Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
During lunch the following Wednesday Casey could feel the angst in the air of her classroom, some mix of excitement, anxiety, and dread. The first game of the season was scheduled for that evening, and they were up against Tupper Lake, who had a strong record, including first place at the Holiday Cup Tournament last year. Her lunch crowd was bigger than usual that day. A few other boys from the team had shown up, as well as Kyle. He spent a few minutes offering pregame reminders— Fuel the engine with healthy snacks and lots of water. Defenders, stay between the player and goalie. Wingers and centers, don’t look at the goalie, see the space around the goalie —but then he let the conversation wander where the kids wanted it to go: who they were watching on YouTube, the video games they were playing, the latest school gossip about who was dating whom. Casey knew he was hoping they’d relax a bit, but as the lunch hour wound down they settled into an uneasy quiet. It was Logan who finally gave voice to what everyone else was thinking.
“Tupper Lake humiliated us last time we played them,” he said, dragging a hand through his dark spikes.
“But that was last year,” Rosie said, “and you guys have improved a lot since then. You really have.”
Logan gave her a grateful smile across the circle, and a blush spread over her cheeks before she smiled in return and looked down.
“Rosie’s right,” Will said. “We have a ways to go, but we’re already a lot better than last year.”
Casey loved his optimism, but the other boys offered half-hearted agreement.
“Look, guys,” Kyle said, leaning forward on his desk, “there’s no way around it, Tupper Lake is a tough team.”
“No cap, Coach,” Ben said, shaking his head.
When Kyle shot Casey a furrowed brow she said, “That means you’re speaking the truth.”
“Yeah, they’re good. But you have to think about your game, not theirs. You all know what you’ve been working on, individually and as a team. And you’ve been putting the time in.”
That got the boys nodding. Everyone had agreed to the extra practices, so they’d worked together almost every day for the last week.
The warning bell rang, and the kids started gathering their things. Casey scrambled for something to say, words that would encourage the boys without offering false hope.
But Kyle beat her to it. “Listen up, Sandstoners. Just stick to the basics, remember what we’ve been doing in practice, and, most of all”—he smiled—“keep your heads up and don’t quit.”
She decided to stay quiet then. It really didn’t get any better than that.
After school that afternoon she forced herself to go up to her bedroom and spend an hour doing the same thing she’d been doing every day for the last ten days: going through the journals she kept during and following her stint in the hospital two years ago. The journals were part of her therapy homework, and she’d complied for several months before packing them away on the shelf of her closet. They were plain old black-and-white composition books, but they contained a depth of pain and darkness she’d hoped to never revisit. Now she was making her way through each of them, determined to read every word. As torturous as it was to relive that time, it felt necessary. During that breakfast intervention Wyatt and Angie had made it clear she was scaring them. Without knowing it she’d started down a road she swore she would never go down again.
Charlie had been gone eighteen months when she slit her wrist that awful night. In some ways the first six months had been easier, only because she’d lived in a perpetual state of shock and disbelief, her brain coated with a protective numbness, like she was walking through life in a fog. Then the fog started to lift, and she was expected to adjust to a new normal she just didn’t want to adjust to. No one said it out loud, but life was moving on without Charlie, and she was supposed to as well. She’d been, first and foremost, Charlie’s mom for almost ten years, and that’s who she’d planned to be for the rest of her life. She had been the earth to Charlie’s sun. Without his gravity she felt weightless, like she could just float away and disappear. Sometimes, that’s exactly what she wanted.
But killing herself could not have been further from her mind when she woke up that particular day, the first day of school. In fact, she’d been looking forward to getting back to work. Kyle had left three months before, and though she physically ached for him at times, she’d been able to hide out at home all summer without having to face the hungry need she felt every time she was around him. They had drifted far apart since losing Charlie, and he’d wanted them to be close again, like before. He needed her to be okay so he could be okay, and she couldn’t do that for him. When Kyle left, his departure had been largely a relief.
However, she knew it wasn’t healthy holing up in the house every day, and Wyatt, Angie, and Danny were watching her closely. So she’d decided that the first day of school would be the turning point. She would dive into her classes and the hockey program, stay busy and checked into her life. She even agreed to go to Angie’s house that night for dinner, and she would talk and eat and smile, and be around Morgan and Maddie without crumpling to the floor.
