No Such Thing as Bad

An hour later, laden with shopping bags packed with groceries and decorations for the artificial Christmas tree in the box Mark had tucked under his arm, they returned to their hotel room.

"Bit brisk outside," commented Mark, depositing his shopping bags and the Christmas tree on the desk, removing his hat and gloves, placing them on his nightstand, and trying to rub some circulation back into his fingers and cheeks. "Especially now that the sun has gone down."

"Yeah, I think Herb found the only place in the country more miserable than Minnesota to spend the dead of winter in," Rob griped, taking off his hat and gloves, returning them to his nightstand, and beginning to rip the tape off the Christmas tree box with gusto. "Oh, and to establish a base of comparison, the four seasons in Minnesota are winter, still winter, the time they fill in the potholes, and almost winter."

"In the interest of fairness, I feel like the Olympic Committee is more to blame for us being in Lake Placid," pointed out Mark, grinning, as he put the groceries that didn't need to be kept cold in an unused dresser drawer. "Herb didn't choose where this tournament would be held, after all."

"Whatever." Rob's tone suggested that Mark's words had been about as fascinating as watching a scab form. "You can blame whomever you want for your problems, and let me blame whomever I want for mine."

"Deal." Smiling, Mark grabbed the ice bucket from the corner by the closet. "I'll be back in a minute. Just getting some ice for the groceries."

"Take your time, and I'll try not to overdo the celebration of your absence." Rob continued to attack the box with vigor. "I don't want to be fighting a hangover in tomorrow's game."

Not bothering to retort, Mark stepped into the hallway, leaving the door to his room ajar. He made his way down the carpeted corridor to the ice dispenser in the wall near the elevator bank, where he waited patiently for Dave Christian and Neal Broten to finish filling their bucket.

"Hey, Magic," chirped Neal, vivacious as ever, whirling around to face Mark as he joined them at the dispenser. "Keeping alert, huh?"

Sensing trouble from one of the locker room's most notorious pranksters, Mark leapt back in time to evade the ice cube Neal attempted to drop down the front of his shirt.

"Neal!" Mark's exclamation was a cross between a yelp and a reprimand. "If I want ice dumped down my front, I'll go to the immense bother of asking."

"Just making sure you're sharp!" Neal bounced around on his toes, his voice rising squeakily, as it always did when he was excited, which was his default state, and which often resulted in him being teased by his teammates for sounding like Mickey Mouse. "Got to be all systems go for tomorrow's game. Can't have you running on less than full throttle. I don't want to have to go out there and score five goals all by myself."

"You won't have to, Neal." Dave nudged his roommate's shoulder. "I'll put them in for you."

"Get real." Neal elbowed Dave in the ribs. "Do you even know where the net is?"

"Sure." Dave took the now full bucket out from under the dispenser. "It's wherever you're not shooting."

"I'm still waiting for the plot twist that Herb had your birth certificates faked to make you eligible for the Olympics." Mark shook his head as he stepped up to the dispenser and started pouring ice into his bucket. "Between you two, you have the maturity of a twelve-year-old."

"Yep," Dave called, as he and Neal disappeared down the hallway toward their room. "I'm ten, and Neal is still in his terrible two's."

Shaking his head in a mixture of amusement and aggravation, Mark, staring into the ice falling into the bucket, wondered why such incredible talent had to come in such irritating packages...

"It took you long enough to get back," observed Rob, glancing up from the instruction manual that described how to build the Christmas tree, as Mark returned to their room with the filled ice bucket. "I drank all three of my kegs of beer."

"I thought you weren't going to overdo the celebration of my absence." Mark chuckled, arranging the orange juice, milk, and raspberry preserves in the bucket.

"I can hold my alcohol really well," answered Rob, smirking, as his eyes zoomed over the directions. "Anyway, what took you so long? Did you hike up to Canada and hack the ice off a mountain peak or something?"

"Nah, but I wish I had," Mark replied, lips quirking. "It would have been less of an ordeal than running into Neal Broten and Dave Christian at the ice dispenser. They're always an experience and a half."

"Neal can make anything an adventure." Rob's mouth thinned into a disapproving line. "What did he do this time? Try to shove an ice cube down your pants?"

"Nope, just down my shirt." Mark placed the ice bucket on the windowsill to benefit from the drafts that came through the glass and plopped on the floor across from Rob. "I dodged in time, though. I know I always have to be on my toes around that little rascal."

