Page 4 of Puck You
“Back from where?”I asked.
“Sebastian was out last season with an injury.Freshman and sophomore year, he was the team’s star player, but he messedup his ACL in the Frozen Four championship game.They won, at least, but he hasn’t been the same player since.He came back for a game in the spring, and it was pretty bad,” said Caroline.
Lydia nodded in agreement before saying, “He was drafted by the Red Wings at eighteen.Everyone thought he was going pro after the championship, but then he busted his knee in the last few seconds of the game.”
Damn, that must have been one hard pill to swallow.I would have felt more sympathy for the guy if he wasn’t such an arrogant prick.
“Is your friend still stopping by?”Lydia asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
At the mention of Sam, I shot out of my seat.How had I forgotten she was coming by the apartment today?
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said as I searched the room for my phone.
It was lying on the floor where I’d dropped my hockey equipment.The screen lit up, displaying a photo of Sam and me from high school.There was a long list of email notifications but no missed texts.I let out a sigh of relief and checked the time.It was still early enough for Sam to be sleeping.
“I should probably finish unpacking,” I said to myself, thinking about the mess in my bedroom.
Even though I’d moved in three days ago, I still hadn’t put away the majority of my things.Thankfully, Caroline and Lydia had the common spaces covered.It was their second year living in this apartment.I’d taken over the third room, which had previously been occupied by a player who’d graduated last semester.
“She’ll be here by eleven.If you guys want to go for coffee then, feel free to join us.In the meantime, I’ll be panic cleaning,”I said then retreated toward my bedroom to the sound of quiet laughter.
Inside, the floor was barely visible beneath the mess of my belongings.It would be much tidier under normal circumstances, my clothes neatly organized in the closet and the bed made to perfection.Ihatedclutter, but I’d been avoiding the task since my arrival.In my haste to pack for my senior year of college, I’d forgotten my most prized possessions at home: my headphones and portable speaker.Both were an essential part of my ability to function, because I always wound up overthinking when I was left alone with my thoughts.Without the distraction of music or a true crime podcast, I was forced to endure the never-ending monologue inside my head—a voice capable of rendering me completely useless.At this point in my life, I pretty much lived with a pair of wireless headphones in my ears, and that’s why Sam was visiting today: she was dropping off the items I’d mistakenly left behind.
The only option I had for background noise was to use my phone, so I switched on an episode ofIn the Darkand turned the volume all the way up.It was better than nothing, but it didn’t compare to my sound-isolating headphones.Over the next two hours, I did little more than move things around to new spots on the floor.When Sam finally arrived, I was sitting on the ground surrounded by clothes, playing with an old Game Boy I’d discovered in the bottom of a bag.Her text sent me running down the hall in excitement.
“You are an angel sent from heaven,” I said after flinging open the door.It was the first thing that came to mind at the sight of Sam standing outside, a bag of my forgotten essentials slung over her shoulder.Her cheeks were flushed from the lingeringsummerheat, several pieces of unruly auburn hair sticking to the side of hersweat-slicked face.
She snorted.“I promise you I don’t have a halo.That’s just my hair.”On humid days like today, her mane could double in size, even when pulled into a bun like it currently was.
“Come in, come in,” I said, ushering her inside.
As she stepped over the threshold, Sam glanced around the living room curiously, eyes slipping over the faded blue rug, lumpy sofa, and wooden coffee table decorated with dents and water rings.
“It’s cute,” she commented, her gaze shifting to the large wooden bookcase being utilized as a TV stand.It was stuffed full of worn novels, a strange mixture of rom-coms and horror movies, and a scattering of peculiar-looking knickknacks.Having spent a few days with my roommates, I could only guess the horror belonged to Lydia, as well as the assortment of trinkets lining the shelves.Sam handed me the bag.
“Right?I love it,” I replied.“Seriously, though, thank you so much for bringing my stuff.”
“No problem.It’s not like you’re far from home, anyway.Wasn’t that the point of transferring here?”
Dallard University was only a forty-five-minute drive from our hometown in northern Wisconsin, which had been one of the deciding factors in my decision to transfer.The other had to do with their phenomenal women’s hockey program.The Dallard Ravens had secured three national titles in the last eight years, and playing with them would offer me the chance to participate in a more competitive conference.ECAC Hockey was no walk in the park, but most national titles were held by teams in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.Playing amongst thebest in the country was a dream come true.
“Let me drop this off in my bedroom.”Sam hovered behind me as I threw open the door to reveal the barely improved mess in my bedroom.
“Seems like I arrived just in time.If I’d waited another day, you might have been buried alive,” she teased.
“It looks worse than it is.”
Sam didn’t respond, but the curve at the corner of her mouth told me she was biting back a sassy remark.She rarely pulled her punches, which told me everything I needed to know.Sam was worried about me because I was worried about, well, everything.
“I’m fine, I promise,” I told her.“I’m just concerned about how things have been since I left.”
“The house is still standing,” she assured me.“They’ll survive without you.”
After spending the summer at home with my father and sister, I wasn’t so sure.Sometime in the last year, the little kid who used to follow me around and beg to have sleepovers had transformed from a sweet, impressionable girl into an adolescent nightmare.Gabby’s alarming shift in behavior was the main reason I’d left Boston College and transferred to a school closer to home.If I was thousands of miles away, I couldn’t keep tabs on her, and ever since I’d learned about her behavioral issues at school, a sense of unease had sprouted inside me.It wasn’t like Gabby to skip class or talk back to teachers.She was only thirteen, still a year away from high school.Of course, my dad insisted that it was nothing for me to worry about, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t telling me the whole story.I was missing a few pieces of the puzzle, and I didn’t want to beblindsided when they fell into place.
From my experience, bad news never arrived in one tidy package.Disasteralwaysstruck more than once.The last time our family had received bad news, it wasn’t a single message but rather a series that had left an open wound my family was still struggling to heal from.It wasn’t as simple as my mom leaving one day because she was unhappy.First there were the manic episodes, times when she was so happy that it was hard for me to understand how something could be wrong with her, and then came the soul-deep depression.The confirmation of her bipolar disorder diagnosis was only the beginning.Hearing my parents whisper to each other about a family history of mental health disorders did not prepare me for the reality of seeing my mother succumb to one.After months of perfecting her medication and treatment plan, her mental health was derailed yet again by a severe bout of postpartum depression following Gabby’s birth.The next three years were like a roller coaster, my mom ebbing and flowing between the highs and lows of her mood disorder.And then, almost a week after she returned from her in-patient treatment program, I had to watch her leave.That was the last bit of bad news—waking up a few days after my twelfth birthday to find that my mother was gone.
Since then, I’d spent my life fearing the possibility of losing another person I loved or, even worse, becoming my mother.But during all those years, I’d never considered that fate befalling my little sister.
