Sabrina
Copyright© 2026 by The Outsider
Chapter 13: Into the Vast Unknown
13 January 2016 – Devens Regional High School, Shirley, Massachusetts
Sabrina held her head in her hands, trying to will her headache away.
’One mistake ... Again, one mistake cost us the game... ‘
“Sorry, Sabrina,” Molly said. “We let you down again.”
Sabrina lifted her head.
“Team loss, Molly,” she replied with a tired smile. “The team lost, not me.”
“Still...”
“One-and-seven...” Fran sighed.
“We’re close, Fran. I can feel it. We’re close to a winning streak.” Sabrina mopped the sweat off her face with a towel.
“I’m not sure what’s been worse,” Sarah said, “getting our ass kicked by North Middlesex the first game, or losing the rest by single goals.”
“Yeah,” Sabrina sighed in agreement. “I hate to say it, but even the win over Groton-Dunstable last week was too close. We almost lost that game. If they hadn’t been offside ... It’s gonna be hard, but we’ve gotta keep plugging away.”
The other girls nodded.
’God, Coach loves his conditioning drills after a loss... ‘ Sabrina thought during her drive home from school the next afternoon. ’I’m going to bed early tonight, that’s for sure!’
She stopped next to the mailbox at the end of her driveway. She groaned, getting out of the car, and wobbled over to it. Sabrina stood in the snow, staring at the open mailbox. A big, fat, white envelope, half-folded over on itself, lay stuffed inside. Sabrina wiggled it free – it bore the return address of the Admissions Department at the United States Air Force Academy.
’A BFE! Holy shit, I got a BFE! A big f•©king envelope!’
Back in the car, Sabrina’s hands shook as she opened the envelope. Taking a deep breath, she slid the contents out onto the passenger’s seat. Her eyes stared at the words ‘Dear Appointee’ on the cover letter.
The car kept the neighbors from hearing her screams of joy, and the happy tears started after that. After her vision cleared, she backed the car onto Hilltop Road and pointed it toward Clinton. She soon parked in front of the dojo where her parents would teach that evening.
Sabrina may or may not have broken the speed limit getting there. Wiping her face once more, Sabrina stepped out of the car. She forced herself to walk – not run – to the front door.
“Hey, Princess,” her dad said from the edge of the mat. He did a double-take. “Are you okay? Have you been crying?”
She smiled and held up the letter from USAFA.
“You’re in?” he asked with a big smile. Sabrina nodded and launched herself at her father. He hugged her and whirled her around. “I’m so proud of you!” he croaked.
“Jeffrey?”
“Our youngest has good news to share with us, Keiko-chan.”
He handed the letter to his wife. Keiko’s hug was less physical but no less emotional. She whispered words of praise and congratulations to Sabrina.
“I’m gonna see if Pete wants a visitor,” she told her parents. “You guys have work to do.”
“Call your grandparents, too, Princess. Don’t forget to call Grandma Jane, either.”
“I’ll make sure I call them. Alex, too.”
She hugged her parents and walked out to her car.
“Hey, Pete,” she said into her phone.
“You miss me already? Didn’t you see enough of me today?”
“You know I can’t get enough of you. You and your mom want to go out for dinner? I want to share some news with you two.”
“‘Off we go, into the wild, blue yonder! Soaring high, into the suuuuuuunnnnnnn!’” the ragged chorus sang as Sabrina approached them in front of the school.
“Please, tell me you guys won’t ever sing again. Artists of the Year, you ain’t.”
Her friends pelted her with snowballs.
“Ungrateful wench,” Pete chastised. He brushed the snow off her shoulder before kissing her. “Congratulations. You’re the first of us to hear about college. Well, of those of us who are going to college.”
“You guys will hear soon, I’m sure.”
“I’m not too worried about getting into the CJ program at Fitchburg State,” Shawn shrugged. “I’m confident I will. Mom and Dad aren’t too sure about my wanting to be a cop, but I am. I think that came across during my interview.”
Sabrina gently punched his shoulder.
“Five-year program, right?”
