IT IS CLOSE TO FIVE IN THE MORNING when he returns to the dorm. The leftovers of his uniform stink of old beer and frightened sweat. His body hurts in many unseen places. Since fleeing the bar, for the past couple of hours, on familiar streets and unknown fields, he has run, walked, run, and sat for long periods of stillness that are like falling, not knowing what to do or where to go.
Now, in the common room, a single lamp is on. His roommate, Jake, slouches unsmiling on the broken-down vinyl couch.
“It’s my fault. I should’ve stayed with you.”
“I really need to crash,” Sam mumbles, but his legs won’t move.
“I was at a party at McMahon. An hour ago, guy showed up saying his buddy’d just gone for emergency surgery. Bar fight in O’Doul’s. Internal hemorrhage or something. Very fucking serious.” Jake leans forward, his gaze nailing Sam into frame. “Somebody gut-whacked him with a baseball bat. The rumor already going around is maybe it was you.”
The duffel in Sam’s hand has begun to feel like fifty pounds. He sets it down.
“And don’t fucking try to tell me how he hit you first. I don’t give a shit. I told that asshole at the party, I swore to him on my mom’s goddamn wedding ring that there was no way—no fucking way, Sam—that my roommate would ever be stupid or crazy or just plain wrong enough to do a fucking thing like that.”
• • •
There is more, but the words turn fluid. Part of Sam absorbs their acidic implications; part repels them like accidental rain.
Until, at some point, Jake stands and says he needs to take a shower; it will help him think. After that, they will head to breakfast. Over breakfast, they will come up with a game plan.
A game plan, yes. Sam nods at his friend, or believes he does. He takes the UConn duffel into his bedroom. He closes the door.
Alone with himself, he stands looking at the brightening stain of sunrise that spreads from the window to his feet.
Something inside him has ruptured; something hideous has come out of hiding. He is leaking enough poison to kill another man, or himself. What toxin he can’t identify, but he’d swear that he now understands, at the level of blood, the meaning of the word ruin. A sudden conviction, like a dog’s yelp, impales him: to keep running and never look back. To find someone as far away as possible who might take him in and hide him from the clean world.
For the second time in twelve hours, he thinks of his father.
Unzipping the duffel, he dumps the contents on the floor. Amid the day’s profane waste are the clothes he was wearing before the game.
Quickly now, he begins to pack.