Damaged Goods

01 ⠀ When the Saints go marching in.

ONE
When the Saints go marching in.

                David Wymack has never been to New Orleans before. Louisiana doesn't have any Class I team, and he has never had any reason to make the trip until today.

When he got his eyes on the Minyard-Hemmick family, David honestly thought he was good with recruits for the upcoming year—a full defence line who already know how to work together on and off the court is what he would call divine intervention if he believed in such things. The fact that one of them spent nearly four years in juvie and is now under court-ordered medication and intensive therapy, that his brother is a notorious asshole who doesn't dabble in team-playing and adjacent themes, and that their cousin is an obvious enabler is—well, David believes Dan will figure something out. If anyone can deal with problem children such as these three, it's her; that, he's certain of. With three new contracts signed, David wasn't planning on recruiting a fourth player, despite knowing his team will run short on strikers by this time next year. The Palmetto State Foxes have always been a small team because David looks for very specific people, and so far they have managed to somewhat make it work. The Foxes don't need a striker sub this year, but David wants this one.

David was in his early thirties when he met Coach Evan Denvers. Kayleigh Day introduced them after David had mentioned to her his plans to build a team thats primary goal would be to give kids who were dealt a bad hand in life a second chance. Denvers was coaching a local team in Atlanta, Georgia at the time and was the first person David met, outside of Kayleigh, who wasn't playing but teaching Exy. He was also the person to give David contacts at the ERC, which eventually led him to Palmetto State University. They didn't keep in contact for very long; David hadn't heard from him in years until two weeks ago, when he opened his email inbox to find a high school student's file, stats and the date for a game he should attend, were he to be interested in that kid.

Her stats are, for the most part, rather average. Had Denvers not told David to come watch her play, he wouldn't have paid her much attention beyond the fact that she's one of Denvers' players, but he's glad he made the trip down to NOLA. What stands out the most about her is her aim—it's so precise and accurate that it's unsettling. David watched her shoot the ball mere inches past the goalie's head like it was nothing at all. He would have believed it to be involuntary, or a lucky shot, had she not done it four times. The away team's goalies weren't particularly good, she could have easily aimed further to the corners of the goals and scored just the same, and yet she kept aiming where they'd have no chance to move in time to catch the ball. David couldn't tell if she does this to prove to herself that she can score on such close shots, or if she just takes pleasure in taunting the other team with shots they simply can't block, but he figures it doesn't matter. What matters is that she plays like she would sooner drop dead than let go of her racquet.

David has spent the majority of the afternoon trying to find out what he could about her, without much success, even from Denvers himself. Juliette Alice LeRoy, five foot eight, right-handed, seventeen going on eighteen in a couple of weeks, moved from western France to New Orleans less than two years ago. According to Denvers, she's emancipated, and there are no relatives in the picture. According to her teammates, she makes a point not to mingle with any of them, and she's so abysmal at getting along with others that they're not complaining about her avoidance of them, anyway.

What Denvers could give him was an address, which David assumed would be a home address, because that's what students are supposed to put in their school files, and yet now he finds himself in front of a bar-restaurant just north of the river, smack in the middle of the French Quarter. He stands outside for a moment—it's just past seven in the evening on a Friday, which means the place is starting to fill with patrons. The building has a first floor, and from the street David sees two windows, one of them open, that seem to be from an apartment, though when he looks around, there is no other door than that of the establishment. He tries not to sigh; he's tracked down recruits in worse places.