The Foxhole Court (All for the Game Book 1)

Neil didn’t see Andrew’s group again until practices on Monday. He was happy to keep his distance, and they seemed to finally have lost interest in him. When they had to interact on the court they kept it short and civil. Even Kevin seemed to have forgotten his lines. His barbed remarks were gone, replaced by a heavy, unwavering stare that somehow made Neil feel even more insignificant than he had before. Neil refused to miss his condescension, but being the bug in Kevin’s microscope made him jumpy.

He was still trying to sort it out when he climbed into bed that night, but he didn’t have long to dwell on it. Someone pounded on the suite door, too heavy-fisted to be one of the girls. Matt was on his computer in the other room, and Neil heard his chair creak as he got up to investigate. Neil didn’t hear what he or their visitor said, but he definitely heard the door bang closed against someone’s unyielding body.

‘Kevin, I swear to God—’

Kevin’s name was enough to get

Seth out of bed. The fifth-year senior threw his covers back and rolled off the side of his bed. Faced with both Seth and Matt, Kevin had no choice but to retreat, and the door slammed closed a couple seconds later. Neil stared at the bedroom door, heart hammering in his chest. Kevin wouldn’t have come over here for either of them, which meant he was looking for Neil. Neil didn’t know why, but he desperately hoped it didn’t have to do with his conversation with Andrew. Why had he assumed Andrew would keep his story a secret? Andrew and Kevin were connected at the hip.

Sleeping after that was almost impossible, and getting up for practice the next morning was a chore. He braced himself for the worst, but Tuesday was a repeat of Monday: the same casual cold shoulder from the cousins and measuring stare from Kevin. Neil was almost relieved when Kevin caught up to him at the end of practice. He’d just cut the water off when Kevin rapped once on his shower stall door.

