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The practice match PSU had arranged with the Trojans was about to start in fifteen minutes, and the Foxes were gathered in the lounge, all geared up and ready to rein hell on the court.
All except for one.
“Minyard,” Wymack snapped, tracking Andrew’s attention. “Where’s Neil?”
“I’m not his keeper, Coach,” Andrew replied.
“Has anyone seen him?” Wymack said, addressing the rest of the team. The only response he got was a series of head shakes, and then it was time to go out for practice.
Andrew stayed back, trying to dial Neil’s number. When he put the phone to his ear, though, all he got was a short, familiar message. “This is Neil’s phone. Leave a message.”
Andrew hung up, leaving the phone behind as he got onto the court.
***
Neil sat on the empty bus-stop’s bench, watching as the occasional car passed by without trying to catch it. His fingers ghosted over the screen of his phone, over the notification telling him he’d missed a call.
He’d accidentally put it on Do Not Disturb, so he hadn’t realize when Andrew had called him. There wasn’t any message, though, so Neil assumed it wasn’t anything urgent.
He contemplated calling Andrew for a moment, half glancing over his shoulder as if he were going to find someone there to stop him. To tell him no. To whisk him away — or grab and chloroform him — to a place where he wasn’t going to see Andrew ever again. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Neil tapped the notification, automatically calling Andrew back. The phone rang and rang, but Andrew didn’t pick up.
So he turned it off and put it in his back pocket, getting up to his feet. He pulled the hood of his hoodie up, inclined his head down, and, focusing on the dirt and dust under his shoes, started walking. He just needed to clear his head for a bit. Pull himself out of the no-breathe zone.
He put his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, trying to ignore the way they stung. They were fine, he knew. He wasn’t hurt. He still had to force himself not to pull his arms out and peel off his armbands to make sure there weren’t holes burnt into his skin. That his knuckles were fine. That his fingers were still operative.
He curled said fingers over the fabric inside his pockets, feeling the softness of his hoodie. Soft, new. Rough, overused.
No, it wasn’t overused, because he’d bought it two weeks ago. Someone should’ve told him it was a stupid move, a waste of money; dead men walking didn’t need new hoodies. And it was too bad to get blood on something all new, rather than rough and overused.
Neil bit his lip, half-smiling at his own idiocy. He was going on a walk, not to his casket. Or to the trunk of a car. Or to a dark and stuffy basement, looking up at the face from his nightmares, listening to that voice promising promises he’d have rather died than see be kept.
He was fine, just a little under the weather. So he hadn’t forgotten; sue him. Nobody expected him to forget everything that’s happened to him. He’ll go around campus, clear his head; get back to Fox Tower a new man. Like his new hoodie. New. Rough. Destined for a pathetic end; to die begging, crying, knowing nothing but overwhelming fear and pain. They were like drugs in his system, dulling out everything else. Making him forget there’s ever been anything else.
He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, lifting up his head to see blue, open, clear. His hood fell off his head, so he pulled it back up, chanced a glance at his hand. Halted, blinking at the scars decorating it.
That’s right, he thought. They were only just scars, because he got through it. His body got over it. The people threatening to break him apart were no longer there to keep at it; and every time his phone pinged, it wasn’t a countdown, but a missed call or a reminder of a test, the kinda thing that people who were living were busy with. People who were counting days to birthdays. People who bought new hoodies, because they could see themselves wearing them.
He put his hand back in the pocket of his hoodie and kept walking, head slightly less down so he could see at least a little, tiny piece of the sky. To keep him grounded.
***
Andrew tried calling Neil again that evening, but the call had gone straight to voicemail again. He hung up, thoughtfully staring at the foot of the bed.
“I’m telling you,” Kevin blabbered from the kitchen, probably making something too healthy for words. “We would’ve easily had that match if Neil didn’t decide to just ditch us without warning. Did you tell him how disappointed I am in him? Oh, and also tell him I got the last few Trojans games on tape, so we can watch those as soon as he gets back from wherever the hell he is and annihilate them next time I see them. Jeremy would never see it coming.”
Andrew debated trying to call Neil again, but ended up putting the phone on the nightstand. “Nobody uses tapes anymore.”
“I’ve got an adapter for my laptop,” Kevin said, coming out of the kitchen holding a plate with two whole-wheat-bread sandwiches. “Oh, you already got off the phone with him? I was hoping I could exchange a word with him myself.”
