Archive of Our Own ^beta

Everywhere Aaron goes, Andrew goes.

Not by choice, though Andrew’s controlling and possessive nature had him mimic that behavior even before the crash. But Andrew is a ghost whose existence was tied to Aaron’s, and so they move through life—and not-life—together; an unbalanced pair of twins like a cracked mirror. They’re both stuck in a kind of limbo—not quite existing on the same plane, not quite as alone as they’ve been growing up. They’re stuck with each other just in the ways that matter to make Aaron’s life miserable, and sometimes he is so lonely he wishes he’d never learned to make room for a brother.

Although Andrew isn’t really a brother anymore. Andrew is a ghost.

Aaron hadn’t believed in ghosts before the car crash. He hadn’t believed in much, granted. Sometimes, when the bruises left on his body and brain by Tilda’s fists and Tilda’s drugs dragged him down too much, Aaron had not even believed his own ability to make it out of his situation.

But the day of the car crash, Andrew had been sitting in the passenger seat. Aaron usually disliked sitting in the backseat, but not when Tilda was driving. Sitting back meant he was farther away from her reach. He could shy from her sight by dropping down in his seat.

Andrew had been sitting in the passenger seat, and so when Tilda drove through a red light and got T-boned, he caught the full force of the impact.

Aaron remembers only parts of the accident. He doesn’t remember much more of the hospital stay that followed, the long days spent under pain medicine that numbed the world.

The first time he wakes up for more than a few minutes, someone comes in to tell him he’s the last survivor of his family. If it didn’t hurt his bruised ribs, Aaron would laugh. His family: his psychotic estranged twin, his abusive and addicted mother, himself—a Minyard tableau. If he’d had to choose someone to keep up the family name, Aaron certainly wouldn’t have chosen himself.

The next time he opens his eyes, only partly affected by the morphine, Andrew is standing by his bed, and he’s there every single other time, too.

*

“Alright,” Nicky says, parking in front of the Tower, Palmetto Academy’s student housing building. He turns to Aaron, sitting in the passenger seat. “There we go. Your last year.”

“I know,” Aaron says. He glances into the rearview mirror, catching Andrew’s eyes in the backseat. Nicky doesn’t comment; it seems he’s gotten used to his weird younger cousin staring into the void or talking to himself.

Maybe he would even believe Aaron if he told him the ghost of his twin brother haunts him. That would go down well. Instead of a special school for troubled teens—the unofficial denomination of this academy that weirdly only houses students with a past—he’d put Aaron directly into the asylum.

Nicky interrupts his musings by stepping out of the driver’s seat and rounding the car. Aaron’s stuff is taking up the whole trunk, a suitcase full of clothes and a cardboard box of school supplies, plus his heavy backpack sitting in the footwell.

Andrew slides in the small space between the front seats, then out of Aaron’s door as he holds it open for a second too long. Or at least Aaron guesses so. He’s never actually asked Andrew how he can appear to go anywhere and manifest in every space.

Nicky takes hold of Aaron’s bulky suitcase and leaves the smaller box to him, locking the door behind him.

“Hello Aaron,” Renee welcomes him as she holds the door open for him. Aaron grunts an answer and steps into the cool lobby of his dorm. Students are milling everywhere, a sea of teenagers settling back into their rooms after a too-short summer.

“Oh,” Nicky says as the door closes behind Renee. “Is she your friend?”

“He will never learn,” Andrew comments in Aaron’s right ear. He’s sticking closer to Aaron than his ghost status should warrant him to, but Aaron knows he hates going through people, a misplaced sign of pride.

“It’s Walker,” Aaron answers. He ignores his twin, not entirely successful. By now, he’s used to it. “She’s nice to everyone.”

“Renee Walker?” Nicky turns around to look at Renee through the door’s window, probably. “The one who’s in all those committees? She founded the LGBT club of the school, you know.”

“Good for her,” Aaron says. “If you’re aware of it, I don’t know why you’re looking at me like you’re already imagining us on our wedding day.”

“Bi people exist,” Andrew says, as if Renee Walker’s hair hadn’t been dyed the colors of the lesbian flag for most of last term.

“I’m not! I just think it’s nice you’re friends with someone. All your teachers have told me how isolated you were last year, you know.”

Having Nicky, not only Aaron’s cousin but also his legal guardian, working as secretary of the principal is really doing terrible things to Aaron’s independence at school. He doesn’t actually see Nicky most of the time, but gossip reaches him fast.

Aaron jabs the button of the elevator, cursing when he sees the arrow above the doors pointing to the top floor.

“I have friends,” he says.

“Kevin doesn’t count,” Nicky protests. “Do you guys even talk?”

Kevin is Aaron’s studious roommate. His room transfer into empty bed in Aaron’s dorm last January was the result of a rumor-filled break with Riko Moriyama’s little posse. He’s as interested in history and literature as Aaron is in science classes. It’s a good thing they didn’t actually share any classes last year, or the atmosphere in their dorm would have become intolerably competitive as they fought for the highest grades.

“Sure,” Aaron lies.

Nicky sighs. The elevator doors open, letting out a bunch of excited freshmen. By the time Aaron can make his way inside, Nicky is still struggling with one of the jammed wheels of the suitcase. The doors close in his face, leaving Aaron blessedly alone in the elevator.

“Thanks,” he mutters.

Andrew’s finger releases the “close doors” button. He shrugs, amusing himself by punching in every floor above Aaron’s.

The third floor is calmer than the lobby. Most seniors will arrive later in the day, but Nicky’s shift at the welcome desk starts in thirty minutes and living inside the school’s campus has left him with a skewed conception of time. Aaron unlocks his door and steps into the dorm room he’s occupied for the past year.

For the first, and probably only, time of the year, both sides of the room are equally bare and tidy. Andrew follows him into the room and immediately perches on the windowsill, looking so incredibly solid that Aaron almost forgets he has no shadow.

If he were alive, he’d be smoking. Aaron had seen him like this hundreds of times, staring out of the small window in their room at the back of Tilda’s crappy one-story house. The view is much nicer now than it was then: a high vista of the classrooms building on the other end of the lawn versus the gray wall of the neighbor’s garage.

Aaron closes the door and calls, “Andrew.” Aware that he’s got his twin’s attention, he continues in a low voice, “We need to figure out this year.”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Andrew says. “It’s a school year, you can presumably graduate.”

He doesn’t mention what happens next. Aaron isn’t sure he wants him to: college is enough of a monster of its own. He won’t be deterred by Andrew’s rhetoric of avoidance, though. Too much of his summer has been spent reflecting on this subject.

“I don’t—” he starts, but then someone knocks on the door noisily.

“Hey.” Nicky slides his head in the crack he’s opened. “Are you hiding?”

“Yes,” Aaron deadpans. “Go away, you’ll blow my cover.”

Nicky grins and steps into the room, pulling the suitcase behind him.

“The elevator took forever,” he complains. “I guess people are visiting each other because it stopped at every floor but it came back empty.”

He gives Aaron a look, who tries to act innocent and makes himself busy with unpacking. After twenty minutes, Nicky’s phone chimes with an alarm.

“I have to go,” Nicky says. “Can you finish on your own?”

“I’m fine. You should go. Didn’t you schedule your shift at the same time as that German teacher?”

“I didn’t even have to. He actually volunteered. Who volunteers to man the front desk on the first Sunday back?”

“I don’t know,” Aaron says. “I feel like Walker would do it.”

“Yes.” Nicky isn’t even listening. “He’s dreamy.”

“Good thing your teacher this year is Ms. Kaufman,” Andrew says. Aaron glances at him, then at Nicky, realizing it could be an actual problem.

“I forbid you to date my teacher,” he warns, just in case.

“Yes, yes. Have a great night back. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Lunch,” Aaron says.

“They always serve broccoli at dinner on the first Monday,” Andrew points out.

“Dinner,” Aaron corrects.

Nicky finally leaves. Aaron glances at Andrew, their interrupted conversation still hanging in the air between them. He doesn’t breach the subject again until Kevin comes in, rolling two suitcases in without a word, then coming back with two tall boxes full of books.

“Hello to you too,” Aaron says as Kevin finally kicks the door closed.

Kevin’s head whips around. “I didn’t see you,” he says. He pops off his earbuds, carefully rolling them around his phone. “Hey.”

Aaron nods back, and they settle in the room in silence. In the nine months Aaron has spent as Kevin’s roommate last year, they’ve never talked of anything more intimate than their classes.

Aaron slides his suitcase under his bed when he’s done. Kevin is still ordering his books on his shelf, never mind that the term hasn’t even started yet. He’s going to be insufferable in college, but luckily Aaron won’t be there to see it.

“Good holidays?” Kevin ends up asking after fifteen minutes of what Aaron could describe as peaceful silence.

“Dreadfully boring,” Andrew replies. He’s still hovering by the window, the only place in the room where he can watch out of the way.

Boring is definitely one way of putting it. Aaron spent most of his break working at Eden’s Twilight and Sweetie’s. Nicky has a regular job thanks to Principal Whittier’s generosity, but neither of them can ignore the fact that college is looming closer every day.

Kevin is watching him curiously, and Aaron realizes he never answered. He’ll have to get used to holding two conversations at once again. It’s exhausting, but that’s just life with Andrew.

“Uneventful,” he says. “You?”

It turns out Kevin traveled during the summer and was only waiting for an opportunity to talk about Greece. Most of his conversation is about historical sites, because that’s the kind of person Kevin Day is. Aaron mostly tunes him out.

“And of course I trained,” Kevin concludes, pocketing his phone. “Did you?”

“What?”

“Train for exy.” Kevin sounds annoyed. “I told you to. We need to win this year.”

“You picked up a racquet,” Aaron says, unimpressed. “After your accident?”

He’s no medical student yet, but everyone in the school knows that Kevin had to leave his fancy private exy team after his injury in January. Anyone who shared a class—or a room—with him also knows that he favored his right hand to write well into the spring. The thought that he would start to play again is almost incongruous.

“I had to get used to playing with my right hand,” Kevin says curtly. “Are you in shape? I don’t want you dragging us down right from the beginning.”

Andrew makes a derisive noise that covers the sound of Aaron’s indignation.

“Obsessed,” he says, clucking his tongue. “He’s even worse than last year. I’m out.”

He slips through the door—or under it, or next to it. Aaron isn’t paying attention.

“Training starts in two weeks,” Aaron says to Kevin. “I’ll be fine. Fuck off.”

“I can’t. This is a team sport—your failure is our failure.”

“Will you stop sounding like a walking sports movie? It’s making me sick.”

“Don’t act like you don’t care. I know it’s important to you.”

It is. At best, it’s Aaron’s ticket to a full ride in college. At worst, it’s precious time taken from studying. He really can’t afford not to make it count.

A knock at the door interrupts their argument. For a second, Aaron almost thinks it’s Andrew—Andrew is always silent, but he can make himself solid enough to interact with objects most of the time. But term has started again. Andrew is back to floating impassively through Aaron’s life.

“Hey,” Matt Boyd says when Kevin opens the door. He looks even taller than last term, his hair gelled in spikes. It probably adds an extra two inches and looks so ridiculous Aaron’s annoyance rears up its head again. “How’s it going? Did you guys have a nice summer?”

“Kevin went to Greece,” Aaron replies. “If you have two hours, he can tell you a bit about it.”

It’s really unfortunate being around rich kids. Aaron’s sidestepping techniques have much improved since he first started at Palmetto Academy last fall.

“Did you take pictures?” Matt asks, always irritably friendly. “Dan’ll be all over them. You can show us at dinner. Anyway, I just wanted to invite you over to our room.”

“Pass,” Aaron mutters from his bed, the farthest point from the door.

Matt shrugs. “I have a new roommate.”

“Good for you. Did Gordon finally die?”

“He graduated.”

“An unlikely outcome.”

Matt frowns. “You’re being particularly bitchy tonight,” he remarks. “Something wrong?”

Your face in my doorway, Aaron thinks. He turns toward the window, ready to exchange his exasperation with the only person who understands it. The windowsill is empty—Andrew slipped out a few minutes ago. Relief mixes with something else in Aaron’s chest, squeezing it painfully.

“Nothing,” he says finally, picking a book at random from the stock on his desk.

Matt leaves him alone after that, sensing his complete disinterest from the conversation. Kevin, however, perked up at the mention of a new student.

“Is he a senior?” he asks. “Do you know if he’s in any club yet? We need a new striker, now that Seth graduated.”

