I am fine. That’s what I tell myself and that’s what I tell the people around me.
I’m fine. This is my life. I’ll deal with it.
SEVEN
After my former teammate’s brother was stabbed to death while leaving his security guard job one night, I always wondered why such tragic things happened to good, innocent people.
Leanna, the former teammate, didn’t show up to practice for two weeks. She was grieving over what happened and she was my friend, so I saw how much it hurt her that something so bad happened.
Mama always tells me I have too much empathy. When someone I don’t even know is in pain, I manage to feel for them, and when it’s someone I do know, I literally feel everything.
When Daddy died, I was weighed down by a lot of grief, but Mama took it so much harder than I did. I remember cuddling with her in the bed she shared with Daddy. She hated sleeping alone that first year, and after eighteen years of sharing a bed with someone she loved, I didn’t blame her. Having one side of the bed empty and cold was foreign to her.
When I first visited Leanna’s house after the stabbing, I could feel the sadness in that home. The house felt gray, which is a weird thing to say since feelings can’t exactly be colors, but it’s the only way I can describe it. Gray.
I’d been in Leanna’s home many times before and the curtains would be open, and it always smelled like cupcakes and buttercream frosting because Leanna’s mom ran her own cupcake company from home.
But this time when I visited, I didn’t smell cupcakes, and the curtains were closed. Leanna’s aunt answered the door and gave me a kind smile, and after giving Leanna’s mom a comforting hug, I went straight to Leanna’s bedroom.
She was lying in the fetal position on her bed, her hair thick and matted. Her eyes were puffy too. She sat up when she saw me, and she instantly smiled.
She said no one from school had come to visit her, but that the coaches had called to check on her and sent their condolences. She was glad to see me, and I could tell she really needed a friend. I knew what it was like to lose a loved one. It’s an indescribable pain and one I wouldn’t wish on any person in this world.
I was there for her and I absorbed as much of her pain as I could. Leanna went on to tell me the details of how her brother was killed. A man had broken out of jail and needed a car. Apparently, the man was hiding out around the parking lot where her brother had been parked, waiting for someone to come out to one of the cars.
The murderer attacked him, stabbed him three times, took his keys, left his body in the parking lot, and drove off. Her brother wasn’t found until a third-shift security guard pulled up an hour later and saw him, but it was too late. He’d bled out.
Fortunately, the police caught the man, and from what Leanna’s mother was saying, he wasn’t going to be out of prison for a long, long time, despite having mental issues.
The story is scary, right? I mean, her brother died because of this man and I felt awful about it. But all I could think about was why that man decided to physically attack Leanna’s brother like that in the first place. Why murder someone to get away instead of running, or catching a bus, or stealing a bike at least? Why kill just to get away? Why cause a scene? An investigation? To me, it was like the murderer wanted to be caught, which also didn’t make any sense. The cops figured out Leanna’s brother’s license plate number. They set up road blocks and tracked the car down. It was all too easy.
That always got to me. Like some part of that murderer was good and wanted to be punished, but his demons had won.
Not only that, but not too long after my father passed, Mama started seeing a therapist. She had pills on her nightstand. Some days she was fine—humming and flipping pancakes—and others she was sad and moping and laid up in her bed.
Her depression was understandable, but to me, it was like she couldn’t cope with losing my dad. These were things I questioned and things I could never wrap my head around. With loss, comes healing. With breaking out of prison, normally you do whatever you can to stay out of sight, not go and kill someone. But that man did everything wrong, and was caught, and he wasn’t apologetic either.
And that is why, on the first day of classes, I’m sitting on the second row in my first class of the morning, History of Psychology. The professor is an older, balding man. Short, with a big nose. Professor Glaspy. I can see the pores on his nose from here. He has a kind voice and he adds pizazz to the way he teaches. I like that.