State of Grace

SIDNEY:
Sid gets about a total of fifteen minutes to himself after the game –all of which are spent on showering, changing and trying to explain the night’s loss to the media- before Peter appears in the locker room, beckoning him with his finger.

Tired, slightly grumpy and dreaming of heading home in the very near future, Sid follows him down the hall to an office room. Peter’s marching like he’s on a mission and Sid could care less about what it is, but again, he wants to get home soon, and he figures the sooner he gets whatever this terrible conversation is going to be about over –the better.

In the office room, Peter holds the door open for Sid to walk in through before shutting it behind them and gesturing for Sid to take a seat on one of the chairs it offers.

Shit.

Sid sort of hasn’t really maybe told him about Celia’s threat since receiving another wearisome and longwinded lecture hasn’t been high in importance in his life, especially not with the slight hangover he’d woken up with yesterday morning. It’s still not high on his list of to-do now, but that’s partly because Peter’s glum and wary expression seems to show he already knows.

“Just over a week, Sidney,” Peter starts in, hands in his pockets as he paces, electing to keep moving rather than sit. It’s a power trip. “I asked you to keep out of trouble for just over a week and you couldn’t even manage that.” He pauses for an overly-dramatic sigh. “I’ve gotta be honest with you here, I’m really starting to wonder how someone who’s kept his nose clean for so long now could start stumbling like this.”

Flicking a glance at the watch on his wrist, Sid wonders how long this lecture will last. Hopefully it’ll be shorter than the previous one, but his chances don’t seem great.

Peter lets out a bigger, different sigh one as if Sid is his teenage son, caught sneaking in late after curfew. It’s a –what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh, with an added roll of his eyes and heavily disappointed expression. Luckily for Sid, or unluckily depending on you view it, Peter knows exactly what he’s going to do with him and he lays out his plan, taking the liberty to contribute his own do’s and don’ts as he explains it.

“I’m supposed to -what?” Sid asks at the end of the explanation.

Again with the eye roll from Peter, but Sid’s confusion is genuine. He understands that Peter has been tipped off about Celia’s action to –without or without Sierra’s blessing- allegedly start shopping around a deal to talk and revel all about the wedding-that-wasn’t, but he isn’t quite gripping the plan just yet.

“You’re going to make good on your promise for stronger fan presence,” Peter instructs. “We got tagged in a tweet by a girl who is here all the way from New Zealand to watch the team play tonight. With what we could gather from her bio and tweets, she is a huge Pens fan and has been saving up for the trip. It’s a long way to come and it shows dedication. What it also shows is that you and the team have passionate fans all around the world, and we are going to use it to showcase how appreciative of your fans you are.”

He finally takes a seat and fishes his phone out of his suit pocket, seeming to glance over a notification before dismissing it and tapping away before he opens something else completely.

“Here she is,” he tells Sid, leaning to pass over the phone.

Sid takes it from him and glances down at the screen which is showing a Twitter profile. He might not have one himself, but he knows what they look like.

“You are going to be a good Captain and meet her, sign whatever she wants and talk to her for a bit, maybe even treat her to dinner or something,” Peter says, growing uninterested in his mundane job of cleaning up other people’s messes via sideshows of positive distraction. “I don’t really care as long as the media gets a great story from it all and I get a newspaper on my desk tomorrow with a story about how respectful you are of your fans, making the effort to show them what their support means to you.”

Sliding his thumb down the long screen, Sid reads about his supposed PR stunt victim. Or maybe she’s not such a victim per say, because she really does seem to have some serious Pens appreciation, if the twitter bio of ‘Grace Jackson –Devoted Pens fan until I die. Crosby is my captain and the boys are my team’ is anything to go by.

In the profile picture she has he can see that she’s a younger woman, mousey brown hair tucked up in a bun making her look older, but the childlike smile on her face as she stands beside a boy next to a novelty soda bottle the size of a small building counteracts it. According to the last line in the bio, she is twenty one.