“I can’t reach him,” Andrew said. Kevin stopped, frowning as he chewed on a bite from his sandwich.
“Mfmmf?” he said. Then, swallowing, he repeated himself. “Still?”
Andrew gave a half-shrug and leaned sideways against the wall. “Did he say anything to you?”
“About what?” asked Kevin, sitting down on his own bed and putting the plate down on his knees. Andrew briefly glanced at him, and Kevin slightly paled. “Are you talking about the Moriyamas? We’ve been winning almost all of our matches lately, so there’s no reason they’d want anything from him.” He paused, then glanced at Neil’s drawer. “His things are still here, right?”
“Obviously,” Andrew said. “He wouldn’t just…”
His voice trailed off, his eyes also fixing on Neil’s drawer. It was the tiniest bit open, as if, in Neil’s hypothetical rush, he hadn’t bothered to close it all the way.
Andrew climbed off his bed and reached to pull the drawer open, finding it half-empty. He pulled shirts and pants aside, trying to see if the space at the back of the drawer where Neil’d put his old duffle-bag still, in fact, had that duffle bag.
His hand hit the back of the drawer, and he swore under his breath. “He took off.”
“What? Why?” Kevin startled, voice pitching. “Did something happen?”
“You tell me,” Andrew shot back, pulling himself back to his feet. “Did the Moriyamas threaten him?”
“They wouldn’t,” Kevin said. “They need him to go pro. He can’t do that if he skips college.”
“Why would he just take off?” Andrew said, half to himself. “Nobody’s after him anymore.”
Kevin didn’t reply for the longest moment. Then, hesitantly, he said, “not that we know of.”
***
Neil, finding himself hungry, went into a grocery shop to go buy himself a sandwich. There wasn’t anyone there but the cashier, and there were also no sandwiches, so he grabbed an energy bar from a random shelf and proceeded to check out.
The cashier glanced at him, awkwardly halting when she saw the scars on his face, but didn’t mention it as she told him the price in a monotone voice. Neil paid and left, feeling something uneasy squeeze in his chest.
He was used to the weird looks. Usually, he didn’t pay them any attention — and usually, nobody actually said anything to his face. But usually, the scars didn’t ache. And he wasn’t usually hyper-focused on them.
Out there, in the grocery store’s dark parking lot, the sounds kinda echoed in an odd way. There were barely any cars parked there — two or three that Neil could see — and save for one, all of the lamp-posts weren’t working. Neil subconsciously adjusted the strap of his duffle bag across his body, steps hastening.
He’s never liked places like this. You’d think they were good for blending it, what with there being no lights and nobody to really notice you — but when someone was looking for you, going out into this kind of place suddenly made you easier to spot. Especially once you started sticking to the shadows.
Because the shadows didn’t really hide you. They just made you look more suspicious. And that — that attracted attention, which was exactly what Neil had ingrained into his bones to avoid. And yet he couldn’t help but try to stick to those damn shadows.
He tore open the energy-bar’s wrapper, about to take a bite out of it, when the whirring of an engine broke into the night’s air.
He instinctually halted, eyes fixing on the car driving into the parking lot. He felt his heart go bu-thump in his chest, and thought, this is ridiculous. I’ve got no reason to be scared. No reason to hide. No reason to react as if somebody’s gonna snatch me and tear, tear, tear me apart.
He bit into his energy bar, eyes still fixed on the car as it parked some distance away from him, lights dying down as the engine was turned off. Out of there stepped two people, heavily shadowed by the lack of light, and started walking in his direction. Which was really just the grocery store’s direction.
Neil stepped back, not even noticing he was doing that until he was a few steps away from his original place.
Fucking hell, he thought. He shoved the mostly-uneaten energy bar into a pocket in his bag, turned around and, head turned down, walked away from there.
He walked and walked until the air tasted different, not once glancing back. Glancing back incited suspicion. Glancing back was also pretty damn pointless when he knew for a fact nobody was following him, because anyone who might’ve, once, was now dead.
And he was not. He wasn’t dead. He was alright. But his heart was still racing, even though he had to force his legs to not break into a run.
“Hey, short guy,” came a sudden voice, and Neil’s head snapped up. Someone — tall and bulky and intimidating — was standing in front of him, a loopy grin hanging from his mouth. “You alone out here?”
“No,” Neil said. The alarms in his head were blaring, but he just didn’t know how many of them were rational, and how many were just reminders of what was, how much of it he was making up.
The guy tilted his head, teeth showing. Neil stepped back.
