UPDATED: Dec. 12, 2018 at 11:18 a.m.

The lasting image is her smile. Jalen Carey will never see it again, but Charli Roberts’ unrestrained smile remains bottled up inside him. Every step on the court invokes a catalogue of emotions, not the least of which is his memory of that smile. That laugh. That love.

She was a year older, but Charli knew how to relate to Carey. She knew what he liked. She taught him how to drive in her Teaneck, New Jersey backyard. She celebrated accomplishments big and small, usually followed with a dab. She was an older sister — something Carey, an only child, didn’t have.

Now a freshman point guard for Syracuse (7-2), if there were a defining event in Carey’s life, it came Thursday, March 2, 2017. He was a junior at Immaculate Conception (New Jersey) High School. On the bus from his father’s apartment in New York City, on his way to school across the Hudson River, he got a phone call. Carey’s friend, Owen, had a strained voice. His sister, Charli, had diabetes, and she required an insulin pump attached to her hip. Overnight, it stopped working. Charli never woke up.

Carey broke down in tears on the bus. Since that day, his life has carried extra meaning. He lost one of his closest friends, but he didn’t lose focus. He reconfigured the energy associated with her loss and ascended into a better version of himself. In the locker room before every game, he prays for Charli. He prays in her spirit, which he’s carried with him from his humble beginnings to Syracuse, where he hopes to be the future of the Orange backcourt and get a step closer to his NBA dreams.

“She wanted me to be the best I could be in life,” Carey said last month. “She didn’t want me to just do one thing. She wanted me to do everything and be the best I could be.”

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Charli Roberts died after the insulin pump she relied on stopped working overnight. Courtesy of Owen Roberts

For Carey, basketball became an escape from city life. He was raised in a public-housing building in Harlem, one building from the apartment in which SU associate head coach Adrian Autry grew up. Carey said he saw friends, kids he went to school with and teammates on youth basketball teams, fade away. He stopped seeing them at school and on the hardwood. So he prioritized basketball, which gave himself and his father, John, something to do and somewhere to be.

Had John not challenged his son by sending him to school in New Jersey, Carey wouldn’t have met his inspiration. John wanted to force his son to adapt, so he enrolled him in Dwight-Englewood (New Jersey) School, to which Carey commuted between an hour and 90 minutes on a bus, from 112th and Lenox Avenue to northern New Jersey.

Carey met Roberts, who also played basketball, at school one day in the ninth grade. Roberts invited Carey over to his house, where he met Roberts’ older sister, Charli. They hit it off. Together, Carey, Charli and Roberts went to movies, drove go-karts and played laser tag. They shot hoops, ate and did homework. Carey said he didn’t have to give a heads-up that he was on his way. He frequented dinners and stayed over some nights. Charli implored Carey: Don’t fall behind in school.

From Charli, Carey saw a smile he wanted to emulate. He learned from her to cheer up others. He challenged himself to find a positive in any negative situation. He played as if another game may never come.

“She was never down,” Carey said. “Always in good spirit, smiling or joking, helping someone who wasn’t having a good day. That’s what I try to do. If anything’s going wrong, someone else’s day could be going much worse.”

Near the beginning of March, Charli picked up Carey near the George Washington Bridge. Roberts said they went to the Cheesecake Factory for a belated birthday dinner to celebrate the birthdays of Roberts (Feb. 17) and Charli (Feb. 18), who had just turned 18.

And then came the day that left Carey without the person he called his sister. Less than 48 hours later, tears welled his eyes.

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Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

Growing up, Charli dreamed of being a high school basketball coach. Roberts said the role would have fit her outlook toward life well. She wanted to mentor young girls and set them on a path for a productive life. She excelled in school.

The day after she died, eight letters arrived at her family’s mailbox in Teaneck. Letters from Seton Hall, Temple, Hofstra and other colleges arrived. She had earned several full academic scholarships, Roberts said, though she never got the chance to read the letters.

The unread letters leave Carey wondering, imagining the person she could have become and the lives she could have changed. He sees it as his best way to forge ahead: Live in her honor.

“It became that he was living for two people, not just himself,” Roberts said. “When she died, Jalen thought to himself, ‘You really got to make it now.’”

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Before his next game, Carey prayed for Charli. He said he scored more than 30 points in his first game since he lost her, with Kansas assistant coach Norm Roberts watching. (The Jayhawks later offered him a scholarship.) He’s prayed before every game since.

Before, he worked hard and trained on his own. But he’d laugh and joke at practice, make light of something funny or look away from the action on occasion, Carey said. Sometimes, he shortened workouts to hang out with friends. He was developing into one of the top players in his grade, piquing interest from Syracuse, Connecticut, Kansas and Miami. He may have fallen complacent.

“He was lazy at one point,” Salmon said. “But around Charli’s death, it got personal. Maybe that’s when the light went off inside him. His senior year especially, his focus was another level.”

#Charliworld ❤️?? https://t.co/DGu5aaoWbo

— Jalen carey (@yungswae5) November 19, 2018

Carey and Roberts made a pact to live for Charli, although that didn’t make the weeks after her death any easier. After school, they sat in Roberts’ room in silence. Carey cried. When he thought about her too much, he prayed for her, talked about her, reminisced about her. When the thoughts overwhelmed him, they found refuge in the basketball gym. Even now, as a freshman in college nearly two years later, Carey calls Roberts when she’s been on his mind.

Rather than make jokes at practice, Carey said he retooled his focus. No laughing. No more settling for jumpshots when he could take the ball to the rim. Charli was watching over him. He couldn’t mess around.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Jalen Carey’s position was misstated. He is a member of the backcourt. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on December 12, 2018 at 3:04 am

Contact Matthew: [email protected] | @MatthewGut21