The Seven Longest Yards

by Chris Norton

  “Where are you going anyway?” he panted.

  “We’re going to be on Good Morning America tomorrow!” I cried. “We’ve got to make our flight.”

  “What? We need to get you there!” Somehow, this man dug deep and found a whole new level of speed. I checked my phone as we ran. We’re never going to make it, I thought. A flight attendant had radioed the gate to let them know we were coming, and they delayed the flight a few minutes, but I knew they wouldn’t wait forever.

  Somehow, miraculously, we made it. We were the last people on the flight, and our plane took off within what seemed like seconds of us being seated.

  Chris checked his phone and saw a text from someone at Good Morning America. “You guys are on the plane, right? We can’t wait to have you here.”

  I dissolved into laughter—at this point I was probably delirious. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “That lady has no idea what’s going on right now.”

  CHRIS

  Once we finally made it to our hotel, I think Emily and I got maybe an hour of sleep before we had to get up and get ready to go to the GMA studio. I didn’t have time to be nervous thinking about the interview. I was busy making sure we were downstairs waiting for our car service to get to the studio on time.

  The car drove a whole block and a half, which in Times Square takes about ten minutes. We were let in a door on a side street and led past multiple security guards. The producer was there to greet us. We took the elevator up, and he quickly led us past the cameras filming the current segment. Then we arrived in the green room, which was like a small meeting room with coffee and a television set. Another producer came in and asked, “Could you two walk into the set to start the show?”

  My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. I wasn’t anticipating this. Logistically, it would take too much time, it would be cumbersome, and we would need someone to push my chair up afterward. I told him it wouldn’t work. He understood, then asked, “What if you start out standing for the show and after Robin greets you, you sit down?” I said I could do that, and to save time I could just leave my feet on the floor instead of Emily bending over to place them on the foot pedals, which with the lack of sleep could set my legs into a spasm anyway. I’m honestly glad they told me twenty minutes before going live instead of the night before, because I would have been way too anxious. The stand and sit went well! But doing it live on national television was nerve-racking!

  The whole twenty-four-hour period was such a crazy rush that when we actually sat across from Robin Roberts, it wasn’t remotely stressful. As I looked around the sea of cameras surrounding us and out the glass wall into Times Square, all I could feel was relief. Once again Emily and I had put our minds to something, and we did it. Our crazy adventure to reach New York was further proof that we were unstoppable. I knew that with Emily by my side we could accomplish anything we set our minds to. I even announced my next big goal on GMA: to walk with Emily back up the aisle at our wedding. We’d worked a very long time to make the graduation walk a reality. I could not wait to start working toward the wedding walk.

  13

  A Fog Descends

  CHRIS

  I fully expected an emotional letdown after graduation and the whirlwind that followed. We had spent the last five months pouring all our time and energy into one goal. We had not only accomplished what we set out to do but also saw our story reach a much wider audience than we ever imagined. Anyone would have a hard time finding their groove again and getting back to real life.

  At first everything between Emily and me seemed fantastic. Looking back, I guess that might be because we didn’t get back to real life, at least not right away.

  Before we headed back to Michigan, we stopped by Emily’s hometown of Muscatine to pick up Whittley. She’d tried killing herself again. Thankfully she survived. Her sister had her come live with her, but she clearly needed a change, even if only for a couple of weeks. Emily was pretty insistent Whittley come and stay with us for a while, and I went along with it even though I was extremely nervous about it. I had met Whittley a few times, but it had been for only a few hours at a time, so I still didn’t know her very well, no matter how much Emily talked about her. Unfortunately, due to Whittley’s recent events, what I had been hearing wasn’t encouraging, especially when I have no way to protect Emily or myself if Whittley were to be set off and lash out at us. On top of all that, I knew absolutely nothing about sixteen-year-old girls in general, and Whittley wasn’t your typical teenage girl.

  Even so, when Emily asked if Whittley could come stay with us for a while, I said yes. I trusted Emily. If she thought we could do this and help Whittley, I was willing to go along with her. Emily has a way of getting through to people, plus she was extremely close to Whittley. More than that, I knew that if we didn’t step up and do something to help her, no one else would.

  EMILY

  Having Whittley in our apartment in Michigan for those two weeks lifted a weight of worry off my shoulders. As soon as the media frenzy after the graduation walk died down, I felt anxious again about what I was supposed to do with my life. Whittley reminded me of the answer I’d always held on to. She also always had a way of getting through to me. Being so far away from her was the hardest part of living in Michigan. Since I first met Whittley when she was in grade school, I had always tried to be there for her, whether it was taking birthday presents to her in the group home or sitting with her at the hospital after a suicide attempt. It hurt me to hear that she was struggling when I lived too far away to do anything. That’s why I was so excited about having the chance to spend some time with her in a safe environment. If I could have found a way to make it happen, she would have moved in with us permanently.

  Whittley and I spent the first few days we were back together laughing, talking, playing Wii, and going to the gym. The light mood changed during a trip to the gym. She suddenly burst into tears. When I asked her why, she told me that one of her friends had texted her to break the news that her boyfriend back in Iowa had cheated on her. I took her outside, and we sat on the steps together, her head on my shoulder as she sobbed, my hand patting her in reassurance.

