Page 6 of A Thousand Broken Pieces

Blood …

The coppery scent immediately yanked me back to the moment I prayed I could forget. The one that was as tattooed onto my brain as deeply as the black and red ink on my neck. I felt my breathing stutter, the white puffs of smoke bursting into misty staccato balls before me. My stomach swirled, the fire I held on to like a crutch extinguishing by the second as that night came tumbling back.

I made a harsh right turn onto the dirt road that led to home but slammed my foot on my brakes halfway up, at the pond. I was panting like I’d just run a marathon. I couldn’t be in the car. It was too enclosed, too stifling, reminded me too much of that night …

Jumping from the driver’s seat, I ran to the pond, inky thick ice coating its surface. I stopped at the edge, head tilted back as I stared at the darkening sky.

In memoriam …

A choked, strangled sound wrenched from my throat. I bent down, palms flattening on the ice. Anything to ground me.Christ. How did we even get here? How had it all gone so wrong?

Why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t he justtalkedto me—

Throwing my head back, I screamed into the night sky, hearing sleeping birds fleeing from the surrounding trees. I slowly stood, throat raw, body jumping with adrenaline, and moved to the shed that I hadn’t opened in I didn’t know how long.

Placing my bloodied hand on the handle, I wrenched it open and found my old skates staring back at me. I ignored the punch to the gut I received when I saw the second pair leaning beside them.

Grabbing mine, I kicked off my boots, not caring if my socks were soaked through as they slapped on the snow. I slipped them on and felt nauseous as that familiar rush ofrightnesstook me in its hold. I glanced up at the sticks that stared back at me like they had a soul, like they had memories that lay trapped in the layers of wood.

Before I could overthink it, I grabbed for the one with black and gold tape—Bruins colors. As I held it, it felt sacrilegious. I never believed I deserved to hold this stick. How could I when it belonged to my hero? The one who’d taught me everything I knew. The one I’d looked up to, emulated, laughed with and run to. The one who’d shone so bright he lit up the whole friggin’ sky.

Now, I was permanently stuck under his eclipse.

Instinctively moving to the pond, I placed my right blade on the ice and pushed off until I was gliding along the surface. The harsh wind slapped at my face. My lungs, which felt like they’d forgotten how to function, drank in a long gasp of air. The tip of the stick in my hands dragged across the pond’s frozen surface. I tapped it back and forth like I was passing a puck in between. It came as natural to me as breathing.This. Ice. Hockey.

I closed my eyes as I circled the pond. And like I had slipped into another plane, I heard the distant echo of two kids laughing …

“You think you can take me, kid?” Cillian’s deep voice rang out over the snow and wind as I ran toward him, stealing the puck from under him. “Hey!” he laughed and chased me down the pond at what felt like a million miles an hour. These days, he couldn’t catch me. When I slipped it through the two branches that made up our makeshift goal, he wrapped his arms around me, swooping me off the ice. “You’re better than me now, kid. How the hell did that happen?”

The smile on my face was so wide my cheeks ached. I shrugged.

“You know that, right?” Cillian said, releasing me and circling where I stood. “You’re gonna go all the way. Everyone sees it. All eyes are on you.”

I didn’t see it. Cill was the best hockey player I’d ever seen. I was pretty sure I would never measure up. He was older than me and was the star of every team he’d ever been on. Ever since I could remember, I’d wanted to be just like him.

“It’s in the stars, kid,” he said, roughing at my messy hair with his gloved hand. “We’ll play at Harvard together, then hit the big time. NHL, All Stars. Olympics.” He smiled and pressed a kiss to my head. “Together, yeah?”

“Together,” I replied, feeling like the luckiest kid in the world. Me and Cillian. Together, the two of us could conquer the world …

A sinking feeling pressed onto my shoulders, a ten-ton weight pushing me down into the ground. I opened my eyes, only to find myself standingin the dark, in the middle of our neglected and abandoned pond. Alone. No future we’d dreamed of waiting before us. NoWoods Brothersconquering the world. Just me, and the specter of my brother hovering over me like a vacuum, sucking anything good and light into its ravenous void.

The wood of the hockey stick groaned in my hands as my fingers wrapped around it like a vice. The longer I stood there, immobile, fury filled the emptiness in my soul and built and built until I lifted that stick high and slammed it down into the ice with every bit of strength I could obtain, shattering and splintering it into a thousand broken pieces.

Our dreams were shattered now too, so what was one more casualty in this shit show of a situation? Pushing back off the ice, I shucked off my skates, kicking them into the mass of overgrown, leafless trees surrounding me, and slumped back to the ground.

You’re going, kid …

Dad may have well been behind me as for how loud his voice was in my head. I was eighteen. And about to go on a trip around the world with others apparently “like me.” I was eighteen and should be working toward the future I’d dreamed of. But the one I had been promised had been stolen from me by the one I loved most, the one Itrustedmost in this world. Nothing else mattered anymore. I was completely alone.

And for such a long time now, I hadn’t even found it within myself to care.

Timid Hearts and First Sights

Savannah

New York

“ARE YOU ALL PACKED?”

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