hey besties. before you read on, just wanted to give a heads up that this chapter has a big ol'
CONTENT WARNING
attached to it. lots of heavy shit involved, so pls be warned. be kind to yourselves xxx
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Daisy's phone is ringing.
On an ordinary Monday morning, it wouldn't be a strange occurrence. Daisy gets a lot of calls from a lot of people; the girls, her teammates, group members for class projects and other friends she's made along her college journey. Most of them she ignores and flicks a text telling the caller she's busy. The ones she cares about know her schedule, and will phone accordingly or text otherwise.
This caller is not one of those people.
It's an unknown number, which is Daisy's first red flag. She's five minutes out from her first class of the day sitting on a bench outside her building with her fingers tapping on the cool metal either side of her. The silence of the campus in the morning soothes her; it's the only reason she tries to schedule her classes this early. A bird nearby sings it's song in a tree, and is promptly scared away by the obnoxious pop ringtone Dan set on Daisy's phone a few weeks ago.
"Hi, who's speaking?" she asks when she answers the phone, expecting it to be a classmate with a question or a professor berating her.
An automated woman's voice speaks instead. "This is a prepaid collect call from Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Centre. This call is monitored and is subject to recording. To accept charges, press--"
Daisy crushes the decline button on her phone, her finger pressing harder and harder into the device until she's sure the key is broken. It might have amused her, how little it takes for her day to go from 'okay' to 'devastating', had she been able to pull in a breath sufficient to get blood to her brain. Her grip on the edge of the bench is all it's taking for her not to slide down and curl into a ball on the floor. Her chest rises and falls too quickly to do anything for her. The blackness inside is spreading, seeping into her limbs and down into her fingers and toes. It swirls in her vision, crushing her lungs and squeezing her heart until she feels like she's going to choke on her own blood.
"Hey," says a voice above her. Daisy looks up, trying to at least pretend she isn't having a panic attack in the middle of campus. It's the girl from her class, Anna-- or Hannah. Daisy isn't sure, and her brain sure as hell isn't about to remember right now. "Did you talk to Renee for me?"
Daisy nods. All she manages to get out is, "she's not interested," and even that sounds shaky. The girl looks at her strangely.
"Bummer," she says. "See you in class."
It takes Daisy a good ten minutes to get herself to the point where she feels steady enough to walk. She leaves her phone on the bench, not wanting it anywhere near her right now. Hopefully, somebody will see a perfectly good phone and take it. Daisy can dream.
The class would have been uneventful, like a lecture on architectural mathematics should be, had Daisy not been imagining all the different ways her brother could walk into the classroom right now. He could stroll in through the door and take the seat next to her, pretend he's a late student while he presses hard fingers into her thigh. He could burst in, wearing one of those old black and white convict outfits, screaming bloody murder and wielding a shiny weapon. He could meet her outside, take her by the hand because he knows she can't protest against him, and put her into a taxi and ship her back off to who knows where.
She skips her second class. Instead, she barricades herself in her bedroom, the lock on the door firmly pressed shut, and stares at the door until she hears somebody come home. The clicking on the laminate flooring is obviously Allison's heels, and Daisy all but flies out of the room to cling onto the blonde girl.
"Woah," Allison says after Daisy nearly knocks her over. "What's up? Are you okay?"
Daisy doesn't reply. She doesn't say another word for the rest of the day, except to whisper to Renee that she's going out just after one in the morning. The court beckons her with open arms, and she's the first to arrive at the gym on Tuesday morning when everybody gathers for before-class training. None of the girls snitch on her night time absence to Wymack, which Daisy is grateful for, but it's hard to do circuits as well as she normal does on no sleep and an empty stomach.
Dan is the only one without a class on Tuesday morning so she sits with Daisy in Matt's room, watching a dumb movie that Daisy couldn't care less about.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Dan asks, but Daisy's quivering bottom lip tells her to ask no more. Daisy doesn't even think about her classes today, because all that's on her mind is that phone call.
How the fuck did he get her number?