“Yeah. College classes, police Academy time, and my master’s. I have to maintain a minimum GPA to automatically get into the police Academy, too.”
Sabrina stopped short when she saw her locker. It was festooned with blue and silver streamers, pictures of fighter jets and NASA rockets, glitter-covered stars, and a big ‘AIM HIGH!’ sign.
“You guys...” Sabrina sniffed.
“As we told you, Sabrina,” Ruby said, “you’re going places.”
Sabrina stepped onto the ice at Groton-Dunstable High School the following Friday. Another tough loss to Acton-Boxborough two days earlier had dropped their record to one-and-eight. She hoped the breathing exercises the team practiced before leaving the locker room would help today.
She tried to push the swirling thoughts out of her head and concentrate. She practiced some stick-handling drills before lining up to shoot on her goalie. As she curled away from the net, she looked into the stands. A group wearing the blue-white-and-black of the Fitchburg Shockers stood as one.
“LET’S GO, WARRIORS!” Their yell drowned out the other noise in the rink. Sabrina pointed to acknowledge them.
“Guys, come here,” she called to her starting line before the face-off. “Look, we’ve been close all season. This close!” she said, holding her thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart. “Put it all together today! Show Coach and our families that the early mornings and late practices haven’t all been for nothing! Show our friends we’re thankful for their support.” She looked each player in the eye. “We can do this! Let’s set the tempo! Right from the start!”
The Warriors attacked as soon as the puck dropped. They pushed hard through their first shift. The next line picked it up and pushed harder.
“That’s the energy we need!” Coach yelled at his players on the bench. “Varying shift lengths, guys! We’re gonna keep ‘em guessing today! Stay hydrated!”
Groton-Dunstable looked like they were standing still next to the Warriors. The Devens forwards crashed the net and kept G-D on their heels. The Warriors’ defensemen kept the puck pinned in G-D’s end. Crisp passing spun the G-D players’ heads around. Molly Ryan snapped a quick pass to Timmy Cernan, who slapped it in for the Warriors’ first goal.
“YES!” Sabrina shouted from the bench. She bumped gloves with the rest of the team and with the line on the ice as they skated by.
“Keep the pressure on!” Coach yelled. “Don’t let up!”
Devens led two-nothing at the first intermission.
“This is the effort I’ve been waiting all year to see!” Coach told the team in the locker room. “This is what I knew you were capable of! Two more periods! Keep it up!”
The home crowd tried to encourage the G-D Crusaders, but a quick goal from Devens rocked them. The G-D goalie was game, stopping shot after shot, but the Devens onslaught kept producing goals. The Crusaders tried to intimidate Devens with hard-hitting, physical attacks, but that plan ended when Sabrina leveled their largest defender with a clean check. The partisan crowd clamored for a penalty, but none came.
“I thought you were known for being unhittable, Sabrina?” Charlie Brace, the third line’s sophomore left wing, asked after the next line change.
“Still am, Charlie. I’m the one who did the hitting!”
“Four-nothing. Never thought I’d see us in this position!”
“Don’t lose focus, Charlie. The Bruins scored three third-period goals a few years ago, remember? Then they won in OT. Two minutes left in the second period here, then there’s the whole third ... It can happen...”
“Buzzkill...”
“Ha! The ‘buzzkill’ would be losing this game five-four.”
“Change up!”
Sabrina vaulted the boards. Half an hour later, the Devens players reveled in the unfamiliar feeling of victory. The noise approached painful levels. Coach Bramhall’s shrill whistle cut through the dressing room din.
“All right! Enjoy the feeling, guys. You earned it! Monday, though, we’re right back at it. We’ve got North Middlesex next Wednesday, in their building. As hard as you worked for the victory today, it’ll take even more effort to beat the top team in our league.”
“Nothing like a reality check...” Pete whispered to Sabrina on the way to their bus.
“Coach is right, Pete. We know what defeat feels like. It’ll take more wins before we’re accustomed to how winning feels.”
“Sabrina, got a sec?”
Sabrina turned at the sound of the deep voice. She craned her neck up to the face almost a foot above hers.
“Hey, Robert.”
