The Year We Fell Down

by Sarina Bowen

  “Sorry,” I said. “That sounds like a dull read.”

  “Not at all,” she smiled. I noticed she had freckles everywhere. “Your trainers seem to have found you refreshing.”

  I laughed. “If ‘refreshing’ is a euphemism for ‘bitchy,’ then maybe I’d buy it.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve had a very challenging year, Corey. Everyone understands that. So let’s get started.”

  First, Pat stretched me. That’s how therapy always began — with the unsettling sensation of someone moving my body around as if I was a rag doll. Pat worked my legs around the hip joints, followed by knees and ankles. Before asking me to sit up, she hesitated. “Can I take a peek at your skin? Nobody will see.”

  I looked around. The therapy room door was shut, and there were no faces outside its window. “Just quickly,” I said.

  Pat lifted the back of my yoga pants and took a peek down the back of my underwear. The concern was that I would get pressure sores from sitting in my chair all day. “No problems there.”

  “I’m not high risk,” I said. “My parents asked you to check, didn’t they?”

  She smiled. “You can’t blame them for caring.”

  I could, actually.

  “If we can get you out of that chair,” Pat jerked her thumb toward the offending object, “then nobody will worry about it anymore. How many hours a day are you up on your sticks?”

  “A few,” I hedged. The truth was that I hadn’t figured out yet how to blend my crutches into my Harkness schedule. “I’m still working out how far apart all the buildings are.”

  “I see,” she said. “But if you’re going to participate in student life, we’ve got to get you climbing stairs. Otherwise, you should have picked a college built in the seventies. So let’s do some leg press.”

  I tried not to grumble too much. But a year ago, I used to put twice my body weight on the leg press. Now? Pat put on sixty pounds or so, and still I had to push on my quads with my hands to move the platform. A first-grader could do better.

  Really, what was even the point?

  But Pat was undeterred by my lousy performance. “Now we’ll work your core,” she insisted. “Good torso stability is crucial to helping you balance on crutches.” It was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Pat had learned her lines from the same script as the other therapists I’d seen. And I’d seen plenty.

  Unfortunately, nowhere in any script were the words for the things that really bothered me. Pat knew what to do when my hips wobbled in the middle of a plank exercise. But nobody had ever taught me how to handle the odd looks I got when people made eye contact with me in my wheelchair. Sometimes I saw looks of outright pity. Those seemed honest, if not helpful. And then there were the Big Smiles. There can’t be many people in the world who walk around grinning like maniacs at random strangers. But I got a lot of Big Smiles from people who thought that they owed it to me. It was like a consolation prize. You don’t have much use of your legs, so have a Big Smile on me.

  Of course, I never complained about these things out loud. It would only sound bitchy. But the last nine months had been humbling. The old me used to be offended when guys stared at my boobs. Now I only wished people would stare at my boobs. When they looked at me now, they only saw the chair.

  “Four more crunches, Corey. Then you’ll be all set,” Pat said.

  I looked up into Pat’s determined face and crunched. But we both knew I would never be all set.

  Chapter Five: Drunk Giraffe on Stilts

  — Corey

  September quickly became October, and life was good. I stayed on top of my course-work, and I learned to navigate the campus with increasing ease. Dana was in the throes of the singing group rush process. Her audition song was Hey There, Delilah, and with all her practicing, I had started to hear that song in my sleep.

  I didn’t have much of my own social life yet, but that was probably going to take some time. Hands down, my favorite Friday and Saturday nights so far had been spent playing RealStix with Hartley. As hockey season got going, Hartley’s friends were increasingly unavailable. They were either at practice, or headed to parties in corners of the campus Hartley didn’t wish to climb to. On those nights, he would flop onto the couch next to me for a few games of hockey. Sometimes we put on a movie afterward.

  “You know, you depend too much on your team captain,” Hartley said one night, when I was losing.

  I wasn’t about to tell him, but the reason I was losing that night had very little to do with my center, and everything to do with the fact that Hartley was not wearing a shirt. I’d spent the last half hour trying not to drool over Hartley’s six-pack.

