One Month Ago
Treyce Stavinsky is sitting in the hallway directly outside of the vice principal’s office. An officer in a blue uniform has escorted him from his home room. Mr. Patel, the vice principal, is currently talking on the phone with a woman whose voice Treyce faintly recognizes. She sounds distraught.
Mr. Patel tells the woman, “The boy is here now. We will explain to him what has happened.” He hangs up the phone and walks towards his office door, his footsteps heavy. When Mr. Patel opens it, Treyce sees he has been crying.
“Mr. Stavinsky, please come into my office,” he speaks solemnly.
Treyce is a running back for their school’s football team. He is in the middle of his senior season. They have been undefeated. He has an athletic scholarship offering from a competitive school. His performance on the field this year was superior to any other 17-year-old running back in the country.
Treyce enters the office.
“Hey Mr. Patel, what’s the trouble? The man outside told me I needed to follow him here, straight away.” He buries his hands inside his pockets.
The last time he had been in this office was freshman year when Corey Filman had started a food fight at the football table. All the football players had to help clean the cafeteria for three months. Mr. Patel gestured towards the chair that sat across from his desk. He waited for his student to sit down before saying anything else.
“Treyce. I just received a phone call from Lila Wells’ parents. She and three other students were involved in a car accident last night. Lila and the driver had passed away before anyone reached the scene” The Vice Principal paused for a moment, he made eye contact with Treyce and could see the anger and disbelief shuddering throughout his body. “The Wells have requested that you drop by their house this afternoon. They have a gift for you that their daughter was saving until your birthday next week. Officer Dawson will drive you to the Wells residence, and you have been excused for the rest of the day. We know that Lila was a close friend of yours, and we are sorry.”
Treyce
Have you ever met someone that seemed to light up the world around them?
They just have some kind of gravitational attraction that draws everyone else in, leaving nobody out of orbit. They are the kind of person that people desperately wish to become one day. That person for us is Lila Wells. She is the sun at the center of Redwood High School’s solar system.
Always has been.
I remember meeting Lila at Bradley Biggs’ 14th birthday party. Bradley and Corey Filman were tossing a football back and forth over Lila’s head, some version of monkey in the middle. Her silky, honeycomb-colored hair was braided away from her face…exposing a flower-shaped birthmark on her forehead.
“Come on guys, can I please try to throw it? You’ve kept me in the middle for half an hour.” Lila called out.
Our future quarterback, Bradley, laughed. “Alright, we will let you play with us if you can make it all the way to Stavinsky over there.” He pointed my direction.
Lila glanced at me. I was within earshot to hear the bet, but far enough away that even Bradley might mess up a solid pass to me. If she was nervous, she never showed it.
“Bet I can do better than you Brad.” Lila grabbed the ball out of his hands and we briefly made eye contact before she pelted me in the gut with it. I had no time to react, and frankly, I was shocked that she had made a direct hit.
“You going to try out for the football team?” I asked, holding my stomach.
She rushed over and attempted to give me a hug, but luck would have it, she tripped over the football lying in the grass, causing the first cataclysmic moment in my life to occur. We fell together onto the ground, and her honeycomb hair unraveled at the edges, leaking loose strands onto my face.
“Maybe I will.” She said smirking, “I’m sorry, I smacked you in the gut pretty good. I’m Lila, who are you?”
“Treyce Stavinsky,” I replied.
It was then that my world changed forever. We were surrounded by people at Brad’s birthday bash, but I didn’t even care. My sole focus in that moment was Lila Wells’ smile. She stood, picked up the ball and extended a hand towards me, “Come join us Stavinsky, we’re going to play a game.”
She is the reason I tried out that year. She is the reason I was scouted and selected for an athletic scholarship to my dream school. Lila is responsible for every big change that has happened in my life.
And now she’s gone.
Cataclysmic, kind of a funny word to use. It means: to denote a violent natural event. Why would someone use such a negative word to describe their happiest memories?
Junior year Lila started going out with Brad. They had been together four months when I heard a conversation in the locker room after practice between him and a few of the other players.
“Tyson’s party was killer last weekend bro; did you end up getting with Rachel?” A younger teammate asked Brad.
That jacka** gave him a cocky half-smile and winked, “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.”
I remember feeling my skin begin to boil at the mention of Brad possibly cheating on Lila. Nobody deserved that, especially not her. Lila spent her free time volunteering at Redwood Youth Center. She dedicated hours of her time to helping people and being there for them. Why the hell would anyone want to hurt her?