“Dan’s already on it. He says he played exy in little leagues. He sounds interested, but I guess we’ll see. Do you wanna come by and meet him? I’m trying to get him settled enough before classes start.”

“Sure.” Kevin crosses the room in three strides. He stops, one hand on the doorknob. “Aaron?”

“Reading,” Aaron says, holding his book up.

He pretends like he doesn’t notice the look Matt and Kevin share just before the door swings closed behind them. Silence settles in the small dorm room. Aaron waits, reading the same paragraphs over and over. Kevin and Andrew are bound to be back.

It has been a while since Aaron has felt this lonely.

The rhythm of school starting again is familiar to Andrew. This is the second year he lives it—in a manner of speaking—without actually attending school.

Being dead has its inconveniences as well as its advantages, the main problem being that he has nothing to do.

Turns out the afterlife is boring, something Andrew had spent years thinking only applied to the moments spent breathing. He guesses it’s a good thing he never let his suicidal tendencies direct him too strongly. The results now are the same—he’s dead—but at least he can shift the blame on someone else.

Because there is nothing else for him to do, Andrew spends a lot of time wandering around and watching live people. Attending classes with Aaron is alright as long as Andrew feels like indulging his own voyeuristic tendencies; he walks slowly around the room, looking over the other students’ shoulders and testing Aaron’s attention span.

The afterlife is much blander than life itself was. Andrew’s memory is still perfect, the only aspect that survives death.

The most dreadful moments are during the dead of the night. Nothing happens then. Curiously, in a such a claustrophobic environment, all tall buildings and gloomy reminders of the past, not many students seem to suffer from insomnia. Watching people breathe or have sex gets old quite fast, especially when Andrew is only too aware of what he’s lost.

He doesn’t get many urges anymore, but he feels their absence like a phantom limb.

On the first Friday back, Andrew comes across the closed door of a lit bedroom. He hesitates at the door then crosses it. He’s never told Aaron what the laws of his half-existence are, but that’s because he doesn’t fully grasp them either. If he focuses, he can manage to hold objects. If he lets himself go, float away just a little bit farther away from this plane of existence, he becomes entirely immaterial.

Sometimes, he even disappears.

It never lasts long—one second he’s gone and the next he’s blinking in the world again, like a pain-free retelling of his own death. But it happens, and if anything could make Andrew nervous anymore this would do it.

He sneaks his head through the door, peering inside the bedroom. A group of freshmen are sitting inside in a tight circle on the floor.

They’re huddled over a small wooden plaque placed on the floor. Candle lights shiver around the room, shadows projecting grotesque shapes on the walls.

A ouija board.

Andrew almost snorts, then the freshmen extend their hands and rest a finger on the board.

They’re calling on the spirits. Andrew waits for a beat before he realizes that they mean him.

He’s a spirit, technically.

Dobson would be disappointed with him for entertaining the thought. She’d be even more unhappy to hear about his decision.

Andrew steps inside the circle, going through one of the girls turning her back to him. She shivers, and he wonders if he’s to blame, or if it’s only a human reaction to what they’ve all convinced themselves is a spooky atmosphere.

“Are you there?” one of them asks.

He can hear their breaths catch in the silence of the room. Outside, the leaves rustle.

Slowly, with a lot of focus, he drags the pointer they’re holding onto to the corner of the board. He places it on “no” instead of “yes”, a concession to his contrary character.

They yelp. Most of them let go of the pointer. One of them even jumps to his feet, nervously clenching his fists. Andrew watches on, detached from the action like the sole audience of his own private play.

“What was that?”

The girl who called the spirits speaks up, watching the board. “That was a spirit,” she says. “We made contact!”

They didn’t make anything. Andrew snorts and steps out of the ring.

“That was a load of bullshit,” the guy says, but he looks spooked. He crosses and uncrosses his arms.

“Sit back up, Jack,” says the girl. “We have to keep going or close the séance.”

“Keep going? It’s clearly not working. Look at the pointer.”

“We can’t have negative energy in the room,” the girl says. She looks like the leader of the group, maybe because she’s the only one actually speaking. The others cower in the back, looking afraid.

Andrew almost tells them there are more frightening things than the dead. The living can do so much more lasting damage.

“So what?” Jack says.

“So if you’re scared or angry, please go.”

A murmur of assent ripples around the circle. In front of their classmate’s obvious fright, the others seem to shed theirs.

“Yeah Jack,” one of them says, “fuck off.”

“Shut the fuck up, Robin,” Jack spits. He crosses the circle, disturbing the board. The pointer goes flying. A girl yelps as it hits her in the shin. “Whatever,” Jack continues, going right through Andrew. He jerks the door open. “It’s just a load of stupid bullshit anyways.”

A short silence follows his exit. Down the hall, another door opens and closes.

“Leave it to the girls to have some balls,” a third girl pipes up. She looks a lot more assertive now than she was when Andrew stepped in.

“Should we close the séance?” someone asks. “I don’t want to keep going anymore.”

“Yeah, and if we could make sure there are no ghosts in my dorm room, that’d be great too.”

The girls start squabbling about whether or not they should keep going with the séance. Whatever their decision is, it won’t amount to anything: Andrew is getting bored.

He slips away right when the leader starts reciting a farewell speech. He could almost believe their rituals are working, but the only greater force in Andrew’s life has always been in own free will. It won’t change just because of the small matter of his death.

*

“Number three is wrong,” Andrew says.

He’s leaning over Aaron’s shoulder, watching him align neat numbers on the paper. It’s curious, the way their handwriting doesn’t look the same at all. Aaron’s is rounder and neater than the chicken scratch Andrew would produce. Maybe it’s because Aaron writes more than Andrew ever did; he actually takes notes in class.

SHUT THE FUCK UP, Aaron furiously writes on his draft paper. He underlines it three times and punches a few numbers on his calculator.

Andrew shrugs. He looked at the teacher’s notes when she distributed the test and as much as he doesn’t care about Aaron’s grades, there isn’t much to do. Besides, it’s almost entertaining to see Aaron repress his temper as Andrew talks to him and he has to write his part of the conversation. They’re used to it now, but Aaron’s frustration never diminishes.

Andrew glances at the clock. The teacher gave her students an hour to do the test—on the second week back, Andrew would almost wonder what material she has to test them on—and it’s barely twenty minutes in.

“I’m going,” he says to Aaron. “Check number three.”

Aaron makes a dismissive gesture with his hand holding his pen, so that it almost looks like he’s nervously twirling it. Before Andrew goes, he sees Aaron go back to the third question, erasing his previous answer.

Palmetto Academy is one of those rare old institutions of the south. It sits on a large lot and boasts a couple of nineteenth-century buildings, which make the board think they’re fancier and better than they actually are. Floorboards run in most hallways and the windows haven’t been replaced in a couple of decades, so the whole place is constantly creaking.

It’s as silent as it ever gets when Andrew leaves the classroom: everyone is in class. Sunlight falls in dusty rays through the slightly dirty window panes. Andrew stops in the pool of light. He waits for a second, then two; he has to count them in his head because he can’t rely on his heartbeat anymore. It’s the kind of comfort he sought when he was still alive, but the sun doesn’t warm him. It never does anymore.

He looks for his shadow, but of course there isn’t one to find.

The shrill ring of the bell cuts through the silence. Andrew blinks, more out of habit than need. He would have started if he had any nerves to startle anymore.

Aaron catches up to him, swept in the middle of a group of boisterous students. He meets Andrew’s eyes and holds his gaze for a short while.

“What did you get for number three?” someone asks.

“You’re welcome,” Andrew says when another girl gives the correct answer.

Aaron gives him the most discreet finger. “I’m going to the court,” he says, hefting his bag higher on his shoulder. “Kevin will have my head if I’m late.”

“I thought they were holding tryouts,” the girl says, interrupting herself through her explanation.

“For strikers, yeah.”

“Everyone wants to play alongside the famous Kevin Day.”

“And no one wants to ram into him at top speed,” Aaron adds. “Which is why we never have any backliners trying out. They’ll probably make Matt and me come back even after we’ve graduated.”

People laugh. Do you need to feel wanted so badly? Andrew thinks. He doesn’t say it. There’s no reason to gratuitously anger the one person he can communicate with. And sure enough:

“Are you coming?” Aaron mutters when he steps away from the group, down an empty staircase.

“I have nothing better to do,” Andrew replies. “I might trip you. That would break the boredom.”

“Don’t,” Aaron warns. “I’ll get back at you if you do it.”

“I’m the one haunting you. Maybe people would stop thinking you’re crazy if they started believing in ghosts.”

“Stop being a jerk.”

Aaron blasts through the door as if it has personally offended him. Andrew slips through behind him and goes to the court when Aaron veers toward the locker rooms.

It’s an ugly thing, a plexiglass box dropped in the middle of the large expanse of lawn that cover the grounds of Palmetto Academy. Outside the court, noisy bleachers have been erected like crooked ribs. Andrew stops just outside the door to the court and crosses his arms. He scans his surroundings. He’s always been mildly interested in people watching, but since he died he really has nothing else to do.

Students are loitering in the stands, enjoying the nice weather and the players. Some look up when they see Coach Wymack’s lone figure cross the lawn from the sports building.

“Alright,” he calls when he’s close. He wrenches the door to the court open and props it with the bag he was carrying. “All of you who are already on the team, gather round.”

All players in gear shuffle forward. Matt Boyd is still taller than anyone on the team but Kevin stands out more than any of them.

It’s the first time he’s officially wearing Foxes colors. Andrew looks him up and down derisively. Orange and white don’t suit his complexion at all, although it could be true about anyone. When Aaron comes running out from the locker rooms in his bulky backliner gear, Andrew has a terrible vision of the fate he’s probably avoided because of his premature death.

Nobody on the team seems to mind that Kevin is among them on their side of the court for the first time. He had still been attending the Ravens’ elite private club last fall, and he only joined the Foxes while he shadowed Wymack for most of spring.

After a few minutes of the most insufferable type of pep-talk, Wymack sends the players running laps around the court. Andrew retreats in the shadow of the bleachers, gaze never leaving the court. Aaron is milling effortlessly among the handful of players in gear.

The Foxes are still running in group. Someone trips on Aaron’s heels and he turns around, annoyed. Andrew doesn’t need to hear the tone of his reproach to know its particular bite. At the head of the group, Dan Wilds turns around to call them back in order, running backwards for a few steps.

Satisfied, Andrew turns his gaze to the small group of people in the stands, then the even smaller one gathered around Wymack. They’re all in gym clothes but without exy padding. Wymack sends them on their own warm-ups after holding conference for a short while.

Barely half a dozen people have come to try out. It’s better than last year and even a lot for an exy team that is known both for its small size and its dismal results.

A passing cloud temporarily veils the sun. Andrew sees the difference from the way the light falls on the picturesque scene in front of him, but he doesn’t feel anything. He looks up, fixing his gaze on the sun and never blinking away. Sensations are tricky now that Andrew’s dead; sight and hearing are more or less unchanged, but he has trouble with his touch and his sense of smell has completely disappeared.

His sense of passing time as well, apparently. When Andrew looks away and back at the court, the players—already on the team and the wannabes joining them—are already spread across the court, playing a scrimmage.

Aaron is in position away from the goal, leaving his back to Matt. Aaron is good at ramming people to the ground in spite of his size and tripping them thanks to it, but if the opposite striker is good enough to go through him and approach the goal, then Matt is there to block their shots.

Renee Walker is in one of the goals. A tall girl in red sweats is standing opposite across the court, clearly less experienced.

Andrew twists his mouth. For a brief moment, his hands clench on an imaginary stick. He turns away and makes his way around the bleachers, leaving behind the sounds of sticks clacking and balls bouncing off the plexiglass walls of the court.

He haunts the lawn in front of the main building for the next hour, keeping a careful eye on the clock. It’s easy, now that he’s dead, to blink and find out that several hours have gone by. He doesn’t need to breathe anymore.

Movement at the corner of his eye alerts his attention. A teacher is leading a student who’s clearly meant to be serving detention through his chore, which appears to be picking up litter.

When Andrew steps closer to them, he’s almost satisfied to recognize the belligerent and frightened freshman of the ouija board incident. The teacher is the tall and blond German teacher Nicky has a crush on. Andrew sometimes tunes Nicky out when he speaks, because he tunes out most people except for Aaron, but it’s impossible to stay with Nicky all summer like Aaron did and not pick up on his attraction for Mr. Klose.

“—come to my office when you’re done,” Klose is saying. He frowns, open his mouth then closes it without speaking and leaves.

