“It’s kind of odd, but actually if someone took these photos of us they only posted the tame ones,” I speculated. There were probably more photos, including me going down on Jimmy, and vice versa. But maybe the site had restrictions about how graphic photos could be. So there were probably more photos out there, and I needed to get my hands on them. I mean, for Jimmy it might enhance his rep, but for me this was a total disaster. I had to stay calm and figure out what to do.

While I was having fourteen different kinds of fits, Jimmy had pulled out his cellphone and was talking to someone. He kept his head turned away, so I could only hear bits of his conversation: “Told me to call about stuff like this,” “I realize that,” “Isn’t this illegal?” and “I want to protect my girlfriend here.”

His girlfriend? It took me two beats to realize he was talking about me. My summer fling was a huge fail, and I hadn’t even gotten to have sex yet. Jimmy was so intense about us. I felt confused and panicky.

He got off the phone and turned to me. He took my hands in his and gave me this super-serious look. “Kelly, I am so, so sorry about all this.”

“Why are you apologizing? It’s not like you did this.”

“Yeah, but you get why this happens, right? It’s because I’m getting more famous. I mean, if we were two regular people there wouldn’t be any sites like this to post stuff on.”

I nodded. The whole thing was bizarro world. Was Jimmy famous? I guess he was someone people were interested in.

“Anyway, you don’t have to worry about this, I’m taking care of it. I talked to someone at my agent’s office. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it’ll be gone. They’ll make sure any further posts will get deleted right away.” He frowned and continued, “I hate this stuff so much. But what really hurts is how somebody as sweet as you gets yanked into this whole mess.”

“What I don’t get is who took these photos? It would have to be someone at the camp. Who would do that?”

“I dunno. It could be Steve Owen,” said Jimmy.

“Steve? Why would it be Steve?”

“Don’t you get it? People are jealous. I got drafted high, I’m going to the show, and now I get to go out with you. Everyone at the camp wants to be with you.”

I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous. Everyone doesn’t—” I didn’t even finish the sentence, because it was stupid. Guys like Steve, they would hit on a tent pole if it were wearing a dress. But it could be about Jimmy and embarrassing him.

Jimmy squeezed my hands tighter. “Kelly, you know I have to go back to Fredericton on Saturday. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I can’t. I have to work for another week.”

“I’m worried about you here. You could stay with my family while I’m in L.A. or go back to Montreal. I’ll make it right with Burt.”

I shook my head. He seemed to be getting way too concerned about this whole deal. “Look, Jimmy, it’ was a terrible thing, but you’re getting the photos taken down right away. So everything is fine now, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. Maybe he’ll give up when he sees he can’t get to us. Anyway, I’m coming back next Saturday to pick you up. I’m so sorry, Kelly. You don’t deserve this crap in your life.”

I shrugged. It wasn’t anything we could have predicted, but maybe we could have prevented it by keeping things more private.

“You’re such an innocent,” he said to me with his wide-eyed gaze. Talk about role reversal. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

“I’m not alone. I have Loreal, and if there’s a real problem I can go to Trudy and Burt. I can look after myself.”

Jimmy was like me in that I could read his expressions easily. Right now he looked like he doubted I could take on a mosquito. He didn’t say another word; instead he kissed me. It was tough to enjoy it when I began worrying someone was watching us.

A
fter Jimmy left on Saturday
, I had more time to think about everything. The two photos had been taken down and nothing new was posted. I knew there were more photos out there, and instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop, I wanted to see if I could find them myself.

After dinner, I took a little walk around the lake to see if I could find where the photos had been taken. Even with a zoom lens, there weren’t a lot of places without trees and brush in the way. I finally found what I thought was the spot: a rocky rise with a good viewpoint of the tiny beach we had been on.

I looked at the ground like any good detective but found nothing. The weather had been dry, so the ground was hard as rock.

Really, the person who took these photos would have to know the camp pretty well. And then be able to upload them to the internet. The Steve theory was looking better and better. Since we only had a dial-up modem here, that narrowed things down considerably. I walked over to the office where Trudy was locking things up.

“Hi, Trudy.”

“Hello, dear. Can I help you with something?”

“Yes, can people use your computer to access the internet?”

“Unfortunately no. We had some problems with viruses, so we don’t allow that any more. You’ll have to go to town and use the computers there.”

“Um, has anyone gone to town, in the last few days?”