  “You are so much better off without him,” I told her. “You are an amazing girl, and any guy who would do this to you obviously isn’t the right one.”

  “But I love him!” she cried. “Why would he do this to me?”

  I wiped the tears from her face and stroked her hair. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sometimes people just do awful things and we don’t know why. But it’s better for you to know now what kind of guy he is before you waste any more time on him.” All I could think as I comforted her was, This is the last thing she needs right now.

  That night I lay awake in my bed, worrying about what Whittley might do. Since I couldn’t sleep, I mindlessly checked the Facebook app on my phone. What I saw made me sit straight up. “No!” I said. I marched right into the spare room where Whittley was sleeping on an air mattress and flipped on the lights. “Whittley, what is going on?”

  I held out my phone with her post on the screen, which read, “I just want my life to be over.”

  “What do you mean by this?” I asked.

  Whittley stared at the sheets and toyed with her hair. “I didn’t mean it,” she said softly. “I just—I don’t know why I wrote that.”

  I stared at her. “You have to be honest here. Were you thinking about hurting yourself?”

  “No,” she said, still not looking at me.

  I tried to talk it out with her, but I still didn’t feel much better when I left her room. I hid all our kitchen knives before I went to bed.

  The next few days were rough. Whittley was devastated over her boyfriend. One night Chris and I were both in her room as she broke down in tears yet again. “Alright, that’s enough,” I said suddenly, hopping to my feet. “We’re going out. We’re getting frozen yogurt, and we’re not going to talk about this jerk anymore.”

  To my surprise, Whittley went with i
t. The night seemed to turn her around, at least a little bit. Over the next few days, I saw her relax and act more like herself. It helped that she didn’t have her usual negative influences around her as she did back home. No one recognized her in public or made assumptions about her. Michigan was good for her. It was a fresh start.

  When the time came for Chris and me to take her back to Iowa, Whittley and I cried and clung to each other. I knew she didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want to say goodbye either. If it were up to me, we would have become her foster parents and kept her with us for good right then and there. I even talked to her caseworker about it once, but the conversation didn’t go anywhere. The family court system works to keep kids with their families until it becomes impossible. Since a family member was still in the picture, her coming to live with Chris and me wasn’t a possibility.

  Driving home from Iowa, I felt a terrifying loss of control. I had no idea what Whittley would do now that she was out of my sight. How would I go on if something happened to her? The fears inside kept growing until I knew I had to do something to protect my heart before I got hurt so deeply that I’d never recover.

  CHRIS

  After Whittley went home, I assumed we’d pour all our energy into planning our dream wedding. I couldn’t wait to marry Emily and wanted to set a date as soon as possible. I’d already started training for the wedding walk, which, to me, was going to be so much more special than graduation, because these would be our first steps into an unbelievable future.

  We knew we wanted to get married in Iowa near all our family and friends, so we checked out venues online. We brainstormed a guest list to help us figure out how much seating we needed. Emily ran color schemes by me. A few weeks went by and even though we hadn’t set a firm date, we knew we wanted to tie the knot the following summer.

  Emily loved weddings, and I thought she would be thrilled to be planning one of her own, but that didn’t happen. Something seemed off. Emily seemed . . . different. The two of us came out of graduation on cloud nine. We had just accomplished this unbelievable goal. Life was great. We had become an unstoppable force, and we were going to do amazing things. But instead of being happy, Emily suddenly seemed to resent me.

  I told myself that Emily was simply feeling a little lost now that she didn’t have a goal to work toward. I knew her internship at the group home had been hard on her and that she felt uncertain of what to do with her life. Maybe she just needs time to figure everything out, I thought.

  Later that summer we took a vacation to Florida that I hoped would rejuvenate her, or at least distract her from whatever was bothering her. While we were on the trip, our property manager called out of the blue to inform us that they had never received our rent from two months ago. She threatened legal action if she didn’t receive payment in forty-eight hours. I could tell the manager was trying to scare me, but I didn’t blink. I distinctly remembered paying the rent—Emily and I were with Whittley when we dropped off a check. We had the check stub to prove it. They obviously had lost it.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down,” I said calmly. “We paid our rent. There must be some mistake. I’d be happy to send you a picture of the stub if you’d like.”

  Emily’s eyes bulged as she listened to my end of the conversation. “Chris, what’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  I moved my phone away from my face. “It’s fine. There was just a mix-up with our rent check.”

  “Wait, what? We paid our rent.”

  “I know we did. Someone must have lost it, and now they’re saying they’re going to take us to court or something.”

  “What? No. Give me the phone.”

  Under normal circumstances Emily would have firmly explained that we paid our rent and asked how we might fix the situation. Emily gets things done. But when I handed her the phone and she started speaking, she was furious. After a few minutes of making no headway, she almost immediately burst into tears. This was no stray tear or two. This was a full-blown meltdown. She could barely manage a word between sobs as she gasped for breath. I stared at her in shock. I knew it wasn’t an ideal situation, but a lost rent check wasn’t anything we couldn’t work out.