Jack watches him retreating, cursing under his breath. Andrew watches Jack. He’s mildly interested to know what landed a freshman in detention on the second week of school.

Anger is Andrew’s reward for staring at Jack, who half-heartedly picks up a few papers.

“Fuck you, you fucker.” Jack kicks the bag once or twice, dropping a cereal bar wrapper inside. “I’m missing on tryouts for this? ‘We don’t condone this kind of language here’,” he mimics, exaggerating Klose’s very slight accent. “Go fuck yourself, you fucking fag—Fuck!”

Jack lands on the ground with a painful sound of skin against gravel, losing his grip on his trash bag. Andrew picks it up by the bottom and idly shakes it. The litter flies away again. It could almost look like chance and the work of the wind. To the untrained, un-psychic mind.

There are angry gashes on Jack’s palms left behind by his brief contact with the ground. He curses again, pressing them against his thighs, like it’s going to change anything.

Behind him, the long thrill of a sport whistle being blown calls Andrew back to the court. He leaves Jack running after his trash bag, which is being carried around by the wind without Andrew’s assistance.

Andrew has a brother to keep an eye on.

*

Andrew arrives at the court right in time to see Aaron violently ram into a would-be striker. They’re almost matched, height-wise, and despite the speed with which the striker covers half of the court, he doesn’t sidestep in time to avoid Aaron crashing into him and stealing the ball. Contact plays like these aren’t always seen with a good eye in high school exy but Wymack doesn’t blink, mostly because the striker springs back to his feet almost as soon as touches the ground.

Some vague cheering comes from the stands. Andrew moves around the court until he sees the group of people gathered on the front row. From their high ponytails, their shorts and sneakers and the jacket one of them is wearing, it seems like they’re from the cheer team.

If so, they’re doing a shoddy job at it. Only one of them seems really focused on the game, clutching her bottle of water in between her hands. She smiles and waves at the court. When Andrew follows her gaze, he’s unsurprised to see Aaron looking away quickly.

There it is.

“Aw,” one of the other cheerleaders says as the scrimmage resumes. “Katelyn’s got a crush.”

“What? On who?”

“Number five. The blonde one? Minyard.”

“I don’t.” Katelyn’s words are a little too quick. “He’s in my AP bio class, that’s all.”

“Oh, gotcha. And Reynolds is in Spanish with me, so I’ll wave at her as well.”

“She’ll destroy you,” the first cheerleader says. “I saw her beat Amal at arm wrestling once.”

A fourth one says, “God, I wish that were me,” and they all laugh.

Andrew wanders away, disinterested.

On court, Wymack whistles the end of the scrimmage and gathers his players around to discuss technicalities that Andrew tunes out. The players all take off their helmets one by one and Andrew scans the group. He spots Wilds and Boyd leaning against each other, then the other Foxes who haven’t graduated yet.

He’s almost surprised to find Robin, the girl who told Jack to fuck off during the ouija board séance Andrew crashed. She’s the tall girl who was manning the goal opposite Renee. She was good despite her inexperience and Andrew isn’t surprised when Wymack pulls her apart at the end of his talk. She ends up in the group of people who’ve visibly made the cut.

Among them is the striker Aaron rammed over earlier. The intense look on his face—almost the same sickening one Kevin always sports when he’s talking about exy— isn’t enough to deter Andrew from looking at him.

Andrew registers the hair plastered to his head with sweat and the striker’s clear blue eyes, but the scars are what attract his attention more. Wymack doesn’t bat an eyelash when he looks at the striker in the eye and the others players seem comfortable or at least unsurprised, but this is Andrew’s first good look at his damaged face.

Underneath the mess of scar tissue, he could be attractive, if Andrew was attracted to people who embody the concept of a bad idea so fully. If Andrew were alive, he’d push and pull until something gave, risking one foot in a raging river and waiting to be carried off.

But Andrew is a ghost, and the sole person he fears for wears his face and nothing more. He looks his fill.

AP Biology is quickly becoming one of Aaron’s favorite classes.

One of the reasons for that is that Andrew never metaphorically sets foot in a biology classroom. The only time Aaron was stupid enough to ask him why, Andrew refused to answer but made a point of attending every single biology class Aaron had for the next three weeks.

The second reason is that Katelyn Miller shares this class with him.

She sat next to him on the first day of class and hasn’t moved since. They’re becoming friends, too, which is new and weird. Before that, Aaron had always understood girls in a very binary manner: people he was interested in, and people who wouldn’t want to talk to him.

Breathing without the weight of Andrew’s knowledge is liberating as well. They’ve been more than joined at the hip since the crash. Sometimes Aaron feels like none of the firsts in his life will ever be his. Andrew will always be there, hovering above his shoulder and taking his bite out of every unshareable thing.

But he’s not there most of the time, and so Aaron lets himself try.

Katelyn walked into the classroom late one morning, just before the teacher looked up from putting down her bag on her desk. She half-jogged between the lab benches, sliding in the seat next to Aaron. She didn't have much of a choice: it was the only one left.

She smiled at him when she sat, sliding her bag in her lap. Andrew wasn’t there, and Katelyn was pretty. Aaron tried his hand at smiling back.

Because of their seats, they get paired off often when the teacher decides to have a lab class. Aaron moves his notebook out of the way, Katelyn inches her stool to the side and they meet in the middle.

But the point is—Aaron doesn’t have friends. He has a roommate, and teammates that he is forced by circumstances to spend time with, and a few people who know him by name and might be inclined to joke around if they all move in the same direction. He has Andrew. He hasn’t had to actively make friends in a long time; he hasn’t wanted to.

But Katelyn took him by surprise. Twenty minutes in that first class, as their teacher had gone over the syllabus and started on the introduction for the course, she leaned across the benches.

“You’re Aaron, right?” she whispered. “Minyard. On the exy team.”

Aaron stared at her, looking up from his notes. Her body was angled toward his, but she was still taking notes, barely glancing at her notebook. Aaron felt incredibly aware of the tip of his own pen, immobile halfway through tracing a “b”.

“Uh,” he said eloquently. The teacher turned around, noting something on the board. Aaron copied it without registering. “Yeah.”

Katelyn nodded. “I’m Katelyn. Miller. I’m on the cheer team.”

Aaron knew that. He nodded as well, slow movements of his head that left him time to think. “I’ve seen you,” he said, although it wasn’t particularly true.

He had seen her, sure, but he had seen her in the hallway or at the cafeteria, laughing or reading or talking. He had never really watched her as a part of the cheer team, moving in the periphery of his vision. The Foxes were bad enough a team that he had other things to worry about when he was playing.

Katelyn seemed pleased, though, so he didn’t correct himself. “Yeah?”

“Sure.” The conversation was stalling. Aaron wondered what he could say that would ensure a satisfying end without being too complicated to whisper back and forth at the back of a class. “You’re all—great,” he added lamely. “We need the cheers.”

Katelyn laughed through her nose. “Thanks,” she replied. And then: “Wait, what did she just say?”

Aaron stared at the teacher. She was gesturing with her marker as she spoke. “No idea,” he confessed, and they both went back to taking notes.

That was day one. Katelyn had smiled at him as they packed their bags, and they had separated for third period. Aaron hurried to his German class, where he found Andrew waiting, reading the teacher’s notes over her shoulder.

Aaron sat at the back of the class. Andrew walked silently to his desk and stood by it, arms crossed over his chest. In the morning light, he was immaterial and almost transparent. The sun shone through his body before hitting Aaron and it felt colder than it should have.

Now they talk regularly as they settle in their seats and leave class. Katelyn is in a few AP classes with Aaron, but Bio is the only one where they sit close enough to talk during the class.

It’s just as well.

The cheer team runs drill and practice in the gym, which means they’re away from the exy team even if they share a time schedule. Sometimes Aaron and Katelyn cross each other going to and from the locker rooms; Katelyn always makes a point of meeting his gaze and smiling at him. Aaron finds himself smiling more as well, which thrills him until he is reminded why the secrecy even exists.

Katelyn even stops to talk that day. She’s already dressed, but Aaron is running late, because his English classroom is in the language building, the farthest from the court. For a moment, they’re as alone in the hallway as Katelyn thinks they are.

“Aaron!” she greets him. She always says his name with a special tone, like she’s testing the name out every time. It’s more endearing than he would be willing to admit. They haven’t seen each other since the day before—lack of shared classes, and Aaron had to speed through lunch to go to the library. “How’re you?”

Aaron’s step falters. He’s almost stopped, her name and an answer on the tip of his tongue, when Andrew appears around the corner.

He looks disinterested, as always, but his eyes are piercing.

“I—can’t stay,” Aaron says instead.

A group of Katelyn’s teammates runs from the locker room to the gym. Katelyn nods and points at them over her shoulder.

“Yeah, me too.” It seems like the most unsatisfying exchange of all times—why is Aaron risking Andrew’s reaction for such a short conversation?—but then she adds: “Hey, I was thinking—we have a study session in the library every Wednesday. Just me and some friends. Do you want to come? They have Meyer in Bio, it’s terrible. You would save their lives.”

Behind Katelyn, Andrew reaches for the handle of the locker room. His eyes never leave Aaron, his gaze cold and unblinking. A dead stare, Aaron has learned in the past year, is a formidable and unnerving thing.

“Uh,” he says eloquently. “I’m not a great tutor.”

“Oh, you don’t need to be, it’s really very informal. We just share lessons and stuff—”

Andrew tugs on the door until it opens wide, then pushes it back. It slams with a loud echoing noise.

“I’ll text you,” Katelyn says, startling a little. “We really have to go.”

She sidesteps him, disappearing inside the gym. Aaron doesn’t look at her go; he keeps his eyes straight ahead and brushes so close past Andrew that he gets goosebumps.

He likes that she said “we”. He’s not sorry about that, even if he won’t ever tell Andrew. He likes that she was just as late as he was, and that she’s always rushing everywhere because she’s not as composed as she pretends to be in front of the teachers.

Andrew doesn’t follow Aaron in the changing rooms or out on the court. He’s left the hallway by the time Aaron is done, and his usual spot by the bleachers is vacant.

The atmosphere is electric inside the plexiglass walls. No one looks over when the heavy doors slam behind Aaron. The team should already be doing warm-ups, and Kevin and Dan should already have gotten on Aaron’s back about being late, but instead the Foxes are all gathered in a loose circle in the middle of the court.

Wymack is nowhere to be seen.

“What’s happening?” Aaron mutters to Matt as he makes his way to the huddle.

Matt is standing slightly to the side, his arms crossed over his chest and a deep frown on his face. The fact that he’s not in the middle of the circle with whoever Dan is loudly arguing with probably means that the situation won’t escalate to violence.

It’s not entirely new, either. The Foxes are a rowdy team, and training has become intense again now that tryouts are over. The new players are starting to integrate with the existing team and Kevin is still as insufferably competitive as ever. Arguments blow up on court more often than not, though never so early.

“I think someone should get Kevin out of here,” a voice pipes up next to Aaron.

It’s Neil Josten, Matt’s new roommate and the Foxes’ newest striker. Aaron has yet to hold a conversation with him on the basis that someone willing to spend extra time with Kevin isn’t worth speaking to.

“Volunteering?” Matt jokes.

Neil doesn’t smile. “I’m probably part of what they’re arguing over,” he says.

Well, that’s nothing new. Kevin get worked up over exy often, and he spent the best part of a week disparaging Neil’s form and praising his potential in turns. Aaron has learned how to tune him out by now.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Dan is saying in her usual loud voice.

“We’re not exactly in position to refuse,” Sheena, the new backliner, says.

“We don’t need him,” Dan insists. “We have Neil, and you know I can sub in if necessary.”

“Now that’s just pathetic,” a third voice says.

Allison doesn’t leave anyone time to answer. “Shut the fuck up, you rat.”

There’s a silence as the rest of the team tries to contain their laughter. Then, low:

“What did you say to me?”

“Riko,” comes Kevin’s plea, and that’s when Aaron sees red.

“What,” he asks Matt, “the fuck?”

It’s Neil again who answers: “Riko showed up just before you did. Demands to be on the team.”

“He doesn’t do high school teams,” Matt explains to him. “No one can stand his ego except his private elite club.”

“The word you’re looking for is nepotism,” Aaron mutters.

Coach Moriyama is Riko Moriyama’s uncle, head coach of a private exy club that usually tramples their opponents without pity or grace, thanks to their duo of star strikers. It’s also the team responsible for Kevin’s season-stopping injury last spring. Kevin was forced out of the Ravens and on the Foxes because of it. Most of Kevin’s friends are actually on the team. Riko has no reason to follow him there.