And then he was pushed forward by someone who was standing behind him, the force of it not sending him sprawling on the ground only because the guy in front of him grabbed his shoulders, still grinning like an animal. “Gimma your wallet, kid.”
“Maybe he’s got something in that duffle of his,” said the guy’s friend from behind Neil. “Looks like a perfect place to hide some—“
Neil didn’t wait to hear what they thought he had in his bag, tearing himself free of the hands on his shoulders and breaking into a run. The alarms in his head were screaming red, red, run for your life! And all of a sudden he was thrown back, the feeling like a muscle memory, an instinct, a fact, and why had he thought he’d ever be free of that—
He was pulled back by his duffle bag, feet wrenching off the ground as he went crashing into it in a weird angle. He kicked out, hitting something solid that let out a breathy ugh — and scrambled away, pushing himself off the ground with one arm while the other was protectively clutching the body of his duffle bug.
He didn’t wait to see how either of the guys were doing or where they were and took off again, his body now almost instantly gearing up into survival mode, the kind of intensity that had saved his life many times before. He didn’t hear it when one of them told his friend, “leave it, he’s not worth it,” and didn’t notice when there was no longer anybody after him. He was back in that old headspace, back in the no-breathe zone, back in that survival mode. He was going to die, that was the only thing he could think of.
He stopped at some point, collapsing onto a bunch of stairs in front of a closed store, panting like crazy and not feeling any part of his body at all. The only thing he could feel was his air being gone, his breathing like a mess he couldn’t make sense of. He braced himself against the ground, trying to remember how to fucking breathe, the rational part of his brain reminding him that he wasn’t dying, that he wasn’t going to die, that nobody was going to kill him. Not today, not ever again. But then there were ghost fingers on his arms and latching onto his legs, and he lost control of his breathing all over again.
He punched the concrete, pain splitting his knuckles, and almost howled at it.
That hitch pulled him back from wherever the hell he was getting lost into, and suddenly he was seeing where he was. He was seeing the concrete he’d hit, the air cold on the tip of his nose, his legs awkwardly folded under him.
He settled himself into a more reasonable position, perched between two steps, and took to staring at the road in front of him. People occasionally passed by, not really noticing him. Cars came and went. The wind rose and fell. And he sat there, breathing, and tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.
But it wasn’t a mystery; he didn’t need to be a genius to realize what it was. It was just him. Neil Josten, the runaway; a name in the wind; a guy who, by all means, should’ve died a year ago. Who’d made it out because of a miracle.
Sometimes he wondered whether it was ever going to be over.
Because his father was dead. Lola was gone. He was more or less free to live his life, as long as he played exy and paid what he was owed. But was he ever going to be free? Because sometimes he blinked, and found himself back in that basement; and sometimes his body just seemed to up and betray him. To forget and mix up the days where there was hurt and pain and despair, with the days when nothing happened in them. To force on him the reminder that no matter how hard he was trying, he might never actually be okay again.
Maybe he wasn’t going to be. And maybe it was time to stop fighting it, to stop beating himself into the belief that anything was going to change.
He’d been damned from the very beginning. Maybe the only thing that was really left was to accept it.
***
Andrew was just about to try calling Neil again when Neil’s name flashed on his screen with an incoming call. Andrew accepted it instantly and put the phone to his ear. “Where are you?”
For a moment Neil didn’t answer, and Andrew’s mind went to the worst case scenario of someone had him, someone was going to hurt him. Then Neil gave a hitched breath and spoke. “I don’t know.”
Andrew stood up, looking for his keys. “Do I need to call the police?”
“What?” Neil sounded honestly confused, and the pressure inside Andrew gave a little bit. “Why would you need to do that?”
Andrew found his keys and was out the door in the same breath. “You took your duffle bag.”
Neil’s voice was faintly amused. “So that’s a crime now. I see.”
“Junkie, do I really need to tell you how it looks?” Andrew kept his voice measured as he climbed down the stairs, heading out to his car. “Nobody could get a hold of you, and I come back to find half your things gone.”
“It was kind of a safety measure,” Neil said, and Andrew stopped.
“Someone’s after you again?”
“No,” Neil said. “But I just. I don’t know how to explain it to you, Andrew. I was panicking.”
“Clearly,” Andrew replied. “Do you see anything around you?”
There was a brief pause, during which Andrew got into the car and started it. By the time Neil relayed a few signs he was seeing and Andrew gathered together a location, he was already out of the parking lot and driving. “Stay where you are. We’ll talk when I get there.”
