Page 32 of The Fall

Seventeen

Calgary unfurls beneath the plane, a welcome mat to nowhere.

The window is cold against my skin when my reflection meets my gaze. I’m pale and hollowed out, my color drained.

The rest of the team is ready to play. Vancouver isn’t in the running for anything; there’s no playoff spot to chase, no records to grab, but some of them want to play spoiler to other teams. Some of them need to play, to be on the ice, born to skate and shoot and move.

I remember feeling that way. Once.

There’s no one next to me on this plane, but God, it feels like there is.

There’s something— God , there’s something —digging at my thoughts. My heart kicks like it recognizes what my brain can’t latch onto. And then, there —a flicker, Blair’s voice, rising through the static that’s been consuming my mind for days.

That’s where we lived. That was our home.

We were on the plane. Calgary had stretched out in front of us as we came in on approach. The feel of his fingers in mine, the way his breath hitched when he pointed out the window. It was precious, this glimpse into his past. He trusted me with it.

That was our home. The words reverberate through me.

My heart stutters. The memory is real , as real as the hum of this plane, the cold seeping in from the window against my forehead. It’s so clear and unmistakable, and I?—

I’m grasping for more. I scour for anything I can hold onto: the way he pointed, the exact inflection in his voice, our elbows brushing between our seats. I’m trying to part fog with my hands to find fading fireflies.

This is proof—I know it.

God, I’m shaking so fucking badly. Blair. Blair Blair Blair?—

Maybe I can find him and tell him what I remember, how I remember. Maybe then?—

Maybe it will make everything right .

I cling to the memory, trace its outline, desperate to hold on.

I hear Blair again, again.

The plane touches down.

My heart cracks.

My hotel room is a sterile, beige box. The Orcas moved from the plane to the team bus to the hotel as quick as molasses. I toe-tapped and finger-bounced and lip-gnawed my way through it all, replaying Blair’s voice on loop so I wouldn’t lose those two sentences. “That’s where we lived.”

Blair . That was his voice speaking to me. Not through YouTube or postgame clips, but him .

Key cards, elevators. There’s a whole bunch of unwritten shit in the subculture of a hockey team.

Vets and old guys ride the elevators first. Rookies, new guys, and losers go last. Fuck that; I ditch everyone and take the stairs, striding them two, three at a time, up to my floor.

I drop my bag, dig out my tablet. I could have searched on my phone, but… I need to do this alone.

I need Blair.

All I’ve been able to do is cling to the scraps that remain: our shared breaths, his skin against mine, his lips on mine, on my jaw, my neck, my collarbone, my chest, my belly, oh ?—

And the way he looked at me.

I can have it all back if I can prove ?—

Please, please…

The Wi-Fi connects, and then I’m typing, furiously searching. Blair Callahan, childhood home, Calgary... Calgary childhood, NHL player Blair Callahan...

But—No.

Blair Callahan was born and raised in Chalk River, Ontario.

I stare at the screen until the words blur. Chalk River, Ontario. It repeats, a skipping record, each revolution carving a groove in my skull. Not Calgary. Not even fucking close.

No. God, no. No, no, no.

There has to be a mistake. I search again, but it’s the same on every stat sheet: He’s from Ontario, not Calgary.

My heartbeat ricochets. I’m losing the rhythm, the pitch.

I try to reconcile what I’m reading with what I know , what I can feel in my veins, in the folds and crevices of my brain.

How can I remember something that never happened?

His voice, for God’s sake— That’s where we lived.

That was our home. I hear him still; I feel him still, as real as anything I’ve ever known, more real than this page, this fucking lie.

You know why. You’re losing it.

My breath feels torn from lungs lined with barbed wire. My skin is too tight, like it’s trying to crawl off my bones.

Those whispers from him? They’re not coming from my memories; they’re coming from the cracks in my mind. That shade of blue from a pair of eyes I can’t forget? That’s the color of the frequency you hear when you lose it .

I’m an echo of a man, haunted and haunting himself. Who am I today? The ghost or the crazed?

I’ve read article after article after article about post-traumatic amnesia, brain injuries, dreamscapes, the mind’s defensive mechanisms. A mind on the brink, trying to protect itself, will rationalize and justify.

It will try to make sense of the impossible.

So many of the articles were trying to soothe, trying to say ‘It’s okay that you dreamed weird fucking shit.