Matt explains as much to Neil, who just shrugs and says, “I know.”

“Great, another fanboy,” Aaron says.

When Aaron is asked to describe what happened, later, this is what he’ll refuse to tell the principal: Riko, with smugness running in his veins, stands in front of Kevin, thoroughly enjoying rubbing Kevin’s fate in his face. Riko is such an insufferable ass that Aaron wouldn’t need to see Kevin’s face for his blood to boil.

But Riko steps closer to Kevin, extending a hand into what is definitely not a handshake. Kevin steps back, flinching, and turns away, looking lost like he’s searching for an exit. He bumps into Renee, who steadies him with one hand on his arm. It goes wrong when Dan steps in, used as she is to breaking up fights between her players.

“Woah,” she says, a one-woman barrier between Riko and Kevin. “Let’s all calm down.”

Riko doesn’t let her finish. “Step away,” he snarls, yanking at her arm and pushing her out of the way.

Dan stumbles, taken by surprise. As flighty as the Foxes’ good relationship is, they always respect Dan’s intervention. Aaron has never seen anyone go toe to toe with her this violently. From the chorus of gasps and imprecations coming from the Foxes, neither have them.

“No you don’t,” Allison snarls, stepping forward at the same time as Matt.

Allison is closer. She swings, towering over Riko, and catches him in the chest. Kevin gasps her name, eyes wide like saucers. The outrage in his tone, in direct contradiction with the look of fear on his face, prompts her to turn toward him.

“Fuck him,” she spits. “He doesn’t—”

That’s when Riko strikes back, a heavy blow to her back that sends her to her knees. Aaron watches his elbow connect with her kidney and winces. He knows from experience how debilitating that pain is in a fight, and that’s when he realizes that he’s moving.

He doesn’t go for Riko. Aaron’s not afraid of him, but he’s also not used to going after perpetrators of violence unless it’s in the middle of the game and with a racket in his hand.

He tugs Kevin from Renee’s hesitant grip.

“Should we do something?” she asks.

Aaron eyes her biceps, the way her legs tense and her fists curl now that she’s not holding on anyone anymore. He has a feeling that Kevin is the only reason she’s not on the other side, bashing in Riko’s arrogant face.

“Stop them,” Kevin answers. He sounds curt in the slightly hysterical way he does when he’s panicking. “It’s just making the situation worse!”

“It’s three against one,” Aaron remarks. Dan and Matt have converged on Allison and Riko’s entangled forms, but it’s obvious after a minute that they’re busy pulling them apart.

A part of Aaron—the part that always cowered when Tilda raised her voice and looked away when she raised her hand—is relieved. But the familiar knot of rage is still there, in the pit of his stomach.

Aaron can feel Kevin shivering against him. It could be anger, or it could be fear. He remembers Kevin’s drawn face when Kevin unexpectedly switched rooms after the New Year last term. He went from Riko to Aaron, from the Ravens to the Foxes, and Riko doesn’t have the right to pull Kevin back now that he’s building himself up again.

“Stop it,” Dan yells a few times over Riko and Allison’s protests. “Both of you, right now.”

Riko’s face is set in a rictus. Aaron is savagely satisfied to see that he’s bleeding.

“Is that how you captain the sorry bunch of players you call a team?” he sneers. “You’re a pitiful group of losers.”

“Then what’re you doing here?” Allison snaps back. She shrugs Dan’s grip off her shoulders, but accepts the hand Dan transfers to her arm instead.

“Giving you an opportunity, which is more than you deserve.”

“Did no one ever tell you you’re annoying when you talk?” Neil pipes up. He’s standing in the middle of the two groups like Dan was ten minutes ago, his back to Kevin, Renee and Aaron. “You should try shutting up.”

Riko sees red, but Matt is big and strong enough to contain him in spite of his struggling. “And who’s this child?” he asks.

“You sound like a bad anime villain,” Aaron says.

Everyone turns toward him. Neil is smiling, a wide smirk that promises nothing good. It’s a far cry from his usual judgy silence.

“You do,” Neil agrees. Then he extends his hand. “Neil Josten. I’m the new striker.”

It doesn’t seem like Riko would shake it even if Matt wasn’t holding him down.

“So this is the state of this team,” he laughs. “A newbie who looks like he’s ten and Kevin, who can’t even hold his racket anymore.”

“You’re barely twelve months older than I am,” Neil retorts. “And Kevin has more potential in his right pinkie than you have in every inch of your miserable body, so you can fuck right off. We don’t need you.”

“Oh, burn,” Robin mutters from where she’s watched the entire thing. Everyone turns to look at her and she claps a hand on her mouth.

Matt starts laughing, and Riko rips free from his grasp. Everyone starts yelling as Riko lunges toward Neil, grabbing fistfuls of his jersey. They’re almost evenly matched, height-wise, but Aaron doubts that Neil is a fighter. He stumbles back, pushed by Riko’s strength, into the huddle Renee and Aaron have formed around Kevin.

“Good,” Riko says as Neil’s body makes contact with Aaron’s. “Two for the price of one.”

Neil draws back his arm and punches Riko directly in the mouth. At that exact moment, the doors of the court fly open.

“Someone explain to me what the fuck is happening,” Wymack barks, taking in the way Neil and Aaron are looming over Riko’s bloody face and Allison is still being held back by Dan, her knuckles bruised. “You better start talking now.”

Coming up behind Wymack, just as angry as him, is Whittier, the principal. And then, further away but unmistakable to Aaron’s eyes, looms Andrew.

Aaron curses.

*

The Foxes all start talking as one, drowning authority figures in a wave of confusing and misleading information. It would be an efficient tactic, but unfortunately Wymack knows his team.

“Dan,” he snaps after five minutes of the Foxes arguing over what, exactly, Riko said that triggered the fight. “I’ll take an explanation now, and without the side order of bullshit.”

“Coach Wymack,” Whittier protests feebly, but then Dan reluctantly starts talking and he grows angry again.

Practice is over without even having started. Half of the team is sent to run laps, in punishment for witnessing the fight and not immediately running away, probably. Or, knowing Wymack, it’s a way to assuage Whittier’s temper against the Foxes while keeping them occupied. Sheena, the Foxes’ newest backliner who stayed aside with Robin, grumbles for at least half a lap that she had no part in the fight, until Dan snaps at her to shut up.

It’s the last thing Aaron hears before the door closes behind them. The rest of the team—Allison, Neil, Aaron and Kevin, which seems particularly unfair even to Aaron—are led to the principal’s office along with Riko.

Nicky is in when they enter the waiting room in front of the principal’s office and made to sit in the row of chairs lined up against the wall. Aaron drops into the last one and slouches, trying to escape his cousin’s inquisitorial gaze.

“Nicky,” Whittier says as he motions for Riko to step into his office first. “Would you please draft emails to the parents and guardians of these students to let them know—” Whittier’s gaze stops on Kevin’s drawn face. “Well, actually maybe wait until I’m done with these five.”

“Sure thing,” Nicky says, still staring at Aaron. “Will do.”

“Thank you. Now, Mr. Moriyama.”

The door closes behind them. Immediately, Allison jumps out of her chair and crosses the office to the secretary desk.

“It’s so unfair,” she whines to Nicky, sitting down with a dramatic sigh. “Riko started it.”

Nicky makes a non-committal humming sound. “Aaron?” he prompts.

Aaron crosses his arms but stays silent. Nicky tries again. “If the principal tells me you’ve done something, should I believe it?”

Aaron wouldn’t have answered that, but even the hypothetical words die in his throat when Andrew appears through the door.

“You didn’t fight,” he says, and he crosses the few feet separating them so swiftly that Aaron wonders if he walked or glided. Aaron closes his eyes.

“Look at me,” Andrew orders, at the same time Neil pipes up to Nicky, “No, he didn’t do anything.”

Because Aaron has been incapable of ignoring Andrew’s words and commands since the day they locked eyes on each other, he opens his eyes just in time to see Andrew’s focus shift entirely from Aaron to Neil. Something passes on his face, raw and foreign. Aaron’s distrust of Neil instantly increases. In the years he’s spent by Andrew’s side, he’s always been the only thing that could catch and keep Andrew’s interest in such a way.

Misplaced jealousy and something else rear their ugly heads. They don’t abate until Andrew drags his eyes back to Aaron’s face, searching for something Aaron isn’t sure he can give.

Silence descends on the group. Riko is sent back outside with instructions to go straight to the infirmary, and Whittier waves Allison in, then Neil when she leaves in the same angry fashion Riko did.

“Alright,” Nicky says as soon as Kevin and Aaron are left to glare at the ground together.

He spins in his chair until he faces them, rolling away from his computer. “Now tell me what happened.”

He’s looking at Aaron, but it’s Kevin who answers. “Riko was looking for trouble. Allison and Neil got into trouble. Aaron was just a bystander. And now half of the team is going to be sent to detention and it’ll push our practice schedule back.”

Kevin has apparently had enough time away from Riko’s poisonous influence to go from fear to righteous anger.

“Fuck off,” Aaron says. “Riko was out to get you and you know it.”

Kevin’s fists clench in his lap. Andrew clicks his tongue.

“All this trouble for old little Kevin?” he asks.

It’s a good thing Aaron is the only one who can hear him. A better person would never have stood for the mockery in his tone.

“I see,” Nicky says. He opens a drawer without looking and takes out a large box of chocolates. “It’s not for you,” he says to Aaron when Aaron glowers at the box. “I know you can’t be bought. Kevin?” He shakes the box softly.

“I can’t be bought either,” Kevin says.

“It’s just chocolate,” Nicky says.

Kevin gets up and sits in the chair next to Nicky’s desk, the one Allison collapsed in earlier.

“Those have nuts in them,” Nicky says, pointing at a corner of the box. “In case you’re allergic.”

Kevin picks a chocolate, nibbling at it. He makes a face. “Liquor,” he says.

“Ah, the ones wrapped in paper always have liquor in them,” Nicky says sagely. “Here, let’s trade, this one’s good.”

It’s an indication of how shaken Kevin is by the afternoon that he accepts a second chocolate. Aaron has seen him have very heated arguments over Reese’s peanut butter cups in the past.

“So what did Riko say that made Allison and new boy punch him in the face?” Nicky asks. “Although, between you and me, he deserves it.”

“He sought me out,” Kevin says. “Is that coffee?”

“It is, but not for you.” Kevin says nothing, sucking at his fingers where the chocolate stained them, and Aaron can see the moment Nicky cracks. “Oh, alright.”

He swirls in his chair, starting on the coffee machine half-hidden behind his desk.

“He’s really terrible at this,” Andrew comments as they watch Kevin coax coffee and chocolates out of Nicky and Nicky coax the story of Riko’s malevolence out of Kevin.

Aaron grunts as loud as he dares. His fingers itch for something to fiddle with, a joint or a pill or a notebook and a pen. He never feels as vulnerable as he does when Andrew insists on talking to him when he can’t communicate back. If Andrew were the type to feel amusement, Aaron would say he does it for the laughs.

He shouldn’t, but Aaron tunes Kevin’s and Nicky’s conversation out. Andrew listens, with the fake air of disinterest he puts on when he tries to act unconcerned. It took Aaron a while to see through it, to shove his blind anger aside enough to allow Andrew the right not to react exactly like Aaron wanted him to.

He wasn’t alone when he had this breakthrough, though, and Aaron knows what Nicky is going to suggest even before the door closes on Kevin.

“I was kidding about the chocolates, you know,” Nicky says. He puts aside Kevin’s cup of coffee. “You’re always welcome to have some.”

“I don’t want any,” Aaron lies. “What did Kevin tell you?”

“I have cookies. You weren’t listening?”

Aaron’s silence is answer enough. He takes an Oreo from Nicky’s box and eats it without separating the two layers.

“Demon,” Nicky says, shuddering. “He told me you stepped in front of him and Riko, and that you protected him.”

“We were all protecting him,” Aaron says. “That’s why there was a fight in the first place. No one wants his nasty presence on our team or next to Kevin—he just makes Kevin useless on the court.”

“He wants to join the team?” Nicky repeats, instead of dwelling on Aaron’s unexpected bout of sympathy, which is just what Aaron wanted.

He raises an eyebrow. “Kevin didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t expand on why Riko was there.”

“He wants to join the Foxes. He quit the Ravens. He’s pretending he’s doing it for the sake of the team, but we all know he’s just there to follow and control Kevin again.”

