Dare Me to Live

Chapter 19 (Part two)

Amber's words rang in my ears long after we turned the lights off that night. They crawled over my skin like ants, festering like cuts that wouldn't close.

She was right, but was she? Was it such a bad thing that I knew what happened to her? Survivor was a part of her past as much as it was a part of mine. Of course we were survivors of very different things, but that didn't mean we couldn't help each other, even if it was just through understanding on what uneven ground the other stood. But how could you convey that there's power in numbers to someone who wanted to walk the knife's edge alone?

I fell back into my library routine with Tyler now that finals were approaching in earnest. The night before Reading Day, a buffer between the last day of class and the first day of finals that was supposed to be used for studying but was more often used for sledding on cafeteria trays if it was snowing and getting drunk in a dorm room if it was not, Tyler brought up his own plans for that night.

"We're having a tournament tonight if you're interested in coming?" he said, flipping through the dusty pages of a massive book he had found in the recesses of the upper levels.

He was the only student I knew who actually used the archaic Dewy Decimal system rather than pulling quotes from the abstract of an article he had searched on Google scholar. Around us was a flurry of quiet activity, the tell-tale sounds of students bent under the heavy weight of deadlines they had thought were ages away. The smell of strong coffee kept washing over us with the near constant opening and closing of the library doors as they swallowed students whole and spit them, eye-sore and stiff-fingered, back out again.

"You sure you want to do that?" I asked with a hint of a smile. "My NHL skills are pretty impressive."

"Funny, I don't remember seeing you around the rinks growing up."

"That's because I was too good for the likes of you." I stretched my arms above my head and leaned back in my chair. Feeling rushed back into my joints, cramped from sitting in the same position for the last three hours.

"I'll have you know I was 3rd in the state in high school," he bragged, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing his mouth crook up at the right corner, it felt connected to me, like the lifting of his lips lifted the weight off my shoulders.

"Then you shouldn't be afraid of a little friendly competition."

"You're on."

_______________________________

"Dude, c'mon! You're losing your man-card here!" cried Zeke, Tyler's roommate, as my virtual hockey player beat the crap out of Tyler's.

Tyler didn't say anything, his brow furrowed, hunched over the controller. His fingers flew across the buttons, but it was to no avail. His meter ran out and the ref pronounced me the winner.

"Sweating yet?" I asked, as Tyler's player was sent to the penalty box and we prepared for another face-off. There were four minutes left in the third quarter. I was up by two.

He nudged me with his shoulder. "It's never too late to make a comeback."

"No chance, man. She has skills," said Zeke, shaking his head forlornly. He seemed to be taking Tyler's ensuing loss as a personal disappointment. Sensing defeat, he reached from his sprawled position on the leather armchair to grab his fourth slice of pepperoni pizza.

The coffee table was littered with an assortment of beer bottles and caps, dipping sauces for the pizza and breadsticks we had ordered in, and a fine dusting of pulverized Doritos from people blindly rummaging in the bowl while trying to focus on the game. The sounds of music and beer pong drifted from the kitchen down the hall where people had gone after having their turn on the Xbox. A piece of cardboard and a sharpie duct-taped to the wall served as a bracket for those who had already played and moved on to the next rounds. Tyler and I were playing in the semi-finals.