“So,” Peter interludes, clicking his foot like there’s somewhere pressing he needs to be, and with the very questionable hit Engo laid on Hagelin out on the ice tonight, it’s highly likely that there will be a call coming in from Shanahan at some stage and some fallout from that to deal with. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust that you can handle this one task on your own. Remember, make sure you’re your usual polite and charming self and that you two get a photo together so that she can post it to her Twitter with a nice caption and we can use it for a newspaper story with someone from the Paper. And don’t say a damn word about the Sierra situation –if the girl asks I want you to side step it or bullshit an answer until you are blue in the face or until she drops it, whichever comes first. Got it?”

Sid nods and hands back the phone, sweeping one last look over the girl’s name, desperate to get this right. Fan interaction. That’s all it is, he tries to keep telling himself. Signing autographs, posing for photos and making conversation – all the easier parts of his occupation, all things he’s been doing for years, things he could do in his sleep.

So why does he feel like he could all of a sudden mess it up? Stupid Peter with his condemning manner and the way he speaks down to Sid like Sid doesn’t even know how to tie his own shoes, making him second guess himself.

Sid stands up and rubs his palms on the legs of his pants. “Grace Jackson,” he says, “she needs things signed, a photo and a great impression of the Captain of her beloved team.”

Peter grins at the parrot-like response and nods. “Right. Now, I’ve got to go. Don’t screw this up.”
Focusing on the positives of the situation as he navigates his way through the halls and back down to the ice where Peter said Grace and her mother would be waiting for him, Sid tries to count them in his head.

1- Good publicity. That never hurts and with the shit storm that Celia & Sierra could unleash in the future, it could come in handy.

2- Good publicity –because that is so important that it needs to be counted twice.

3- He does enjoy fan interaction. Few people ever tire of hearing how great they are, and Sid is not one of those people. Hearing how people became fans of the sport, the team or him as a player is always interesting and the fact that this particular fan made such an effort to get to a game is flattering.

4- It could be interesting. He doesn’t know much about New Zealand except Kiwis, Sheep and that it’s close to Australia, so at least he won’t be bored to death.

The nearer he gets to where he can see them standing, the better he feels about it. Fans are fans and he can handle fans. He can handle the ones who send him mail asking to bear his children, the ones who have followed his every game since Junior’s and the ones who only really know his name and the team through the popularity of his last name in conjunction with the league. This girl seems in the middle, luckily. He. Can. Handle. It.

Right?

Maybe with a few deep breaths first.

As he walks, sucking his deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, he notes one of the two women, the taller and older looking one, points to something on the other side of the arena and the younger woman –who has to be Grace, he can recognise her from the twitter photo, the only difference being that that smile of hers has tripled in size- along with Coach Blysma who has somehow been roped into this also, along with a lone reporter, all turn to look at whatever she’s spotted. That’s when Sid sees LOVEJOY in big letters on the back of the jersey Grace is wearing and sighs.

GRACE:
In all her wildest dreams and visions of making this trip, never once did the possibility of the Penguins Staff picking up her tweet and inviting her to a Meet-and-Greet with the Coach and Captain of the team after a game ever enter Grace’s mind. That is just too much to even begin to process.

Which is probably why when she turns to see Sidney Crosby walking down the stairs towards her, Grace feels like the world is spinning on its axis and about to combust any minute. Because it can’t be real, this…..this cannot be her life. Things like this –great, spectacular opportunities like this- happen to other people. Happen to the same people who get to follow their dreams of going off to College or University to become whatever they want. They happen to more fortunate and lucky people, people who deserve the opportunity and aren’t currently wasting it by nodding dumbly at all of Coach Blysma’s polite conversational talk and now feel like they are about to faint as Sidney Crosby walks toward them.

So, these things usually happen to pretty much everybody who is not Grace.