‘The next time I come for you, you will follow me,’ Kevin said.
‘Why?’ Neil asked.
‘It’s time to collect what’s mine,’ Kevin said. ‘Andrew isn’t going to interfere anymore.’
Neil didn’t understand, but Kevin didn’t stick around to explain.
At ten o’clock, a knock came at his dorm room door again. Neil was watching a movie with Seth and Matt, but he made sure he was the first off the couch. He wasn’t surprised to find Kevin waiting on the other side. Seth swore viciously at the sight of Kevin in the doorway. The movie’s sounds abruptly cut off as someone paused it, and the couch creaked as the others got up.
‘What part of ‘You’re not welcome here’ do you not understand?’ Matt demanded.
Kevin ignored them and shoved an Exy ball hard against Neil’s chest. ‘Let’s go.’
Neil hesitated, but he didn’t have long to decide. Seth and Matt were coming up fast behind him ready for a fight. Neil put his arm out to stop them. If Seth was in front, he might have bulled past Neil to get his hands on Kevin’s throat, but Matt pulled up short.
‘I’ll be back later,’ Neil said over his shoulder.
‘Are you stupid?’ Seth asked.
‘Yeah,’ Neil said. ‘Finish the movie without me. I don’t mind.’
Seth huffed and stormed away, but Matt moved into the hall to watch as Kevin and Neil left. Neil didn’t look back at him but followed Kevin downstairs to the back parking lot. There were more cars now than there’d been at the start of the summer, but Neil hadn’t seen any new faces around the dormitory. Whatever team was moving in was on a different floor from the Exy line and Neil wasn’t in any rush to play meet-and-greet.
Andrew was waiting for them in the car. Neil was surprised even though he knew he shouldn’t be. Kevin didn’t go anywhere alone. It didn’t matter what time of night it was; with Edgar Allen in their district Kevin wasn’t going to suddenly get brave. Neil thought about the last time he’d gone to the court in the middle of the night and found Andrew watching Kevin practice. It made him wonder how many times they did this.
Andrew was in the driver’s seat, arms folded across the steering wheel to make a pillow for his head. His eyes were closed and he didn’t stir when Kevin opened the passenger door. Kevin leaned over and looked in at him.
‘I can drive, you know,’ Kevin said.
‘The day I let you drive my car is the day I’m dead,’ Andrew said. ‘Are you getting in or are we going back to bed?’
Kevin sighed heavily as if Andrew was being unusually difficult and climbed in. Neil got in the backseat and sat in the middle where he could see both of them. Andrew twisted the key in the ignition as he sat up and drove them to the stadium.
Kevin let them through the gates and into the locker room with his keys. Andrew waited in the foyer while Kevin and Neil changed into their court gear, watched as they gathered their racquets and some gear, and followed them to the inner ring. When Kevin and Neil went for the court door, he went up the stairs into the stands to wait on them.
Kevin bolted the court door behind them, set the balls and his racquet aside, and got Neil moving right away. They ran a couple laps along the inside of the court walls, did intervals with the court lines, and stretched out at half-court. When Kevin was satisfied, he started going through drills. They started with a simple game of catch and quickly escalated to more complicated exercises. Neil recognized only a few of them. Those he didn’t know were harder to pick up and Kevin’s impatience, absent the last two days of practice, put in an unfriendly reappearance.
The last drill they did was the hardest. Kevin grabbed cones from the locker room and set them each up with a line of six. The name of the game was to rebound the ball off the court wall in a way that it’d knock the cones over. It wasn’t enough to have an accurate throw; Neil had to be both accurate and powerful. Neil didn’t expect it to be so difficult, but he’d never needed such hairpin precision before. Rebounds were used when passing the ball to teammates across the court. Teammates were intelligent, moving targets who could react to a ball’s trajectory, whereas these cones were static targets.
Neil’s first time through he managed to hit a grand total of one cone. Kevin got three of his six, but he was doing it with his weaker hand, so his misses didn’t make Neil feel any better.
‘You have too much free time if you’re coming up with drills like this,’ Neil said after he flunked a second round.
‘This is a Raven drill,’ Kevin said. ‘No one is allowed game time until he or she can knock every cone over in whichever order the master calls. Freshmen spend weeks to months trying to earn a spot on our line.’
‘The master?’
‘Coach Moriyama,’ Kevin said after a pause. Neil could hear the grimace in Kevin’s response, but he didn’t know if it was because Neil was making Kevin say his name or because he’d slipped up so obviously. Kevin recovered by switching his racquet to his left hand and giving it an experimental swirl. ‘Call them for me. Don’t stop.’
Neil didn’t think it was a good idea for Kevin to play left-handed, even if it’d been six months since his assault, but he didn’t argue. He counted the cones off in random order with only a second between the numbers. Kevin didn’t wait for him to finish but moved with him, scooping balls from the ground in front of him and hurling them at the wall. All six shots landed, sending Kevin’s cones toppling in the exact order Neil called. Kevin hit the last cone with enough force to send it rolling several feet.
Between the Foxes’ in-fighting this past week and Kevin’s bullying all through May, Neil had almost forgotten why he liked Exy so much. He did his best at practices but these days he worked mostly to keep his teammates off his back. As Neil surveyed Kevin’s damage, he finally felt inspired again. On its heels was a hungry, desperate rush.
