Barriers

I very clearly understand what had just happened, but I don't respond right away. The world has stopped and all essence of the present time seemed to fade away for a moment. I don't move until my mom nudges me.

“Nas!” she exclaims, her grip on my knee turning to downright painful, “You did it!”

The arena is silent for the first time all night. The same thing is running through everybody's mind – she was drafted? - but I can't think about that. I stand at the same time that my dad does, and he looks down at me and envelops me into a hug.

“I knew it.” My shoulder is wet with his tears. My dad is not a man who cries a lot, and in that moment I knew how much this meant to him. “I knew you would.” He was having trouble forming coherent sentences, so I gave him one last squeeze and stepped aside to hug Tatiana and my little brother, Ivan. My mom was last to receive my attention.

“My girl,” she tells me, hands on my shoulders, eye-to-eye. I have an inch on her height-wise but our gazes are locked. There's a camera in our faces, two of them actually, so she hugs me and simultaneously cries and speaks Russian in my ear. When she lets go, I leave the aisle and make the walk up to the stage.

The entire arena is looking, every single pair of eyes on me. I'm not just the last pick of the draft; I'm the first female pick of the draft, ever, and it hits me that that's kind of a huge deal. I make it to the stage and shake hands with my new general manager, his assistant, and the owner of the Bruins.

“Thank you,” I say as the crowd starts to finally cheer, apparently snapped out of their shocked reverie. I speak up so that I'm heard by the men next to me. “So much. Thank you.”

“We're excited to have you join us,” I hear, but I can't tell who said it because I was pulling the jersey on. We pose for photos and I shake their hands again.

While the first rounds of the draft seemed to drag on, everything that happened after being selected seemed to be in fast forward. I lost track of how many interviews I'd done, photos I'd taken, hands I'd shaken. I must have met thirty people from the Bruins organization, and my phone had been buzzing nonstop for half an hour.

Much later, I was able to catch up with my family again. My parents were still crying, but it was useless to try to get them to calm down, especially since seeing them cry made me start to cry. All five of us hugged each other in a sea of arms and tears, surely looking crazy.

“My girl,” my mom said to me again, her hand on my wet cheek. “My girl, the hockey player.”

“We need to have jerseys made,” my dad said, with a sharp nod.

“She doesn't know her number yet,” Ivan piped up from my left. I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer to me.

Being the oldest, I knew I had a path to set out for my two siblings. Even though we'd all been involved in similar activities at the start – hockey, figure skating, dance, gymnastics – we'd eventually broken apart and gone our own ways. Tatiana didn't like playing hockey but loved skating. I loved hockey but didn't like how figure skating, with its practices and training and competitions, felt like two or three full-time jobs put together. Ivan hated skating and had enjoyed hockey until he decided he wanted to be a wrestler. Even though the three of us had our own interests, I knew that my role was very clear: I had to show them that you could do whatever you wanted if you wanted it bad enough. As I look around at the thinning crowd, dotted here and there with draft jerseys and hats, I hope I had shown them just that.

“You're number seven on the Sonics,” Tati says to me, leaning against my dad. “The Bruins don't have a number seven, so you'll probably keep your number.”

“Look at this little hockey know-it-all,” I joke. Tati grins and looks up at my dad, who is smiling down at her. My mom claps her hands together.

“We go out for dinner,” she says with a tone of finality. “To celebrate.”

Going out to dinner was harder than it sounded. We were in an unfamiliar city that was extremely difficult to navigate. My dad was driving with mom in the passenger seat, and I sat up from my middle seat in the back. We were now on the same road we'd been down three times.

“We're lost. So just turn in here.” There's a McDonald's coming up, and I'm trying to be a voice of reason.

“No,” Mom said sharply. “We don't celebrate with... with garbage.” She gestured towards the golden arches of McDonald's to our left. My dad put his turn signal on and parked the car right in front of the restaurant. Mom looked at him like he had just betrayed her or stabbed her in the back.