"You're preaching to the choir." Rob rolled his eyes and then continued reading the instructions. "Obviously, I should have hazed him more as a freshman. Now he thinks he is an actual human being entitled to make other people miserable, and it's all my fault for not torturing him enough when he was a freshman."

Aware that Rob, as usual, didn't intend for his acerbic remark to be taken seriously, Mark snickered. When it came down to it, Rob was about a thousand times more likely to go out of his way to help a teammate than to do something spiteful to another player on his team, so his sarcastic façade was more hilarious than he probably meant for it to be. Besides, Mark knew that Rob didn't truly dislike Neal, who was ultimately too sunny a personality to inspire any negative emotions in teammates stronger than exasperation or vexation.

"Neal doesn't mean any harm," Mark said, threading his fingers through the carpet. "Not even when he accidentally-on purpose bangs into the sticks you've just finished taping perfectly."

"Of course not." Rob snorted. "With him, everything is whimsical, and planning anything is a crime against the universe."

"Speaking of plans, you are one of the few guys I've ever seen read directions before attempting to build something." Mark grinned. "Who taught you to do that? Your mom?"

"Me prototypical dumb man." Rob put on his best imitation of a caveman grunt. "Me no read directions. Me just build tree how me thinks it should be built. Then me surprised when me break tree. Me use duct tape to fix tree. Tree hideous but tree mine."

"I didn't claim not reading the directions was the best approach." Mark laughed. "I just said it was the male one."

"Not in my house," argued Rob. "My dad always reads the directions. He says that's where you find all the important legal disclaimers like, in the case of this product, we can't sue if we give one of the tree branches to a baby, and the baby chokes on it."

"Your whole worldview really is skewed by the fact that your father is a lawyer," Mark muttered, watching as Rob finally pushed the instructions aside.

"Being a bloodthirsty leech is environmental and genetic." Rob shrugged, and then went on crisply, "Anyway, our first step is to sort the branches into three piles: large, medium, and small. That should be an easy enough task for even someone as mentally challenged as you not to mess up completely."

"You just keep inflating my ego with your kind words." Mark dug into the box and joined Rob in organizing the branches into three piles according to size.

"Less talking and more sorting." Rob wrinkled his nose. "This is how it always is with us: I do all the hard work while you get the lion's share of the glory. I'll put up this tree all by myself and decorate it alone. Then everybody will remark what a lovely tree Johnson and McClanahan have in their room, and my name will never be mentioned first."

"Don't blame me for your last name's inferior positioning in the alphabet." Mark tapped Rob's arm with one of the smaller branches before dumping it onto the appropriate stack. "J always comes before M in the alphabet."

"Wow, what an insight into life's mysteries." Rob whistled mockingly, and whacked Mark's knee with one of the larger branches en route to dropping it onto the right pile. "I'm going to have to borrow your notebooks one day, Sherlock."

"Only if you can afford the very reasonable rental fee of twenty dollars an hour." Mark's eyes gleamed playfully. "What's our next step, Watson?"

"Call me Watson again, and I'll knock you back to Victorian London." Rob wagged a warning finger and then explained, pulling out the holder and the trunk of the tree from the now empty box, "We stick the trunk of the tree into the middle of the holder, and make sure that it is stable."

"Okay." Mark grabbed onto the red Christmas tree stand. "I'll hang onto the holder so that it doesn't move while you shove the trunk into it."

"As I said, I'll do the hard work," grunted Rob, wedging the trunk into the stand. "Meanwhile, you sit on your rear and steal a majority of the credit."

"The tree seems pretty stable." Mark gave the tree an experimental tug once Rob had secured it in the holder.

"I'm so touched to earn the coveted Mark Johnson stamp of approval." Eyes widening, Rob threw a palm over his heart. "I shall treasure the memory of this precious moment well into my senility."

"I wouldn't go so far as to say I approve." Mark furrowed his brow in feigned contemplation. "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to wholeheartedly approve of anything you do, Robbie."

"Anyone who claims you're a friendly person is lying, delusional, or just plain stupid." Rob kicked Mark's shin and then scooped up one of the larger branches. "Now, we attach the biggest branches to the bottom row of rungs on the trunk. Then we put the medium branches on the middle row, and the smallest branches on the top row. Do you understand, or should I repeat it more slowly, using shorter words?"

"That won't be necessary," Mark assured his roommate, as they snapped the branches into the proper rungs. "If you understand something despite the fact that the lightbulb over your head never turns on, I certainly can grasp it."