She decides that she can't be in the suite alone by herself, convinces herself that the loneliness is the real reason she's so anxious. A trip to the library solves her problem for a few minutes at least, until she gets sucked back into her thoughts. Thirty-six hours on no sleep finally gets to her and she falls into a catatonic state in the library, slumped over a desk with her cheek pressed into her textbook. None of the students around her seem to think it's a good idea to disturb, because she wakes up three minutes before afternoon training is scheduled to start and an hour after her afternoon class has finished.
After training, Renee takes Daisy aside. She speaks no words, only analyses the girl and then sighs. They share a bed tonight, because Renee knows how much Daisy needs to be close to people when she's like this. The two girls rest back-to-back in Renee's bunk, hands gripped tightly together. Renee falls asleep before midnight; Daisy's eyes keep darting around the room for hours before finally catching forty-five minutes of rest just before dawn, her eyes focused hazily on the little pink night light she sleeps with.
Wednesday is easier. Somebody must have clued Kevin into Daisy's weird state, because he invites her over to watch an old game after training. October and their match against the Ravens is approaching fast, but both of them can see the improvement in the Foxes. Kevin tells her he thinks that they might not get pummelled as hard as he once assumed. Daisy says nothing, just accepts the choc-chip protein bar he hands her and finds a spot on the couch.
Kevin sees the pen in her hand and her pink notebook in his peripheral, but he doesn't notice that the page is empty until the game is over. He turns to face her, shoves her shoulder when she stares blankly at the black TV screen.
"What's up with you?"
She pulls a sour face at him. "What's up with you?"
"You're being weird-- weirder than normal. Are you high?"
Her blood boils beneath her. "What, because you're all just waiting for me to relapse, huh? Poor Daisy, the drug addict who we need to tiptoe around because she's one bad day away from doing heroin again--"
"I didn't fucking say that," he cuts her off with angry eyes and a harsh tone. "I was asking you because I had to rule it out. So what's up with you?"
She huffs out a breath, folds her arms over her chest. It's hard to stop herself from pouting, so she bites down on her lips instead. "My brother tried to call."
"What, from prison?"
"No, from Disneyland," she snaps. "Of course from fucking prison."
Kevin's tone has less edge than it did a moment ago. "What did he say?"
Daisy replies, "I don't know. I didn't listen to more than the robot voice at the beginning. But it freaked me out."
"No shit," he echoes. They sit in the quiet for a few moments. "Do you... like, wanna talk about it?"
She gives him a withering look. "Do you care?"
"I mean, if it's going to affect your game-- which it obviously is, looking at how you've been training the last couple of days."
"Shut up," she says.
Silence falls once more.
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Thursday is when it all comes falling down around Daisy. Like, it's been crumbling apart all week inside of her, ever since that phone call on Monday. Allison had made her purchase a new phone but Daisy had refused to keep the same number, and now she only twelve contacts in her phone: all of her teammates, Wymack... and the last one, well, that's for Daisy to know.
She stumbles in afternoon training, because she hasn't really slept in almost two days again. Her vision is a little foggy and her reaction time is terrible and, yeah, from an outside perspective, it does look like she's high. But it still shocks her when Wymack approaches her, looking furious, and grabs her by the shoulders so sharply that she flinches. The scrimmage comes to a halt around her.
"Is it your ankle?" he asks, and she shakes her head. "Then why are you falling over nothing on my court. Cohen, I swear to God--"
"I'm not," she says. "I promise."
She knows he doesn't believe her, but it takes until Friday for him to do anything about it.
Daisy is asleep on the couches in the lounge of the Court when everybody arrives. She's wearing her gear, her racquet on the floor beside her. The girls take her for a cold shower and Daisy admits she fell asleep around four, meaning she's had a grand total of two hours sleep in the last sixty hours. Nobody knows how she does it, and honestly, Daisy doesn't either.
Coach finally snaps when she trips over her own feet and face-plants on the floor of the court. He storms through the door, grabs her by the shoulder, and pulls her off court.