“Actually only Burt and myself, the transmission is gone on the extra truck so we only have the one vehicle until Monday. Of course, you and Jimmy went the other day. And it’s not that far a walk.”

“True. But back to the computer, some people must have laptops. Are they allowed to use them here?”

“Well, yes. If you want to borrow a laptop, you could ask Eric or Steve. You can plug it in at the desk out here. But since it takes up the phone line, we ask you only use it after 11:00 PM and before 7:00 AM.”

“Thanks, Trudy, that’s very helpful.”

“No problem, dear. Agnes Frechette was asking me about you.”

She must be Jimmy’s mom. That hadn’t taken very long, since he had only been home a few hours. Oh boy.

“Don’t worry, I only told her good things.” Luckily, Trudy was in my corner, now that she had threatened to keep me in line if I ever broke his heart.

“Oh, that’s great,” I replied weakly and hustled out of there.

Well, well, Steve again. If I had to choose between Eric and Steve, I know that I would certainly not paint sweet and awkward Eric as a kind of villain. I needed proof though, so I checked back at the office after 11:00 that night. Sure enough, Eric was beavering away on the laptop.

“Hi, Eric.”

“Oh wow. Hey.” He looked surprised to see me, but not guilty.

I pulled up a chair beside him, and he almost fell off his.

“Hey, would it be possible for me to borrow your laptop to check my email?”

“You want to…? Like for sure, eh.” He pushed the laptop towards me, but didn’t get up and leave. “Do you, like, know how to use this?”

Good grief. “Oh yes. But it’s female stuff, so could I use it alone? Only for ten minutes or so.” Female stuff, the magic words for getting guys alarmed.

“Female? Oh sure, no probs.” He got up, knocked over his chair and righted it. “I’ll be back in ten minutes, Kkkkkelly.”

“Thanks, that’s really nice of you.” I smiled at him, and he backed into the door.

Okay, there was no doubt in my mind now that Eric was not the mystery pornographer. He had turned his laptop over with no hesitation at all. Still, I would do a quick search. I checked his browsing history, which seemed consist mainly of World of Warcraft sites and game forums. Then I looked at his picture files. Nothing in the last two weeks, except—wait, what the hell was this? A photo folder marked KT and dated this week. I opened it. Four photos. One was me from the McGill sports website, another was the headshot from the camp. The last two were taken with a cellphone camera, one of me supervising swimming with the girls and another one of me doing dry land training.

Sigh. Only the normal photos that anybody with a crush would have. I closed the folder and sat back. Just in time; Eric was hovering in the background, and if he knew I had seen that folder he would probably have a humiliation meltdown.

“Thanks for letting me use this.”

He nodded back at me, smiling slightly.

“Can I ask you a technical question?” I said.

“For sure.”

“If you had files you wanted to get rid of permanently, can you just delete them, or would you have to do more than that?”

Now Eric was on familiar ground, and he started talking rapidly.

“There would be only two ways to do that. You could do a secure delete. It’s a way of encrypting the data so it can’t be retrieved by a hacker. It’s pretty simple, in Windows for example—” And then he demonstrated the steps. It didn’t look too bad, but a bit time consuming.

“What’s the second way?”

“Well, you could rip out your hard drive. Brutal, but she works. You’d lose all your files, everything.” He flipped the laptop over and showed me where the hard drive was. Apparently, a few screws and it was out.

“Thanks so much, that’s very helpful.” And I went back to my room to think this through.

Okay, Steve-O was looking like the prime suspect here. I definitely got the vibe from him that he was jealous of Jimmy’s success. Jimmy had mentioned Steve was a big deal prospect until he got his knee injury. Would that be enough to piss him off into doing something like this?

I figured Steve would not hand his laptop over so easily, so I might have to do a little reconnaissance mission of my own. I looked over the camp schedule for tomorrow and found that Steve was doing an extended session with the Bantams, on-ice instruction and dryland training from 1:30 to 4:00 PM the next day. Leaving his room wide open for me to search!

I took my backpack and headed over to the room after the on ice session was well underway. I listened at the door first, and didn’t hear anything, so I walked in. I found the laptop right away and turned it on. I checked the browser history, and it didn’t take long to find the same stalker sites April had sent me.

