Page 127 of Changing the Playbook
I shift my head—the first voluntary movement in hours—and watch my sister process the disaster. The apartment looks bad. I know because her face cycles through shock, recognition, then something that makes my dead heart twitch—pure fear.
“Oh fuck.” The words escape as a whisper. “Not again.”
She attacks the apartment with focused fury. Bottles clink accusations as she stuffs them into garbage bags. Her movements are sharp, violent, but her hands tremble when she thinks I’m not looking. I let her rage like a tornado around me, my ass on the couch the eye of the storm.
“Maine called me.” She won’t make eye contact, too busy excavating a plate from beneath geological layers of napkins. “Said you’ve missed two practices.”
Two? Sounds right. Or wrong. Time isn’t something I track anymore.
“He said it’s like before.” She starts on washing the dishes. “During your funk last year.”
That word, shrinking last year’s catastrophe down to manageable size, makes my blood boil. But correcting her would require energy I’m hoarding for breathing, and suddenly my senior year meltdown seems small when compared to what Sophie is going through, and what she’s asked me to do.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You’re not.” Andy slams the plate down, and starts on the next. “You’re decomposing in the dark at 2:00 p.m., in a shirt how many days old?”
“Could be Thursday’s. I’ve lost track.”
“And your apartment’s a crime scene, and Maine says when you do show up you’re skating like a zombie.”
The thought arrives clean: I don’t give a shit anymore. About hockey, about school, about maintaining this performance. All I want is Sophie, and now I’ve got her. The rest is just me processing what I’ve lost, and what I’ve got to do next.
“I’m giving up the NHL.”
Andy freezes. “What?”
“Sophie needs me to stay. So I’m staying,” I say. “I’m just processing.”
“Processing?” She wheels on me, tears building—the furious kind. “This isn’t processing. This is you sliding. This is your depression eating you alive.”
“It’s my choice. I love her. She needs me here?—”
“To what? To give up everything you’ve bled for? Everything you ARE?” Andy’s face contorts with grief. “You’re volunteering for your own destruction.”
I shrug. It’s all I can muster.
“Fucking hell, Mike.” The tears stream now, but her voice stays fierce. “Do you know what it was like? Watching you last year? You stopped talking. Stopped existing. For three months, you were gone. What remained was this hollow thing that looked like my brother, but…fuck,Mike.”
I remember. The weight of existence crushing me into the mattress. Food tasting like ash. The careful distance I maintained from everyone because their concern felt unbearable, and the loss of hockey was like a feeding tube being disconnected from a catatonic patient.
“You FOUGHT.” Her voice rises. “You fought sofuckinghard. Therapy twice a week. All the new things. You rebuilt yourself, and I was so goddamn proud.”
Something hot pricks behind my eyes.
“And now…” She scoffs. “One conversation with her and you’re back here, like none of it mattered, like YOU don’t matter.”
“It’s not?—”
“Then explain it. Make it make sense.” She drops beside me on the couch. “Because what I see is my brother choosing to drown.”
“Love means sacrifice.”
“No. Love means growth.” Her hand finds mine, squeezes hard. “Love means becoming more, not less.”
Another shrug.
She shifts closer. “Last time, hockey saved you. The possibility of playing again pulled you through. But if you give that up… what’s left?”