  He cracked open a bottle of beer and offered it to me, but I waved it away. “Digby is good, but there are other players on the ice.”

  “But Digby is dreamy,” I said, setting down my controller. And it was true — even the digitized version of the Puffins’ captain made my heart go pitter-patter. He was almost the hottest hockey player I could name. The hottest one was sitting beside me on the sofa.

  Hartley snorted into his beer. “Seriously?” He laughed, which meant I got to see more of his smile. “Callahan, I thought you were a real fan. I didn’t realize you were a puck bunny.”

  That made me gasp. “And I didn’t realize you were an asshole.”

  He held up two hands defensively, one of them still clutching his beer. “Whoa, just a little joke.”

  I bit my lip, trying to dial back my irritation. Puck bunny was a derogatory term for women who liked hockey players much more than they liked hockey. Nobody had ever called me that before. The happiest moments of my life had been spent on the rink.

  Hartley eased his broken leg onto the table and cocked his head, like a golden retriever. “I hit a nerve? I’m sorry.”

  Reaching across the sofa, I took the beer out of his hand and stole a swig. “I guess I should start painting my face and yelling at the refs. Since I’m such a big fan.”

  I stretched the bottle back in his direction, but he didn’t take it back. He just looked at me so intently that I wondered if he could hear my thoughts. “Callahan,” he said slowly. “Are you a hockey player?”

  For a minute, we just blinked at each other. I’d always been a player — since I was five years old. And now, at best, I was just a fan. And that really stung.

  Swallowing hard, I answered the question. “I was a player. Before, you know… Before I gave it up.” I felt a prickle behind my eyes. But I was not going to cry in front of Hartley. I took a deep breath in through my nose.

  He licked his lips. “You told me your father was a high-school coach.”

  “He was my high-school coach.”

  “No shit?” Hartley cracked open a new beer without ever breaking eye contact. “What position do you play?”

  Did I play. Past tense.

  “Center, of course.” I knew what he was really asking. “Captain. All state. Recruited by colleges.” It was so hard to tell him this — to show him exactly what I’d lost. Most people didn’t want to hear it. They would change the subject, and ask if I’d considered taking up knitting, or chess.

  But Hartley only reached over, clinking his beer bottle against the one that I still held. “You know, I knew I liked you, Callahan,” he said. At that, my battle against tears became even tougher. But I took a long pull off the beer in my hand and fought them off. There was another moment of silence before Hartley broke it. “So…I guess this means I should teach you how to flip the screen perspective, so you can always see where your defensemen are. Slide over here.”

  Happy to have that conversation over with, I scooted closer to him on the sofa. Hartley wrapped his arm around me in order to hold the controller in front of my body where I could see it. “If you push these two buttons at the same time,” he said, depressing them with his thumbs, and looking up at the screen, “it toggles between the player’s view and the coach’s.” I was tucked snugly against him, where I could feel his
breath on my ear when he spoke.

  “Right,” I breathed. The heat of his bare chest at my back was incredibly distracting. “That’s…useful,” I stammered.

  As he showed me a couple more maneuvers, I inhaled the clean scent of his soap, and admired the sculpted forearms reaching around to encircle mine. There should be poetry written about those arms. Hartley explained something about body-checking, but I didn’t quite catch it. Every time he said “body” all I could think about was his.

  “Okay?” he finished, as I struggled to take in oxygen. “Now when I beat you, you won’t be able to claim ignorance.” Giving my short ponytail a gentle yank, he withdrew his embrace.

  With flushed cheeks, I scooted quickly back to my own end of the couch. “Come on, then,” I said, mustering up a few brain cells. “I’m ready to mow you down.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” he chuckled.

  The next Friday night, I bumped into Hartley as we were both coming in the front door of McHerrin. “RealStix later?” I asked. Please?

  He shook his head. “The hockey team doesn’t start their play season for another week, so Bridger’s having a party. You should come — there are only six stairs. I made him count them for me. Can you do six stairs?”

