Page 2 of The Fall
When I’ve been here before on other maudlin midnights feeling sorry for myself, I’ve screamed at the waves or hurled rocks at the surf, and then I would trudge back to my life and lace up again in the morning. I’ve never come to this beach when I’ve been this desolate before. Tonight, the emptiness out there echoes the void inside me.
I need to get off this beach, walk back to my truck, and get away from these waves and their whispers.
But I don’t want to.
I’m not suicidal, but I’m desperate, and the difference is razor-thin. Here, hovering on the knife-edge between the two, I can’t say which way I’ll fall.
I haven’t slept in three days. Not really. Every time I close my eyes, I see blown plays, missed blocks, and given-up goals. It’s a constant movie flickering on the insides of my eyelids. The headlines, the sound bites, and the frustrated growl of my coach are all around me, this constant barrage of everything I amnot. Every day, I’m drowning in all of it, in what I could have been, what I wish I could be, if only?—
I want it to stop. I want to hold on to the silence of a world where I’m the only thing in it.
And I’m so tired of being alone.
I dreamed once of being part of something larger than myself, something that would always support me, something I could never disappoint. I still want that. A hopeless part of me clings to happy endings. I want destiny, and forever, andmy name stamped in silver that screams to the universe that Iexisted, that Imattered.
Waves break and crash, flow and recede.
Everything I used to love about my life is either irreparably shattered or has withered and died.
I could do it.
The thought pops into my head so matter-of-factly. I’ve been thinking about it for months. It started so fleeting, so minor, until I realized it wasn’t so fleeting anymore. Now the thought is scratched into my brain, worried on over and over again, each time gouging me deeper, and it’s not going away.
Would anyone notice?
Hey, what happened to Kicks?
Who knows, man. Kid was a washout anyway.
No, no one would miss me if I disappeared.
It’s only one step, then another. The water and the sky are so entwined that I cannot separate the two.
For one beautiful moment, I believe that I’m not stuck in this life, and that if I jumped, I could soar. If I ran, I could flee. I could let go and find a new life.
The roar of the waves fills my ears. Black water crashes around me. My knees give way, and I drop to the surf. Wave and sea foam slap my face, cruel with salt, harsh on my lips.
I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to turn around. I’d rather stay here. I’d rather merge with the waves that stretch to the horizon and crash and curl and slide and pull back.
But I get up.
No one is coming to save me from myself.
The rubber flooring of the Orcas locker room squeaks under my shoes as I trudge toward my stall. I stop and stare at my name tag. There I am, Torey Kendrick, the disappointment.
I drop my bag and sink onto the bench.
There was a time when my name meant something, when I was the golden boy, the second overall pick, the franchise savior who would lead this team to glory. Everyone believed it, too: scouts, management, fans. Hell, even I believed it.
The name over my stall might as well be a punchline now.
I peel the tape off my stick, strip by strip. Clean lines used to calm me. Ritual equals control. Left glove, right glove. Laces tight, then tighter. The bite of the eyelets grounds me.
They said my stride was poetry once. They said I saw lanes two passes ahead, that the game slowed for me. I fix my gaze on the black tape pulling smooth from the roll, a single mercy. Around the knob, spiral, pinch, test.
Dreams die in slow, rotting stages. First it’s a blip, a bad week, a cold stick. Then comes the bargaining—one more video session, one more hour on the bike, one more tweak to my curve. After that, the slow, grinding acceptance seeps in, suffocating you, until the life you pictured wavers like heat over asphalt: right there, shimmering, so close, and nothing but air.
Hockey has a way of folding you into its myth and spitting you out when you don’t fit the story anymore. Billboards come down. Jerseys go on clearance racks. The kid who used to shout my name when I tossed him a puck at warm-ups probably shouts someone else’s now.