"Speaking of lights, it's time we put some on our tree." Rob took a spool of lights out of a shopping bag, unraveled one end of the string, and thrust it into Mark's hand, ordering breezily, "Come on. Wrap that around the tree, and I'll hold the spool for you."

"I thought I was supposed to be getting the easy jobs around here," Mark reminded his roommate wryly, weaving the strand of lights around the bottom boughs of the tree.

"The tree is only a foot tall, Magic, and it's not like you have a dog running around getting tangled up in the lights." Rob snorted. "This is an easy job."

"Let me guess." Noticing his friend's reference to a dog's antics with holiday lights, Mark chuckled. "Sassy is a pain in the neck when your family tries to put lights on the Christmas tree."

"Sassy is a pain in the neck whenever my family tries to do anything." Rob emitted a long-suffering sigh, as Mark wound the lights around the middle of the tree. "She is a sweet dog, but she is as dumb as a log. It's hopeless. You try to scold her for ruining something, and she just looks at you with these huge, pitiful brown eyes that assure you she has no clue that whatever she just did has wrecked your day and that all she wants is a pat on her stupid head. Then you end up giving her one even though she doesn't deserve it."

"I can't believe your family didn't name her something more appropriate like Dopey." Mark grinned as he finished wrapping the lights around the top of the tree. "Were you trying to be ironic?"

"No," answered Rob, taking boxes of shiny ornaments out of the shopping bags. "We just didn't realize that Sassy was the dimwit of her litter when we bought and named her. Anyway, we didn't want to name her after a Seven Dwarf. That's not very creative."

"Creativity in naming isn't always for the best," Mark stated somberly, as he unpacked a rotund, rosy-cheeked Santa and hung him on a branch. "I went through high school with a girl called Rain, and rumor had it that she would never forgive her parents for foisting that moniker on her."

"Rain," repeated Rob, all derision, while slipping a snowflake ornament onto a bough. "That's almost as catchy as precipitation, as far as names go. Did she have a brother named Snow?"

"Nah, she was an only child, so her parents couldn't saddle another kid with their unfortunate choice in names." Mark slid an angel onto another branch. "Of course, Rain tried to free herself from the burden of her birth name as soon as possible. The day she turned eighteen, she had her name legally changed to Laura."

"At least she didn't commit suicide as a lesser person might have," remarked Rob, hanging a nutcracker on the tree. "I admire her resiliency. Maybe her life will be filled with sunshine despite the stormy start her parents gave her."

"Puns aren't funny, and neither is being morbid." Reproachfully, Mark shook his head as he removed an elf that seemed to be busy making a toy in Santa's workshop from one of the ornament boxes. Deciding that it was time to change the subject, he added, "Isn't it weird how no elves are ever shown cramming coal onto Santa's sleigh?"

"Such a question comes from the mouth that just finished accusing me of being morbid." Rob clicked his tongue in rebuke as he placed a few more ornaments on the tree. "Mark, you know nobody ever gets their kid coal for Christmas. They don't want to inflict that psychological trauma on their child, or to have to deal with the mess coal would make in their beautifully decorated living room."

"That's not true." Mark slipped the elf onto a vacant bough. "One of the boys on my Pee Wee team got coal for Christmas, and he was never right in the head afterward. He became a drug addict and a high school dropout, but he wasn't a bad boy when we were Pee Wees."

"Of course not." Rob's lips twitched upward scornfully, as he placed an angel, her hands folded in prayer, on the highest branch. "There's no such thing as a bad boy. Disrespectful, yes. Rebellious certainly. Deviant maybe. Potentially even homicidal. But not bad."

"I'm talking about how somebody's life got ruined." Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. "Would it kill you to be a tad sympathetic instead of a ton sarcastic for once?"

"Look, Mark, people's lives don't just get ruined most of the time—normally, it's people making bad choices that destroy their own lives." Eyes narrowing, Rob lifted the tree carefully, positioned it on the desk, and plugged the cord for the lights into the electrical socket. Instantly, a hundred white lights burned on the tree, glittering off the ornaments, and reminding Mark of the stars that blazed in the obsidian sky outside their window. "I have sympathy when people lives are damaged by circumstances beyond their control, but when they make poor decisions and expect to be coddled instead of held responsible for their actions, I feel contempt or righteous indignation. It can be satisfying to blame the parents for ruining their kid's life, but if that kid is an adult, he really wrecked his own life, and the sooner he figures that out, the sooner he can begin getting it back on track."