"We had a deal," he says, letting go of her and watching her stumble by the sub benches. "I put my career on the line for you, keeping you on this team because I knew it was the only way to get through to you. You're making an ass of me in front of everybody, and I won't tolerate it."
"Coach," she whimpers, trying to walk towards him but stopping when he raises his hands. "I promise, I'm not high. I-- I've thought about it, all the time I think about it, but I'm not. Ask the girls, ask Kevin-- I swear-"
"Forgive me if I don't believe you," he says. Daisy can feel the hot tracks her tears are leaving down her cheeks, scrubs them away with an angry fist. "I don't, Daisy. You're going to get your bloods done-- no, you're done here today," he adds when she tries to answer back. "I'm calling Reddin to let them know you're coming, and they'll let me know if you don't show up. I know how long it takes to walk from here."
Daisy's bottom lip trembles and she wraps her arms around herself. She can feel the eyes of her teammates burning into her skin, and she turns her back on them to avoid them seeing her face. It's embarrassing, her cheeks red from holding in her tears and her breaths shaking her shoulders violently. Footsteps approach her from behind, but Daisy sets off into a fast walk to get away from them. She passes by Wymack, gives him a final, miserable look, then leaves the court. She's crying before she even gets outside, still in her training gear minus the armour she viciously ripped from her body before dumping it and her racquet in the lounge.
The fire in her veins is stronger than ever; she can feel every ounce of blood pumping through her body at a rapid pace. Her feet fall heavy on the concrete below her. She figures if she runs, she can make it back to the dorm and then on to Reddin without raising any alarms.
So that's just what she does. Her body carries her back towards her bedroom at lightning speed, her fingers rooting through her dresser until she finds the tiny contact lens case at the back of the drawer.
Two small white pills stare back at her. They're barely the size of her pinky nail, but she knows they would solve all of her problems. Daisy doesn't give a fuck; they can find the drugs in her system and they can kick her out. She'll find somewhere else to go, something else to fail at. Nothing is fixing her pain. She hasn't found one thing that even comes close to this high, nothing that makes her forget her pain and trauma and lets her live like a normal twenty year old girl.
So she places the two pills onto her tongue, sucks them for a moment in her mouth, and spits them back into her palm. A quick rub of her shirt fabric against the pills removes the outer coating and she stares at them for a moment, considering her options.
Sure, she could throw them away, get her blood work done, go back to living her miserable existence. But the thought of another sober moment makes the tears fall even harder, and she throws the pills to the back of her throat and swallows dry.
The regret hits her immediately. Her hands start to shake harder, she hiccups to try and catch breath through her sobs. Daisy falls to her knees, buries her fingers in the carpet and grips onto the fibres. Tears blur her vision as she stumbles into the bathroom, slips on the bathmat and crashes hard onto her knees. She crawls towards the toilet, barely opens the lid before shoving her fingers as far down her throat as she can. She retches, but when nothing comes out, she does it again.
The timer she set on her phone rings. Daisy needs to leave now to get to Reddin on time, and she's not going to screw this up any more than she already has. She just hopes she's not fucked it up for good this time.
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The pathologist's office is as cold and harsh as the last time she was here. The same woman takes her blood, although she knows not to say anything this time. Daisy just stares at the wall, all her tears dried up and emotions washed away. She's got nothing left right now, so she just does what she's told.
As she's leaving, her arm aching from the vials of blood drawn, a familiar face turns down the hallway at the same time she does. Daisy, completely phased out of reality, almost walks into the shorter woman.
"Oh!" the woman exclaims softly as she sidesteps to avoid the girl's war path. "Daisy! What a surprise seeing you here."
Daisy looks down at the woman, eyes narrowed slightly.
"Betsy Dobson," she greets. "I know it can be tough remembering the small things. I'm the psychologist for the Foxes."
It rings in Daisy's head. She was exempt from the once-a-semester visit required of all athletes this time around, courtesy of her summer spent in intensive rehab, but she obviously left quite an impression on the woman for her to remember.
