Sure enough, there was another message waiting on the machine when Adam walked into the dorm.
"Your dad," Charlie stated. Adam nodded. He contemplated just deleting the message, but on the off chance that someone else had called and had something important to say, deleting without hearing was probably not the best idea. He pushed the play button, and almost immediately, his father's voice, yelling just as he had when Adam was a kid, came through the speaker.
"I cannot believe what I just saw, Adam. I have never seen such a terrible game in my life. I sure hope the coaches gave you hell to pay for that one. You looked like a damn kid out there. I have never been so embarrassed. It's a damn good thing I had a hand in your scholarship, boy, or you'd have lost it tonight. I'm absolutely ashamed, Adam, absolutely ashamed." The message ended and Adam stood there for a long moment, feeling as though he'd been slapped hard in the face. The messages were always hard to take, but this one had been particularly personal. The tears came before he could stop them and he pushed himself forcefully away from the desk, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to stop himself from crying.
"Adam?" Charlie's voice was gentle, but Adam didn't want to hear it.
"Leave me alone," he said, his voice grating and harsh. Charlie opened his mouth to say something more, but then decided against it. He watched in silence as Adam got into bed and turned his back to the room. He wanted to say something to ease the blow, something to relieve the pressure, but he couldn't think of anything, and he didn't think Adam would want to hear it anyway.
Adam lay in bed for a long time, listening and waiting. When he was sure Charlie was asleep, he got up and went to his dresser. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to do such a thing, but when he found what he was looking for, he found himself sighing with relief. He climbed back into bed, trying to make as little noise as possible, and turned back towards the wall. In the dim light that came from the streetlamps outside, he flicked open the largest blade and looked at it for a long time. The rational part of his brain was screaming at him to put it away before he did something stupid, but the emotional part of his brain led his eyes to the pale flesh of his left—uninjured—wrist. For just a little while, he wanted to tell that rational side to shut up, just shut up and let him go. His eyes were dry now, there were no tears on the outside, but on the inside, he was crying nonstop. It just never seemed to end.
The first cut didn't hurt nearly as badly as he thought it would. Just a simple one, straight down, following the veins. He watched in fascination as the dark, red blood—his blood—seeped through the cut and overflowed onto his pale skin. The second cut he didn't even feel because it was as if his arm had gone numb. All he felt was the release, the escape. All the pain was concentrated in that one area of his body, and then it flowed out of him through the self-inflicted wound. It was control. He was in control. He could localize the pain and minimize it. Some small part of his brain was telling him this was the worst possible way he could be in control, but he ignored it and pushed the blade into his skin for a third time.
The next two weeks, Charlie could sense his friend spiraling out of control. After practices, and after games, he'd come back to the dorm, ice his wrist, study, and go to bed without a word. Their conversations amounted to nothing more than questions and one word answers, and even those were sometimes hard to get out of Adam. His father's messages were getting more personal, more vicious, and Adam had taken to deleting them without even checking to see who they were from first. When he was around the dorm, he refused to pick up the phone and if his father called, he pleaded with Charlie to lie for him.
At night, Charlie was sure Adam was not sleeping intentionally. Several times, he'd woken a little at the sound of someone walking around their room, and once or twice, he'd thought he'd heard noises coming from the other side of the room. Noises. Whimpers. Cries. It bothered him, but the few times he'd gone over to check on his friend, Adam had been dead asleep.
Michigan's last game was against Ohio State, and it was slotted to be a tough one. Everyone knew the Buckeyes were tough, and by the end of the game, no one would know it better than Adam.
Early in the third period, with Michigan down 2-1, Adam found himself on a breakaway. His lungs were burning with the effort, and his leg muscles were screaming in protest, but he pushed himself into a full sprint anyway. Every movement, any movement, sent waves of pain radiating up his right arm, and this time was no different. As he cut left, then right, it felt as if shards of glass were being pounded into the muscles in his arm. Somehow he got off a weak shot, but that wasn't the worst of it. The check was late, and definitely called for a penalty, but when Adam hit the ice, he knew the damage had been done.
He went to the trainer after the game, and she ordered him to see the doctor immediately, telling him that she would only front for athletes to a certain degree. He went to the doctor without really thinking, without really caring. He was devoid of emotion, devoid of feeling. The diagnosis was pretty much what he'd expected: bad sprain, 2.5-3 weeks with rest and ice, and he would be okay. The doctor warned him to ease back into training when he removed the gel-cast, and Adam found this absurd. How could he ease back into something like training? There was no middle ground. Either you trained or you didn't. He headed back to the dorm, feeling a little light-headed from the pain-killers, frustrated, and somehow empty inside. When he stepped into the dorm, he vaguely heard Charlie ask him something, but he didn't answer, just went to his bed and lay down facing the wall.
Late that night, Charlie was still restless, unable to sleep. He was worried and anxious. He couldn't remember the last time Adam had actually not answered him. Yeah, they'd traded a lot of one-word answers, but the only time Adam had not talked to him was during freshman year at Eden Hall, and that had only been in response to Charlie's silence.
Throwing back his covers, Charlie swung his legs over the side of his bed and rubbed his eyes. He was tired, but unable to sleep. Things were weighing too heavily on his mind. With a shallow sigh, he got up and walked across the room to where Adam was sleeping. He sat there for a moment in the darkness, just thinking, then reached over and turned on the small, bedside lamp. He let his eyes linger on Adam's face for a moment. There were faint tear streaks there, still drying, and Charlie wondered how long Adam had been awake, crying. His attention was then drawn to his friend's wrist, which was lying exposed on the pillow next to his head.
"Oh…no, Adam…" Gently, Charlie lifted Adam's forearm from the pillow. It was deeply scored with five or six angry red lines, running from the base of the palm to about mid-arm. Lightly, Charlie ran his fingers over the cuts, then pressed his hand against the wounds, wanting nothing more than to soothe the pain, take away the hurt.
"Why would you do this to yourself?" The words came before he could stop them, in a hushed whisper, voice unsteady. He didn't know, maybe didn't want to know, when this had started. He didn't want to know when his friend had stopped trusting in him. Adam stirred in his sleep, and Charlie released his arm, laying it back on the pillow. Then he pressed his palms against his eyes, feeling a few tears there. What was he supposed to do?