"Maybe you're right." Biting his lip, Mark hesitated, and then pressed, "Do you ever feel guilty for having two parents who love you when some children don't have even one parent who isn't abusive or neglectful?"

"Sometimes," admitted Rob after a moment's pause, "but that just makes me more determined not to fail, because with all the advantages I've had, there's no excuse for me being anything less than successful."

"We're going to be successful and happy." Taking advantage of an opportunity to remind his excessively driven roommate to lighten up every once in awhile, Mark clapped Rob on the shoulder. "Don't forget to smile during your pursuit of greatness. Happiness is an important part of success."

"I know." Rob smirked. "That's why I'm always a bundle of joy and optimism."

"Ah, I must have been thinking of a different cynical Rob McClanahan whose motto is 'if it isn't sarcastic, don't waste your breath saying it.'" Mark gasped in mock embarrassment. My mistake. How awkward."

"It wasn't until you said that." Rob rolled his eyes. "Only the most socially impaired actually comment on how awkward a situation is, because that's even worse than complimenting someone by telling them their belly is as plump as a pig's."

"Even that is better than beginning a speech with the words 'I don't care whom I offend by doing this.'" Mark's lips quirked. "Seriously, why not just open with a declaration that you'll be switching to robot friends as soon as they're invented to avoid all contact with humans and pesky emotions?"

Rob opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted before he could start to speak by a knock on their ajar door.

"It's some of your robot friends arriving right now," Rob quipped.

"Come in," shouted Mark to whomever was outside their door, wrinkling his nose at Rob's remark.

"A mini Christmas tree!" Rizzo called out jovially, pausing in the threshold to admire the new decoration. "Very nice touch. Gives the room a home away from home feel."

"Get a move on, simpleton." Phil Verchota prodded Rizzo into the room as if he were an errant sheep. "It's just a Christmas tree. Even in a place as primitive as Boston, I'm sure you've seen one or two before."

"Use words next time." Rizzo gave Phil a retaliatory shove as the Minnesotan forward entered the hotel room. "Jerk."

Listening to this, Mark stifled an impatient groan. Rizzo and Phil waged a perpetual insult war, hurling all sorts of invective at one another every time they met inside the locker room or outside of it. Being an accomplished scholar, Phil had the high ground when it came to an extensive array of demeaning terms, but Rizzo unquestionably won the volume battle.

"If my mom were here, she would wash both your mouths out with soap," announced Bill Baker, walking over to stand beside his best friend, Phil.

"She would be lucky if she could get Rizzo to stop talking long enough to put a bar of soap in his big mouth." Silky snorted as he, too, appeared in the hotel room, causing Mark to wonder how many teammates he and Rob would be expected to host tonight.

Perhaps Rob was thinking along the same lines, because he demanded, "What's this—a Christmas party? Because I don't remember sending out invitations to any of you idiots."

"We're gate crashing." Bob, leaning heavily on Morrow's shoulder, hobbled into the room. "What's the big deal? You have all the decorations up, so, obviously, you were expecting company."

"Bob, sit down," commanded Mark, pointing at his bed. "You shouldn't be on that leg more than necessary."

"Give it a rest, Doc," Bob scoffed, but he allowed Morrow to escort him onto the bed. "I'm not an invalid. I've just got a broken ankle."

"I know that." Calmly, Mark nodded. "I also know that you'll heal faster if you don't overexert yourself."

"A Kent tournament isn't going to overexert me," grumbled Bob.

"Way to let the cat out of the bag." Rizzo glared at Bob.

"It was taking you a century to get to the point," retorted Bob, chin jutting out stubbornly.

"Mark and Robbie." Rizzo focused his attention on them for the first time. "We need another pair for our Kent tournament. Would you be interested in playing?"

"We're in," Rob, as eager to accept a challenge as ever, responded without so much as glancing at Mark to confirm this. "What is the prize for winning?"

"Bragging rights." Rizzo shrugged. "We're broke amateur hockey players, Mac. We can't afford anything more expensive than that."

"Lame." Rob sounded genuinely disappointed. "My first grade teacher handed out better prizes for winning the spelling bee, and her idea of a grand prize was a sticker with a gigantic smiley face on it."

"You don't need to worry about how pathetic the prize is, Mac," teased Bill. "It's not like you're ever going to win anything."

"You're clearly a loser jealous that I'm such stunning winner." Haughtily, Rob lifted his nose in the air. "My parents warned me I'd meet people like you in college."

