On three, we push our sticks against one another’s, battling it out for possession, but even with May’s sobering moment of emotion, it doesn’t help what Dr Mendoza called my ‘yips’. I keep pushing, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m doing. My arms go numb, and suddenly, I’m not pushing any more. I pull my stick back, and May immediately takes the opening. She snatches the ball up easily, starting a play for the goal, but her beeline slows right away as she looks over her shoulder.

I’ve come to hate the look. The pity, the moment when people figure out that a guy who could have been an MLL champion can’t even push his stick in the right direction now. It’s easy to blame it on an injury. They get that. When something physically hurts you, it gives them something to look at. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to call it what it is. Because when they don’t have something to look at, it becomes an excuse.

‘Oh,’ May finally says, but it’s not pity on her face. It’s a certain type of pain.

The kind someone only reveals to you when they’ve been exactly where you were before.

May’s junior season. Lifeless games. Dead passes. Goals that most youth players could have made.

‘This isn’t new to you,’ I exhale, letting my stick hang carelessly in my hands. ‘Your junior year.’

She purses her lips. ‘Guess not. Wasn’t just my junior year. My life crept into my game plenty of times. When you left. And then when …’ With a twirl of her stick, May gazes up at the clouds, and then back at me. ‘Anyway. To answer your question, no. This isn’t new to me.’

‘How the hell did you come back from it?’

‘I don’t know exactly how.’ She shrugs, and she does that little combination of things again, the purse of her lips, the look up, a blink or two. Holding back her emotions. ‘I found the right reasons to move on, I think.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Personable Guy

May

It was the June after my junior year at Prosperity High. Hot, dry, and heavy with nerves. First game of summer league. I picked up my stick just like I did before any match, but this time, something was glaringly different.

I couldn’t stop seeing him across from me, him with his crosse, me with mine, opposite sides of the field, just like it had always been. Opposite sides of the country.

Emotions were supposed to be easy for me. I got my dad’s stoic nature, rather than my mom’s out-loud empathy. I had never struggled this way before.