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It's what comes after the match that's the hardest.
Watching it from the sidelines doesn't hurt Daisy as much as she thought it would. She still stands with her hands pressed against the glass, analysing every movement made on court. Her eyes follow every throw on the court, every step, every breath that her teammates take. She uses her obsessive gaze to block out the soul-deep ache of being sober. The last time she saw the Foxes on court, it was through the haze of a mind altering high. Now, she's too alert. Too quick to notice others mistakes, too wired in to the real world to know the mistake will happen five seconds before it does. She makes notes in the little pink notebook Wymack gave her, scratches through page after page. If this is what she can contribute to their game, like hell is she going to half-ass it.
The full-time buzzer blares. The Foxes are beaten 7-9, which honestly isn't that much of a loss. They're used to getting obliterated on court, and losing to Breckenridge by two points isn't half bad. Daisy trails behind the team on their way back to the locker rooms, flipping through her scrawled observations. She's sure nobody else could read the words, but that doesn't matter.
"You wanna tell them what you saw?" Coach asks her while the team are changing out and showering. Daisy nods, leaning up against the entertainment centre in front of the couches and awaiting her team. They come slowly, first the girls, then Matt, Aaron, and Nicky, then Kevin and Seth, then Andrew, and finally, the new kid. "Cohen made some notes for you guys. Be grateful," Wymack announces to the group, then gestures to her and steps aside.
"So," Daisy begins, flicking through her twelve pages back to the start. "You all started off way too slow. Warm up better. The Jackals were ready to run at the buzzer, it took you guys four-and-a-half minutes to get into the action. That's bullshit."
And it doesn't get better from there. It feels like a teacher berating a classroom, a parent scolding their child. Daisy's notes are extensive and in-depth, and at times they get personal. She tells Kevin that everybody can tell who he is on court, not because of the name on his jersey but the way he 'carries his racquet like a little bitch'. When it's finally done, over an hour since the final buzzer sounded, Daisy steps to the side. Coach stands at the back of the room with a proud smile on his face; it makes Daisy's heart wrench because it looks exactly like how her dad used to beam at her after every match, every good grade. Wymack dismisses his foxes and they bounce out of the room with glee, each and every one glad to be rid of Daisy's brutal shredding of their match.
Dan approaches her. "Was I too harsh?" Daisy asks her, and it makes Dan chuckle.
"No," the girl replies. "It was perfect."
She catches a ride back to the tower in the back of Matt's truck. The wind scraping it's fingers through Daisy's hair, making her eyes sting and her mouth go dry, is a feeling that she lavishes in. Renee sits opposite her, smiling at Daisy. The girl looks relaxed; fully free since the day she came back to them two weeks ago. She's been doing so well, she seems healthy and content... Renee wonders if it will all come to a screeching halt very soon.
She banishes the thought from her mind as they reach the parking lot for Fox Tower. With a silent prayer to whoever's listening, Renee lends Daisy a hand in climbing out of the truck.
But the real trouble comes when they get inside. There's a knock on the girl's door not long after they've all gotten into their pyjamas and decided on a movie.
"Hey," says Nicky from the doorway when Dan pulls it open. "Cohen in there?" Daisy leans around Allison to stare at Nicky. "Uh, we got pizza, they sent us a vegan one by accident."
"Cool," replies Daisy.
"What I'm saying is, like, do you wanna come have pizza with us? It'll just get tossed if nobody eats it, and none of us are sick in the head enough to want a Hawaiian."
She looks down at the oversized Fox hoodie coating her figure, her hair scraped into a misshapen bun atop her head. "Not really?" But Nicky's eyes seem desperate, and he wouldn't be asking her if it wasn't for a reason. He's the only one in that room who seems to like her, and an inkling of curiosity breaks through her wall of bleakness. "Actually, I haven't eaten since breakfast."