‘I want that,’ Neil said.
‘Then start really trying.’ Kevin lined his cones up again and switched his racquet back to his right hand. He gave his left a small shake as he returned to his starting spot. ‘This is the first of eight Raven precision drills. When you master this one, we will move on. We’ll meet every weeknight save Friday until you can do all of them in your sleep.’
‘But we’ve lost a month of practice already,’ Neil said. ‘Why couldn’t we have started this in May?’
‘Because you set Andrew off unnecessarily,’ Kevin said, annoyed. ‘He said I couldn’t be alone with you and he wouldn’t let me bring you here.’
‘And you always do what Andrew says?’ Neil asked.
‘He is the only reason I can stay here, so yes,’ Kevin said. ‘Now shut up and practice. We’re weeks behind where you should be at this point.’
They spent the next half-hour on that same drill before moving on to footwork. Kevin called it quits at twelve-thirty. Neil was disappointed to stop after just two hours, but as he helped Kevin collect their balls and cones, fatigue started to set in. He was yawning by the time he followed Kevin off the court.
Kevin went into the stands to find Andrew, so Neil took a rare first shower. He was halfway through when Kevin joined him. Neil dried off and dressed in the sticky heat of the shower room and went into the locker room to drop his uniform off. He waited there for Kevin, and then followed Kevin to the lounge to collect Andrew on their way out. Andrew said nothing to either of them as he drove back to the dorm, and they filed up the stairs to the third floor in silence.
Neil was quiet as he went into his dorm room, but the excess care was unnecessary. Matt was at his desk, bleary-eyed and halfslouched. He perked up a bit as Neil closed the door behind him, and in the light from his monitor Neil could see the worry on Matt’s face.
‘You good?’
Neil realized Matt had been waiting up for him. Surprise warred with unexpected guilt in an uncomfortable twinge. ‘Yes. He’s teaching me Raven drills.’
‘You’re going to hate getting up in the morning,’ Matt said, shutting his computer down.
Neil knew he wouldn’t. He’d be tired and sore, but he’d be getting up so he could go back to the court. It wasn’t worth arguing about, so he murmured something unintelligible and preceded Matt into the bedroom. Matt got into bed while Neil collected his sleeping clothes, and by the time Neil finished changing, Matt was already asleep. Neil climbed up the ladder into his bunk and passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow.
It felt like only a matter of seconds before his alarm was going off to wake him up again. Neil double-checked his clock to make sure it was right, scrubbed the exhaustion out of his eyes, and went down the ladder to get ready for the day.
Maybe last night’s practice was an icebreaker in Kevin’s strange world, because Kevin’s angry comments made a comeback this morning. They harkened more to the angry disappointment Kevin started the summer with, though, and less like the hostile insults Kevin resorted to after hearing about the district change. Neil tried to appreciate the difference and almost succeeded.
The cousins still had nothing to say to Neil, but Neil noticed Nicky watching Kevin and Neil from time to time throughout practice. Seemed he hadn’t missed the thawing ice between the two. Neil waited for him to say something, but anytime Neil looked Nicky’s way, Nicky feigned to find something else suddenly fascinating. Neil let it slide, unwilling to be the first to break the silence after what Nicky had helped Andrew do to him in Columbia.
Nicky’s patience lasted until Wednesday afternoon. Andrew had weekly sessions with his psychiatrist on Wednesdays. Nicky dropped him off at the medical center while the Foxes were lunching and made it back in time to change out for afternoon drills. The men were all in the changing room, checking the straps on their armor and tugging their uniforms on again, when Nicky broke.
Except when Nicky finally spoke up, it was in German, and it wasn’t to Neil.
‘You think he’s ever going to forgive us?’ Nicky asked.
‘Does it matter?’ Aaron said. ‘He’s not our problem.’
Neil forgot the collar he was tightening around his neck and turned to stare at them. Andrew knew he could speak German, which meant these two should know Neil could understand them. Neil wondered if they expected him to join in, if Nicky was passively inviting him to forgive or condemn them without the others listening in on it, but neither man was looking at him.
‘What do you mean, he’s not our problem?’ Nicky asked, but Aaron didn’t answer. Nicky waited but lost patience before long. ‘Are we really doing this all over again? You want to fight these guys all the way to graduation?’
‘I want to be left alone.’
‘This is a team sport!’
The others had been ignoring them, likely used to the occasional German conversation, but Nicky’s strident tone got their attention. Seth glanced over with an irritated scowl, but Matt flicked a curious look between the cousins. Kevin didn’t look up, likely used to the occasional squabbling by now.
Nicky didn’t seem to notice the attention he was getting. ‘You can’t live like this, Aaron. I can’t live like this. It’s exhausting and depressing.’
‘Okay.’
”Okay’? Just ‘okay’? This isn’t okay. Jesus. Sometimes you’re so much like Andrew it’s horrifying.’
Aaron’s expression was livid. ‘Fuck you.’
‘Hey,’ Matt said loudly. ‘Break it up, you two. What the hell?’
Aaron pushed off the bench and stormed out, leaving Nicky glowering after him. Matt looked from the door to Nicky, frowning.
‘Nicky?’ he asked.