That Steve was a total bastard. He had a lot of photos, so I didn’t have time to search for mine. I took the basic route, flipped over the computer and removed the hard drive with a screwdriver I had brought. Dropped the hard drive into my pack and then started looking through Steve’s closet and drawers for the camera. No luck, maybe he had it with him. I was going to have to try to get that later.

I rushed off to help a group of boys going out canoeing on the lake. Once we were near the middle, I reached into my pack, and brought out the hard drive, complete with the rocky anchor I had taped onto it. The water of Lake Carswell was so clear I could see it falling into the darkness at the bottom. A really lovely sight.

I finished with the canoe group in time to go and supervise the art room. Only Max was in there as usual. We chatted for a few minutes, and then he got to work on the miniature village he was creating out of clay and recycled junk. Well, I had taken care of the laptop, but I knew there was still a camera and maybe a memory card out there somewhere. Maybe Steve had used someone else’s camera and downloaded the photos. I could vaguely remember someone showing off a new digital camera, who was it? Oh yeah, it was Riley, he had been taking photos during a scrimmage. And Riley would do anything Steve asked, including hand over his new camera.

I looked at my watch, it was 3:45, just enough time to run in, check Riley’s closet and make it back before the Bantams were done. I told Max I would be right back, grabbed the pack again, and headed back. I found the camera in Riley’s closet but had no time to look at it, as I could hear the voices of the guys in the hall. I stuffed the camera into my pack and headed out. As I zipped around the corner, I ran right into Steve and Riley.

“Hey, Céline.” Steve smiled at me, what a phony he was. “Are you missing Jimbo yet? Because I can show you what a real man can do for you.”

“Uh, no thanks,” I told him, hoping my nervousness wasn’t showing.

I headed straight back to the art room where Max had not used his unsupervised time to set fire to anything. In fact, he was exactly where I had left him, now landscaping his miniature city.

I took my backpack to the other side of the art room and opened it up. Then I looked at the camera, no photos. Damn, there was no memory card here. Where the heck was the memory card?

“Looking for this, Kelly?”

I turned around. Riley! And he was holding the memory card in front of me.

Okay, I had to admit, I did not expect this. I had been thinking Steve the whole time. Why would Riley have done this? Shit.

Well, whatever was going to happen next, it wouldn’t be G-rated.

“Hey Max, you better go and get ready for your on-ice session now,” I called out. He looked up at Riley and me.

“Are you sure? Is everything okay here?” Great radar on this kid, but now was not the time.

“I’m sure, sweetie. You’re on the ice soon, so scoot.”

“Yeah, kid, I’ll see you there in a few,” said Riley. He walked over and shut the door behind Max, then came up close to me.

“Gee, Kelly, I seem to have your full attention for once. Usually it’s Freshy or even Steve, but now—” He grinned at me. Then he reached out and ran his hand through my hair. I could taste bile in my mouth, but I swallowed it down.

“So, baby, what would you do to get this little memory card back?”

“Riley, I don’t get this. Why would you do this?”

“Wasn’t a plan, just chance. I seen you going to the dock. I wanted to talk to you. After we danced Saturday, I felt like there was something between us. But you were more into Freshy. Of course, he’s a big fucking deal around here, but whatever.” He shrugged, and then ran his hand down my shoulder. My stomach lurched.

“I guess you’re cooked. Something like this could really fuck things up, but more for you than him. Shows what a stud he is, but shows you’re more of a… slut.” He smiled. “Still maybe the Blackhawks don’t want their squeaky-clean prospect to be a player off the ice, so it might fuck up his deal too.”

I didn’t say a word. I stayed as still as if I had encountered a poisonous snake on a trail.

“I’ll make it easy for you. Alls you have to do is meet me on the same beach tonight, after lights out at 10:00. You can do to me what you did to Freshy; that looked like fun. But I’ll want more than that. I still can’t figure out why he didn’t nail you that night, because you sure seemed to want it. Guess he’s too much of a gentleman. I’m not.” And he reached out for my breast, but I backed away.

Riley laughed at me.

“Sure, run away now, but if you want this card, you’ll be all over me later. And if you tell a soul, I’ll make sure I lose this, until I get a chance to post it on the World Wide Web. D’you think your parents will be happy to see how their daughter spends her summer? Freshy’s parents will be impressed too. The big fuck you for that snobby bastard is only a bonus.” He shoved the memory card into his jeans and grabbed his camera back.

“I might need this later. To take some shots of us.” He smiled, then turned and left.I ran over to the sink and threw up.