"I've been meaning to give you a call, actually," Betsy says. Daisy can understand why she's a therapist; the warm smile on the woman's face is all too inviting for the girl to spill all of her secrets. "I thought perhaps you'd like to visit one day, just for an informal catch up? In fact, if you aren't busy right now, I've got a little while free? I have missed our sessions, you used to visit so often in your first year."
Daisy considers it. She should be going back to practise, but is she really in the right mindset to be training right now? Her brain is furious, her body is spent. She finds herself nodding and following Betsy down the corridor, into the plump, cosy office at the end of the hall. They sit opposite each other, Betsy hands Daisy a cup of jasmine tea.
"I remember you don't drink coffee," the woman says. Daisy nods. "So, how have you been?"
That's when Daisy starts to cry again. It's the stupidest things that set her off sometimes, somebody remembering that she doesn't eat meat or asking how her week has been. Betsy understands this, and reaches out to put a hand on Daisy's knee.
"It's okay," Betsy says gently. "I know. You're going through some of the hardest times you'll ever go through."
"Nobody gets it," Daisy manages to choke out. "Like-- everybody is just waiting for me to blow up again. Every time the girls walk into the dorm they expect to see me dead on the floor again. I don't know how to-- how to make them believe I'm doing better."
"Are you?" Betsy asks. Daisy looks at her. "Doing better, I mean?"
It takes Daisy a moment to think. "I... maybe? I still miss being high all the time, of course I do. Every day I have to put away the urge to call my old dealer. But I have more good days. This week has sucked."
"Why this week in particular?"
"My brother called," she says. Betsy purses her lips and clasps her hands together tightly, Daisy notices. "He tried to, at least. I didn't pick up."
"Perhaps he wanted to mend things between you two? He is in prison, am I correct?"
"Things are never going to be fixed," Daisy says sharply, before raising a hand to her lips. The words even shock herself; she's never admitted that to anybody before. She always wanted to give Jonathan the benefit of the doubt, hoping things would become clearer to her as she grew nearer to his age. But things are as muddy as they were before. "He ruined me. He ruined my life. I-- I don't know how anybody could think the things he did were the right thing, but he never showed any remorse. He smiled at me when he got taken away in the court house."
Betsy stares at her. Daisy knows the woman was granted access to the court transcripts when Daisy started seeing her three years ago, but the girl doesn't know how much the woman read. "Do you think he's the reason your addiction began? That his cruelty led to your dependence?"
Daisy laughs in a sick way, the sound making even the hairs on her own arms stand up. "Of course it fucking was. He used to feed me my dead father's Oxy's so I would be calmer when he let his friends pay him to spend a night with me."
The woman falls silent. Daisy knows that Betsy has spoken to a lot of fucked up people, and she's almost proud that something she said made the psychologist speechless. They stare at each other for a moment.
"Is-- Daisy, I don't--"
"You don't have to say anything," Daisy says softly. She stares at her lap, picking at her cuticles until blood rises to the surface. "I've made my peace with it."
"I think we should make this a regular thing," Betsy says, finally. "I think it would be very beneficial to you, and I would really like to try my best at helping you. If you aren't interested, please feel free to say no."
"Okay," Daisy says. She's run out of energy to argue, and Betsy seems like she genuinely cares. Maybe it's Daisy's mommy issues not letting her say no to older women, she doesn't know. But she leaves Betsy's office with a date next week to come back and a little bit of a lighter heart.
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The rain starts halfway back to the dorms. It's dark now, and Daisy hadn't noticed the clouds gathering overhead when she arrived at Reddin. Her hair is plastered to her face, instantly soaking through the jersey she's still wearing, and she's not sure whether it's the trauma or the cold that's making her limbs shake harder than ever. Flashing images shock through her head every second, all the different parts of her life finally colliding together in a cataclysmic event she's not sure she'll recover from.