"All right, let's get down to business." To capture everybody's attention, Rizzo clapped his hands. "For the first round, we'll have Mark and Rob up against Bob and Ken, while Silky and I beat Phil and Bill into next week. Then the winners will face each other while the losers have a consolation game. Everyone got that?"

"What pathogens do you think are in Lake Placid's water?" Silky shot Rizzo a wilting glance. "You must believe they're really powerful to make us all dumber than President Carter overnight."

"No need to get testy." Rizzo waved an impatient hand. "Okay, everybody, agree on a sign with your partner and then let's get started."

"What sign do you want to use?" whispered Mark, bringing his head close to Rob's. He figured that he would let Rob have the honor of devising their signal not only because that would be a constructive outlet for the other young man's competitive urges, but also because Rob's mind was delightfully devious at such things, always managing to invent some physical or verbal cue that never failed to take an opponent unawares.

"If one of us gets Kent, we'll ask Bill whether he sees himself driving a Ferrari or a Mercedes-Benz five years from now," Rob murmured into the shell of Mark's ear, his breath tickling the skin.

"Very witty." Mark's eyes glistened with a combination of approval and amusement, since, as Bill was one of the more promising NHL prospects on the team, it was common for others to torment him by speculating on what high-end vehicle he would be zooming about in a few years.

"Ready to be annihilated?" taunted Bob, as Mark and Rob approached the bed where he was sitting with Morrow.

"I don't have to be prepared for something that's never going to happen," Mark countered, falling into the old habit of exchanging casual banter with Bob as he had ever since they were Pee Wees. "What a waste of energy."

"Pride goes before a fall, Mark," Bob snickered, "and I happen to be an expert at making people fall."

"You're a terror," observed Mark dryly, thinking of some of Bob's favorite defensive tactics: kicking opposing forwards' skates out from under their feet and yapping a stream of insults at larger players (and most players were larger than him, since he was only about Mark's size, and Mark would never be confused with a giant). "For years, I've seen that in action."

"Everyone has got to have battle scars of some kind," Morrow put in, as he finished shuffling the cards and held them out to Rob, who was sitting next to him. "Cut, please."

Deftly, Rob did so, and then presented the deck to Morrow to deal. Soon, they all had the appropriate number of cards and were picking up and slamming down cards from the ever-changing supply in the middle of the bed, trying to get four of a kind. Neither of the cards—four and six—that Mark currently held two of were showing any signs of cropping up, and Rob, who had covertly scooped up three nines since the start of the game, was having no luck with finding that final, elusive card, so Mark decided to devote most of his energy to watching Bob and Morrow for signals that indicated they had gotten Kent. After all, if he could call Kent on either of them before their partner did, that would be just as much of a victory as if he had gotten Kent himself and Rob had called it before their opponents did…

As this thought occurred to him, he saw Bob's fingers flit up to his forehead to brush a lock of flyaway straw hair behind his earlobe. Mark had been friends with Bob for too long no to realize that Bob only found hair in his eyes troublesome when he was doing some supposedly secret sign, so he said swiftly, "Kent on Bob."

"Smooth, Bob." Morrow laughed as he collected the cards and returned them to the box. "Really subtle. You should consider becoming a commando."

"Only if I get to rescue the hostages in Iran." Bob scowled. "Anyway, if you had been watching me, you might have seen my gesture before Mark did."

"Maybe you shouldn't have made your gesture while I was busy changing cards." Morrow shrugged. "Just a tip."

"You have two eyes," Bob pointed out, rolling his. "Next time, you can use them to see two things at once so we can win, okay?"

"Hate to break it to you, but you weren't going to win with that signal." Mark shook his head. "I've seen you use it ever since we were little. You desperately need a new one."

"Or perhaps I just need to get a new friend," mumbled Bob, who was never a particularly gracious loser.

"Oh, please." Mark waved a dismissive hand. "Who will listen to you chatter on about nothing for three hours if I don't?"

He and Bob had always been friends of the opposites attract stripe. Bob appreciated the fact that Mark listened patiently to all of his excited babbling and angry rants, while Mark enjoyed being in the presence of someone who didn't expect him to talk any more than he wished and who made it more difficult for strangers to notice that Mark wasn't much of a talker. Mark scored goals, and Bob made him feel fearless when he did so, trusting that Bob would be able to protect him from any opposing team's attempts at vengeance. It was a peculiar friendship, but a strong one that had only grown more durable with the tests of time.

