Blind Side (7 page)

I
’ve walked
a thousand miles up and down these halls; the same corridors where I spent my youth. The plan was always to become a teacher, but I was never meant to return to this place once I had finally mustered the strength to leave it all behind.

Love has a crazy stupid way of changing everything. It can make you forget you were supposed to be someone else. Sometimes, it can make you forget who you always were as you blossom into someone new.

You take the good with the bad, and pray silent enough so no one can hear you. You pray that somehow the good outweighs the bad, and that’s the secretive formula of happiness:

There are people in this world who can’t be happy, and there are people in this world who don’t deserve to be happy. I’m not happy, and I don’t know if it’s because I lost that ability a long time ago, or if it’s because I don’t deserve it.

It doesn’t much matter why though.

I feel as if I’m walking a tightrope, but with every careful step along the slim rope, I find the destination slipping away from me. One step forward, and two steps back. I look over the edge, and think about jumping.

I never do. Whether it’s reality, or a too real to not be a dream, I always come back from the brink and continue my march across the tightrope. That was then, and this is now.

Rage races through my veins. It took an injection of anger to diffuse the sadness of a broken heart after that fateful phone call. It was a call I’ve been waiting on for a year minus a day, where each day I woke up thinking,
today’s the day.
Naively, I always believed he’d pass on his own in the depths of the night. I couldn’t have foreseen that his parents—the people who had sent him into a downward spiral because they refused to accept who he was—would be the ones to pull the plug.

Nathan’s dead, and the last vestige of my heart has been ripped off like a BandAid covering a fresh gunshot wound. It hurts at first, and then it burns. Finally, it goes numb.

I’m numb, but somehow I feel the cold metal sheathed under the weight of my right hand. The hallways are dark, with the softest paintings of artificial light lighting the thin passages just enough to see. The air is thick, but chilly, suffocating me with a torrid vengeance.

Outside these hallowed halls, a battle rages on the field, where each team is lost in a game that has the obtuse power to dictate futures. Young men will lose their souls on that field tonight, while others will find validation.

Others—my husband—will lose everything the way I once lost everything. What’s left of his heart and soul could be shattered, but he’s losing more than that. He’s losing the power he holds over me. No longer will he question me about my whereabouts in the heat of a game.

I come to a stop at a four-way intersection, where a short hallway bleeds into the oversized cafeteria on one side, and three corridors of classrooms all meet in this center.

It’s poetic that my life will end right here in this spot. I raise the gun to my head and close my eyes.

My heart pounds against my chest, crying for me to stop. My brain kicks against my skull, begging me to reconsider. My soul does nothing—it’s too far gone. In a world where I’ve become inundated with voices dictating what I should do, and who I’ve become, I opt to listen to the most silent of the voices.

My finger hovers against the trigger with an eerie rhythm pulsing through my sweating appendage.

“Stassi?” a familiar voice calls from beside me, a voice belonging to a certain stranger named Kemper.

I angle my eyes to look at him, standing beside me in bootcut jeans, wearing a white jersey with purple numbers, tucked underneath denim. He’s sweaty, his hair tangled just above dark brows, and his face glistening under the low blue-toned light. There’s a haunted pale look etched into the design of his face, contrasted against the darkness behind him and in the space between us.

“What are you doing here?” I question.

“I think that’s the least important question in this scenario.” He raises a hand, cautioning me. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t pretend to know what I do or don’t want.” I twist on my foot to face him, holding the gun still in the process so that it’s still aimed squarely at my head. “You don’t know me.”

“That’s true.” His tongue laps around dry, parched lips. “But I want to know you.”

“You’re a student.”

“That’s also true.” He nods his head, an attempt to distract me with his God-crafted face, but I eye his feet as they take a measured step toward me. “But I know what I feel for you. It’s crazy, I know that, but it feels real.”

“Please stop.”

“You’re not exactly giving me that option.”

“Stop or I’ll shoot.” I reaffirm my grip on the gun, my trigger finger flirting dangerously close to finality. “I mean it.”

“You’ve been hurt by someone or something.” He shrugs, as if he’s carrying apathy on his shoulders. “That’s life. It’s hard and it’s stupid, but it’s also beautiful.” He nods with a forced smile, a promising ray of light in the darkest of nights. “Choose life, because it’s beautiful.” He takes another step, but I counter his approach with two steps back. “There’s pain, and there’s sorrow. There are clouds on rainy days, and sometimes I’m too burdened to get out of my bed on Monday mornings.” He stops moving when he realizes that with every step he takes, I retreat further from him. “I don’t know what you’re going through, but I want to know. I want to know who you are beneath the facade.” He exhales a warm explosion of air and wipes his palm against his sweaty face. “I want to know that people can come back from the darkness, because it gives me hope that the darkest of days will fade away.”