’ It twists what’s familiar and unfamiliar and makes it its own.

‘Don’t worry. None of it is real. None of it fucking matters. ’

Hallucinations are built from the mind’s leftover pieces, scraps locked too deep to recall, woven from debris you didn’t know you carried.

Maybe I listened to those podcast episodes. Maybe I did see video clips of Tampa’s players. And maybe that’s all it took to ignite a fantasy that blazed so brightly it seared itself across my brain.

I was vulnerable. Desperate for connection. My brain—fucked-up from the hit, starving for anything to hold onto—latched onto Blair and built a world where I mattered, where I wasn’t?—

Alone.

The room spins, the walls closing in. There’s a word for this, for what’s happening inside my head.

Crazy.

There it is: the truth I’ve been circling, the truth I’ve recoiled from, running away like I can outrun the tides. None of it was fucking real. Unless I slipped into another universe, unless alternate dimensions are a reality, or time travel is something that happens to people?—

But it’s not. You know that. You fucking know that.

The room is too quiet, too empty, for this. I’m in fucking Calgary, inside a beige box, and my mind is splitting apart. I’m thousands of miles from everything that was perfect, sun-warmed and salt-streaked and mine . I’m thousands—millions—of miles from sane.

Blair was my mooring, my lighthouse, my everything, but he’s gone . No. Worse: he never was. He’s nothing more than a made-up man, a ghost from a life I’ll never have.

I hear my teammates in the hotel hallway. Mutineers? No, the Orcas, my real teammates. They’re laughing, making plans to head out, go to dinner. No one knocks on my door. They’re leaving me behind.

I’d leave me behind, too.

My breath shudders into a whisper, then stops altogether. The air in Calgary has learned how to choke a man.

I am alone. Utterly, completely alone, and I curl into myself like paper on fire.

Blair’s eyes, his smile, the warmth of his touch—the memories—fantasies—flicker and fade, in and out. I grasp, but they slip through my fingers, insubstantial as smoke.

Tears burn behind my eyelids. I swallow hard, try to breathe through the pain. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. The one person who could make sense of this, the one person I need more than anything?—

He doesn’t even know my name.

I shudder down the ice, my edges grinding and unstable. I’m supposed to feel power in every push, my quads coiling and releasing, but nothing holds. Blair haunts my footwork, shadowing every pivot, every turn. He’s there when I make the crossover, pulling me off-balance.

It’s all wrong without him.

I cycle pucks to no one, reroute drills that dead-end in open ice. My mind’s been bled-dry, and there’s nothing left.

Coach’s voice slashes over the ice. “Get it together, Kendrick!”

The puck flies past me. I scramble to catch up, but it’s too late. I’m late to every play. The rink is too small, too fucking close. The bench is no salvation. I hunch over, gripping my stick as if it’s my only tie to reality.

One failure spills into the next. “What the hell are you doing out there, Kendrick? You’re fucking up!” Coach roars.

The ice won’t hold. The puck catches me on the wrong edge, races past?—

Calgary zips the puck up the ice, give-and-go and get a goal. The score ticks up. We’re down one, then two, and I’m a bystander in my own collapse.

When I cycle off my next shift, Coach’s hand lands granite-hard on my shoulder. “Stay down,” he says. “You’re done for the night.”

I’m done.

My key bites into the lock, and the door swings open into a place I might have called home. Inside, my apartment breathes lifeless air over my skin. No, this place doesn’t welcome me back at all.

I drop the package I’d picked up from the apartment’s mailroom on the counter. It was here when I got back from the Calgary–Edmonton roadie, where I played part of the Calgary game and none of the one in Edmonton.

Should I even open it?

My phone vibrates, and the screen tells me what I already know: Dad.

I know what’s coming.

He calls back, of course.

I can’t ignore it forever. I answer.

“Torey.” My father’s voice is a blast through the receiver. He’s always been larger than life. When I was a kid, he was my Superman. When I got older, I learned he was human. He never realized I was, too, I think.

“Hey, Dad.” I barely recognize my own voice.

“Coach benched you? What the hell is that about? How are you supposed to contribute to the team if they don’t give you the ice time?”

I swallow. The truth fights to surface, but it’s easier—safer—not to breathe a word of it. “I’m not—” My tongue stumbles, trips over a lie. “I’m fine. I just had an off day.”