“That little fucker,” Nicky swears. He turns toward his computer. “Did you know how much of an administrative nightmare it was, to enter his affiliation to a private club as a part of his P.E. grade? I had to go back and forth with the secretary of the club, and she’s a nasty piece of—work.”

Somewhere behind them, Andrew snorts.

“You can say ‘shit’ in front of me,” Aaron tells Nicky.

“All of this drama for a game of ball,” Andrew says derisively. “Why did you even get involved? I get why you don’t want Nicky to know. You’ve gone soft.”

Shut up, Aaron thinks. He wishes he could say it out loud, or turn and throw something at Andrew. He settles for raising his middle finger behind his back.

“So you’re becoming friends with your teammates,” Nicky muses. “That’s great. I wish you would do it in a way that doesn’t land you in detention for the next two weeks, though.”

“No, I’m not,” Aaron denies automatically. He takes the opportunity of Nicky’s turned back to glare at Andrew over his shoulder.

“You don’t have to do this alone, Aaron,” Nicky continues. “You don’t have to be alone all the time.” His voice has grown incredibly gentle. Aaron avoids his eyes. He wishes Whittier would hurry up and get the story from Kevin.

“Oh, Nicky,” Andrew says. “Aaron doesn’t remember how to be alone anymore.”

“I think you should see Dr Dobson again,” Nicky finishes in the same infuriatingly calm voice. “It’s been a while since you’ve seen her, and I know she was helpful after the accident.”

“Not for the reason you think,” Andrew says. His voice has grown colder, as has the feeling in Aaron’s stomach.

There they are. Dobson is always the last stone in Nicky’s pile of worries and advice.

“You’ve been distracted lately,” Nicky is saying. He seems unaware of the fact that facing him and not Andrew is taking all of Aaron’s efforts and concentration. Andrew has yet to move into Aaron’s line of sight, a clear breach in their unspoken communication etiquette. “I always see you staring into space. I don’t think you’ve listened to one full conversation this summer. See? You’re doing it again. Aaron, are you alright?”

Aaronw wants to laugh. For once, Andrew doesn’t speak up.

“I don’t need to see Dobson,” he says finally.

“I think you do.”

“I won’t.”

“You should,” Andrew says.

It’s unexpected enough to make Aaron mentally trip. He turns around, staring at Andrew’s serious face for a second, right when the door to Whittier’s office opens.

Kevin walks out, looking at his feet, and stalks out of the room before Aaron can open his mouth. Whittier watches him go with a frown, then he turns toward Aaron with a sigh.

“Get in,” he says. “I want this over with.”

He should have given Riko a month of detention and let the others go if he really wanted the matter settled, but Aaron doesn’t say it.

“Please think about it?” Nicky asks in a low voice as Aaron moves away from his desk.

Because Aaron is last, he gets, miraculously, out of trouble.

“I want you to tell me what happened,” Whittier says tiredly as they sit in front of each other across the desk.

“You’ve already heard what happened,” Aaron says.

He’s treated to a play-by-play story of the incident as Whittier humors him. “Is that what happened?” he concludes.

Aaron shrugs. The story is so precise that he doubts Kevin or Allison were the ones Whittier got it from. It leaves Neil and Riko, though Riko would never spin a tale that paints him in such a bad light.

Neil Josten is five-feet-three and has a dangerous mouth on him, and Aaron gets a little more annoyed with him.

“Sure,” he says, because he doesn’t think it can put him in trouble. At this point, the whole thing is starting to look like an exaggerated movie plot. It’s ridiculous, and Aaron almost regrets his involvement in it. But he can see Kevin’s flinch when Riko reached for him every time he closes his eyes, and he knows the taste of the fear painted on Kevin’s face as he stared at the other striker.

He doesn’t say more than that. After a while, Whittier lets him go unpunished, but with a reprimand about taking part in a fight and not going for a teacher.

Andrew glowers at Whittier from the back of the room, but he doesn’t say anything. When Aaron is finally free to go, Andrew doesn’t follow him back to the locker rooms. Instead he turns right, back towards the main building, and disappears without a word.

Aaron pointedly doesn’t watch him go. Each step feels heavy and slippery, like Aaron is sinking into quicksand and the chain linking him to Andrew is weighing him down.

It hasn’t always been the case. For a brief moment, after Aaron woke up at the hospital with a dead twin brother and mother but before Nicky showed up like the world’s most improbable knight in shining armor, Aaron had wanted Andrew.

He’d called in his sleep, and when he had opened his eyes through the heavy haze of pain meds on his addict organism, Andrew had been standing there in the room.

His absence had been an inexplicable wound in Aaron’s side, but seeing him again had left Aaron incapable of speaking for a good five minutes.

"You killed her," he accused later, because two months prior a freshly-arrived Andrew had made a threat towards Tilda that sounded like a promise.

"I did not."

"You did." Aaron's heart was beating so hard he could feel it in his lips. The heart monitor was screeching in his ears with every beat. Everything else felt numb. "You said you would, and you did."

"I said I would get rid of her for your sake," Andrew replied. He was standing at the foot of the bed, a bloody angel of death. One that had gotten the position because of his status. Because he was dead, he was dead. Aaron hadn't believed it until he'd seen nurses repeatedly walk through his brother. "You think I would have risked having you in the car?"

"You—"

"Even I cannot predict the full outcome of a car accident," Andrew said.

"You died. You would have died anyway."

Andrew looked at Aaron, not denying or agreeing to anything. Aaron felt sick and burning hot with anger, frustrated with Andrew and with himself. He'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't let anyone in again.

"You would have killed her for my sake and not care if you died in the process?" He tried to sit up, but all he could do was lean on his elbow before pain made him double over. Andrew watched him struggle with his bored eyes. "What good would that have been?"

"I don't care about dying," Andrew said finally, waving the argument over.

"And where would that have left me?"

"Safe from your abuser and without a brother. An improved situation, really."

"Fuck you," Aaron said with heat. "Don't project your own feelings on me."

Andrew didn't answer that, but he watched Aaron for a long time without speaking. Aaron fell back on the bed, exhausted. His whole body was hurting, and he was starting to feel the effects of the painkillers.

"You can't leave," he said finally. He didn't look at the foot of his bed to see if Andrew was always there. Aaron knew that he was. He didn't have anywhere else to go. "You can't leave me again."

And Andrew had not.

Because Aaron is taking a pronounced interest in the blonde cheerleader, Andrew starts noticing the people around Aaron. After the exy practice fiasco, he focuses on the Foxes, attending all of their practices and games.

It places the cheerleader right in his sight as well, and comes with the added bonus of making Aaron silently seethe.

It is, all in all, a pointless routine that he keeps. Being dead means living through a hazy, gray string of other people’s moments. Andrew is aware that Aaron is the one thing linking him to this plane of existence. He thinks if he stopped gripping so hard, it would be easy to disappear, fade into non-existence like he’d wanted to do when he was alive.

Ironic, really.

Aaron’s unbruised face was the only thing that mattered, at first.

Andrew stayed back after the fiasco in the locker rooms with the cheerleader. The encounter left him in a strange kind of mood. He killed time haunting the great lawn in front of the school, sweeping away books and notebooks until the students retreated inside.

He thought he had managed to miss the whole of practice when Wymack and Palmetto Academy’s balding principal almost walked through him. The sight that welcomed him when he followed them to the exy court had only kindled the fire under the vat of his anger, and he’d felt the old protective instincts kick in.

That Aaron didn’t want him or Nicky to know that he was making friends with Kevin is something, but ultimately not enough. If Andrew had anything to do with it, Aaron wouldn’t have friends that could drop him and leave him. It’s Aaron’s own fault for getting attached, really, but that doesn’t stop the fact that he got hurt. Kevin and the Foxes will stay around Aaron by necessity, but they can’t get too close.

Andrew usually wouldn’t allow it, but Aaron doesn’t seem to be asking for permission anymore.

It’s an incredible step forward for someone as cowardly and disinterested as him, and Andrew finds himself relaxing his hold on the reins to see how far Aaron manages to go. Andrew is almost curious to see if it’s rope to hang himself he’s giving his twin, or a chance at something he can’t quite grasp.

Two days after the practice incident, a rumor spreads throughout the entire school that Riko Moriyama has changed teams—and he’s expected to make first line.

It’s an ironic twist of fate that exy-related drama follows Andrew even in his death. Aaron, and thus Andrew, learns the news because Kevin goes frantic in their dorm room. Coach Wymack told him in private to help him handle the news; he comes back with panic-wide eyes and has a breakdown in front of Aaron. Andrew leaves before it can escalate from the pacing and ranting, but he doesn’t miss the panicked and betrayed glare Aaron directs at him.

Well, if Aaron insists on making friends behind Andrew’s back, he can deal with the consequences alone. Kevin isn’t under Andrew’s protection or responsibility.

“Breathe,” is the last thing Andrew hears Aaron say before he steps into the darkened hallway.

He walks away from the puddle of light seeping from the door of Kevin and Aaron’s dorm room. Night is always the most difficult time for Andrew—with nothing to observe and nothing to do, he’s left suspended in a limbo that stops when the first signs of stirring animate the school at dawn.

Andrew wanders the halls and the grounds, carefully avoiding the exy court and any other sports-related locations. The night seems like it’s warm, with wind Andrew cannot feel blowing through the patches of overgrown grass around the edges of the property. Andrew tips his head back to stare at the sky, and when he looks around himself again the sun has risen.

Aaron spends a lot more time with Kevin and the Foxes after that. The team regroups for lunch, minus the freshmen, pass each other in the halls and even detour by Aaron’s locker to drag him to group study sessions on the lawn. They don’t seem to want to leave Kevin alone for his inner demons or Riko to approach him.

Andrew lets them. Aaron is dragged into it kicking and screaming—or he would be, if he wasn’t the silent type—and Andrew’s attention wanders.

The Foxes’ newest striker, and the way his jaw set with stubbornness before he admitted he’d stepped in to protect Aaron and Kevin from Riko, becomes the focus of Andrew’s concentration instead.

Now that he’s seen him once, he’s been able to spot him several times around the school. He’s always both alone and surrounded by people. His primary objective seems to be getting lost in the crowd, which is a strange thing to do considering he’s joined the most controversial sports team at school, for the most controversial position.

Andrew has taken to watching exy practice from the stands, because his previous position by the door did not let him see the full court. He watches the strikers, aware of it and hating every second of it. Riko Moriyama likes dirty plays, trying to outwit the backliners as often as he rams straight into them.

Two weeks after Riko has joined the team, Aaron falls for his tricky violence one too many times, hitting the ground violently. Andrew has crossed the walls of the court before Wymack blows his whistle and chews Riko out.

Aaron makes eye contact with Andrew and slowly shakes his head, silently indicating him to back off. The one space Andrew respects Aaron’s wishes on his presence nearby is the court; a moment of inattention can be costly in the middle of a game. After Aaron proves he can move and use his wrist without further injury, the play resumes. Josten steps in for Riko, and so Andrew finds himself watching him come up against his brother.

The seniors crowd Aaron when practice is over, most of them glaring at Riko as he passes by. Aaron deftly avoids any physical attention and shrugs them off, but by then the scattered audience in the bleachers has had time to come down.

She is the first one to reach him, of course. The seniors knowingly disperse when they see her, Boyd clapping Aaron’s shoulder before heading out for the locker room. Andrew can read the indecision in Aaron’s stance. He dislikes the attention, but his childish crush on the cheerleader makes him seek hers anyway.

“Hey,” she says. “Are you alright?”

“Fine. It was nothing.”

“Well, it was a foul anyway. If you ask me, Riko always favors them too much.”

Andrew leaves when he hears the genuine surprise in Aaron’s voice. “I didn’t know you followed exy so closely.”

Something burns in Andrew’s cold chest.

That night, Riko trips down a flight of stairs, spraining his ankle and bumping his head. He doesn’t come back to practice for two weeks after that, and Neil Josten becomes the newest attraction of the exy practice.

*

Neil Josten, from what Andrew gathers, is a conundrum. He eats alone at a table surrounded by the Foxes. He shows up for practice early and stays late with Kevin, but he never engages with other students when they want to talk about upcoming matches, unless they’re his teammates. He never glances at the bleachers to meet the eyes of one of the few students who like to sit on practices, but whenever Andrew sees him around the school Neil Josten has his head up and a searching gaze.

The eyes are what rings Andrew’s inner alarms first. The first time he sees them is in Josten’s file in Wymack’s office, when he technically not-breaks in in the middle of the night.