I stand there motionless in every part of my body, except for my beating heart, racing mind, and dancing trigger finger. An uncomfortable silence settles in, and a door slams in the distance. I swear I can hear the bowel of a ship buckling as if it’s sinking, but it’s just the precursor to victorious cries screaming from the stadium as someone has scored a touchdown. Presumably from the thunderous chants, the Chiefs are once again winning.

“My parents disowned me because I was a user,” he continues. “After living on the streets for three months, I checked into rehab. I lost a year of my life, but I saved my life. I’ve got no family, and I’ve got no friends. In this spinning world, I’m driving solo, and sometimes the loneliness eats me alive, and other times, it’s the most peaceful existence.” He eyes me for a brief moment and takes a calculated step toward me. I don’t flinch or stumble backward. I’m stuck in place like a fool who should have jumped a long time ago. “Nobody knows me here. It was the only way I was going to get a fresh start, to move somewhere where nobody knows my name or my past.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I shake my head in disbelief. It’s not something I’m used to, growing up in a place like Ridgefield where doors are kept closed at all times, because if they’re not, that’s when people start to talk.

“Because I’m tired of feeling alone,” the words come barreling out of his mouth like a truth cannon, locked and loaded with sadness, riding a quivering wave of solace.

“It’s all we have in this world. Ourselves.”

“Maybe.” He shifts his eyes to the gun. “But if you really believe that, you’d put that gun down.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Make it that simple,” he commands in a roaring tone. “Choose life because you know it gets better. Choose life because, like you said, all we have in this world is ourselves, and you don’t want to let yourself down.”

“That ship sailed a long time ago.” I purse my lips and shake my head gently, afraid if I make too sudden a movement, I’ll accidentally pull the trigger. “I can’t live with what I’ve done. I can’t live with what I’ve lost.”

“You’re not going to do it,” he assures me and takes another step.

“You can’t know that.”

“You’re not crying.” Another step toward me, and his face is illuminated in a faint light pouring downstream from the cafeteria. “When people are really going to pull the trigger, they’re crying.”

“Crying?” I stumble over my own words, trying to process them. I think to myself,
why am I not crying?
I settle for the first answer that crosses my mind,
because I don’t have to.

“They cry because it’s the end. They don’t want it to be the end, but they’re trapped with no way out of whatever particular level of hell they’ve found themselves in.” Now within touching range, he reaches for my hand, tangling his palm around me, but he doesn’t take the gun. “You have a way out, and it all begins with putting that gun down.”

“I’m empty inside,” I cry softly.

“That’s okay.” His lips roll over each other, and he reaffirms his grip on my hand. He won’t steal the gun away from me, because maybe he thinks I have to make the choice to live.

I make it.

The gun clatters against the wood floor and I collapse forward. He catches me in his arms as we both spiral to the floor. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. I became a teacher to save students, and now a student has saved me.

I give into the tears, and they come like a flood, drenching my face in a stream of relief and regret, of pain and sorrow, of freedom and a second chance at life. But I know it’s not that simple. The path I must walk in life has been irrevocably changed.

He cradles me in his arms as my emotions stain the floor. And gently, he whispers to me, “You were never going to pull that trigger.”

“Maybe,” I whimper. “Maybe not.”

N
eon red light flickers
, canvassing the interior of Kemper’s Challenger in a soft glow between chaotic flashes of darkness akin to a strobe light. Auroras flood my eyes, typically an impending sign of a severe headache, but there’s nothing inside to ache.

I’m a hollow woman in a hollow world, regressing into a younger, more fragile state of mind. There’s a tapping on the passenger window before the door is pulled open.

A crack of thunder rips through the sky, followed by a flash of lightning but there are no clouds in sight. It’s a clear night, where I take in the sight of a tapestry of interconnected stars as I step out of the car.

“Thanks,” I say to Kemper.

He shuts the door behind me and jangles a key in his hand, pointing to the upstairs portion of the Sunset Motel. I begin a slow march past a row of rooms, each fronted by green doors with chipped painting. We reach a short flight of stairs and ascend them.

Kemper glances around us, searching with his eyes for passerby’s who could spot us, but on a Friday Night in this city, everyone is preoccupied with the game. By my estimation, the fourth quarter is about to start and I couldn’t care less if we’re winning or losing, because I, myself, am losing.

Always losing.

Kemper twists the key into the lock and pushes the door open. I’m bombarded with a musky scent and cool air from an air conditioning unit that seems to be stuck on high by default, humming a cry for maintenance.

By all means, it’s your typical vintage hotel with one queen-sized bed on one wall, and a mirror-lined dresser on the other.

“What are we doing here?” I question as I inch past him.

“Taking a break from the world.” He pulls the door shut and steps to the window to draw the curtains to a close. A dark shadow falls upon the room as I drop down onto the bed. I’m content to stay here in the dark, listening to the pacifying sound of occasional traffic zipping by outside.

A clicking sound, and a standing lamp in the corner of the room kicks on, painting the room in a soft, yellow glow. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, taking note in the way I don’t see my reflection no longer. I look like me, with the same dark brown hair and green eyes sunken under the weight of tiredness. It’s a hollow reflection of a hollow woman who’s been rescued from the pit of despair by a man who was a stranger first, a student second, and a savior third. Now, who he becomes is anybody’s guess, but more than anything, I just want to be alone to drown in my own sorrow.