Pictures of her father, skewed and fuzzy in that way memories are. She doesn't have any pictures of the man; her brother had made sure to get rid of any evidence either of them were a son or a daughter. In her mind's eye, Isaac Cohen was tall, broad, good for hugs and better for piggyback rides. He always made pancakes on Saturday morning, and enough latkes to feed the street during Hanukkah. Jonathan would always beat him at bowling, but that's because Dad let him. Daisy had chosen her first pair of glasses to match the wireframes he'd worn. He'd always called her 'little flower' rather than Margaret, and that's where her new name had come from after the entire mess had ended.
A car's horn jolts her violently from her memory and she stumbles over her feet. Headlights are beaming into her eyes and she has to squint to make out what lies behind the fluorescence.
"Daisy," calls a familiar voice. She blinks, shielding her eyes with her hand until a shadowed figure comes into view. "We've been fucking driving all over campus; where have you been? Coach is pissed--"
"Betsy asked me to talk with her," she says. Kevin comes to a stop in front of her, hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. "She had some time free and I think I stayed longer than she wanted me to."
"You're soaked," he says, like she doesn't already know. "Come on. Andrew's not going to wait much longer."
She falls into the back seat of Andrew's car with a wet squelch. He's in the seat beside her, with Nicky driving and Kevin the passenger. The wide smile across his stupid face makes Daisy's blood boil the same as it always does.
"Fuck you," she says to him, then turns to gaze out of the window. The car stops not long afterwards, not outside of Fox Tower like she'd assumed, but downtown outside of a late-night diner.
"Get out." Kevin is standing outside of her door, that Daisy hadn't even realised had been opened. She frowns at him. "Come on. I haven't got all night."
Daisy looks to Nicky, who's watching her in the rear view, and then to Andrew, who's sick smile hasn't moved an inch. Instead of burying her fist into the blonde's face, she gets out and slams the door behind her.
"Are you going to ditch me here?" she asks. Kevin just rolls his eyes.
"We're getting food," he says. "You almost passed out on court this afternoon. When's the last time you ate?"
Daisy protests, "I had a protein bar this morning!" but it's to no avail. Kevin just shoves her between the shoulder blades towards the entrance of the diner. "Fucking asshole," she hisses as she stumbles.
"We aren't leaving here until I see you eat a full meal," he says, almost sounding tired rather than angry at this point. "It's embarrassing watching you fail."
"I'm not failing," Daisy mutters. They find a table easily, seated in a booth near the windows. Daisy taps her wet sneakers on the floor below them and shivers a little, her hair still dripping wet and stuck in cold, damp clothing. Kevin orders for them, then turns to stare at her.
"I literally don't know how you've survived this long," Kevin groans. He pulls his hoodie over his head and tosses it at her over the table, successfully hitting her in the face. It smells clean; like a mixture of men's 5-in-1 and cheap laundry detergent. She scowls, but puts it on anyway. By the time their food arrives, her shivering has subsided. A veggie burger, fries, and milkshake sit before her.
"I can't eat all this," Daisy says. Kevin just shrugs.
"Eat until you puke, for all I care. You're leaving here full, or you aren't leaving at all."
"I don't do dairy--"
"It's a soy milkshake," he says, effectively quelling all of her arguments. She picks up a fry, studies it, and then takes a small bite. Kevin makes a frustrated noise and rubs his hand over his face. "You're so fucking irritating, Cohen."
"You're literally holding me hostage," she deadpans. "You want to talk about irritating?"
He mutters something under his breath that she doesn't catch, and decides to instead focus on his burger.
"How did your talk with Betsy go?" he asks. Daisy has made a decent dent in her fries and taken a few bites from her burger, and he seems satisfied enough to stop ignoring her. She frowns at him, and he adds, "she called Coach to let him know you wouldn't be coming back to practise."
Daisy just shrugs. "Okay, I guess. It was nice to talk to somebody without them being allowed to gossip about me, you know?"
"She helped me a lot when I got here."
"I remember."
Quiet falls once more. It's a touchy subject that neither of them want to bring up, the time before. Back when Daisy was just a hyperactive girl obsessed with the sport, and Kevin was always one bad day away from jumping off of Fox Tower. Back when Daisy dragged him up from his pits of depression and gave him something worth recovering for. Back when she was Daisy Cohen, the pretty, popular girl with lots of friends and too much to say. He studies her across the table; the dark circles under her eyes seem like voids, her skin is pallid and dry. Her hair is a lighter red than it was when she first visited the salon, and the locks hang beside her face limply.