Like Sabrina, Robert Thomas was a senior and the starting defensive end on the DRHS football team.
“Hey. Have you heard about Caroline and Chad’s party?”
Sabrina blinked. She hadn’t paid attention to anything related to the Perfect Couple in months. The fact that Robert asked her about them was surprising, too.
“The Plastic People and I don’t move in the same circles, Robert. Or see eye-to-eye, for that matter. And to be honest, you haven’t said word one to me since freshman year, so I’m a little surprised you’re doing so now...”
“I’ve heard they’re planning to invite you to their party. You’re going to the Air Force Academy, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So, in a couple of years, you’ll probably be watching me when Army comes to play.” Home football games were required activities for all cadets at USAFA. Sabrina needed a second to catch up.
“Wait, you’re going to the Point?”
“Yeah, they’ve been recruiting me for football, and my appointment came through last week. I’ll be part of West Point’s Class of 2020 if I survive Beast Barracks this summer.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you. That brings me back to your question of why I’m talking to you. You know they can rescind our appointments if we screw up before we report, right? Being arrested, poor academic effort, that sort of thing?”
“Yeah, but again, so?”
“So, the Slaves to Appearance are gonna try to trip you up before graduation.”
Sabrina’s face hardened.
“Do they know what happens when people attack me?”
“They should, but just because they’re intelligent, doesn’t mean they’re smart.” Robert looked away for a moment. “Sabrina, I grew up down the street from Mr. Oglethorpe. That’s why I avoided you back then. The incident with you in Eighth Grade destroyed him. His reputation evaporated, and he moved away. Mom explained how bad he was to women, but I didn’t get it. By the time it sunk in, we’d already formed our opinions of each other.
“Two years ago, when those guys broke into your house and you handled it, I listened to people like Cassie far too much. After the Halloween attack, you were so wrapped up in the fallout, and we in our respective seasons, that I didn’t take the chance to apologize when I could have. I should have.
“I don’t know what Cassie, Caroline, and that crowd are planning exactly, but watch your back. I know your friends watch out for you too, so if they hear about what those asshats want to do...”
“Scorched Earth, Robert. My friends will go nuclear, which could backfire on them as well.”
“Right. The subtle approach might be better in this case.”
“I’m gonna destroy them!”
“Calm down, Wheels,” Shawn cautioned Erica. “We need to figure this out and come up with the best way to handle it.”
“Sabrina,” Sarah cut in, “Cassie’s main argument against you is that you’re violent. Anyone who plays with you now, or did in Fitchburg, knows that’s not true, but all we’ve heard about the attacks is that some people broke into your house. We heard you took care of them, but again, that’s it. Is there more to the story? Something you could use to make Cassie and her bunch shut up?”
“She’s right, Sabrina,” Ruby said. “We’ve played this so close to the vest that anyone not involved only knows half the story. Less than half, actually.”
“That’s where we start,” Shawn proclaimed. “We start with the kids you play hockey with and give ‘em the straight scoop. Then we go on the attack but in a roundabout way.”
“Meaning what, Shawn?” Sabrina asked.
“After we push the full story out there, we work on discrediting Cassie, Caroline, and anyone else who talks smack about you. They weren’t there and they don’t know shit!”
“Okay, but I still don’t get how we’re gonna do that...”
Shawn’s smile reminded Sabrina of her mother’s feral smile.
“So, that’s what we’re going to do if they keep this up, Mr. Lanier, and why,” Sabrina explained to her principal later that day.
The principal sat quietly and considered Sabrina and Shawn’s proposal.
“You understand that you could bring down a firestorm of complaints with this. There are going to be some parents who will be upset. They will object that you’ve exposed their precious children to unpleasant truths about the world outside these walls.”
Sabrina stared at her school’s chief administrator.
“Mr. Lanier, I watched those people murder a police officer. Shawn’s father is an officer in Littleton, as you know. My father has worked alongside the men and women in blue for over twenty years, people he trusts to have the backs of him and his crews while they try to save the lives of others.” Her eyes burned with even greater intensity.
