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There's nothing inside Daisy now. That much is for certain.
Where once there were fields of memories, a tide of emotions that ebbed and flowed, a wealth of knowledge and feelings that made her feel more human, there is now the burnt husk of something that was lit on fire and put out too late.
Daisy feels it in her fingertips, no longer buzzing with electricity but weights at the ends of her hands. She feels it in her feet, far too heavy to break connection with the ground she's planted onto. Mostly, though, she feels it in her heart. She'd rather have taken an ice pick to the chest than to feel this... this harsh emptiness. This feeling of not being quite whole and not knowing what she needs to fill the void with to regain her soul.
It's strange to mourn a version of yourself that never truly existed. Daisy Cohen was a figment of a person that nobody ever really met. It was the polished girl that Daisy looked into the mirror and saw smiling back at her, lip gloss and straightened hair and denim cut-offs that showed her lean thighs. She would say hello to the other athletes in the dorm, she would get lunch with girls from her classes. She would pretend that the letters from her brother in prison didn't make her dry heave to even think about and that the nightlight beside her bed was for aesthetic purposes and not because she was terrified that one day she would open her eyes in the dark and it would all just be... gone.
Almost like it is now. She fucked up, and she fucked up bad. Like, existential levels of bad. Biblical apocalypse levels of bad. Her future is almost certainly ruined, and everything she's been working towards since she was a kid is dashed.
That's what she thinks to herself, knees drawn so tightly into her chest that the airbag in front of her would do no good if they crashed, for the two-or-so hours west on the I-26. The man beside her shoots furtive glances her way. She doesn't look back, because her head is too full of nothing to care.
She's trying so, so hard to care. It just doesn't come as easily as before.
At some point she dozes off. She keeps weird hours now that her system is clean, and rest comes in what furtive snatches she can steal from the sandman. He dangles the concept of sleep over her head in the funny way that he always has, except now her constant exhaustion leaves her unable to jump to catch it. She watches him, feet buried into the ground and arms leaden at her sides, with eyes brimming with tears that won't fall. It's been four months since she could just crush a couple of pills and fall into dreamland for hours. Now all she has are these little moments she can dig her fingers into and milk for all their worth.
A violent shudder is what wakes her. The driver stalled the car at the best of moments, right in his parking spot outside of the apartment building. He looks over at her.
"Sorry," he says. "Been meaning to replace the damn thing for years, but you kids keep me too busy to go check out the car yards."
Daisy blinks.
She unfolds herself and clicks her seatbelt while the man is wrestling her bag out of the backseat. She wasn't allowed to take much with her on such short notice, but her roommates had managed to cram a duffel with everything she might need on her stay. It was sweet, really, all of the things they'd tried to sneak in for her. Candy, a photo album, her little pink nightlight, an unassuming mobile phone tucked into the lining. It was all discovered and taken away. Almost how most of the things she's ever felt were taken away, too.
She doesn't remember getting up to the apartment, but now she's here. Planted on a squashy leather couch in front of a television recapping sports news from the weekend. It's a Monday, she learns. There's flashing images of coloured mascots and teams wielding oversized racquets about themselves; Daisy stares blankly. This is something I want to care about, she thinks. But positive thinking isn't something she's ever counted as one of her talents. Her inky black hair, greasy at the roots and straw-like at the ends, acts like blinders to guide her attention to the television.
"Hey, kid," says the man. She looks at him, searching for his face in the haze of her brain. Coach, her brain replies. "Want something to eat? Abby's bringing burgers in for lunch."
Abby? Think... remember. Who's Abby?
"Abby, our nurse?" Coach reminds her. Daisy blinks. "They said you'd have trouble eating, but that we should try our best to keep you fed. Can you eat fries?"
"Yes," Daisy says. Her throat is raw; her words come out like a snarl from a cornered animal. Coach nods, taps something into his phone. "Sorry," she tacks on.
"S'alright," Coach replies. He's already distracted himself with something else, tidying a table of files and paperwork into the drawer underneath it. "I sorta signed myself up for a lifetime of dealing with assholes when I chose my job title."
Laugh, Daisy thinks, but nothing comes out. Instead, she turns her attention back to the television set before her. From somewhere behind her Coach taps the remote, and the sound comes on. There's a montage of three teams training; one in scarlet and gold, one in white and navy blue, one in black and red. Daisy stares at the screen, placing those colours to teams. USC, she thinks. Penn State. Edgar Allan.
The man behind her watches this, sees the recognition crossing her blank face. It's better than the marble bust impression she's had on for the last three hours, when he signed her out of the center and ferried her back to campus. She doesn't know how lucky she is to be here; he assumes she won't ever truly realise. It's a knock on the door that makes them both turn, her from the TV and him from the back of her head.
"Just Abby," Coach assures, already leaving the room for the hall. Moments later he returns with a woman in tow. She's about his age, grey-dusted brown hair pulled back into a neat ponytail. She smiles at the sight of the girl on the couch.
"Hi," the woman greets gently. She perches on the couch next to Daisy, puts a soft hand on her knee. The girl looks at it, then up at the woman's face. She's familiar, but not as much as Coach. "How are you feeling? I brought some food for you, but you don't have to eat it all."
"Abby, let her be," Coach's voice rings from behind them, over the sound of paper rustling and polystyrene packaging squeaking. "She's not five."
"I'm trying to be gentle, David," Abby snipes. There, that's a tone of voice that makes Daisy's memory jolt. The snap brings a few hazy memories out of the blur: ones of limping off court towards the stern-faced nurse, ones of stripping to her shorts and sports bra to be analysed in a tiny room, ones of hugging the woman after a victory.
