Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 115833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 579(@200wpm)___ 463(@250wpm)___ 386(@300wpm)
“The next day, me and Whitney went to school, and Damon stayed in bed. My mom had to work a double, so no one was home with him, but he knew how to take care of himself, so we figured he’d be fine. When I got back, I saw he was still in bed, but he wasn’t moving. I tried waking him up, but I—I found a letter in his hand. All it said was ‘I’m sorry. It’s all too much.’ I saw deep gashes on his wrist, and there was so much blood beneath him. I saw a knife. I . . . fuck. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started screaming for Whitney to come to the room.
“Whitney saw and called our mom, but it was too late. Damon had just started his senior year. He had so much ahead of him. He . . . he sliced his own wrists with a kitchen knife. He bled out on that bed by himself. I really don’t know why he’d taken such a drastic approach. I mean, I knew he was sad, I knew he was hurting, but I just . . . I never thought he would kill himself. And that note in his hand, I kept reading it, knowing exactly what he meant.
“Our dad was an abusive asshole who was too hard on us. He coached me and Damon for years and taught us everything we knew, but he was too much. He was too strict, too harsh, just . . . over the fucking top. Even before he started drinking so much, if we lost a game, he’d punch us dead in the chest for however many points we lost by, but we considered it tough love then. Damon was talented, but I remember him getting to a point where he didn’t want to practice or play anymore because he hated the consequences of losing.
“But of course, our dad kept making him. He wouldn’t let him quit, and Damon was good—hell, he was better than I was on the court, and my dad made sure to let me know that. I guess it all came crashing down on him, though. It had to for him to take his own life. My dad got arrested for what he did to Damon, but my mom dropped the fucking charges just so he could attend the funeral. I was so fucking mad, D. My anger has always gotten the best of me, and I was so heartsick and pissed off because he was just back in our house like nothing happened, groveling to our mom, manipulating her while she was sad and weak, but I saw right through that shit, so while my mom was sleeping, I told him he needed to leave. And if he didn’t leave, I’d tell the police that he’d been hitting me too.
“He left for a couple hours but came back later that night. He was so fucking drunk, stumbling through the house like an idiot. I was in my room and all I could hear was him screaming my name, ‘Declan! Declan! Declan! Who the hell do you think you are? Get the fuck out here, Declan!’ Then I heard a bunch of commotion. I heard my mama screaming at him, so I opened the door, and my mama was trying to push him back down the hallway, but he was so drunk and furious that he pushed her to the side, and she hit her head on one of the picture frames. She hit it so hard the glass cut her head. I saw her bleeding, but I had no time to go and help her because my dad charged toward me and wrapped his hands around my throat.
“He shoved me back on my bed, and he kept choking me and yelling in my face. He kept telling me I would never be as good as Damon, that I’d never amount to anything, that I should’ve been happy to be trained by him and that I wouldn’t have any of the talent I had if it weren’t for him. He kept saying I should’ve been the one to go, not Damon. And in that moment, I was so scared. But not because he was choking me out or anything. It was because his words were sinking into me like seeds, planting themselves there and taking root.
“I knew I’d never be as good as Damon—and I didn’t want to be. I didn’t care. But I also knew that since Damon was gone, I was going to have to carry on his legacy in some way. That’s why I wear the number seventeen. That was his number and the age he died. I was scared people would see me as this fraud, or the person who wasn’t worth a damn, you know? I was scared that he was right . . . that I’d never amount to a damn thing. But here I am, best of my team and one of the biggest faces of the NBA franchise, and there’s still this hollowness inside me,” I said, tapping the center of my chest with the tips of my fingers.