(My response for this week's writing prompt.)
"Pass the puck!" she screamed to the kids skating in the arena below. "Steven's open! Pass it to him!"
Cheryl Carlson began stomping her feet and clapping her hands, the wide skin of her forearms snapping back and forth unseen beneath her large purple ski jacket.
"Shoot, shoot!" she bellowed. The ten year old goalie from the visiting team stopped the sliding puck and smothered it with his glove. Cheryl slumped back into her seat, causing everyone to feel a distinct sinking feeling along the backs of the seats across the row.
"Nice try Derek!" she said as she clapped some more and in turn started a chain reaction of similar applause from the other parents around her. Across the ice rink on the opposite side of seats, the visiting parents applauded as well.
Cheryl had long since taken it upon herself to lead the moral support for her son's hockey team - a decision no one else truly contested or cared about to begin with. Of course, it was also this apparent apathy amongst the parents that convinced Cheryl to step herself up in the first place, and only gave cause for her to cheer even harder for their team.
Or louder. Ultimately, it was really all about the same to everyone else.
The puck dropped.
"Alright, here we go!" Cheryl said. "Watch your man, Tyler! Derek, get into position!" Despite sitting seven rows back from the arena, Cheryl's shrill, voluminous voice echoed far beyond that of the children's own coach next to them. And while they certainly did their best to ignore it, it was simply easier for the kids to just accept it as part of the game's usual noises; this far into the season, Cheryl's voice was as much a part of the game as AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" during warm-ups, the referee's whistle, and the younger brothers and sisters who always ran squealing back and forth behind the bench.
"Tyler, watch your man!"
"Don't dump the puck!"
"Aw, bad call ref!"
"Hustle! Skate! Skate!"
Almost an hour into the game at the start of the third period, a little girl ran up the steps of the seats. Just behind her walked her mother who was carrying a familiar translucent ice cream bucket.
"Okay everyone," the girl said, "we're going to do the fifty-fifty draw now!"
Cheryl's head snapped over to Philip's younger sister rocking slightly back and forth in her usual red wool hat. All the parents reached into their pockets and pulled out their raffle tickets. Though she kept one eye on the continuing game, Cheryl went curiously silent with her other eye looking at the numbers between her short, pudgy fingers. Derek's grandmother in the third row pulled a ticket from the bucket and handed it to the excited little girl.
"The last three numbers are one, three, eight!" she announced. "One-three-eight!"
Light-hearted groaning made its way through the rows as parents half-lamented how close they were. All but one, in any case.
"Oh! That's me!" Cheryl said as she waved her ticket around, causing another noticeable tremor across her row. As Philip's sister ran over to confirm, her mother presented the collection of forty-seven dollars. As Cheryl's laugh echoed over the ice, the other parents gave a polite applause in light of her luck. "Oh, this is wonderful!" she continued. "We can go out for a nice dinner tomorrow, then! Oh, this was an excellent time to win this, thank you..."
As the entire arena heard about Cheryl's future dinner plans, young Tony Carlson slouched down low on the player bench, shaking his head and bouncing his hockey stick against his helmet while his teammates laughed quietly.