Coach snorts in response, thrusts two containers at the woman. One of them is placed into Daisy's lap, but the sight of the greasy fries turns her stomach. Picking it up with light fingertips, she places it on the coffee table before her and draws her knees back into her chest. Behind her, Abby and Coach share a look.
Daisy knows what the look means. It's the same look people have been giving her for weeks. Like she's a kicked puppy, like she needs their pity or sadness to fix herself. She's full of enough self-pity to last herself a lifetime, and she'll be damned if somebody else's misplaced guilt is going to be her cure.
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The nights are harder. The days are bearable, just about, because there are distractions from the hunger that food cannot satiate. She can jog the neighbourhood, scroll mindlessly online, watch TV and game reruns that Coach taped for her over the summer.
At night, there's nothing but Daisy and her fractured mind.
They told her that things wouldn't be the same for a while. Give it a year, her nurse had told her. If you can get through one year, three hundred and sixty five days, you can get through anything.
The first sign of bullshit was that the nurse hadn't realised it was a leap year. So, that number had been bumped up to 366.
Second, that nurse smelt like a life of privilege. Had she ever slept with her back against a stranger's water heater just to avoid catching hypothermia? Had she ever stolen from the school cafeteria so that she could have another meal when she went home that night? Had she ever worn the same shirt eight days in a row because everything else had been stolen from her bedroom when she didn't bolt her window shut one night?
Daisy had. Daisy had done it all.
It's those points in her life that are the main characters in her head right now. It's almost four-thirty, every move of the clock's hands ticking closer to sunrise. She knows Coach wakes at about five; she usually hears him bumbling around in the dark for about an hour before he finally snaps the light on to make coffee and watch the news. But he doesn't need to know she catches dreams the same way she catches a ball in a net.
She remembers the first time she held an Exy stick in her hands. It was too heavy for a ten year old, but the league didn't have a team below under-15s, so she dealt with it. Training on Tuesday nights after school and playing games against other districts on Saturday mornings were her two hours of reprieve every week. Two hours of not thinking about her brother, or her dad, or her little job at the local butchers, or being forced to make friends by the guidance counsellor. Two hours of racquets and balls and goals and people cheering her on despite her being a foot shorter than the other players. Two hours of peace.
She wants that feeling back so desperately it hurts. In her head, going back to the court will ignite something in her that she hasn't felt in an eternity. It'll light the fuse, flick the switch in her head from NPC to main character. Daisy doesn't want to be a spectator in her own life anymore. She wants a taste of being alive.
Coach is taking her to the court today. She's been holed up in his apartment for a week, hiding out and making sure she's ready to adjust back into the real world. The university president Charles Whittier had been to visit her, to make sure she felt well enough to come back to campus. Mostly, she thinks, to make sure that she doesn't look like she just spent four months in a rehab centre under the guise of being in intense physical therapy for an injury sustained last April. Heaven forbid they find out the Palmetto Foxes star backliner turned out to be a junkie whore, right?
Daisy blinks, and she's in Coach's car again. These lapses in memory aren't serving her well, but her nurses said it would subside. At least, that's what it says in one of the thirty-odd pamphlets they thrust at her and Coach as they were leaving. Freedom to Live! The Road to Recovery! Supporting the Clean Life of a Loved One. It's funny, really, looking at the covers. All titles written by rich doctors in their cushy homes leading a sober lifestyle. What's there to do hard drugs about when you're a millionaire, right?
The orange abomination rises like a beast on the skyline. Daisy's toes tingle at the sight of it, and it's the most she's felt in days. The closer they get, the shallower her lungs feel. By the time the car pulls up in the parking lot, she feels like she's drowning. Her chest is tight, her skin feels like it's clinging to her and dragging her down, down, down into a pit of despair that she can't climb out of. There's no air down here, nothing for her to take into her body but the icy hopelessness she paddles in.
"Hey," Coach says, reaching across to clap her shoulder. It's an anchor, and she clings onto it with dear life. Her breaths come in shudders, her body quivering so violently she feels like she may fall apart. Coach holds her together with one hand on her arm. "It's just the team. They've all got their own shits, they'd be fucking hypocrites if they look down on you for yours. Besides, the threat of a marathon never did anyone any harm."
Daisy's throat finally catches the air once more. She gulps in breaths, gladly taking the water bottle Coach hands her and downing that as well. Calm washes over her, and then... it's gone. The black void within her swallows all feeling and she's back to that nothingness.
Most days, she'd rather feel nothing than whatever it was wracking through her body five minutes ago.
Daisy commits the code to the security gate to her memory. She doesn't want to break in, but she will if Coach tries to keep her out. Since she picked up that too-long, too-heavy racquet for the first time eleven years ago, her stint in the centre was the longest she's been away from an Exy court. Her hands are itching to wrap around a racquet, her toes ache to run until they go numb. At least, that's what she thinks this feeling is. Her mind has been playing tricks on her recently, and it's not uncommon for her to mistake hunger for the urge to throw up, or the need to play Exy for... well, she'll find out when she steps inside.
"They're all waiting in there," Coach says, before they get to the inner door of the Court. "I let Dan know you were coming back today so she warned everybody beforehand. I'm trying to make this as easy as possible, but there's gonna be hard work on your end."
Daisy hums agreement. Hard word? Daisy knows hard work. Hard work is making ends meet after your father dies and leaves you in custody of your deadbeat brother. Hard work is running drugs at age twelve to keep the heat on in the winter. Hard work is ridding your body of the poison you've been putting into it for the last four years, and dragging yourself out the other side, numb but alive.
But facing her teammates, after everything they helped her with and all the shit she handed them back in response? This is the hardest thing she's ever done.
And now, with them all looking at her hovering in the entryway like they're looking at a ghost... seeing his face looking at her like she was scum under his shoe...
Yeah, she wishes that void inside her would swallow her whole.
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