In the mirror, I see Kemper’s reflection approach. I feel the weight of the bed sink as he drops onto the bed beside me. “I live downstairs, in room twenty-three.”

“You live here?” I question, but I don’t face him. I’m content for our reflections to have this conversation. With the distance the mirror provides, it’s safer this way. Easier too.

He laughs to himself and falls backward onto his elbow. “It’s nothing more than a temporary home.”

“You choose to live in a hotel?”

“Motel,” he corrects me. “It’s not so much a choice as a necessity. My uncle owns the place.”

“So, you do have family here.” It’s an observation. Not a question. It’s small talk, and nothing more.

“Blood, yes.” He shakes his head. “Family? No.”

“I’m tired,” I say softly, hoping he’ll get the hint that I want to be left alone.

“You need rest.”

“Do you mind…?”

“Leaving?” he questions, as if he’s reading my fucking mind. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“This isn’t going to be a repeat of the other night,” I warn him, but I’m standing on shaky ground. In the back of my mind, I see him undress and take me in the front seat of his car. A nice, hard fuck might be the only thing to bring me back from the brink at this point, but it’s just as possible it could be the final nail in my coffin. The second he walked into my classroom was the second everything changed.

“I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

“I’m here to tell you that I am.”

“Sorry.” He shrugs and rises to his feet. “I need to see it with my own eyes. If I walked out that door and you did something stupid, I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

“Forgiveness comes slow.” I turn to face him, because now I crave the connection our reflections in the mirror could never provide. “Too slow.”

“It’s none of my business.”

“You’re right,” I say under my breath. “So don’t ask.”

“Why were you going to do it?” He questions and falls into the sitting chair adjacent to the bed and in front of the lamp.

“You can sit in that chair all night if you want, but I’m going to sleep.” I crawl backward to the top of the bed and turn over onto my side, opting to stare at the bathroom instead of him. If I ignore him, maybe he’ll leave me alone long enough so I can figure out my next move. Unfortunately, I haven’t read the handbook on attempted suicide. It’s never even crossed my mind, but today in the face of impossible grief, my psyche snapped in half like a tree branch in the fragile mornings before spring.

“I can’t forgive myself.” I sigh and roll over onto my opposite side. “That’s why I couldn’t do it.”

“Die?”

“Live.”

The revelation hits him like a ton of bricks. It’s not something a young mind is capable of understanding—that sometimes it’s easier to live than to die, and sometimes it’s harder to die than to live. It should be straightforward, but nothing in life ever is. I couldn’t pull the trigger tonight because I didn’t deserve it. I need to pay for my sins.

He clears his throat and averts his eyes. “It’s none of my business,” he reiterates.

“I wanted to become a teacher so I could help people,” I press on, not because he needs to understand, but because it’s easier to process my thoughts when they’re spoken aloud. “I wanted to help him so badly, that I threw all caution to the wind. But I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t even help myself. One choice ripped my entire life away from me.”

“There’s always light at the end of heartbreak,” he assures me with a half-assed smile. It seems to me that there’s something weighing heavy on his heart too, and his assurance isn’t solely for my benefit, but the part that hits me the hardest is that he doesn’t ask who the
he
is when I talk about
him.

“Even if the heart’s already stopped beating?”

“It looks like yours is beating just fine.”

“It’s not mine I’m talking about.” My heart thumps in anticipation of what comes next. I want to slam the brakes, but my mouth is accelerating too fast. “I was pregnant.”

A realization sinks into his eyes, but there’s no way he’s able to grasp the situation for all its emotional weight. I’ve said it out loud for the first time since the accident, and a burden has been lifted from my soul, but now I’m too tired to carry on this conversation.

This is a complicated and twisted tale of despair that even I don’t have a strong handle on. I can’t assign blame where it belongs, because I can’t figure out the puzzle of tragedy. All I know is that we all played our parts.

Nathan and his rebellious soul, spurned by that which he could never change.

My husband and his unshakable penchant for following the rules, but only when those same rules suited him.

Nathan’s parents for their blinded convictions, for which they always stood.

Myself for getting in the car even after inhaling the first intoxicating breath of alcohol.

My sister for picking up the pieces in the only way she knew how.

We all played a part except for my innocent, unborn child. And now that the plug has been pulled on Nathan, it makes it all for naught. Before, there was retroactive justification for jumping in that car, because
what ifs
are a powerful grieving tool. Now all that’s left is a hollow hole in the world.

I turn back over, with no care to continue talking. The hurt is too raw, and too real. I fear I may fall back down the rabbit hole if it should continue much longer, and besides, I’m too exhausted. It’s a chore to even keep my eyes open.

The last thing I see before I fall asleep is my phone ringing, with my husband’s photo flashing on the screen.