That morning started off well. She forced herself to get out of bed and shower as soon as the alarm went off, then beat Wyatt to the kitchen and made herself eat breakfast before heading to school early so she had prep time before the bell rang. She’d spent the last week spring-cleaning her classroom and her old lesson plans, coming up with fresh approaches to the social studies material she’d been teaching for fifteen years. By the time students started arriving, she felt ready, more present than she’d been in a long time. It was only 7:30 A.M. , and she’d already broken the cycle, interrupted the dark ritual that had ruled her mornings since Charlie died.
Her first two periods went off without a hitch. Both were eighth-grade classes, and she enjoyed catching up with returning students. She eased into the material they’d be covering, but also let them enjoy the first day of being the oldest kids in the school. They talked about their summers and their current dramas—there was endless drama—and she even found herself laughing with them.
It was third period that slammed into her like one of the freight trains that blew through the crossing on River Road. She should have been prepared, she knew which class was next on the schedule, but as soon as they started filing in she felt any confidence she’d been building all morning slip away. They were sixth graders, the kids Charlie had gone to elementary school with. The kids he should have been starting middle school with that day. She pasted on a smile and greeted each of them with a handshake as they walked in. There were faces she recognized, kids who had been in Charlie’s classes but she hadn’t seen in years, like Ben Landy with the chubby cheeks, the McKee twins with the strawberry blond hair. And she could tell by the whispers and wide eyes that many of them recognized her as Charlie’s mom.
Then Logan Lopez stepped in. She couldn’t remember when she’d last seen Logan, but he was taller and thicker. He gave her a shy smile as they shook— Hey, Ms. McCray —and when their eyes connected she knew he was thinking about Charlie too. She couldn’t speak, so she nodded at him and told herself she was through the worst of it. But when Will Taylor arrived it was everything she could do to remain standing. She’d been expecting a brand-new student who just moved to Potsdam over the summer. She had not been expecting the image of Charlie to walk through the door. And he didn’t just walk through the door, he reached up as he did to hit the top of the doorjamb with the tips of his fingers. Same thing Charlie used to do with all the doorjambs in their house, though he could never reach them.
Her sheer determination to not lose it in front of her students helped her go through the motions the rest of that day. But the same thoughts kept running through her head. Charlie would never be in middle school. He would never be as old as Will, and he would never be tall enough to reach those doorjambs. He would never be in class with Ben Landy or the freckled-faced twins again, and he would never hang out with Logan or play another game of hockey with him. He would never learn Kyle’s favorite Gretzky quote correctly—it would forever be You have to take a hundred shots, Dad. The pain that accompanied those thoughts felt like it pierced her heart and radiated throughout her whole body until there was nothing else. She would face the same thing tomorrow. And the day after, and the day after…
That’s when Casey knew there would be no turning point for her.
When she received Kyle’s text that afternoon— Okay? —she didn’t respond because by then she saw only one escape, and the more she thought about it, the more inviting it was. Not that she made a specific plan; it was more like she tucked the idea into a back pocket to use as a last resort. But having it there made it possible for her to go to Angie’s that evening, then spend time with Wyatt sharing old memories. She didn’t know exactly when she decided she was going to do it, but after hugging him good night she went straight to the upstairs bathroom, and she wasn’t deterred when there were no pills and her only option was razor blades. In that moment it was the only possible solution.
When she woke up in the hospital the next day, weak and disoriented, a huge bandage covering the aching wound she’d inflicted upon herself, her initial reaction was pure anger. Her plan had failed, now she was left to deal with the aftermath. As a teacher she’d been through enough suicide prevention trainings to know the scrutiny someone came under after mentioning thoughts of self-harm, never mind acting on them. Mandatory systems would kick in as mental health professionals were forced to prod and evaluate, determine how much of a threat she was to herself. She’d lost control over her own fate, and she was pissed off about it. Enough to refuse to see Wyatt, Danny, and Angie for days.
On the third morning she had a visit from Social Worker Maggie. When Casey opened their discussion by insisting she was fine now, that she’d hit a low point but needed to be home with her family to continue mourning the loss of her son—yes, she’d played that card—Maggie had asked why, then, was she refusing to see her family. Casey claimed she worried they were angry with her, and it was Maggie’s response that finally jolted her out of her very small, self-centered world: Well, I just met with them , she’d said. And they weren’t angry. They were scared because they almost lost you, and they’re wondering what they could have done differently.