Nicky affected a wounded look and tilted his entire body toward Matt. ‘Aaron hurt my feelings! Kiss it better, Matt?’
‘Faggot,’ Seth said, stalking out.
Matt wasn’t swayed. ‘You guys all right?’
Nicky feigned confusion. ‘Of course we are. Why?’
Matt looked at Kevin, then Neil, waiting for one of them to back him up. Kevin ignored him, so Neil gave a slight shrug. Matt let it go and finished getting ready. Nicky gathered the last of his uniform and left a couple seconds later. Neil watched him go.
It wasn’t an act. They wouldn’t have let their argument take such a personal turn if they knew Neil was listening to every word. But that meant Andrew hadn’t told them, and Neil didn’t know why Andrew would keep such a secret from his own family. Maybe it slipped his mind when he medicated Saturday night, but it was a big thing to forget.
Neil didn’t know what game Andrew was playing or what he expected to get in return for his silence. He kept an eye on Andrew when Andrew made it back from Betsy Dobson’s office, but when he might have had the chance to ask, he let it slide. Andrew was drugged and happy; Neil didn’t want him to change his mind in a burst of scatterbrained amusement.
That night Kevin was at his door again. Neil bid his disgruntled teammates goodnight and followed Kevin to the car. Andrew was smoking in the driver’s seat but stubbed his cigarette out upon their arrival. He took them to the stadium, waited for them to change, and went up into the stands as they continued to the court.
When Kevin locked the court door behind them, Neil asked, ‘How often do you two come here?’
‘Every night,’ Kevin said.
Neil looked over his shoulder at the stands, but he couldn’t see Andrew. ‘Isn’t he bored of this by now? He’s never going to practice with you, so why does he humor you?’
‘He will,’ Kevin said. ‘He just doesn’t know it yet.’
‘I didn’t take you for an optimist.’
Kevin ignored that and started setting out cones for interval runs. ‘Let’s go.’
Neil pushed Andrew out of his thoughts and focused on Kevin’s drills.
They had two weeks of practice before the ERC made an official announcement regarding the district change. The day’s practice was over and the team was back at the dorm when Wymack called to warn them. Matt flipped on the TV and went to ESPN to see the segment. They’d missed seeing the news itself but were in time to see the reactions on the news show. The anchorman was gesturing wildly and talking a mile a minute. One of his guests was shaking his head in exaggerated disapproval; the other kept trying and failing to interrupt.
‘Here it comes,’ Matt said. ‘They’ll be all over us like white on rice. Coach’s phone is going to be ringing off the hook for weeks.’
‘I didn’t sign up to be part of a freak show,’ Seth said, cracking open another can of beer. ‘Let’s just send him back north and be done with it.’
‘Why do you hate him?’ Neil asked.
Seth looked at Matt. ‘Told you this kid was stupid.’
‘Why do you hate him so much,’ Neil clarified, ‘that you’d wish such a thing on him?’
‘Because I’m sick of him getting everything he wants just because he’s Kevin Day,’ Seth said. When Matt started to say something, Seth pointed a warning finger at him and kept going. ‘Do you know what fame gets you, shitface? Everything. All he has to do is ask for it, and someone will give it to him. Doesn’t matter what. Doesn’t matter who. The world is dying to give him anything he wants.
‘When he broke his hand, his fans cried for him. They flooded our locker room with letters and flowers. The amazing Kevin Day can’t play anymore, they said. Their lives were over. They’d grieve the loss forever. But tell me,’ Seth said, leaning forward on the couch to stare at Neil, ‘when’s the last time anyone cried for you? Never, right? They’re there for Kevin every step of the way, but where were they when we needed them?’
‘So you’re jealous,’ Neil said.
Seth made as if to throw his beer at Neil. ‘His life is not more important than mine just because he’s more talented.’
‘You have to admit your attitude makes it hard for anyone to care about you,’ Neil said. ‘You and Kevin both have impossible attitudes, but he can play better. Of course they chose him.’
‘Look here, shortbus,’ Seth started, incensed.
‘He has a point,’ Matt cut in. ‘This is your last year, Seth. Maybe it’s time for a fresh start. Give the people someone to rally behind and you’ll win them over.’
‘What’s the point?’ Seth slouched back on the couch again. ‘We’re the laughingstock of the NCAA and Edgar Allen is going to massacre us this fall. It doesn’t matter what I do. No one will ever recruit a Fox to the pros.’
‘Awesome attitude, Seth,’ Matt said. ‘Way to encourage the rest of us.’
‘I am encouraging you,’ Seth said. ‘I’m encouraging you all to stop being stupid. You’re not going to get anywhere so long as you play for this team.’
‘You’re too big of a coward to try,’ Matt said. ‘Neil and I will prove you wrong. Right, Neil?’
‘I’m just here to play,’ Neil said. ‘I don’t care about the future.’
Matt stared at him. ‘You don’t really believe that.’
Neil shrugged. ‘Afraid so.’
Matt looked between them. Seth raised his beer in a silent toast, somehow looking both smug and angry.
‘I can’t believe you two,’ Matt said at last. Neither man answered him. Matt looked to the ceiling for answers, then said, ‘I guess our dinner plans are scratched. I’m not going downtown if the press is out and about; I don’t care how many campus police Chuck gave us. Let’s see about ordering in and watching a movie or something. You guys sit here and wallow in self-defeat or something while I check with Dan.’
Seth jeered at Matt’s back as Matt left, then looked at Neil. ‘Maybe you’re not as stupid as I thought.’
‘Maybe I am,’ Neil said, and left Seth to finish his drink.