“Those vermin wanted to drag me into their cesspool, to sell me into a life of slavery and pain. The ‘unpleasant truths’ you speak of already exist inside and outside these pristine walls. Those men forced me to expose those truths. They attacked my home, twice! I refuse to allow anyone to slander me, especially if they deny reality and close their minds to it! ’Nemo me impune lacessit.’”
“I see you’ve inherited your father’s penchant for using quotes, Sabrina.” Phil Lanier sighed. “Very well. I’ll allow the flyers should they become necessary. Please keep any images and language you use on the conservative side, or I may have to change my mind.”
“That’s why they broke into your house? And then they tried it again?”
“‘You can’t cure stupid,’ Robert. And why does the reason behind the break-ins matter? If another country tries to invade us, are we going to care why they’re invading?”
“No, you’re right – we’d just worry about kicking their asses back to wherever they came from.”
“Right. So, will you help us?”
“Yes. And I’ll talk to my teammates, too. I’m sure some of them will help out.”
Sabrina updated her friends at lunch.
“Okay, so that’s the football and hockey teams accounted for.”
“We shouldn’t assume all of them will agree with us, Naomi, but we can probably count on most of them,” Erica pointed out. Naomi shrugged and nodded in agreement.
“What do you think those privileged idiots will do when the tide turns against them?”
“I don’t know, Desiree,” Sabrina replied, “but bullies like Cassie tend to crumble under pressure and blow away.”
After lunch, Sabrina saw that Robert and his friends had put up flyers in the school’s hallways. ’I guess they deemed them necessary... ‘ Up ahead, she saw Chet angrily tearing them down as he found them.
“HEY, CHET!” she yelled. He stopped and turned. She stepped up to him and pulled the flyers from his hand. “Truth hurts, huh? You trying censorship now?”
“You’re proving our argument for us!” he sputtered.
“Then why not leave them up, hotshot?” Molly snapped. “Is it because only some of the facts fit the story you’ve spun?”
Chet turned red and stomped away. Two students watching the drama replaced the downed flyers once he disappeared.
“Thanks, guys,” Sabrina said while bumping fists with them.
“You bet. The football team will have the whole school covered by the end of the day, and we’ve made lots of flyers to replace any that disappear. They can’t tear them all down.”
“Like I told Robert, just keep them clean, okay? We don’t want Mr. Lanier to make us take them down.”
“Well, I suppose losing to North Middlesex by only two goals this afternoon is an improvement,” Pete sighed.
“Better than losing by six any day...” Sabrina muttered. They lay on Pete’s bed, curled up together. “Still, I can tell we’re getting better. That win over Groton-Dunstable last week gave us a real shot in the arm. We’re not gonna win the league this year. Heck, we might not even make the playoffs.”
“Two-and-nine and you’re still thinking of playoffs? We won’t make the playoffs even if we win the rest of our games!”
“We stayed with those guys the whole game, Pete. The only reason we lost was a couple of lucky redirects. Without those, the game would have gone into overtime.”
“And as one saying goes, ‘If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon!’”
“Look, we just keep playing with that kind of intensity, and we’ll break out.”
“I know,” Pete sighed in agreement. “We’re helping build a good foundation for the next few years. Too bad we won’t be around to see the team prosper.”
“Anyway, our homework’s done. Why are we talking about hockey instead of other ... subjects?” She pulled him in for a kiss.
The team improved through the season. The Warriors out-skated Concord-Carlisle that Friday. They won going away, six-one. Most of the team sat in Robert Thomas’ barn later that night, laughing. Most of her friends and the other sports teams were at the party as well. In deference to Robert’s USMA appointment – and Sabrina’s to USAFA – there was no alcohol.
Sabrina looked around and smiled. This is what she hoped her high school memories would contain, not the shunning she had endured earlier. Her friends mixed with the others here and were having a good time.
“Who knew Erica was so good at darts?” Pete asked. “She’s beaten everyone she’s played so far.”
“Unreal, huh? The people she beat don’t look like they care, either.”
“It was cool of Robert to invite us tonight.”
“I’m glad we’ve finally made some friends outside of our circle, too.”