Josten’s file is empty enough that it makes him interesting. No parents, but an uncle who placed him to Palmetto Academy. Homeschooled with no trace of ever doing anything that could be academically recorded during his childhood. And at the top, those piercing blue eyes staring at Andrew through the cheap ink of the headshot.

It’s on a clear night in October that Andrew collects the first piece of answer to his unformed questions. The cicadas have finally stopped singing after the summer and without a stitch of wind the night is quiet. Andrew passes through the dark without disturbing anything.

The quiet “shnick” of a fire exit closing softly alerts him mid-way through the night. Andrew is loitering under the shade of the trees in front of the dorms when he hears it. Then, because his hearing isn’t what it was, he looks up. A silhouette stands out against the night sky for the brief moment it crosses the rays of light of the building’s exterior lighting.

Well, that’s new.

His curiosity piqued as much as it can be, Andrew finds himself following them down the dark path to the running track. The lights around the track are turned off except for one at the far end that Andrew doesn’t think he’s ever seen go out. The students of the Academy like to joke that it’s proof of supernatural activity.

As far as Andrew knows, they might be closer to the truth than they think.

He approaches slowly as the person starts warming up, then take down the tracks. When he passes under the lamppost at the other end of the oval, Andrew isn’t as surprised as he should be to see Neil Josten’s stark face thrown into relief.

Andrew stays where he is, half-hidden in the shadows close to the stands. He watches Neil run circles around the red tracks under the light of the moon, and he thinks if he were alive his chest would rise and fall with the rhythm of Neil’s running feet.

It’s a hunger he’s never felt before.

Neil stays out for some time. Andrew doesn’t have a watch, or breaths to set the tempo of the world to—only the black outfit in which he died. He stays out staring at Neil’s light stride, and the sky stays dark. He’s gone back inside for a long time before the night pales around Andrew.

The next night, Andrew walks back and forth between the dorms and the running track without success. No one is awake. When he gives up and goes back inside, all the way to the dorm he knows Matt Boyd and Neil share, he can only hear silence behind the closed door.

“Have you been here all night?” Aaron asks groggily when he wakes up to find Andrew sitting on the windowsill. Andrew doesn’t answer.

He has an infinite amount of patience. He’s a ghost: waiting is the only thing he has left.

The school day stretches and compresses like an elastic. Andrew follows Aaron to class and leaves halfway through. He looks away, and lunch is over. At exy practice, Aaron rams down the strikers going up against him and Matt gets into a spat with Riko that halts the whole scrimmage. Dan sends them both to run laps to cool their heads, bringing on Sheena and Neil instead. Everyone pretends Kevin doesn’t fumble the ball every time Riko runs past him.

Andrew sits in the stands and watches his brother protect the goal and Neil’s mad dash through the other players, the back and forth of the ball.

Neil is the fastest player on the team. He’s a shifty person outside of his uniform, always looking in the corners and ready to bolt.

Neil is out at the running track as soon as the clock strikes eleven that night. Andrew watches the hands of the clock in the common room on the first floor of the Tower tick slowly upwards, and follows when he hears soft footsteps in the stairwell.

Neil is there the next night, and the one after that. Soon enough Andrew can discern a pattern: he never goes out the night before a game and stays inside at irregular intervals that Andrew attributes to homework.

October goes on. The nights must get colder, but it’s South Carolina and Neil never goes outside at night in anything more than shorts and a tee-shirt. He speeds down the track fast enough to warm up, anyway. One time Andrew doesn’t leave before Neil does, entirely hidden in the shadows of the stands on a moonless night. Neil almost brushes past him as he leaves, breathing hard.

Andrew doesn’t make any noise. He can’t have; he knows this as surely as he knows that he’s dead. But Neil hesitates two steps away from Andrew and for the briefest second Andrew thinks that he’s been seen.

It doesn’t make any sense, but the what-ifs storm in Andrew’s mind all day. He sticks to Aaron’s side all day to make up for it, reveling in the secret language Aaron engages in when they’re in public, the conversations conveyed through Aaron’s eyes and minute gestures conceived to look casual.

Andrew grows restless during Aaron’s history lesson, yanking at the curtains until the teacher pauses the video she’s showing the class to check that the window is closed. He can feel Aaron’s stare on him when he slowly completes a lap of the classroom, flicking pens to the ground and flipping pages on books left unattended.

He sees Aaron scribbling on his notebook at some point, looking pointedly at it just after he crosses Andrew’s eyes, but for once Andrew refuses him the communication.

Aaron frowns as Andrew stays on the other side of the classroom. He taps his notebook with his index finger, hand splayed on the table so that it looks like a nervous tick.

“No,” Andrew denies him. He leaves, not waiting for an answer.

The teacher pauses the video at that moment, turning the lights back on. In the middle of the commotion from the students trying to pretend they paid attention, Andrew is sure that Aaron’s outrage goes unnoticed.

*

The next time Neil goes out running, Andrew is already waiting at the track. He positioned himself directly under the light, at the far end of the track, the complete opposite of his usual place. Neil comes in jogging slowly, and he goes through his warm-up routine and two full laps before Andrew’s questions are answered.

The next time Neil approaches the lamppost, halfway through his third lap, he slows down.

“You’re not Aaron,” is the first thing he says.

He’s not even out of breath. If Andrew were alive, his would have left his chest. Words escape him for a minute, and he settles for watching Neil.

“No,” he says finally. “I’m Andrew.”

Neil nods. “I’ve seen you around recently. You were at our last practice.”

And the one before that, and the ones the week before that, and every single one since that fateful afternoon when Riko joined the team. He was in the office with Aaron and Neil when they were brought in front of Whittier, and Andrew knows for certain Neil didn’t see him then.

“Yes,” Andrew answers simply, waiting.

Neil nods slowly, catching his foot in his hand and beginning to stretch. He looks casual, as though he often has conversations in the dead of the night with the dead twin of one of his teammates. “Why don’t you play?” he asks instead.

Because I’m dead doesn’t seem like the right answer. Either Neil Josten is a master of sarcasm, in which case Andrew has nothing else to say to him, or, for the first time in a year and a half, the only other person apart from Aaron who can see Andrew thinks he’s alive.

Andrew isn’t a liar, but he’s not ready to let go of the pretend yet.

“I have no interest in exy,” he replies.

“And yet you come watch our practice.” Neil’s eyes are colder than Andrew thought they would be, up close. He looks disinterested, but his words are sharp. “Is it Aaron?”

“What about Aaron?”

“You’re twins.”

“Ten points for you.”

“Well, do you go because of him? I’ve never seen him even glance in your direction. Kevin usually doesn’t like it when people come over and watch—says it’s a distraction. But he’s never said anything about you.”

He wouldn’t. If Kevin could see Andrew, he would start by complaining about the rooming situation.

“Kevin has other bigger problems than little old me.”

“True.” Neil shrugs. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you?”

“I’m running. You’re just watching.”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

Neil raises an eyebrow, looking little impressed by Andrew’s curt words. Thoughts are jumbled in Andrew’s brain. It’s been a long time since he’s talked to anyone that wasn’t Aaron, Dobson notwithstanding. He never thought of conversation as a skill when he was alive, but he’s starting to realize that it might be, and he’s rusty.

“I’ll see you around, then,” Neil says. It’s a clear dismissing, but he waits for Andrew’s answer before leaving.

Andrew doesn’t have one for him. He taps two fingers to his temple, a mocking salute that used to come as naturally to him as bringing a cigarette to his lips when he was alive. He doesn’t watch Neil’s puzzled face as he fades into the shadows of the bleachers, and he doesn’t look back even when he hears Neil walk back to the Tower.

Andrew makes sure Neil doesn’t see him around for the next two days. For the first time since he died, Andrew finds himself looking around himself, aware of the walls he can cross and the people who stare right through him.

“Why are you so goddamn jumpy?” Aaron grumbles at breakfast. He’s eating alone, no Foxes around for the first time in weeks, and mumbles half-coherent sentences to Andrew behind his orange juice glass. “You’re not standing guard. Calm the fuck down.”

Andrew’s eyes stray from their search around the dining hall.

“Don’t,” he warns, “say fucking stupid things.”

Aaron has been spending too much time around Kevin and his short temper. Andrew’s words have no effect on him.

“Jumpy,” he repeats, munching on his toast.

Deliberately, Andrew pulls out the empty chair next to Aaron. He sits down, feet flat on the ground, and crosses his arms on the sticky wooden surface of the table.

This, at least, gets a reaction. Aaron drops his toast back on his plate. “What the fuck,” he hisses from the corner of his lips. “Get out of here.”

“I’m interested in seeing things from your perspective,” Andrew says, staring ahead. “To see how you can stand on such a high horse.”

“Fuck off,” Aaron replies, and the heat behind the words isn’t in response to the height joke.

Neil Josten passes by with his tray a minute later. He nods at them—at Andrew, from seeing him two nights ago? At Aaron, because they’re on the same team?—and gives them a one-worded greeting without slowing down.

Aaron watches him pass in silence. “I don’t even like him,” he remarks once Neil has disappeared in the washing station to stash away his tray. “Why are they all so weird?”

Something is burning up in Andrew’s chest. He stands up, not caring enough to push down the chair. He walks through the table, his back to Aaron.

“Andrew?”

“Just go say hi to all your stupid friends and fuck off.” Andrew walks away before Aaron can give him his answer, forcing his brother to speak up or swallow his words. But Aaron has never spoken up for himself in his life, and so Andrew has the last word.

*

“I haven’t seen you in class,” Neil says that night on the running track. Andrew stands away, watching him stretch after his run, in a moment bathed with a light like the promise of familiarity. “Are you sure you go to this school?”

In a manner of speaking. “You saw me in the dining hall.”

“And you weren’t even eating.”

“Anyone told you your nosiness will cause you trouble one day?”

Neil’s smile is a sharp and dangerous thing. “Actually, yes.”

He drops down in a crouch, one leg extended to the side, looking up at Andrew all the while. The memory of an old want stirs up inside Andrew. Neil holds Andrew’s gaze for a long time. When he stands back up, looking cool and collected despite the sweat gathering on his collarbone, Andrew wishes he could reach out and turn his face away.

“Do you ever answer questions without being so cryptic?”

“It depends,” Andrew says. “On whether you’ve earned the right to get the truth.”

“You don’t seem like someone who would speak to people you don’t consider worth your time.”

Neil is right. Stubborn silence was a characteristic of Andrew, but his death took even this from him—the freedom of choosing whether to speak or to stay silent, as steep as the price, etched on Andrew’s forearms by razor blades, had been.

“You don’t know me.”

“You don’t know me. But you keep following me out here,” Neil says. “The least you could do is share something about yourself.”

“That’s not sharing,” Andrew replies. “I don’t give without getting something in return.” Neil has yet to look away from Andrew. It’s almost unbearable. “A game,” Andrew elaborates. “A truth for a truth.”

Neil shakes his head. “You don’t want my truths.”

Well, that’s interesting.

“Your lack of acceptance of your tragic past is your problem. But you want answers, and here is my price.”

Andrew is serious, but Neil huffs out an unhappy laugh.

“A truth for a truth,” he repeats, standing back up. “Alright, here’s one: I don’t trust this game.”

“It doesn’t work if it’s something I already know.”

“Goodnight, Andrew.”

Neil trots off.

The next night, they meet in front of the emergency exit door Neil uses to sneak out of the Tower. They’ve seen each other at practice just a handful of hours before, but by a common unspoken agreement they never talk then.

“You could run with me,” Neil tries as he starts warming up. Andrew lets his silence answer for him. “Alright. Keep being bored, then.”

“I’d be bored even if I ran.”

“Running isn’t boring. It’s the most calming moment of my day.”

That’s probably because Neil seems incapable of resting. “Is that a truth?” Andrew asks.

Neil looks at him for a long time. Andrew meets his gaze without blinking. Aaron hates it; blinking is a reflex inherently specific to the living and Aaron hates reminders that Andrew doesn’t belong to that category anymore. Aaron always has trouble looking people in the eye.

But Neil doesn’t say anything. Instead he smiles a small, secret smile, a fleeting thing that may very well be unknown to him. He turns away, starting down the track at his usual high speed.

“That’s two,” he says over his shoulder. “Better start thinking about what you want to tell me.”

Neil runs ten laps. He doesn’t look at Andrew when he passes his spot in the bleachers, but he stops close to him instead of completing the last circuit. Andrew shakes himself from the slow torpor he got into and stands up, approaching the railing overlooking the track.

