before there was sam dickinson, and before cherny, and before zayne parekh, it was malcolm spence. it’s not that misa has a type, or that all his friendships, doomed or everlasting, follow some cleanly carved out pattern. misa has some soft underbelly to him that’s compelling maybe, or it’s just that he’s agreeable, and that makes people want to take care of him.
toff can get on a podcast and say that. sam can tell stories about misa asking how the hotel phone works, there can be endless photos of misa getting driven around. none of that is particularly relevant to how you make friends and how you keep them.
spence and misa are born in the GTA, and they play in the GTHL together, and then a little later on the international stage, and they get drafted together (but separately) to the OHL and NHL. spence was the first road roomie, was the guy misa knew he could talk to in any room, because that’s not the case with everyone. it’s a very specific relationship you get to have with someone who has seen you at eleven, and thirteen, and with broken bones, and then again when you’re leaving them behind. because sure they played together when hockey mattered less, and against each other when it started to really matter, and there’s the sharp little divide between college hockey now and playing in the show. and there’s another divide where you have spence, all gta goodness, and zayne, all youth teammate, and sam, all infested string of fate to all important future.
and maybe it’s just because i think misa would do very good with a dead best friend, but spence sort of already has that role. except he keeps coming back to life, playing for UMich an hour away from where misa played for saginaw, but only after he left. it’s sort of funny in that way dying young is. when you are loving someone, because misa certainly loves spence, you don’t expect them to become a footnote of a person. it’s cruel to think that way, so misa doesn’t, and yet it’s inescapable because everyone in every locker has learned not to look, but is perpetually sizing up their temmates as competition. mites, and club, and juniors, and the lesser known nhl in this sense, is all temporary. your teammate becomes a sort of dead friend, or the guy you’re lying to, or the guy you forget took his coffee in a very specific way. or it’s all three, and you still see them in the offseason, on summer break from college, where you get to pretend neither of you are all three.
spence is sam because sam is no longer spence. and neither of them are actually all that special, zayne isn’t either, misa guesses, it’s about being temporary and solid and dead. malcolm spence gets to be malcolm spence again when it’s the offseason and misa looks at him and remembers that spence was his first kiss back when first kisses didn’t matter and girls were gross, that spence was the one with the good snacks, and a fridge in the garage, and a mean uncle, and who lied about knowing wayne gretzky. again, none of it matters except for when it does.
what i’m trying to get at, and what misa is trying to get very far away from, is that you don’t ever get to have anyone. maybe spence is going to die playing for UMich, because not making it to the NHL is dying, or he will and he comes back to life and misa looks at him again and sees thirty different versions of them, the kinds that are just them, and the ones who look like sam, and zayne, and porter martone, and cherny, and the guy misa once made out with at fifteen. doesn’t matter. you don’t get to keep them and being boys together where you punch each other in the face and lick ice covered poles, is not the same as getting in a scrum. or maybe it is and misa is fucking stupid, and he’s the only hockey player ever to have abandonment issues.
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