That upcoming Friday night marked the second cataclysmic event in my life. It was the last game of the season, my first year as a starting player. I remember seeing Lila wearing Brad’s jersey, number 32. She was in the stands with a group of girls, including Rachel McNery. They were both holding up a sign that read, “WE LOVE YOU BIGGS!” I bet Lila had no idea just how much Rachel wished she were wearing Brad’s jersey.
The last play of the night, Brad had called for the switch — a deception tactic that is used to fool your opponent. We were behind six points and would need a touchdown to tie the game and go into overtime. My job was to take the ball from Brad while he faked a toss. During the entire game, all I could think about was Lila, and how catastrophic it would be for her if she knew what Brad had done. All I could think about was the possibility of our sun losing its spark. Causing everything else to be catapulted into a new orbit.
The clock started, and I ran towards Brad. Instead of grabbing the ball, I just kept going. I knocked him to the ground, effectively scratching whatever chance we had remaining of redeeming ourselves for the game. I heard the clock sound off, letting the stands know that Breyburry High had won.
I could feel the anger steeping off Brad’s body. He threw off his helmet and screamed, “What the f*** is wrong with you Stavinsky? We had a clear shot…an easy chance to fool these motherf***ers and try for overtime. Why the f*** would you throw it?”
I took off my helmet, revealing a side of myself I never knew I had. Brad’s face melded from an angry madman into a fearful little boy. “You don’t deserve her.” I said, looking into the stands.
After the crowds had died down and left the field, I found myself walking to my car in the dark. It was parked a few blocks away. My parents both had to work, so neither of them was able to make it to my final game. I am kind of glad they missed it. They probably would have had a few words with me after seeing me looming over the top of my teammate in a rage.
I’d almost reached my car when I heard a voice behind me, “Hey Treyce” I immediately recognized Lila’s soft tone. “Just wanted to see if you were doing okay. Things looked a little tense on the field tonight. Brad refuses to talk to me about it. You two fighting over something?”
Someone. I thought to myself. “Just a spat, no need to worry.”
“If you say so, drive safe.” Lila said to me, patting my shoulders.
“You too,” I paused, “Lila?”
She turned to face me again. Her honeycomb hair flowed freely around her waist. It glinted in the starlight. Almost as if she weren’t even real, just a glowing image of a perfect person. “Yeah Trey?”
I think I’m in love with you. I am in love with you and I would treat you a million times better than that d***head of a boyfriend you have. That’s what I should’ve said. I should’ve said that Brad was a lying piece of crap and any guy on the planet would be lucky to be with her. Instead, all I could manage was, “If it would’ve been you out there on the field, we probably would’ve won.”
She smiled and walked away. Where she had touched my jersey, I felt a phantom grip the entire drive home.
Current Day
Mr. Patel looks at Treyce, it has been a month since the accident. He can see the boy’s body shuddering. They had been calling him in for weekly check-ins, along with the other students. Among those in the car accident who hadn’t survived had been Bradley Biggs, Shaun Casey and Lila Wells.
“Perhaps writing about it will make you feel better. Say all the things you wish you could’ve said while she was here.”
Mr. Patel said.
Treyce Stavinsky exited the vice principal’s office. He made it out to his car and started crying. From his backpack, he pulled out a piece of paper and a black ballpoint pen. He wrote:
Dear Lila,
You have caused three cataclysmic events in my life. The first was when we met, the second is when I fell in love with you and the third is when I lost you.
I drove to your parents’ house the day I found out you had died. Mr. Patel had told me they had a birthday present for me to pick up.
I knocked on the door and your little brother answered. Matthew, he’s only seven. Only seven, and the only person in your house that isn’t crying.
He looked at me and said that your parents had mentioned I would be dropping by. Then he ran upstairs to your room. When he came back down do you know what he handed me? Of course you know what he handed me. You were going to hand it to me yourself. He handed me the football you threw at me when we first met. A neon blue ball with a note written in bold white ink across the width of it:
“Thank you for always being there for me Trey, even when I’ve made your stomach ache. Just wanted to let you know that Coach is going to let me join you guys for a game this Friday for your birthday! We will finally get to play together, at least for a little bit. I bet you that we can win it.
Love, Lila.”
Coach cancelled that game. We retired Brad and Shaun’s jerseys. The whole town has been mourning the loss of you. The youth center has a picture of you up on their wall now. Rachel McNery and your other friends decorated your locker in flowers and photographs.
I don’t know how I’m going to do this without you. You’ve been at the center of everything good in my life and I feel thrown out of orbit. The rest of the town feels it too.
The world should have stopped spinning. The world should have frozen over in darkness after the accident, but it didn’t. We lost our light source, but the sky keeps cycling new days even after your passing.
Please come back Lila, we need you.
Love, Treyce
Story by Dakota Brown
Illustration by Ashley Isenberger
Design by Ashley Isenberger