“Is it your head? Are you sure you should be playing right now? Maybe you need more time to rest.”

“I’m fine. 100 percent cleared, Dad.” Physically.

“Well, then, your coach needs to wake up, put you on the ice where you belong. You belong on the first line. Hell, you’ve always been the best. This coach of yours…” He trails off in a long, heavy sigh. “This is on them, Torey.”

Here’s my dad’s problem: he believes, to the center of his entire self, that I am the best hockey player he’s ever seen.

He spent eighteen years boasting about every one of my achievements, chronicling my rise through mites, bantam, and juniors, proudly posting my sports photos and game shots on every wall of our home.

He believes I was born to raise the Stanley Cup.

I used to think he was my biggest and best asset.

I had unfailing and unflinching support.

He’d drive me to the rink at 4 a.m. to practice, or across Saskatchewan to a weekend tournament, a thirteen-hour trip there and back.

I wanted for nothing: hockey sticks and skates and training gear, a home gym, a custom meal plan. My dad, my secret weapon.

He is the sum of every late night on the road, every morning practice, every beaming, fresh-off-the-ice smile, every ounce of expectation I built, polished, and set on my shoulders, proud to carry it. He believes I can do everything. I know I can’t do anything.

He hasn’t caught up yet.

“It’s not...” My denial fizzles out. I’m too tired, too fractured to argue. What’s the point? If he knew the truth, if he saw the wreck of the son he used to know?—

No, there’d be no patching that up. To him, it would be like shattering a priceless jewel or losing stardust from a burned-out solar system. Once gone, never repaired, never replaced.

So I let it hang: my failure, our silence.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Torey? You live for this. You’re better than this.”

I stay silent. The truth is a monster caged inside me, and if it gets out—if I admit I’m not what he thinks I am, that I’m a disaster waiting to happen, that I’m heartbroken over a relationship I made up, with a man —there’ll be nothing left of me.

I’ll be a pile of dust that he’s so disappointed in.

“Dad, how’s Singapore?” I choke out. I’ve never fully understood what my dad does.

He’s an executive, that much I know, and he rakes in the cash—we never wanted for anything—but he spent a lot of years traveling, more and more when I was a teen, even more when I was billeting.

Now he’s based full time overseas. He streams my games wherever he is and sends me commentary by text.

He’s a talker, my dad. Shifting the subject works.

He can’t wait to tell me about Singapore: where he’s gone, what he’s up to, how much he thinks I’d like this or that.

He’s so effusive. He’s the exact opposite of me.

I don’t remember my mother—she left a while ago—but I must be more like her than I am like him.

Eventually, the needs of the world catch up to my dad.

I hear his assistant interrupt, reminding my dad about his next appointment, his next meeting, and the need to prep for the prime minister.

“Torey, I have to run. But listen, call me, okay? Doesn’t matter the time, call me when you can. ” A pause. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

The call ends. I slump against the counter, phone still cradled in my palm. The screen goes dark; the room feels darker.

The package waits, and the secret it holds burns in my veins. I shouldn’t have done it. I know, I know how crazy it is, but maybe it’s better if I’m crazy. You’re circling the drain.

I rip through the tape. The cardboard splits, exposing its sinful innards: Blair’s jersey, his name and number 24 stitched in bright white across midnight-blue.

I cling to it as if holding it could bring him back.

If I squeeze hard enough, maybe something of him will bleed over and I’ll have him again.

But it smells like plastic. There’s no sunshine, no Key lime ache, only the sterile, factory-produced scent of mass production.

I crumple, falling to my knees on the cold, hard floor.

The world dims; my breath tangles in the fabric, and I choke on sudden, soul-shuddering sobs. One more breath … one more. One more memory of what never really was. I grasp another handful of the jersey, sinking deeper into what I know is madness.

Three seconds. Three seconds of unbecoming.

Then ten. Twenty. I lose track of time, holding Blair’s jersey to my face as I weep on my kitchen floor.

Eventually, I pull myself up enough to lean back against the cupboards.

There’s alcohol here, somewhere. I fumble for it, find vodka, and take a deep swig straight from the bottle.

I wanted so much more than this.

I sit in the dark and hold Blair’s name over my heart. Tonight, I’m not Torey Kendrick. I’m not anything at all.

I drink. God, do I drink, but it doesn’t fill the void.

Nothing does.