Maybe I was better off forfeiting it altogether. I failed. I have a D in Intro to Literature. That’s fucking embarrassing. That’s like being unable to read and comprehend shit. Everyone can read and comprehend!Second graderscan read and comprehend.
I can’t believe I thought I’d hit rock bottom a week ago. Now, I’ve fully dug a hole into the earth’s crust and curated my own holding cell of dead dreams where my body will rot until I become nothing but an incorporeal name of the past. And no, this isnotme being dramatic. My life sucks balls. Big, sweaty, hairy balls.
Thewhooshof the puck torpedoes past me, whipping up a tornado of ice shavings and sucking me into a vacuum of chilled air. I have to blink a few times to transport myself back to the present. I’m at hockey practice. My teammates are counting on me, and I’m as useless as a condom dispenser in the Vatican. I had every chance to intercept that shot.
Crew Calloway—captain of the Minnesota Mustangs, retired playboy, and all-around stand-up guy—skates over to me, donning a frown that’s signed, sealed, and delivered with my name on it.
It’s crazy how far we’ve come. We used to be sworn enemies.Or more accurately,Iwas his enemy, and he was the innocent bastard just trying to live his life.
“You okay?” he asks, his visible breath slipping into the fifty-degree atmosphere like the end of a comet’s tail.
No matter how much I want to shake off my fake smile and artificial attitude, my impenetrable bulwarks prevent me from doing so. They’re like high-rise wooden stakes broadcasting aKEEP OUTsign in regard to my fragile, fragile ego.
“Yeah, just off my game,” I deflect, clenching my hockey stick out of frustration. Not a total lie, alright?
Something sinister knots in my stomach, jealousy cresting like a destructive wave against an eroded, coastal bluff at the seemingly peaceful lives of my fellow teammates. We’re working toward the Frozen Four, and if I have any shot at convincing my dad that I’m good enough to make it to the NHL one day, then my performance has to be flawless.
Axel—a hulking defenseman with a kink for my humiliation—joins the conversation, way too giddy for nine a.m. on a Tuesday. There’s no pretense to his words, no sugarcoating, just a no-lube kind of ass fuckery that manages to garner too much attention.
“Is it true that you ran over someone with your car?”
I choke on my own spit.
The rest of Crew’s friends flock around us like seagulls starving for a breadcrumb of truth amongst exaggerated lies and glamorized fabrications. There are five pairs of eyes on me, and my guilt is louder than a flashy marquee.
“I didn’trun oversomeone. I hit someone. On accident.” I tack on the last bit rather quickly.
I would’ve kept this a secret if it wasn’t for the goddamn gossip vultures. My teammates are the closest things I have to friends. I don’t…play well…with others. Honestly, I kind of shoehorned my way into their friend group, and they’ve been generous enough to let me stay.
I’m kind of expecting them to give me shit for it, but color me surprised when Crew offers me an—ugh—pitiful half smile. He’s too nice for his own good.
“Are you okay?”
I want to say, “I’m fine,” but the hyperactive voice inside of my head screams, “Me? Okay? Oh, yeah. I’m good. Great, even. Almost killed an innocent person, so that was fun. Then got cussed out by her and my own father. She has the power to ruin my reputation completely, and I can’t even be mad about it. Ironically, I was trying to fix my life before I ended up destroying it. It’s like this fucked-up, never-ending ouroboros of failure after failure, and I’ll secretly never be satisfied with my own accomplishments because my expectations are too high. But don’t worry about me—there’s only a fifty percent chance I won’t try to roll into oncoming traffic.”
But, of course, I just give a tight-lipped nod.
I hate having emotions. I hateshowingmy emotions. Which probably makes sense as to why most people avoid me…and why most girls mark the NEEDS THERAPY box on my after-sex survey. I like to keep track of my stellar performances, okay?
The hole-burning spotlight on me is suddenly two degrees too hot. “Honestly? I’m more worried about the girl that I hit.”
“You? Worried about someone other than yourself? That’s a first,” Foster, our goalie, jokes, only to be gunned down by a very unamused deadpan from our captain.
“I mean…no, yeah. That makes sense,” he saves.
“Issheokay?” Harlan follows up, always the voice of reason.
He’s also the nicest person I’ve ever met—like, the kind of nice wherehe’dapologize for getting hit by a car. But he’s not a pushover by any means. He just has a big heart, which is more than I can say for a lot of people.
The barbed truth lodges in my esophagus, scraping delicate tissue just to taste the air. She’s far from okay. The image of her lying on the ground, bruised and bleeding, percolates throughmy mind like rain through honey locust leaves. A constant drip feed of torturous memories. Nobody will ever understand the inexplicable fear I felt at that moment.
I don’t elaborate; I don’t invite questions. “She’ll be okay.”
Sutton, with his giant height and enviable mullet, sighs as if he was the one behind the wheel. He’s got this whole mountain man vibe going on. He practically materialized off the page of one of those historical romance novels. “Oh, thank God.”
I’m so torn between letting my repressed emotions fly free and reinforcing my (hopefully believable) façade. I’ve never been burdened by anything before. I always get what I want, and my bank account has so many zeros that it looks like a binary code. But the leaden weight that caves my chest in is one I never could’ve predicted. There’s a restlessness in my body, skittering into the hard-to-reach corners, nesting in subterranean crawlspaces.
When I speak, the words are ripped out of me. “She was so…angry. I mean, of course she fucking was. I don’t deserve her forgiveness, you know? But I feel this responsibility to do everything I can to make it up to her. Ineedto fix this. I don’t want to imagine a world where I can’t.”
