At the time, I didn’t know what had changed. I’d been eleven years old, scared and heartbroken and confused. Eventually, life returned to the mundane schedule that we’d kept before my mother died, even if I found myself waking up in the middle of the night with tears streaming from my eyes and my body shaking violently.

 

            No one ever knew about the breakdown in the snow that night. Only Andy had seen me fall apart, and even he never saw that happen again. No one saw me cry. Paul was despondent after my mother’s death. My father tried to stay strong, but despite his efforts, he started to grow distant. Someone had to hold the family together, so I took it upon myself to be the glue.

 

            My release came on the ice. When I was playing hockey, when I was skating, the pressures disappeared, the stress forgotten. By fourteen, I’d decided I was going to play the game for the rest of my life, come hell or high water.

 

            At the same time, I was beginning to figure out what had changed that night so many years before. In those moments of weakness, I’d been vulnerable; I’d been exposed to need. As we grew up together, the need grew stronger, and I finally discovered what it was. I was in love with Andy.

 

            I never said anything, of course. He was still one of my closest friends, despite the fact that he’d never really gotten past the defenses I’d put up after the night of my mother’s funeral. Besides, I knew that I was different. The other guys on our team were starting to date, and they would spend warm-ups, practices, and all of the time in the locker room talking about girls. Not one of them mentioned another guy. I stayed silent during those conversations, instead making myself focus on pushing harder and getting better. It worked. I was getting stronger, skating faster. I learned how to use my small stature to move in and out of scrums easily, discovered ways to confuse opponents, practiced taking advantage of others’ mistakes. I lived and breathed hockey.

 

            Only the nights were hard to deal with. I’d repressed everything, my worries, my fears, my feelings, so that I could make it through the days. But as soon as I fell asleep, they tried to escapes. To combat it, I stopped sleeping. I inhaled coffee, pushed myself on the rink, studied constantly, and only let myself nap when it was absolutely necessary.

 

            The nightmares stopped for a while. Insistent, though, they started to haunt me while I was awake. Voices echoed in the halls at school. Visions distracted me during games. When the exhaustion got so bad that I passed out in the showers after a long practice, I decided that I needed to go back to sleeping.

 

            I couldn’t risk waking up in Andy’s arms again. When I came to after fainting, I was staring up into wide, panicked eyes. Mortified, I realized that I was lying there, completely naked and helpless, and then I tried to get up. He was worried about me, insisting that I tell our coach, or if nothing else, my father. I shrugged him off, lying that I’d had the water of my shower too hot. He was skeptical, but stayed quiet, even though he forced help by keeping an arm around me on the walk to my locker.

 

            Everyone had left by then, and we dressed in silence. I felt his eyes on me, and I cursed myself under my breath. Never again would I let that happen. I was strong; I had to be. No one else was going to save me. I couldn’t let him see me fall apart a third time. I started sleeping again, and as if a punishment for avoiding them, the nightmares were even worse.