"We have food," Dan says, turning to face Daisy. They have a silent conversation: Daisy's eyes say 'this means something to them, I need to find out what' and Dan's eyes reply, 'they're going to fucking indoctrinate you into their weird Andrew-worship-cult and we'll lose you for good this time!'. Daisy wins when Dan finally blinks and looks away. She crosses the room and follows Nicky out, much to the protest of Allison's call of 'but we just put in Legally Blonde!'. Nicky gives her a grateful smile, but she touches his shoulder just as he goes to open his door.
"What's this about?"
She sees right through his innocent, "What?" and scowls. "Look, Andrew asked me to invite you over. I don't know why. He ordered you a special pizza and everything."
Daisy's stomach drops. "What-- why the hell would he do that?"
Nicky shrugs. "Beats me. I don't even know how he knows your pizza order."
Do you know who does know Daisy's pizza order? You guessed correctly. The one person who's been making her life hell since she got back.
"Cohen's here, be decent," Nicky announces as they enter. Her long legs stride across the room to where Andrew sits on his desk, smoking out of the window that he'd long since moved the mesh screen from.
"What the fuck is this all about?" she asks, jabbing a finger at him. He grabs her wrist in an instant, squeezing so tightly her fingers go numb.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Margaret," he grins at her. It's sick, she thinks, the constant psychosis he lives in. Everybody knows of her deep disapproval for his medication. She thinks it's one of the reasons he didn't kill her when she got close to Kevin before everything happened. "Pizza's on the counter. Those darn delivery drivers and their ignorance," he says, shaking his fist at the sky. "Some poor soul is starving right now, literally disintegrating without their sick cultural assassination of both islander and Italian cultures--"
"Yeah, we get it," Daisy grumbles. Sure enough, there's a Hawaiian pizza with 'VEG' scribbled on top of the box in the kitchen. She analyses it for a moment, looking for any sign that it had been tampered with. But it seems fine.
"Hey, Mags," Andrew calls after she takes a first tentative bite. "Check on Day for me, will you? I think he might have hung himself with his own jersey, he's been awfully quiet for a while."
Daisy grits her teeth, holding in every urge to knock the pint-sized motherfucker out of the window he smokes through. "Sure," she hisses, crossing the room. She doesn't even bother to knock, just slams the door open and stares at him. "He's alive," she announces.
But, is he? He sits on his bunk, knees crossed into his chest and staring at a page in a book propped up at the foot of his bed. In the few minutes she stands analysing him, he doesn't move an inch or turn the page. With a deep sigh, she steps into the room and closes the door behind her. Kevin's face finally moves, lifting to look straight at her.
"I already told them that if they're going to consume more than a thousand calories in one meal, they better not do it in my sight," he says quietly. Daisy just stares at him.
"And you wonder why you have no friends," she replies. She picks up his book and places it on the floor, sits where it once was at the opposite end of his bed. "A slice won't kill you."
"Didn't you say that once about hard drugs?"
"Touche," she replies. They sit in silence for a little longer, Daisy chewing silently on her pizza, crusts abandoned in the box, and Kevin picks pineapple off of the remaining slices to snack on.
It's almost peaceful, almost adjacent to their friendship before. It makes Daisy's heart twinge a little to think of what they had, and what she threw away for her own selfish and destructive habits. She recalls the jump of her heart at being able to call Kevin a friend, the Kevin Day! She remembers them sitting on his bed, a little closer than they are now, watching game reruns on his laptop or comparing notes from training that day. She remembers nudging him with her shoulder when somebody made a good play, him watching her facial expressions ranging from ecstatic to horrified to shocked to amused watching Exy games. She remembers thinking she'd found somebody just like her, somebody who cared so deeply about the sport that they'd hang it all on the line. A real friend. And now, they're... this. This horrible mess, a mish-mash of each other's deepest flaws reflected upon themselves. Daisy could cry.
"All your notes were correct," he says finally. "I took them from Coach's office. You make some good points."
"I know," Daisy replies. She can't pull her head out from underwater; everything is playing out before her beyond her control. She's a passenger in her own mind. "That's why I made them."
He nods. More silence. "It... uh, it was weird playing on a team without him tonight."