“What?” he asked. “You heard Nastia, we're lost.” He looked to me, and I nodded in agreement. “And McDonald's is Nastia's favorite. So she should choose where we celebrate.”

“C'mon Mom, I'm so hungry,” Ivan groaned from my left. I watched as my Mom's defenses wore down; her face softened and she sighed.

“Fine. But we never do this again.” The backseat of the car empties as we push and shove our way out to the parking lot, shouting all the way. “Behave!” Mom yells from behind us, trying to regain some control of the situation at hand. I open the door and let Tati and Ivan go ahead of me, and when I look back, I see my mom and dad hand in hand, in their own world.

–

Five days later and we've been back home for three of them. I'd informed everyone I knew about being drafted, including my friends, teammates, and my boyfriend, Doug. There was a pretty big party thrown in my honor, courtesy of a couple of the Sonics, and there was a copious amount of alcohol which is always a good way to celebrate. Everyone is excited, and I am too, but there was a definite lull now that all the festivities were over. Now I have to wait for an invitation to the Bruins development camp, and hopefully after that I'd be invited to training camp.

It's a very early Friday morning when I wake up to my phone chirping beside me. I grab it sleepily and mumble a greeting to whoever is on the line.

“Is this Anastasia? This is Peter Chiarelli, from the Bruins.”

“Oh! Jesus. Hi. Hello! This is Nastia.” Now I'm awake. I sit up in bed and rub my eyes, ignoring the clock on my nightstand that reads 7:34 AM. I am never up this early.

“Good morning, Nastia. I hope everything is going well. I wanted to extend an invitation to you to the Bruins development camp coming up in early July. All of the draft picks from this year and some from years prior will be there. It's designed to help us gauge who's in shape, who's ready for the NHL, and who maybe needs some extra time. We'd be glad to have you.”

This is it. Things are beginning to happen. If I impress everyone at development camp, I could possibly be in the NHL next season. I couldn't say yes fast enough.

“Absolutely! I'll be there.”

“Fantastic! I'll e-mail your agent all of the travel information. We're looking forward to seeing you.”

“Wait!” I exclaim before he can hang up. “I just... You guys know I'm a girl, right? There hasn't been any miscommunication or anything?” I wince at how dumb that sounds, but he laughs out loud.

“We're well aware, Nastia. We've seen your stats, we've watched you play. We've drafted you and we're willing to help you achieve your potential, whether or not you're a girl. Now, I've just e-mailed all of the information to the agent you listed, and if everything works out, I'll be seeing you in early July.” He pauses. “It's hard work, so bring your game face.”

“No problem. I'll be there.” We say goodbye and I hang up and look at my phone in disbelief before I set it down on the nightstand. I stare up at the Datsyuk poster on my door, jump out of bed and sprint down the stairs. “Dad! DAD!”

“What?!” he yells from the kitchen. Then he goes on a tangent of Russian. “Running down the stairs, screaming all over the house. You kids are crazy. Just crazy.”

I make it into the kitchen. “You need to check your e-mail because I just got invited to development camp and they e-mailed the information to my agent and you're listed as my agent.” It hits me that I should probably look for an agent, instead of listing my dad as mine. “Please.” I smile at him.

“I'll go look. Good morning to you, too,” he says sarcastically. He moves to leave the kitchen, messing up my hair as he does. The kitchen is now empty, and as far as I know, the rest of the house is too. I go into the cupboard to grab a box of cereal while my stomach growls angrily at me. With a bowl full of Lucky Charms, a handful of Oreos, and a can of orange soda, I go into the living room and turn on Sports Center. I'm not really focusing on the TV until I hear my name.

“Big news in the hockey world these days. At the NHL Draft, the Boston Bruins made history when they drafted the first female player to ever be eligible for the draft, 18-year-old Anastasia Pankratova of the Lexington Sonics from the United States Hockey League. The pick wasn't without merit, as she scored 40 goals and 45 assists for a total of 85 points in 52 games last season.”

“Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli cites Pankratova's speed, vision, and knack for getting the puck in the net as reasons for their pick. But it helps that her father, Sasha Pankratov, helped the Soviet Union and Russia to several medals in his time. Sasha never made it to the NHL, but if all goes well at the Bruins development camp starting next month, his daughter may very well do just that.”

On the screen is the picture of me taken for the draft, a picture I've come to hate from seeing it on TV so often. I change the channel and focus on my food until my dad comes back from his office with a stack of papers in his hands.

“All the information is right here,” he shows me. “They'll pay for your flight and hotel.” I nod and set my empty bowl aside. “It looks like you leave the 28th.” I bite into an Oreo as I nod along to what he's saying.

“Cool. Do you want to go to the rink today?” I've been itching to get on the ice ever since the USHL season ended. My team, the Sonics, were out of the Clark Cup playoffs again this year, so it's been a while. Ice time is at a premium at the local rink because several rec hockey teams and figure skating practices all had to share. There is only one private rink in town, the Caliber Skating Club where Tati practices daily, but my parents pay the price for it.

He agrees to the prospect of shooting around at the rink for a while, and after I change into sweatpants and a Sonics long-sleeved shirt, I meet him in the garage. He's already found our skates and two sticks. Our garage is loaded with so much sports equipment – nets from the street hockey tournaments of my youth, skates (both figure and hockey), sticks, basketballs, tennis racquets. We've always been an active family.

He puts our stuff into the trunk of my ancient Grand Prix as I try to start it up. It usually takes three tries for the engine to start, but it runs fine. On my third attempt, it purrs perfectly.

“Needs a new starter,” my dad says once he's in the passenger seat. “But might as well just sell it, yes?”

“Sell it?” I'm paying attention to the road behind me and backing out of the driveway. I put the car in park and start the all-too-familiar route to the public rink. “How am I supposed to get around?”

“You can't take this thing to Boston. I won't let you.”

“I'm flying to Boston. You told me yourself that they're paying my way to development camp.” What is he even talking about? I brake at a red light and watch traffic flow by. He pauses.

“I mean after development camp. When you play in Boston.”

That's a pretty big assumption from the father of the girl drafted dead last in the draft, but he sounds so sure of himself. Still, I can't just leave that hanging in the air like it's gospel truth.

“There's no guarantee of that, Dad. There's no guarantee of anything except going to camp and doing my damnedest to impress the coaches.” The light turns green and I accelerate, paying careful attention to the road since my dad is with me. I'm a pretty careless driver otherwise. “I could end up in the ECHL or Providence. Or I could end up on the Sonics again, or nowhere at all.”

In the last two miles to the rink, nothing is said. My dad is hard to read, so I can't tell if he's planning what he's going to say next or if he's just done talking to me, upset with my realism. One is not necessarily better than the other.

I park my car and we get out and go to the trunk. As he gathers up the equipment, I play with the well-worn Red Wings sticker on my bumper. Without thinking, I try to peel it off.

“What you doing?” he finally speaks, using the sticks to smack my hand from the sticker. I recoil.

“Well, I can't go parading around with a Detroit sticker on my car, can I?” I've been a Red Wings fan since my hero's, Pavel Datsyuk, rookie year. But things have become a little more complicated now due to my new allegiance to Boston.

“Why not?” he asks, looking at me.

“What?”

“Why can't you parade around with a Detroit sticker on your car?”

“Because I'm a Bruin,” I answer him. He smiles.

“Sorry, I didn't hear that. Repeat?” I roll my eyes, catching on to what he's trying to do.

“Because I'm a Boston Bruin!” I shout to the empty parking lot. He grins ear to ear and wraps his free left arm around my shoulder. I wrap my arms around to hug him, mindful of the blades of our skates that he's holding, and press my face into his jacket.

“That's what I thought.” Nothing more needs to be said; his point is proven.