"Going to crush Bill and Phil for me?" Rizzo, who with Silky had apparently lost to Bill and Phil, crossed over from Rob's bed to pat Mark exuberantly on the back.

"And me," Silky added, taking the place that Rob had just vacated.

"We'll do our best." Mark grinned as he rose to give his spot to Rizzo. "Not being a psychic, I can't make promises about the future."

"He's just being modest." Rob tossed over his shoulder to Rizzo as they walked across the room to join Bill and Phil, who were waiting for them on Rob's bed. "It's a bad habit I'm trying to break out of him. Of course he's going to win. He's Magic."

"Not even Magic is going to help you win, Rob." Phil shuffled the cards, making a fan between his fingers. "You're so hopeless that you totally cancel out his brilliance."

"Is that a challenge to me?" Mark arched an eyebrow as he cut the deck Phil extended to him and then returned it to be dealt. "I thrive off competition, you know."

He did. Maybe not as much as his roommate, whose love of engaging in and triumphing over challenges bordered on the insane, but his definition of fun was skating fast, scoring a ton of goals, and winning. That was as strong an example of competitiveness as any, as far as Mark was concerned.

The cards had been dealt, and they were all focused on accumulating four of a kind, while watching their opponents for any signs that might indicate that the competition had gotten Kent. Apparently tired of waiting for Kent to come to him or Mark, Rob decided to go into attack mode: baiting Bill.

Shooting Bill, who was sitting across from him a sidelong glance as though to check that Bill wasn't watching him (although what he really wanted to do was goad Bill into studying him intensely), Rob caught Mark's eyes and then itched his neck.

"Kent on Robbie," shouted Bill, who was too clever for his own good and had consequently tripped hook, line, and sinker into Rob's trap.

"Read them and weep, Bill." Smirking, Rob revealed his hand, which contained a ten, two fives, and a seven. "I see no four of a kind, do you?"

"Nice going, Bill." Phil snorted as he put away the cards. "You fell right into the idiot's trap. I thought you were sharper than that. You're such a disappointment as a friend."

"Can it," snapped Bill, kicking Phil in the shin. "When I want your opinion, I'll rattle your cage. Anyway, it's not fair that Mark and Robbie won a Kent tournament without once actually getting Kent. That's like winning the Triple Crown without mounting your horse."

"Sour grapes." Indolently, Rob pushed back his cuticles. "Mark and I don't make the rules. We just exploit them."

"People hate lawyers because they pass along amoral tendencies like that to their children," Phil remarked tersely. "I hope you know, Mac, that every time you open your mouth to say something like that, you make it a little harder for lawyers everywhere to be seen as anything better than sharks."

"Sharks are majestic and tragically misunderstood creatures." With exaggerated solemnity, Rob threw his palm over his heart. "They are victims of slander and libel. No matter what the shark smear campaign says on the contrary, the fact remains that you are more likely to get struck by lightning than to get attacked by a shark."

"You know more useless facts than anyone I've ever met," muttered Bill, as everyone began to trickle out of the hotel room, the tournament over and the bragging rights securely in Mark and Rob's possession. Not that Mark planned on using them too much. That would just be obnoxious.

Once everybody had drifted out to return to their own rooms for the night, Mark asked Rob, "Now are you poised to dominate tomorrow's game?"

"Definitely." Rob's eyes gleamed with the light of tomorrow's challenge. "I'm feeling a hat trick coming on."

"A hat trick is nice for someone of your limited abilities, but I can one-up that." Mark nudged his roommate in the shoulder, aware of how much Rob valued the competitive dynamic in their friendship. The constant struggle to skate more quickly or shoot more accurately than the other was just another way that they improved each other as line mates. Making another player better was as much about providing healthy competition as it was about offering nourishing support. "I'm thinking I'm going to score four goals tomorrow."

"That will happen in your dreams maybe." Rob elbowed him in the ribs. "You'll be lucky if you get so much as an assist tomorrow."

"You should talk," volleyed back Mark without missing a beat. "I don't believe you've had a hat trick in your life."

"Just observe how I've perfected the art of the hat trick tomorrow." Rob offered his most confident smile. "Then your opinion will change pretty rapidly."

"Whatever builds your self-esteem." Grinning, Mark thought that he actually wouldn't be surprised if Rob McClanahan scored a hat trick in tomorrow's game. He was playing better every day, as well as coming off a dazzling surge of twelve points in ten games that might have impressed even Herb. With records like that, their team had the potential to truly shine at this tournament, Mark told himself.