Sid finishes the last step and comes to join them all, tossing his head in greeting and flashing a warm smile as he extends his hand to Grace with a, “Hey Grace.”

It’s all she can do to let her hand flop around at her side until her mother’s hand fills it and Grace squeezes it to make sure that this is real, that she isn’t dreaming it all after falling asleep on the hay bales in the barn on the farm again.

Thankfully, Sarah is a wonderful mother who knows her daughter well enough to guess that her brain is in the middle of a how-is-this-really-happening-meltdown and needs some assistance. With her free hand, she shakes Sid’s hand instead.

“Hello Sid, I’m Sarah Jackson, Grace’s Mother. It’s an honour to meet you, isn’t it Grace?”

Wide-eyed, Grace nods -still not quite able to form words.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” Sid replies, shaking Sarah’s hand. “I’ve heard you guys have both come a long way to catch the game. Sorry we couldn’t give you a better result.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sarah eases. “You are more than making up for it by letting us steal some of your valuable time.”

Grace tries hard to keep her heart rate normal and her excessive blinking to a minimum as Sid asks where specifically they come from and her mother answers with talk of the farm and their family. She watches the way Sid fights to keep his eyes open and puts in forced effort to make sure his face is giving signs of paying attention, but with all the staring she’s doing, she can pick up on the flutter of tiredness in his eyes and the weight of exhaustion on his shoulders after the hard game.

“I’m sorry for making you do this,” she blurts out suddenly, cutting Sid off as he begins to ask about Jacob’s studying. “I know you’re super tired after the game, and disappointed since it was a loss and a loss to the Rangers, but I really did want to meet you so I asked the guy if he could reschedule for some other time, I mean, we are here for a few more days. Except he got kind of pushy about it and I didn’t want to miss the chance to talk with you about everything ‘cause I just have so many questions –but if you want to go home or whatever that’s fine too. You’ve probably got someone waiting on you; well, no, of course you do I mean, it’s all over the internet.”

She rushes it all out almost all in one breath and though she knows she’s over killing it, she just can’t stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth. It’s a slow and painful train wreck, but they just keep coming, falling out of her mouth and into the air around everybody at an alarming rate.

“Not that I like –Google you or internet search you or whatever. Much. ‘Cause I’m not that type of –OH MY GOD. I’m going to shut up and stop talking and find myself a rock to crawl under. Right about now.”

By the power vested in somebody high and mighty and with a beautiful soul, Grace receives what she can only count as a miracle as Sid, Coach and the reporter all just laugh warmly like her behavior isn’t worrying or embarrassing at all.

She turns to her mother and gives her a raised-eyebrow look of ‘WHAT IS HAPPENING’ and Sarah just chuckles and squeezes her hand in response.

“I am SO sorry, th-that is so embarrassing,” Grace apologises, making the effort to send the words in the direction of Sid, Dan and the reporter –the reporter who please for the love of God is hopefully not writing this all down because wanting the earth to open up and swallow her whole right now is bad enough on it’s own. Grace doesn’t think she could handle reading all about it in the paper tomorrow morning.

“Not at all,” Sid replies, taking it in stride with a beaming, reassuring smile as if he witnesses epic meltdowns from awe-struck fans so often that it has become normal, almost expected in fact. And Grace blushes even harder at that thought, because he is Sidney Crosby, face of the league and Captain of the Penguins -of course reactions similar to hers are normal for him.

“I’m not that tired, besides, you’ve made quite the effort to come and support the team and I, it’s the least I can do to show you our appreciation,” he continues. “I am hungry though, so, would you and your Mom care for a late dinner? My shout.”

Grace is pretty sure that she sees him sneak a look at the reporter and emphasise the ‘my shout’ part of his invitation in the reporter’s direction, but she’s also not yet capable of digesting that, or digesting anything beyond ‘HOLY SHIT WE ARE GOING TO HAVE DINNER WITH SIDNEY CROSBY’ and then mentally lining up all the questions she has ever thought of asking him.