Page 2 of Salvation
The boys line up, and the whistle blows. This is the part where my heart should hammer and excitement should coursethrough my veins. But even though I still love this game, I feel nothing. I haven’t since I was sixteen years old. I smile when I’m supposed to—make jokes like people expect me to—but inside, I’m dead. I guess that’s what happens when a man loses everything.
With the flick of his wrist, the center snaps the ball, and I hold my breath, watching the boys run the play we’ve practiced a thousand times.
“Please, God. Let me feel something. Anything,”I pray as the ball sails through the air, and the crowd waits in anticipation.
I’ve prayed that same prayer every day for years, but nothing ever changes. I keep trying, though, hoping my faith will be enough one day.
It has to be enough.
But when one heartbeat descends into the next and the ball falls into the receiver’s hands, that prayer goes unanswered again.
I’m numb.
Still, I go through the motions. I sling my hand in the air, cheering as the receiver sprints down the field. My voice can be heard above everyone else’s as he runs it in for a touchdown, and I take off running with the team to meet him in the end zone.
It’s a show I’ve perfected, and the irony is not lost on me.
I’ve learned that if people think you are happy, they won’t look close enough to know you’re not.
Reaching the end zone, everyone else crowds around the receiver, slapping him on the back and offering him congratulations, but I hang back, letting my eyes drift to the spot they always do at the end of a game—to the top right-hand corner of the bleachers. It’s always empty, and yet, I always look anyway.
My eyes fall on the spot, and for one single second, I can feel my heart again as I spy familiar blonde curls.
Ivy.
The lights turn on, and my life gets brighter. The world lifts off my shoulders. I can breathe for the first time in years.
But then I blink, and the darkness returns—just like it always does when reality smacks into my chest. Ivy’s not here. She left, and she’s never coming back.
______________________
I walk in my back door, rubbing at my neck. It’s late, and all I want to do is go to bed. Tonight isn’t the first time I thought I saw Ivy. She’s everywhere. The sound of her laughter in an aisle over at the grocery store. The amber of her eyes in an unsuspecting stranger. Her memory haunts me wherever I go, like a ghost intent on making me pay for my mistakes.
Scrubbing my hand down my face, I pull my phone from my pocket and tap the screen to check it before going to bed for the night. Three missed calls from my mother stare back at me, and even though I would love to wait to return them until tomorrow, Della Rae Richards is not to be ignored. I wouldn’t put it past her to show up at my house and stand over my bed in the middle of the night, all over an unreturned phone call.
The woman is crazy. In a good way, but still crazy.
So, pulling out a chair and sitting down, I swipe my thumb across my screen and press the phone to my ear. She answers on the second ring.
“Campbell,” she says before I can even say hello, “is that you?”
Two kids scream in the background, and I hear my mom cup her hand over the speaker to talk to them. I sigh, rubbing my free hand over my forehead, already exhausted from this conversation.
“Sorry about that, honey,” Mom says, returning her attention to the phone.
“Did Isaiah drop his kids off again?” I ask, already knowing the answer, but asking anyway.
My older brother, Isaiah, was the only child for a long time. Our parents babied him, constantly bailing him out of everything, and that habit has continued now that he’s older. By the time he was eighteen, he loved three things: my parents’ money, alcohol, and drugs. There was a time when everyone thought he was doing better—getting his life together. He met a girl, settled down, got married, and had a couple of kids, but when she divorced him last year, he slid right back into those old habits, relying on my parents to bail him out.
“Campbell,” Mom says my name with a warning.
“Was he at least sober today, Mom?” I have to ask.
She doesn’t say anything for one second—then two—but I already knew the answer in the first second.
“Mom.” There’s admonishment in my voice that I’m begging her to hear.
“No, Campbell. That’s my baby, and you don’t give up on your babies. I’ll just keep praying.”