  I considered the question. “I can do them, as long as I don’t mind looking like a drunk giraffe on stilts. Only less graceful.”

  He grinned. “That’s me on a good day. I’m going over at eight, and I’ll knock on your door. Bring Dana, and anyone else you feel like.” He went into his room.

  “Do you want to go to Bridger’s party tonight?” I asked Dana when she finally came home.

  “I would, but I can’t,” she said. “There are two rush parties. Will you help me choose an outfit?”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling even better about my decision not to rush a singing group. If you had to sing well and dress well, I was not a good candidate.

  We chose a slinky purple sweater for Dana, over jet-black jeans. She looked pretty, but it didn’t look like she was trying too hard. “But what are you wearing?” she asked me.

  I only shrugged, glancing down at my Harkness T-shirt. “It’s a kegger in Bridger’s room. Who would dress up for that?”

  Dana rolled her eyes at me. “Come on, Corey. The jeans are okay, but you need a cuter top.” She strode into my room and began opening dresser drawers. “How does this one fit you?”

  “Well, it’s pink.”

  “I can see that. Put it on.”

  Humoring her, I threw my Harkness tee on the bed and grabbed the top that Dana held out.

  — Hartley

  When I opened the door to the girls’ common room, I could hear voices from behind Corey’s half-open bedroom door.

  “There. Can I go now?” Corey asked.

  “That’s so much cuter,” Dana gushed. “It hugs you in just the right places. Now, wait. Put on these hoops.”

  “Fine,” Corey sighed, “because it’s quicker than arguing with you.”

  “And I’m not letting you out of the house without lipstick.”

  “God, why?”

  That’s when I laughed, and Corey’s door opened all the way. “Gotta go,” she called to Dana.

  “Wait!” her roommate cried, fumbling on Corey’s dresser top. “Don’t you own any mascara?”

  “Good luck at the rush parties,” Corey called as she crutched toward me in a hurry. “Run,” she mouthed, and I opened the door.

  Corey managed the six stairs into Bridger’s room with little difficulty, which was great since I wouldn’t have been any help. But that night, the party itself was the real work. It was exactly what I should have anticipated. Warm beer in plastic cups? Check. Music too loud to talk over? Check. Girls tossing their hair at all of my teammates? Check and check.

  Bridger’s room was thick with Harkness Hockey jackets and sweatshirts. The puck bunnies fanned out around them, fawning. I followed Corey’s stare to find a rather drunk young woman grinding up against Bridger. When I caught Corey’s eye, she raised an eyebrow. All I could do was shrug. You might think that there wouldn’t be any puck bunnies at an ambitious school like Harkness. But you’d be wrong. At every home game, there was at least one homemade poster reading: “Future Hockey Wives.” They weren’t even subtle about it.

  When Corey and I had battled all the way into the party, Bridger gave us each a warm smile and a warm beer. It was then that I discovered the logistical difficulty of drinking a beer while supporting oneself on crutches. Corey, who was obviously smarter than I was, had wedged herself onto the arm of Bridger’s beat up old sofa. Leaning her crutches up against the wall behind her, she had her hands free.

  From her perch, Corey surveyed the room that Bridger and I would have shared if not for my broken leg. Beaumont House was a hundred years old, and the university hadn’t renovated it in a few decades. So the dark wood moldings were scratched, the walls yellowing. But it was still one of the coolest places I’d ever been. The arched windows were hung with real leaded glass, divided into tiny shimmering rectangles. An oaken window seat stretched beneath.

  Students perched on its edge, cups in hand, the same way they’d been sitting since the 1920s. I’d always thought that was cool, but tonight it just seemed depressingly stagnant.

  Bridger even had one of those felt banners hanging above his not-functional-since-the-1960s fireplace, reading Esse Quam Videri. The university motto was: To Be, Rather Than to Seem. It was a nice sentiment, but the vibe in Bridger’s room that night was more along the lines of: To See, To Be Seen, and To Drink a Lot.

  The first beer went down quick. “You need another?” I asked Callahan.

  “Not really,” she said with a smile.