And it hits her like a ton of bricks. Of course, that is why he was distracted on court. That's the reason it took him so long to get into the game, and it was so easy for him to be distracted. He was looking for his other half. He was looking for Riko.
"Yeah," says Daisy. "I bet it was."
His body is quivering, and it isn't from the lack of warmth. "I've never been on a court without him. Like, I practised with you all last season, but that wasn't real. It still doesn't feel real. I keep expecting to wake up, back in the Nest, him on the opposite bunk. Like it never happened. Like this never happened." He flexes his left hand instinctively.
Daisy blinks. The parallel of their lives is so strange sometimes. Both runaways, both exiles of their lives before. But both of those lives are gone now, and though there are reminders here and there, it's over. This life here, this life with the Foxes, with Palmetto State University, is the one they're living. The path the universe carved for them was correct in leading them here, away from their pain, and into a safe place.
But she doesn't tell Kevin any of this. In fact, she doesn't say anything at all. The words won't come, won't translate from the abstract of her mind to the sound of her voice. Instead, she scoots a little closer to him on the bed and reaches over to grab his laptop. She still remembers his password, a combination of numbers and letters that mean something to him: his jersey number, Riko's initials, his mother's birthday, the date he left the Ravens. It comes back to her far too easily.
"The Trojans game should be finished by now," she says. Kevin is snapped from his nervous daze, and pushes up into a sitting position. She wants him to say something, to take the conversation back to where it was. She wants him to admit that Riko hurt him, promise that he'll never run back no matter how convincing Moriyama is. From the numb void within her, her hatred of the boy from Edgar Allan resurfaces. It simmers in her chest through the entire USC game, bubbles as her and Kevin compare notes afterwards, and almost boils over by the time she's ready to leave, close to midnight.
She's seething when he reminds her that they're to be on the bus just after one for the drive up to Raleigh. A tilt of her head causes him to elaborate. "For Kathy's show? Kathy Ferdinand?"
"I know who Kathy is," she snaps in response. "Since when were we going up there?"
"Since... I don't know. Coach told us last week."
"Oh," Daisy murmurs.
"Go get some rest," he tells her. "You look like shit."
"God, don't tell me I look fat again," she says, and his jaw drops. "Your words, not mine."
"You know that's not what I meant--"
She hums, and he stops talking. "Okay," she says, after a few moments of them staring each other down. "See you later."
"Bye."
Daisy makes her quiet escape from the room, sees Andrew staring at her from his perch on the window ledge. Aaron and Nicky are both asleep on the beanbags in front of the TV, and he beckons her over with a curl of his forefinger.
"I don't trust you, Margaret," he says.
It cuts deeper than Daisy expects it to, but she doesn't let the wound show on her face. "I know."
"But he does," Andrew jerks his head towards the bedroom she exited from. "And while I don't respect it, I do realise it will be hard for me to keep you apart."
Daisy's eyebrows drop low over her dark eyes. "He doesn't even like me anymore. He told me he doesn't want to be friends."
"He lies. I've always been a particularly good judge of character, and I can read Kevin like a book. I promised I would protect him until he graduates, and I intend to keep that promise, no matter who I must protect him from. Understand?"
Her eyes fall to her feet. "It's not going to happen again. I'm done with it."
"Every addict relapses. You're a ticking time bomb."
Her grief gives way to a ferocity she wasn't expecting to surface. "Fuck you, sitting there all high and mighty. You helped Matt out of his addiction, took him to Columbia and gave him speedballs and got him clean. Where was my helping hand, huh? Like you said, you're a good judge of character. You always knew about me, and you never gave one shit. You don't get to start judging me now, Minyard, you fucking don't."
She turns on her heel and stalks out of the room, the slam of the door startling the other boys awake. Andrew's face contorts into a wide grin; he stubs out his cigarette on the window ledge and climbs down from his perch.
"Was that Daisy?" Nicky asks, scrubbing a fist into his eyes.
"Yes," Andrew says. "I think she's going to turn out to be a very interesting person."
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