Starting Over

That room. You can't understand what that room was like.

The four dorm walls were closing in on him in January's chill. Quickly. There wasn't a countdown, but vanilla-colored cinder blocks were coming for him.

His elbows throbbed. His head ached. His heart pounded.

"I had bags under my eyes," he said. "I bet I slept five hours that whole week."

In the silence of that room, alone with unpacked boxes and photographs surrounding him,

Reid McCollum was broken.

He wept.

Seeing the broad-shouldered, 6-foot-5, 18-year-old smile on this warm July evening, you wouldn't have had any idea about the pain 2007 brought him that he then had to face in 2008. You'd have no clue. For a time, he didn't either.

During the fall months, McCollum had immersed himself in his senior season as Summerville High School's star quarterback as the Green Wave rolled into the state title game. He rode that diversion nearly to Christmas Day, a couple of weeks before he was to enroll early at the University of South Carolina.

He hugged his family, said his goodbyes and headed here to begin his life.

And that's when it all caught up to him. Right there in that room.

It had to sometime. It had to somewhere.

"You've got to grieve," said Dennis McCollum, Reid's father. "Everybody does it differently, but you've got to grieve. I don't think he ever had the time to sit down and grieve.

"I think physically, he wasn't ready. I think if you're not ready mentally, you don't stand much of a chance physically. And he knew it."

Days after his arrival, McCollum told an understanding Steve Spurrier that he was leaving school and that he would be back in the summer.

McCollum left that room. But, in so many ways, he was never really there.

The first wave

How do you broach the subject of loss with someone who has lost more in months than you have in your life, in ways more profoundly harrowing than most ever have in their lives?

Fire took them both from McCollum. Fire. It didn't make any sense then. And it doesn't make any sense now.

Disease, car accidents. They don't make any sense, either, for those who are too young to die.

But for Louis Mulkey and Cassidy Pendley to both perish in fires — four months, nine days and a state apart — that challenges the mind in a unique and anguishing way, making you wonder on an ultimate level why things happen the way they do.

"It's something I wonder about to this day," McCollum said. "Imagining how the families felt, that's what hurt the most."

Moreover, the reason it's confounding and confusing is because of the kind of people Mulkey and Pendley were.

As most know, Mulkey was one of the nine Charleston firefighters who died June 18, 2007 at the Sofa Super Store in West Ashley.

But most didn't know Louis the way Reid did.

"That's probably the lowest point in my life. Ever," McCollum said. "It just didn't seem fair. That's what I remember thinking the most."

McCollum laughed when he described Mulkey as a "clown." But, at the same time, as someone who angered him because of the way he challenged him as a quarterback.

See, Mulkey was McCollum's first position coach on legend John McKissick's staff at Summerville High.

"He's the one that first told me I was no good, that I had to get faster, that I had to get bigger," McCollum said. "He worked me harder than I thought I needed to be worked. Now I realize it wasn't hard enough. He would push me to the point where I hated him."

Of course he didn't hate him. That's why he was asked to talk about his mentor at a memorial service for Mulkey at Summerville's football stadium.

That's where the healing began, he said.

The void was always going to be there, he thought, but Mulkey's lessons could defeat the grave with ease.

But after the first wave of grief has washed over McCollum, the second came crashing down on him.

The second wave

As most know, Cassidy Pendley was the North Charleston native and recent Fort Dorchester grad who died Oct. 28, along with six other college students (five from South Carolina), in a fire at a beach house in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.

But most didn't know Cassidy the way Reid did.

"That one hurt a lot," McCollum said. "She's the nicest girl. She's genuinely nice to everybody. She's never in a bad mood. She's always upbeat. It's like, 'Why? Of all people, why her?' "

McCollum says he beat himself up that he wasn't there to save Pendley from the house that was engulfed by flames.

"You can't really think things like that, but there was so much going through my head at that time," he said. "I put a lot of it on myself."

They went to rival high schools and had no business being together in their peers' eyes. But McCollum said once his friends saw him with her, saw how beautiful she was, they shut up in a hurry.

When Pendley went to USC, McCollum knew he'd soon follow.

They hit the pause button on their relationship last summer, but McCollum says he felt inside that they'd again push play sometime down the line.

Whether that would've happened, doesn't matter. What matters is that he knew he would have a friend in Columbia. He knew Pendley would be there to share his ups and downs on and off the football field.

So, what in the world was he supposed to do now that she wasn't there? How could he not see her in everything he did and everywhere he went, and wonder how he could experience this campus and this life without her?

Do you get it now? Do you see how this transcended the idea that McCollum was just "homesick" and needed more time to prepare for college life?

Yeah, now you know why he packed his things, got on Interstate 26 and headed back to Dorchester County.

A little space

At home, McCollum settled into a routine.

He ran with Summerville's track team in the mornings and afternoons, to stay in shape. He trained at Velocity Sports Performance in Mount Pleasant, to prepare himself for USC's summer workouts that are now in full, grinding swing. (That's where the throbbing elbows came from in January. McCollum says he worked out so strenuously the first week that he got tendinitis in both joints.)

But, above the physical side of things, McCollum got his mind right.

His parents stood back. They were there to help, but understood that space is what their son needed.

"We've got four kids, and he's the youngest," Dennis McCollum said. "They've got a mind of their own. Sometimes you don't want to think they do, but you want to let them spread their wings and think for themselves."

McCollum took a West Coast trip with his father. He talked with a counselor about what he was encountering. He surfed. Oh, did he surf.

"The waves are pretty good in the spring," he said. "There's just something about being out there that clears your head."

Just about everyone, in Columbia and Charleston, wondered if McCollum would return after he left. Some had given up on the idea, assuming he'd go elsewhere.

But McCollum said another school was "never" in his plans. He knew he'd be back in July.

"This is what I've always wanted to do," said McCollum, who's most likely headed for a redshirt this fall. "There was never a doubt in my mind that I'd be back up here.

"Maybe people thought I didn't want to be a part of (the program). I definitely do, and I am. At that time, I just wasn't ready."

The future

This room. You can't understand what this room is like.

It's a place of hope. Of promise. Of memories, illustrated by those photos, that provide both hope and promise.

Six months didn't make McCollum perfect. But it provided a peace where there wasn't any before.

The time turned open wounds into scars. The pain is now dull, but the reminders are always going to be there.

Reid still talks daily with Louis and Cassidy. He wears a "9 Heroes" bracelet on his right wrist to honor Mulkey and the firefighters who lost their lives last summer.

All told, McCollum is a young man with one eye turned toward the past, to what his fallen friends meant to him. But he's got the other eye fixed on the future, one that was already bright and brightened more by Mulkey and Pendley as inspiration.

Soon, and it's a transformation deep in progress, both eyes will gaze forward.

"It's a matter of me turning into a man," McCollum said. "I'm always going to be thinking about it, but I needed to turn it into something that won't bring me down as low as I've ever been. They can push me to be better, push me to work harder, push me to be the best person I can be.

"I'm starting over."

Or, really, starting for the first time.

Reach Travis Haney at thaney@postandcourier.com and check out the new South Carolina blog at www.charleston.net/blogs/gamecocks/