  And good thing, because I probably couldn’t carry one back to her without spilling it. With my cup in my teeth, I made my way through the crowd to the keg without crushing anyone’s toes with my crutches. Bridger took the cup out of my mouth and refilled it.

  “What happened to that octopus I saw hanging on you earlier?” I asked him.

  He tipped my cup to avoid too much foam. “Christ. I had to peel her off me. That’s Hank’s little sister.”

  “Seriously? I thought she was younger.”

  “That’s the problem. She’s sixteen, and just visiting for the weekend. Now she’s reattached herself. To Fairfax, of all people.”

  I scanned the scrum of bodies. Sure enough, on the window-seat I spotted a half-lidded girl wrapped around our teammate. And Fairfax looked pretty deep into his cups himself. “Fuck. Where is Hank, anyway?”

  “I really don’t know. Haven’t seen him for a while. Probably someone offered him a smoke.” Bridger handed me my cup, and we both watched a drunken Fairfax shove his tongue in the girl’s mouth. “That’s just some kind of wrong,” Bridger muttered. “Do you have your phone?”

  “Sure. Hold this.” I gave Bridger my cup, and shot off a quick text to Hank. “911. Put the bong down and come get your sister.”

  Bridge and I drank a beer together while watching the door. But Hank didn’t appear. I looked back toward the happy couple. “Dayum. Did she just grab his junk?”

  Bridger winced. “We’ll have to stage an intervention. If that was my little sister…” he let the sentence die. “That girl is drunk off her ass.”

  It had to be done. “Coming through,” I called, and Bridge and I wove our way towards the window seat. They were still hot and heavy by the time we got over there.

  I tapped the girl on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Hank is looking for you.” Their lips made an audible popping sound when they came apart. “Whah?” the girl slurred.

  “Your brother,” Bridger said, pulling her off Fairfax. “Right now.”

  “Holy shit, Darcy!”

  Hank had appeared, towering over us. The dude was almost seven feet tall. He put one giant hand on his sister’s shoulder, and held up his phone with the other. “Thanks, Hartley. I owe you.”

  I shrugged it off, but not be
fore Fairfax noticed. After Hank dragged his sister away, he fixed me with a wobbly stare. “So you’re cock-blocking me now?”

  Seriously? “No, man. I’m helping you out. You’ve got to throw the little ones back. It’s the law.”

  “You are such a bastard, Hartley. Always such a bastard.”

  I clenched my fists on instinct.

  “Oh, fuck no,” Bridger spat, putting a hand on my chest. “You are not punching Fairfax at my party. No matter how big a douchecanoe he is tonight.”

  But my blood was boiling already. That fucking word. Why do people have to use that fucking word?

  “Dude, no,” Bridger pled, both his hands on me now. “Let this one go. If you hurt him, he tells Coach…nothing good comes from that. And the guy is plowed, Hartley. He won’t even remember this in the morning.”

  As if to prove the point, Fairfax began to sag onto the window seat.

  I shook Bridger off me, but I didn’t lunge at Fairfax.

  “No good deed goes unpunished,” Bridger added, handing me the crutch I’d dropped.

  Right. So this had been fun.

  I turned away without another word, heading back towards Corey, and her perch on the sofa arm. The sofa proper was taken up by with two couples engaged in varying stages of foreplay. But the wall beside Corey was empty, and so I maneuvered myself into position to lean upon it. With just a third of a beer left, I could dangle the cup from two fingers and still hang onto my crutches.

  “Everything okay?” she asked mildly.

  “The leg is killing me tonight,” I mumbled, staring into the last of my beer.

  She tugged her bag off her shoulders. Digging into the bottom, her hand emerged with a tiny bottle of Advil. God bless her, she tapped two of these into my palm.

  “You are such a babe,” I said, tossing them back into my mouth.

  “Uh huh,” she said with an eye roll.

  I gave her a wink, and the puck bunny standing in front of us gave Corey a dirty look. She was a fluffy-haired cheerleader type wearing some kind of tight, shiny shirt.