Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 109903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109903 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 550(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
"We should go," Neil said, because he didn't want to think about this anymore. "Don't tell Andrew about any of this, Kevin."
"I can't," Kevin said. "He won't respect your choice."
Neil started for the door, but Kevin put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. "Neil."
There was a world of regret in that name, but it was a promise, too. Neil pulled himself back together piece by broken piece and followed Kevin off the Foxhole Court.
-
For the first time in Neil's life, he wasn't thinking about the future. He stopped counting days until the Ravens' match and scaled back on how much news he watched and read. He threw all of his energy into practices, stayed awake through most of his classes, and juggled his teammates as best as he could. He saw Andrew's lot on the way to and from practices and he was out with Kevin and Andrew most nights, so he gave his evenings to the upperclassmen.
He knew things about them he'd never bothered to learn about anyone else in his entire life. Renee's birth name was Natalie; her adoptive mother renamed her when she pulled Renee out of the foster system. Her mother was the reason she and Dan were at Palmetto State. Stephanie Walker was a reporter who'd interviewed Wymack with the ulterior motive of marketing Renee to him. Wymack flew to North Dakota during spring championships to watch Renee's team take on their biggest rivals. Dan happened to be captain of the rival team, and Wymack was impressed by her fierce performance. He signed them both that same weekend.
"It was pretty bad," Dan admitted when Renee told Neil the story. "I couldn't believe Coach actually expected us to get along, especially after her team kicked mine out of championships in my senior year."
"She took it very personally," Renee said with a fond smile on her face.
Neil tried imaging a time when they weren't friends and found it difficult. "You got over it eventually."
"I didn't have a choice," Dan said. "The Foxes didn't want girls on the line-up, and they especially didn't want one as captain."
"We had to face our teammates as a united force," Renee said, motioning from herself to Dan and Allison. "It was the only way to survive. Our friendship was a show that started and stopped at our bedroom door. It took most of the year for us to realize it wasn't an act anymore."
"I didn't figure it out until summer break," Dan said, "when I was talking to the girls about the season."
By 'the girls' she meant her stage sisters. Dan, aka Hennessey, had gotten a fake ID back in high school so she could work as a stripper in a nearby city. The hours worked well around her classes and Exy schedule, and it made the money she needed. Her aunt was unemployed and stuck at home with a newborn. Dan somehow had to support all three of them. Dan said she stopped talking to her aunt the second she moved out, but she kept in touch with her former coworkers. Supposedly they were all waiting for her to become a hotshot star.
That was how Neil found out Dan didn't want to go professional after college. She wanted to be a coach, and she planned on seizing the Foxhole Court when Wymack retired down the road. She would maintain Wymack's recruiting standards in his absence. Matt was wholeheartedly in favor of the idea.
Matt was an interesting countermeasure to Dan's scrappy background: the wealthy and well-educated son of a professional boxer and a high-profile plastic surgeon. His parents separated years ago, in large part due to his father's unending infidelity, but weren't officially divorced. Matt grew up with his father, since his mother's career meant a lot of time on the road. Matt minced his words when talking about his father but could go on about his mother at length. She was his idol, and Neil found listening to his stories as interesting as it was painful. When Matt talked about summer breaks spent drag racing in the mountains Neil remembered the sound his mother's corpse made when he tried peeling it off a vinyl seat.
Two weeks after the banquet, Allison started talking to Neil again. Neil still hadn't figured out how to apologize to her, or if he had to apologize at all, when she finally broke the silence. Neil was eating dinner downtown with the upperclassmen when Allison told him to pass the ketchup. It almost startled him into dropping his burger and he handed the bottle over as quickly as he could. It was days before she had anything else to say to him, but her chilly silence slowly started to thaw. Neil even saw her smile at one of Matt's off-color jokes. She was nowhere near done grieving, but she was learning to be okay.
Neil wished he had something to give them in return for their easy friendship and trust, but nothing about him was safe enough to share. They never pried, but it took him weeks to realize they didn't have to. They didn't ask for secrets; they settled for the breadcrumb truths of day to day life. They knew he hated vegetables but loved fruit, that his favorite color was gray, and that he didn't like movies or loud music. They were things Neil understood only in terms of survival, but his teammates hoarded these insights like gold.
They were piecing Neil together and building a real person around all of his lies. They found the parts of him no disguise could change. Nothing they were learning would change this year's outcome or tell them who he really was, but it was frightening nonetheless. Luckily midterms were coming up, so Neil could use studying as an excuse to slowly pull back out of their reach.
The library seemed a safe refuge, since it was four stories tall and had two hundred rows to hide in, but Neil wasn't the only one with exams. He was leaving the library café with a much-needed cup of caffeine when he bumped into Aaron and Katelyn. Aaron ground to a halt at the sight of Neil, looking almost offended, but Katelyn smiled in happy greeting.