  I finally took back the phone. “We’ll have to call you back.”

  I had never seen Emily react that way to even a major crisis, much less a landlord spat. For the first time, I knew something was actually wrong.

  EMILY

  It’s not like my life was drastically different after Whittley left. I still spent most of my time taking care of Chris and handling all the household jobs. I remained heavily involved in the Athletic Angels, where once a week boys from a group home came to Barwis Methods, and I led them through a workout, a life skills lesson, and a snack. For a couple of weeks, I also flipped through bridal magazines and Googled DJs and wedding cake designs.

  But for reasons I couldn’t explain, everything I did felt empty, meaningless. My life had no purpose. My old dream of helping at-risk teenagers had died. My internship at the group home had killed it once and for all. I thought I could help everyone no matter what they went through, but after that experience I felt helpless. For as long as I can remember, every time I heard a story of a child that had been abused or a child struggling with mental health and suicidal thoughts, I took it all in and it broke me. It had been taking a toll on me for many years. I was at a point where it hurt so much that I was shutting down and burying it all. I couldn’t take the pain and responsibility of other people’s well-being anymore.

  Sometimes I toyed with the idea of finding a job someplace less traumatic, but I didn’t get serious about finding a full-time job. We didn’t know how long we would stay in Michigan, and the last thing a kid in a group home needs is to get close to an adult who will leave them like everyone else does. Besides, I was Chris’s full-time caregiver. I even received payment through Chris’s insurance, which let me put off finding my full-time calling, something I started to doubt even existed.

  Over the next few weeks, I felt more and more lost. I didn’t feel good about myself anymore. I was living with a wall between me and the rest of the world, and I didn’t understand why it was there or how to make it go away. It was as if a fog had descended over my life. Everything that used to be sunny and bright was now cloudy and gray.

  When we first moved to Michigan, I was happy to help Chris. I jumped at the chance to fill up his water bottle or transfer him to the couch. Now every little task felt like work. Life felt so hard. The little things became stressful and overwhelming. Each time Chris needed me to set him up in his bike or drain his leg bag, irritation bubbled up inside me, and I let it out. I’d tell Chris in no uncertain terms that I felt unappreciated and taken for granted. One night I had spent half the day grocery shopping and cooking one of his favorite meals—homemade enchiladas, rice, and a salad. I plunked his plate in front of him and waited for him to gush with thanks for the amazing meal I had slaved away to prepare especially for him. Instead, he started eating without saying a thing.

  “Well, thanks a lot for the ‘thank you,’” I exploded. “I spent so much time on this meal. I had to go out and buy groceries. I had to cook all this food. When we’re done, I’m the one who has to clean all these dishes. I don’t feel like you appreciate any of the stuff I’m doing for you.”

  Chris stopped midbite and put his fork down. “I was going to say thank you, but you didn’t give me enough time to say it,” he said, defending himself. “You know I appreciate it, even if I don’t say it right away.”

  “All you care about is yourself!” I snapped back. “You don’t care about me.” I grew angrier by the second. “You’re so rude and selfish, and all you think about is yourself in your own little world. I’m trying to do nice things for you, and I don’t feel appreciated at all.”

  All I wanted was for him to say he loved me—though even that probably wouldn’t have been enough. He didn’t take the bait. “Where is this coming from?” he demanded. “You completely blew
up at me for no reason.”

  I tried to stop myself from taking it up a notch, but I couldn’t. Every time we fought, I wanted him to get emotional or do something, anything, to show me he cared. I got nastier and nastier, trying to get a reaction from the human thermostat who never got too hot or cold. It was a mental battle that I usually lost.

  “You are such a jerk!” I was yelling now. “I don’t even know why we’re together anymore. You don’t love me.”

  “You’re crazy!” Chris finally lost his cool. “Of course I love you! You’re being crazy!”

  “I am not crazy!” I screamed, tears rolling down my cheeks. Hearing him say the very thing I worried about deep down was too much. “I’m out of here. I am done talking to you.” I stormed out of the apartment and stomped to my car. As I turned the key in the ignition, I heard my phone buzzing. It was Chris. I pushed my finger down on the power button as hard as I could to turn it off. I didn’t want to talk to him, or anyone. Instead, I just drove around, with no destination in mind. I was burning up inside, angry and empty, and it hit me that I didn’t have a destination in mind—not tonight, not in life.

  I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to be alive.

  “God, please just let this other car hit me,” I prayed. “Just take my life. I can’t do this anymore. This is too hard. I’m never going to be myself again. I have no hope. If this is how my life is always going to be, then I would rather be dead.”

  This may have been the first, but it certainly wasn’t the last time I had this conversation with God. Nor was it the only time I drove away angry, wishing another car would hit me and put me out of my misery.

  I never thought seriously about taking my own life, even though when I was angry, sometimes I would shout at Chris that I wanted to kill myself or that I didn’t want to be alive anymore. He knew I wasn’t serious and that I was trying to get a big reaction out of him. Life felt so hard, but I knew I could never do that to my family. If it weren’t for them, I realized I wouldn’t have hesitated.