“Have you gotten tired of us?” Pete asked with a smile. “Or are you just getting around to telling us?”
“Well, there are only so many times I can hear Shawn’s jokes...” She jerked away when Pete tickled her.
“Do you think we’ve heard the last of Cassie and her group?”
“Doubt it. Making the playoffs is more realistic.” Pete put his arm around her again. “Less than four months to go.”
“I can’t believe it. It’ll go quick, too.”
Sabrina rested her stick across her knees as she stared down the rink. She shifted her gaze to the puck waiting for her at center ice. She exploded out of her crouch at the whistle.
There was no slow weave across the ice as she’d seen with some penalty shots. Sabrina charged at the opposing goalie. Staring at him, she faked a forehand wrister. He bit on the fake, raised his glove, and slid to that side. She braked and drifted backward. He sprawled and tried to poke-check the puck away from her.
’Gotcha, sucker!’
Sabrina chipped a forehand shot over the prone goalie into the wide-open net. The Warriors players fell over themselves laughing and cheering. Coach Bramhall signaled a line change. He put his hand on Sabrina’s shoulder after she sat down.
“Pavel Datsyuk, huh?” Corey Bramhall asked, referencing the great Soviet player who joined the NHL during one of his country’s periods of ‘openness.’
“I’ve always wanted to try one of his moves, Coach!”
“As a former goalie, I think I’m offended!” he said, nudging her helmet before walking away shaking his head.
“Holy shit, that was sweet!” Vic Thurmond laughed. “I think the goalie had to head back to the locker room to put his equipment back on! You undressed him!”
“Hey, we’ve only got four games left in our season, counting this one. I might never get a chance to try that move again! I had to learn it after I watched that shootout!”
“I think everybody is gonna be practicing that move now that we’ve seen you do it!”
“Anything to help us win. We’re not gonna make the playoffs, but we can at least get back to .500!”
“I’m not sure there’s much more I can teach you, Sabrina,” Miriam Danforth commented.
“It’s all right, Miriam...” Sabrina answered as she pointed the Cessna back toward Hanscom Field.
“I could see if there’s a jet instructor pilot around if you’d like?”
“Tempting. If the Air Force doesn’t send me to jet pilot training, I might look into it, but I’ll hold off for now. I’ll just build hours over the next few months.”
“You’ve picked up some unique qualifications at seventeen: a private pilot’s license, instrument and multi-engine ratings, complex aircraft rating. No tail-dragger endorsement, though. We still have time to add that to the list before June.”
“I think Dad wants me to be able to drive a car with a manual transmission before I leave. That might fill up the next few months.”
“That, and your karate.”
“Yeah. I’m bummed the Academy doesn’t offer a karate club or women’s hockey. I might sign up for Aikido. Learning another martial arts discipline might be useful.”
“The Air Force Academy doesn’t have women’s hockey?”
“Nope, not at any level.” Sabrina shook her head. “After the stink I made over not being able to play at my school, I pick a college that doesn’t offer it at all.”
“Can you force them to add it? Like you did to your high school?”
“Would you believe the service academies are exempt from Title IX?”
“Really?”
“No joke. I want to see what things are like out there before I start making that kind of noise, anyway. Plus, I doubt I’ll be the only female cadet there who misses the game.”
“I still don’t get why Framingham North is even on our schedule,” Pete griped. “It’s not like we’re in the same league.”
“Non-conference games, Pete. Like when the Patriots play teams outside the AFC East.”
“I guess. I hear Framingham’s kind of physical.”
“Like Amesbury?”
“Worse.”
“Great. At least we’re playing them at home.”
The Warriors were on a four-game winning streak, their record now nine-and-nine. They had a chance for a winning season if they beat Framingham North High School.
“I added some new music to our warm-up playlist,” Shawn mentioned before the game.
“Like what?” Vic asked.
“You’ll see.”
The first thing the team saw was the crowd packing the rink.
“I’ve never seen the place this full!” exclaimed freshman Jeremy Brenneman.
“Me neither, Jeremy,” Sabrina replied. “Of course, there hasn’t been a team while I’ve been here, so that might be why.”
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