Those words had fallen upon Casey like a ton of bricks, particularly when a memory surfaced, one she’d managed to block out until right then: Wyatt screaming for her over and over, banging against the bathroom door until the lock broke, yelling NO, NO, NO while he dragged himself toward her on his forearms…
Sitting at her desk now, Casey dropped her head in shame. She always did when she thought about how selfish she’d been, how cruel to everyone. But most especially, most egregiously, to Wyatt, who had already lost the rest of his family. She knew what it was like to lose people and wonder what she could have done to stop it, to carry around that grief and guilt. And she’d almost given Wyatt the same burden to bear.
She decided then and there, sitting across from Social Worker Maggie, that she would never put him through that again. Maggie said that was a good start, but she also explained that during suicidal moments the physiological functioning of the brain changes, its ability to problem solve is diminished, which is why there seems to be only one way to end the pain. So Casey stayed in the hospital for five more days, underwent the evaluations, participated in ongoing therapy, and she learned the darkest times would pass if she waited them out or distracted herself by making the pain physical: snapping a rubber band against her skin, pinching herself, tugging her hair. Safe techniques that disrupted her thinking and provided momentary relief.
She complied with all that was asked of her during that time, but she kept something for herself too. She never told anyone about her ritual, the one that ruled her mornings. How she stared at Charlie’s picture first thing, and watched videos of him on her phone, then went across the hall and sat in his room, all the while asking herself endless What If questions. She didn’t tell anyone about her ritual because they would have said she needed to give it up, that it was too painful. But it was the pain that fueled her, got her through each day. She didn’t know how to function without it. The one time she tried, she’d ended up bleeding out on her bathroom floor.
When she signed the safety contract with Wyatt, Angie, and Danny, she’d had only one request: they couldn’t tell Kyle. She knew he would come home if they did. She could stomach the idea of being treated like a child for a while, the intrusion of mental health professionals, the certain knowledge that many people in town would find out what she’d done. What she couldn’t take was Kyle coming back to fix her when she couldn’t be fixed, leaving both of them to see nothing but sadness, grief, and failure in each other’s eyes. Wyatt, Angie, and Danny agreed, and a few months after she got home from the hospital she initiated divorce proceedings to set him free.
While she was putting together postgame snacks for the kids a little later she received a text from Kyle: Can you step outside for a sec?
She went to the front porch and saw him standing on the lawn, just like the morning he’d asked for her help with Danny. He still hadn’t been inside the house since he came back.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just a couple of questions. Am I supposed to bring food to the game for the kids?”
“I’m taking care of that.”
“Okay.” He held up a piece of paper and a pen. “I have to complete this roster form for tonight, but I don’t know everyone’s jersey numbers.”
“I do.” Casey walked down the steps and reached for the form and pen. She leaned against the railing to fill it out.
Kyle laced his hands behind his neck and blew out a long breath. “I can’t believe how nervous I am for them. I don’t remember being this nervous before my own games.”
“You were.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said. “You and I had that little tradition…”
Casey stopped writing while she recalled that tradition. The night before games his senior year they would slow-dance to a few songs together. She used to tell him the music would calm his nerves. She believed that was true, but it was also one way of getting him to dance with her. He thought he wasn’t good at it, so he’d always been reluctant. She started writing again. “I don’t know how much that actually helped.”
“I do. That’s the year we went to State.”
She finished filling in the form and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “By the way, how’s she running lately?” He nodded toward the Bronco in the driveway.
“Better than ever.”
His brows ticked up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Mateo worked his magic.”
He continued to stand there, looking at her, like he had something on his mind.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“It’s just… You’re wearing my shirt.”
Casey peered down at the red plaid flannel she had on. The soft, warm, oversize one she wore around the house all the time. “Huh,” she said, fingering the shirt. “I thought it was Wyatt’s. I’ll wash it and get it back to you.”
His eyes swept over the shirt, then up to her face. “Don’t bother. It always did look better on you.” One side of his mouth curled up. “See you at the game,” he said, before heading back across the road.
She watched him go, then turned to see Wyatt on the porch, shaking his head at her. As she climbed the steps he said, “You knew damn well that wasn’t my shirt.”
“Oh shut up, Wyatt,” she said, walking right past him and into the house.