"You know," he says. "Red is my favourite colour."
She looks at him. "Lame."
"Excuse me?
Her lips quirk a little at the edges, but she hides it by looking at her plate. "That's such a boring favourite colour."
"Well, what's your favourite colour, Miss High and Mighty?"
She shrugs. "I don't really have one. Favourite colours are for children."
Kevin's eyes narrow, and he points a fry at her. "Your favourite colour is pink, you just don't want to admit it because it's as basic as red." When she opens her mouth to protest him, he carries on. "Literally everything you own is pink. Your sneakers are pink, your nails are pink, you have that pink lip balm you wear all the time, and your nightlight is pink."
This time she actually smirks at him, but it's a mischievous, dark smile. "You're so obsessed with me, Day."
He just rolls his eyes. "Yeah, sure."
"This is so embarrassing for you," she snickers. "Why are you stalking me?"
The gentle flush rising in his cheeks says one thing, but his mouth says, "We practically live together, Cohen. It's hard not to know things about you."
Daisy just shrugs and looks at her plate, takes another bite of her burger. "Whatever, creep."
He feels the corners of his mouth working to hide a smile. She finishes her fries but leaves a third of her burger behind, and Kevin asks for her milkshake to go. He pays and they leave the diner, deciding to walk back to the dorms since the rain has cleared up.
"I might go to the gym, if you want to tag along," Daisy says halfway back to campus. Kevin stops in his tracks and she slows soon after, turning to face him. "What?"
"You're not going to the gym."
"What are you, my keeper?"
"It's my fault it's become like this," Kevin says. When her eyebrows furrow, he continues, "I told you to work harder. I've been pushing you too much, and now you've got these shitty fucking coping mechanisms. I'm sorry."
"Never thought I'd hear those words come out of your mouth," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "But not everything is about you. I like the gym, it makes me feel real."
When she turns to carry on, he grabs her arm. She scowls at him. "Look, I'm not saying you can't go to the gym. But we all know that you're there at all hours, you don't sleep properly, and you train so hard that you throw up. That's not healthy, and that's coming from me. Just... take it easy, okay? You owe yourself rest days, especially in your situation."
"I thought you didn't want to be my friend," she retorts. Her eyes are narrowed at him, and when her pupils flick towards his hand still on her, he drops it.
"Fuck you," he says. She scoffs. "Of course we're friends, you idiot. You think I'd hang out with Renee like we hang out? Allison? No. We're friends because you get it, the same way I do. It makes me feel less like a product of the Ravens' insanity to see you as obsessed as I am."
"I'll let you hold me hostage more often if I know you'll get all lovey on me," Daisy says, even though she feels all warm and soft inside. She smiles at him. "You're so lame."
"Oh my God," he groans. "I'm just trying to say that you're important to m-- to the team. If we lose you because you're treating your body like shit, then we're out. Me and Neil can't hold down the line without you."
Daisy just rolls her eyes and turns away, walks away with her back to him to hide the small smile on her lips. Gone from her mind is the anxieties of the week; gone is the trauma she relived with Betsy earlier. Her head is empty, for the first time in days, and she doesn't want to jinx it, but she feels like this could become a more common thing if she just let it.
She ignores the girls' taunts when she gets back to her dorm, ignores them singing love songs to her and fake-swooning upon her arrival. Instead, Daisy takes a shower, steals Allison's skincare to pamper her face, and crawls into bed.
Daisy sleeps all night long in a dreamless sleep. No monsters, no warped memories of the past. It's just Daisy, her peaceful rest, and her little pink nightlight.
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warned y'all about the heavy shit. this is the end of ACT ONE of flower power, and what a fitting end!! the next part will pick up directly where this one left off so no need to worry!! pls let me know ur thoughts n feelings, i adore reading all ur comments it makes my heart swoon big time 💘💘