“No, don’t—“ Neil’s voice came so fast Andrew accidentally accelerated, before pulling back to his usual speed. The line fell quiet, and for a moment Andrew wondered if Neil didn’t actually want him to come get him.
When Neil finished his thought, his voice was small and rough. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”
Andrew was quiet for a few additional seconds. “Why’d you leave?”
“I thought it’ll make it go away.”
Andrew wasn’t entirely sure what Neil was talking about, but still he said, “did it?”
“No.” There was an amused edge to his voice, even though Andrew had a feeling none of this was actually funny to him. “It just made it worse. I feel like my world is ending, Andrew. I don’t know what to do.”
“It’s not,” Andrew assured him. “Neil, you’re okay. Just keep breathing, alright? Like I taught you.”
“I’m trying,” Neil said. The amusement strained into something desperate, even though Neil — consciously or not — tried to cover that up with carelessness. “How far away are you?”
“Five minutes,” Andrew said. “As long as you’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m not.”
Andrew found him four minutes later, sitting on those stairs with his back slightly hunched and hands absently playing with the phone. Neither of them had gotten off the line, but neither of them said anything, either, until Andrew came out of the car and sat down next to him.
Actually, even then, it was a few minutes before Andrew spoke up. “You’re hurt.”
Neil glanced at him inquiringly. Andrew reached out, hand fluttering over a cut on Neil’s forehead without actually touching. Neil’s own hand went up to it, dry flakes of blood barely visible on his fingertips when his hand came down again. “I was kind of mugged.”
Andrew blinked. “Were you.”
“Yeah, but not really,” Neil said. At Andrew’s narrow look he huffed out a laugh. “I ran away before they took anything.”
“Of course you did,” Andrew replied. “What were you running from?”
Neil frowned, thinking the answer to be obvious. Andrew, to clarify, gestured at the duffle bag strapped across Neil’s body. Neil’s hands went to it, self-conscious, and he hunched slightly more. “Have you ever felt like you’re playing a losing game?”
Andrew shifted, pulling a leg up to his chest as he turned to fully face him. “I have.”
Neil’s eyelids fluttered down, fixating on something on the ground. Andrew watched as he breathed in and breathed out, strained, as if forcing himself to take some semblance of measured. “Do you still feel like that?”
“Sometimes.”
Neil glanced up, meeting his eyes. “I can’t get out of that basement. Every time I feel like I’ve finally moved past it, it all comes tumbling down, like not even a day has passed.” He paused. “I don’t know how many times I can go through that again, Andrew. Without going crazy. I thought I changed, I thought I was — not the person I used to be. But I still feel just as helpless.”
“You’re not helpless,” Andrew said. “You’re not there anymore.”
“I know that,” Neil said. “In my head. But I don’t feel like it. My hands hurt, Andrew.” His breath hitched. “And I’m just so scared, I can’t take it.”
“You can,” Andrew told him. “It’s going to be like that sometimes. Sometimes you’ll remember, and sometimes you’ll be back there, and sometimes you’ll convince yourself you’re never getting away from it again. But—“ Andrew halted, as if searching for exactly what it was that he wanted to say. “But it’s not going to be every day.”
Neil bit the inside of his lip, fixated on Andrew’s eyes like they were a lifeline out of sea.
“You can try to talk to somebody about it,” Andrew suggested. Neil silently shook his head.
“Then when you have days like this,” Andrew relented, voice only the slightest bit hesitant, “don’t run away. Tell me, and I’ll try to distract you from it. If I can’t, tell Kevin. Ask him about classical history. Sacrifice a goat to the exy god together or something.”
“I don’t think Kevin’s into that kinda thing.”
Andrew gave him a fierce look, and Neil dropped his head, swallowing down a smile. It flickered away into thoughtfulness, and eventually that, too, dissipated into nothing in particular. “You think it’s ever gonna get better?”
“I do, actually,” Andrew said. “Eventually.”
Neil returned to staring at the ground, that vacant kind of look in his eyes. Andrew kept him company, until Neil got tired of the cold stones and stood up. They got in the car, and they didn’t talk until they were back at Fox Tower.
When Andrew turned off the engine, before they got out of the car, Neil spoke up again. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Andrew said.
Neil nodded, briefly locking eyes with him. Then he got out of the car, carrying his duffle bag on his shoulder, and feeling that maybe, after all, he could try again tomorrow.