“You’re playing,” Andrew calls as Neil approaches. He leans his elbows over the railing. “What made you change your mind, I wonder.”

“I think I should be the one asking questions,” Neil says. He’s stretching, as usual.

Andrew waves at him to go on, but Neil takes a moment to think.

“Why haven’t I seen you around the school before?”

“Maybe you haven’t been looking.”

“Andrew.”

It’s not a question Andrew can answer on his own. “It’s on you,” he insists. “I’ve always been there.”

“There at the school or there on this running track in the middle of the night?” Neil asks.

“Is that your second question?”

“Actually, yes. Why have you been following me?”

“I don’t sleep. I was out. I saw you.”

“Can’t sleep or won’t sleep?”

Both. “It’s not your turn.”

Neil shrugs. “Alright, shoot.”

He’s switched leg, and now he stands on his left foot, slightly unbalanced. His left arm shoots out, like he’s looking for something to hold onto. For a beat, Andrew is within arm’s reach.

Anyone else would have offered an arm. His past self would have taken a step back. This Andrew, the form of Andrew that won’t ever change, the one stuck with the same clothes and the same priorities for the rest of time, does neither of those things.

Andrew was never one to let things happen. Since he was old enough to take control of his life, he never let the others’ blind decisions impact him. But no one has been able to affect him in a long time. This is a form of inaction that says more than lashing out ever could.

Andrew needs to remove himself from the conversation.

“Later,” he says. “Not today.”

Neil shakes his leg out, eyes piercing. It’s incredible that someone with such clear and inquisitive eyes hasn’t figured out all of Andrew’s secrets yet.

“Fine.”

Andrew was the one who raised the walls back up, but it’s Neil who leaves, his shadow projected far on the ground from the lights bordering the path back to the Tower. He rubs his arms briefly, shoes squeaking over pebbles, so alive that something inside Andrew hurts with yearning.

*

When Andrew gets to the running track the next evening, Neil is already done with running.

November is well under way, so he’s finally exchanged his tee-shirt and shorts combo for longer pants and sleeves. Tonight, he even has a jacket on, the colorful orange and white bomber every Fox is given at the beginning of the season. Andrew has seen Aaron’s plenty of times from game days and several moving outs, and he would have recognized the neon lines down the arms without the letters spelling “Josten” on the back, glistening under the moonlight.

It’s off-putting, a breach in their routine. Andrew waited for the time to pass in front of a clock, so he knows he hasn’t spaced out for several hours like he often does. But here Neil is, definitely not running and definitely jumpier than he ever is at night.

“Something crawl under your skin?”

Neil startles. “I didn’t hear you,” he says, crossing his arms tighter around himself. Past the bleachers, the trees rustle under the wind Andrew can’t feel.

“I didn’t mean you to. Why are you jumpier than a frightened rabbit?”

“I’m not a rabbit.”

“You are when you’re wearing that face,” Andrew says, pointing at Neil with his chin. He leans back against the railing of the bleachers, as calm as Neil is nervous.

“I got a phone call,” Neil says, as though it explains anything. “It’s nothing.”

“Clearly not, but your delusions are your own problem. No running?”

“I’m already done. I was going back inside.” He hesitates, hands in his pockets. “Do you smoke?”

Andrew tells the truth. “I used to.”

The wind picks up again, and Neil zips his jacket up. “Come on,” he says. “We’ll get blown off if we stay here.”

Andrew thinks at first Neil is about to lead them back inside, which would mean that Andrew would have to cut the evening short—it’s harder being real under the uncompromising harshness of the lights. But Neil only steps around the stands, sneaking under their rigid metal structure like a mouse inside machinery. The wind is mostly blocked off, creating a little bubble of Andrew and Neil, stepping away from the world.

Neil drags over an upside-down plastic crate lying around—maybe the remnants of an athletic school event—and drops down on it. Andrew stands. He watches Neil going through the familiar motions, lighting a cigarette, taking a drag to keep it going. The smoke swirls in the cold air of the night. Andrew’s imagination has never been good, but he almost feels as though he can smell it. His memory compensates where his senses fail.

Andrew stares at the tendril of smoke rather than down at Neil. It’s the easy way out, though he wouldn’t have thought so a few months ago. Like almost all things, it’s unfair to be dead and miss life so acutely.

Neil slowly exhales.

“Are you going to ask me? Or I can give you one for free.”

“Give it, but not for free. That’s not how the game works.”

“You don’t strike me as a sticker for rules.”

“I am when they’re my rules.”

Neil has stopped smoking. He’s holding the cigarette to the side of his face, his hand propped against his scarred cheek. Andrew almost wants to bat it away. Surely fire so close to Neil’s hair isn’t safe. He wonders if the circular burns on Neil’s cheek were obtained so easily, so carelessly, or if they’re open evidence of violence.

“I don’t smoke,” Neil says. “I don’t do it for the nicotine. The smoke reminds me of my mom.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow.

“Is there a backstory?”

“She used to smoke. She died in a fire.”

Slowly nodding, Andrew turns the information over in his mind.

“I learned how to play exy in juvie,” he says. He see Neil’s head snap up; because of the mention of exy or juvie, Andrew can’t be sure. Before Neil can ask, Andrew prompts: “I don’t play anymore.”

“Why did you stop?”

“It got boring,” is the best Andrew can do.

“How can exy be boring? What position did you play?”

“Goalie.”

“Were you good?”

“When I cared enough to be.”

“Let me guess. That wasn’t often.”

The sight of the smoke is getting to Andrew. He makes a dismissive gesture and watches in silence as Neil gently shakes the cigarette to disperse the smoke.

“Second-hand smoke.”

Neil blinks. “What?”

“It’s just as bad as outright smoking the stick. You could be headed toward cancer.”

“And then where would I be,” Neil says drily. “An exy striker with a lung condition.”

He’s still smoking, or whatever what he’s doing can be called.

If he focuses, Andrew can interact with objects; hold a door open, pick up a pen, pull out a chair like he did a few days ago in the dining hall. Hold a cigarette. He reaches down without meaning to.

Neil surrenders it easily to his outstretched hand.

“I used to think a slow death was better than living.” Andrew watches the smoke, almost suspended in the still night.

“What made you change your mind?”

“I didn’t.”

Andrew isn’t sure whose turn it is in their game now. He gives the cigarette back to Neil, trying to escape the look on his face.

*

The fifteenth round in their truth game starts by Neil asking: “Why are you always following Aaron?”

“I thought I was following you.”

“Don’t change the subject. That’s my question.”

“Maybe I don’t want to answer it.”

It’s a compromise they’ve fallen back on several times, used by both of them equally. There are some things Neil cannot or does not want to say about his past—what, exactly, his father did, that sent his wife and son on the run for years; who finally killed him. Why his uncle placed him at Palmetto Academy instead of taking him back to England.

Violence doesn’t scare or surprise Andrew. He’s seen Neil’s face and accepted it from the first day. He’s lived a violent life and died a violent death, crushed between grinding sheets of metal and shattered glass.

“I’m curious,” Neil says, “because I always see you around but he never acknowledges you. You never talk about him, but at the same time he’s the reason you’re here, isn’t he? What is there between you two?”

Andrew stares ahead. “That’s more than one question,” he says.

“Answer the one you want.”

“And that would satisfy your curiosity?”

“Hardly.” Neil smiles self-deprecatingly. Andrew can’t help but stare; the movement of his lips tugs weirdly at the scars barring Neil’s cheeks.

“Aaron is my brother,” Andrew says. “But we didn’t grow up together. Pay attention,” he warns Neil, who breathes in cigarette smoke like it’s the essence of Andrew’s story. “I’ll only say this once.”

“I’m all ears.”

It’s a terrible idea and an unfair bargain, the balance tipping away from Andrew. There is no reason to tell Neil this, except that as the nights have gone, Andrew has started to think of him less as a stranger and more as a fixture of his routine. So Andrew talks. He broaches the circumstances around the twins’ separation and their lucky meeting. Neil doesn’t blink at the mention of juvie, although Andrew neglects to tell him why or how he wound up there.

“Aaron’s mother died in a car crash,” Andrew says. He ignores the memories this sentence dredges up. He’s a ghost; he can’t be haunted by the past. “Then cousin Nicky left his parents to take care of us, and Wymack found him a position in the principal’s office. Since Palmetto Academy is in the middle of nowhere, here we are.” Andrew spreads his hands to indicate the barren countryside around them. “As for Aaron—we made a deal when he was in the hospital that I would stick by his side, and I’ve kept my word.”

“So here you are,” Neil echoes. It’s later than usual; Neil usually acknowledges this by marking the end of the conversation, but today he stays sitting. Andrew stands, so that he has to look down to see Neil. Their usual positions.

“My father was a criminal,” Neil starts suddenly. “He was violent and cruel, and he didn’t like it when my mom took me and ran. When he caught up with us, he killed her and gave me these.” He gestures to the side of his face. Andrew watches in silence. He suspects the truth is more complicated than Neil’s simple words and short sentences, but he recognizes the attempt at honesty for what it is. “He was killed in turn, and then my uncle took me in.”

“Why Palmetto Academy?”

Neil’s mouth twists. “Recommended by an acquaintance.”

There’s a cruel irony behind his words. Andrew can only guess at it. He doesn’t ask.

“Is that why you’re so skittish around the others?” he asks instead. “You always look like you’re ready to flee the team every time one of them invites you to lunch.”

“Says you, whose favorite activity is brooding in a corner.”

“I have my reasons.”

“So have I,” Neil counters. He’s silent for a short while, until his cigarette burns to the filter. He drops the burning butt to the ground and carefully grinds it beneath his shoe. “You’re special, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say yes, even if I knew what you were talking about.”

“You’re not like everybody else. There’s something about you that I can’t place.”

Well, the feeling is mutual. “Are you trying?” Andrew asks instead of voicing that thought.

“You’re not a math problem,” Neil says. It’s not a no and even less a yes.

“You couldn’t solve me anyway,” Andrew warns, because who would ever come up with the hypothesis that Andrew is a ghost, invisible to most people? Neil is special too, if he can see Andrew, but there is no way Andrew can solve that either.

“I know better than to try,” Neil says calmly. “It’s not my place. I’ll wait for my answers.”

“You won’t get them.”

“Maybe I won’t. Maybe I will.”

His calm acceptance of Andrew’s secrecy would make his blood boil if he had any. Instead he pushes Neil’s face away, back toward the Tower where Neil is supposed to be.

“Leave,” he asks, and so Neil does.

*

Aaron is still sleeping when Andrew siddles into his room at dawn. Andrew sits on the windowsill and stares out at the deserted grounds through a gap in the curtains. The point of view from the little room is jarring, familiar and half-forgotten at the same time.

How long since he last spoke to Aaron? Since he did anything more than follow him around, half of his focus on something—someone—else?

Aaron’s made friends, but that’s a symptom, not the cause. The possessive streak in Andrew’s mind coils back on itself.

He’ll get his brother back. Neil is a distraction, but Andrew can handle that. He has nothing else to do; nothing else to exist for.

Over on the nightstand, Kevin’s analog alarm clock ticks out the seconds. Andrew counts ten minutes, and then ten more, until morning.

Being ignored by his twin brother sucks. Being ignored by his dead twin brother when Aaron is the only person who can see and interact with him directly is a double ignominy.

Andrew is off haunting something else. What does the ghost of someone who already found the world largely boring when he was still alive do? It means that Aaron is free to spend his time however he wants, which is a novelty he doesn’t entirely trust yet.

He’s learned not to believe in good luck or positive turning-points in his life. He gained a brother and lost him in the span of five months. He gained him back, sort of, but Andrew is a ghost, a single-track minded shell of the intense black hole of a person he was when he was alive.

The Foxes are part of that novelty. Since the incident at practice, they’ve closed ranks around Kevin, which is both weird and useless, since Riko has been free to join the team anyway. He’s tried to rip the starting line from Neil; even Coach Wymack, who’s far from impartial when it comes to Moriyamas, couldn’t deny the gap in skills between the two players.

Aaron’s watched it unfold from the other side of the court. Kevin plays clumsily when he’s paired with Riko, breaching the line between focused on the game and so far in his own head that he doesn’t acknowledge the rest of the game unfolding in front of him. Each game, Wymack changes the line-up for the strikers, which satisfies no one, to give Neil his chance. Aaron guesses it’s fair, and he would be gladder to thwart Riko if his own eyes didn’t stray to the bleachers every time Neil steps on the court.

Andrew is always there, watching. He’s too far away for Aaron to see where he’s looking—on his left to Aaron’s position in front of the goal, or to middle-court where Neil prepares to tear off down the court? He always leaves before the players shake hands after the end of the game. The uncertainty gnaws at Aaron’s fraying nerves.

Practice is becoming a constant fight. If they keep it up, they’ll bomb their season before the winter break. Aaron is dragged in it against his will. He’s too weak to tell the Foxes no when they seek him out and drag him to their folds. He tells himself he’s only there because he’s Kevin’s roommate, and Kevin is the reason they close ranks.

Katelyn, though, is a different sort of problem.

The first time he sees her after that fateful practice, she enquires after him, then the other members of his team. Aaron is a little wary of answering, but the frown on her face when he mentions Riko joining the team appeases some of his doubts.

“I really don’t like him,” she says. “Did you know Jean moved because of him?”

Aaron’s never talked to Jean Moreau—he was a grade above him, attended Palmetto Academy like it was his last meal before death row, serious and looking pained all the time. He used to be Kevin’s friend, until he left just three weeks into the first term of his senior year. Apparently he moved to California—Aaron’s English teacher would call it a clean chiasmic structure to Aaron’s own life.

“I thought he moved because he got injured and the Ravens wouldn’t let him play anymore?”

“Yeah,” Katelyn says. She lowers her voice. “And who do you think injured him?”

Aaron’s first instinct is denial. “That’s not possible,” he says, even though Kevin’s left hand is direct proof of Riko’s unstable violence.

“Isn’t it? Riko is bad news. I’ve seen him at parties,” (what parties are those? Aaron wonders. Palmetto Academy is a boarding school.) “He can be really violent.”

“Good thing I can be violent toward him in return, then,” Aaron says. Matt is Riko’s mark at practice most of the time, but Aaron has had chances to clash against him, which he’s done with a savage satisfaction.

“Just be careful,” Katelyn answers. “Jean was a backliner too.”

Aaron shrugs and nods. He doesn’t want to talk about Jean Moreau anymore. He can’t even pronounce his name right, unlike Katelyn who inexplicably knows how to curl the vowels just right.

Katelyn’s concern for him is unexpected and warming. When she talks about Wednesday study sessions again, Aaron agrees without even thinking about saying no. He meets her friends, who aren’t all that interesting, and in exchange, Dan invites her to share her lunch with the Foxes when she stops to chat with Aaron in the line.

“Sure, thanks,” she says with that lack of hesitation Aaron admires.

He wishes he could be as certain as she is every time he answers an invitation. He looks over his shoulder almost reflexively. Andrew is nowhere in sight; his absence hangs over Aaron almost more heavily than his unblinking stare would.

Dan claims a much larger table than the three of them need. Matt sits down next to her, and then Renee and Allison drop in. Aaron slouches in his seat. He wanted a quiet lunch with Katelyn, not a team event. His teammates are well-meaning, most of the time, but they’re exhausting to exist with. Aaron usually gets through these moments by bowing his head and bearing through silently, but with Katelyn at his side he can’t do that.

Neil is the last one to join them. Dan flags him down as he passes by the table with his eyes on his tray, either lost in thought or intent on ignoring them. Either way is fine with Aaron—unfortunately, Neil rocks to a stop when he hears his name, and he readily takes a seat when Dan gestures him to.

Aaron does his best not to scowl at him when he sits down.

“Is this a team-bonding lunch?” Neil asks as he searches his salad with his fork.

“Nah,” Matt says, “we would have invited Kevin, otherwise.”

“There are other people to the team than your friends.” Dan pokes him in the side. “We should unite to win this season, not feud among ourselves.”

Allison makes a face. “Do I need to remind you Riko is on the line-up?”

“One more reason to keep the team tight,” Renee reasons. “He does enough damage.”

“Anyway, Katelyn’s here,” Aaron says. Everyone turns to him. He regrets speaking immediately, but the deed is done. “So it can’t just be exy talk.”

“Oh, I can stand a little bit of exy talk,” Katelyn says with an easy laugh. She leans forward conspiratorially. “The Vixens go to all your games, you know. We know the highs and lows of high school exy.”

Everyone laughs, except Neil who just points out, “But you don’t attend practices.”

“It’s a joke,” Matt says. “A reference—nevermind.”

The look on Neil’s face has gone from puzzled to uninterested. He spears salad with his fork and eats in silence.

“If anything this is a defense team meeting,” Dan says with a circle of her fork. “So Neil, you’re just as much of an outsider.”

“But Robin’s missing. And Sheena.”

“Okay,” Aaron snaps finally. “So it’s just your friends, or whatever. Nice that we’re all here.”

“Sheena sucks,” Matt agrees readily.

“Robin’s nice,” Neil points out.

“Has she talked to you? I can draw two words out of her. She won’t even communicate with us during games.”

“She’s shy.”

It’s an understatement. Robin Cross is as mousy in temperament as she’s tall in person. She’s clumsy except when she has an exy stick in her hands and silent ninety-percent of the time. Her position in goal should make her one of the people Aaron talks to the most, but he’s never known her to call any advice or game play to her backliners, which is so backward that it’s angered him on more than one account.

“What use to us is a goalie who won’t talk to her defense line?” he asks Neil. “She should get over it.”

“She’s just a freshman, isn’t she?” Katelyn intervenes. “Give her time, she’s probably intimidated.”

“Then she’s just stupid. Half of this team are seniors; we’re all graduating this year. She’ll find herself alone on a new line-up soon enough. She’s got nothing to lose by talking to us.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Neil tells Aaron seriously. “You’re a dick to everyone.”

“Hey,” Katelyn protests.

“Just to people who aren’t worth my time,” Aaron replies. “Which you’re part of, if you hadn’t noticed.”

On his left, Aaron can feel Katelyn turn in her chair, but he doesn’t stop glaring at Neil to look.

“You’re so stupid,” Neil says. “Most of the time I don’t even know what your problem with me is. Are you hung up about Andrew?”

The unfamiliar name halts the conversation at the table. Aaron registers it intensely, hyper aware of everything and everyone around him. His hand spasms around his fork before he drops it. It clatters loudly against his plate.

“Shut up,” he says, even though he wants to scream.

Neil looks at him with a puzzled look on his face, like he hasn’t destroyed all of Aaron’s hard-won composure in one blow.

How? How? The question turns round and round in Aaron’s panicked brain.

“Who’s Andrew?” he hears Allison ask across the table.

“Aaron, are you okay?” That’s Katelyn, quiet and concerned next to him.

He shakes his head once, an answer to her question or a warning not to talk anymore.

How? How does Neil know? Of course Andrew’s existence is easy to find out: they lived together for more than six months before Tilda crashed the car. Before Andrew died, before he became a ghost, stuck to Aaron’s side like an indelible marker stain. There’s a mention of him in Aaron’s file, a small paragraph mentioning the school counselor, Betsy Dobson.

It’s not too crazy to think Neil might have stuck his nose where it doesn’t belong, found the ammunition and the wish to use it.

Aaron has never taken well to bullies. He stood up to Riko a month ago; now he’ll stand up—

He loses his train of thought when the looks of all the Foxes at the table converge on him.

“My brother,” he explains.

“You have a brother?” someone asks.

“A twin brother,” Neil explains.

“No way,” Matt says. “So where’s Andrew and why have we never seen him before?”

Any end to the conversation will cost Aaron, but there is on option that drags Neil down with him, that cuts him off from the Foxes’ support.

“He’s dead,” Aaron snaps.

The words hang heavily in the air.

Aaron is not done with his meal but his appetite has left him. He stands up, chair screeching on the tile behind him, and turns to leave.

Andrew is standing right here in the central aisle, between two tables filled with students. No one is paying him any mind, but when Aaron drags his eyes to his face, Andrew doesn’t meet them, staring at a point over Aaron’s shoulder.

“Don’t talk,” he says. “Not a word.”

Aaron’s heart misses a beat. Andrew is not looking at him; he’s not talking to him. The realization hits Aaron like a freight train. He starts forward, expecting Andrew to stand out of his way, but they both hold their ground, and Aaron’s shoulder passes through Andrew’s immaterial arm.

The Foxes all gape at him as he leaves the cafeteria, but no one starts after him.

Aaron blows past the doors without a care about who stands in his way. Anger and helplessness are a familiar burn in his stomach, threatening to consume him whole. Aaron has always had anger management problems. As a child he was inclined to hit and scream and break things, because his mother screamed and hit and broke him. It’s something he’s known all his life; anger was the constant companion of his childhood, before Andrew even showed up.

Countless school counsellors have tried to teach him how to contain it. Aaron never took to it, except when Tilda was looming over him. It’s instinctive to lash out when he’s alone after holding it together in front of other people, so he holds his breath and his thoughts until he’s by the exy bleachers, and then he lets out the fury that has been building.

Punching the seats does nothing to take the edge off his anger, but at last the pain registers through the blinders blocking off the rest of the world.

Aaron curls around his throbbing fist, resting his forehead on his knees. His breath comes out in rash pants, warm and loud in the enclosed space he’s formed by folding over himself. He shivers once. He forgot his coat inside.

After a while he opens his eyes and straightens up just enough to peek at his fist. He was logical enough in his anger to hit the metal seats with the meaty side of his fist, not his knuckles. His pinky finger is bruised and scraped, but at least he’s not bleeding.

Andrew makes his presence known when he’s still stretching out his aching hand. Aaron doesn’t startle. He hasn’t been surprised by his brother’s presence in his life in a long time.

He has to reconsider everything now, but Andrew doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything, Aaron thinks viciously as they stare at each other in mullish silence. That’s what being dead does to you, of course, but it’s also debatable whether Andrew cared even when he was alive.

Accusations press at his mouth, ready to be hurled at Andrew’s indifference. Aaron bites his lips, hard, to contain them. The first one to get angry always loses with Andrew, but Aaron’s been angry his whole life. He lost the moment he took the first step and Andrew sent his feeble efforts back like a slap across the face.

He stares at Andrew, hard. Andrew watches back.

“I’m waiting,” Aaron finally grits between his teeth.

Andrew shrugs. After a moment of silence, he obliges: “For what?”

“A fucking explanation.”

“I don’t have one.”

“Don’t fuck with me,” Aaron warns.

“He can see me. I don’t know why.”

The words are not an apology and barely an explanation. Aaron doesn’t realize he was expecting better until that bitter and white-hot anger crawl back up in his throat.

“What did you do?” he accuses.

“Are you hard of hearing, or just plain stupid? I told you, I don’t know.”

“He knows your name, and you don’t know how. He thinks you’re alive, and now he’s told everyone, and you don’t know why?”

Andrew opens his mouth to answer—something unhelpful that will make Aaron see red once again, surely—when a new voice interrupts them.

“‘Thinks you’re alive’?” Neil says from below. “What are you talking about?”

Aaron whips around. He thought the situation couldn’t possibly get worse than that, but of course, life has a way of spinning out of control, as usual. Neil is standing at the foot of the bleachers, against the plexiglass walls surrounding the exy court.

His eyes flit from Aaron to Andrew, cold but angry. His mouth is a thin line of displeasure, but Aaron knows the damage it can do when he opens it.

“Go away,” he says instinctively, like this is something he can salvage by slapping a band-aid on it.

“I don’t think so.”

Aaron takes a deep breath. Next to him, Andrew is a twin pillar of silence, as rigid as a ghost has any right to be. It’s an impossible situation. For the first time in a year and a half, there are two people instead of one where Aaron stands. He had forgotten how natural it felt for someone else to acknowledge Andrew.

Neil moves slowly. He climbs up the stands, coming to rest on the row below Andrew, and angles his face up at him.

The sky is overcast, the sun entirely hidden, otherwise Neil would find the most obvious answer to his questions. Andrew hasn’t had a shadow since the accident.

If he’s observant, he might still notice Andrew’s complete immobility; the way the wind passes right through him without tugging at his hair or at his clothes, or the lack of movement of his chest. He doesn’t need to breathe.

“Can I touch you?” Neil asks after a moment.

“No.”

Andrew’s favorite answer. This time, though, it might be born out of genuine sentiment.

Neil’s hand, which was raised halfway up to Andrew, curls up in a fist at his refusal.

“Because you don’t want me to or because I can’t?”

“Both,” Andrew responds, extending his own hand. He reaches for the sleeve of Neil’s coat, his pale fingers knotting into the heavy material easily. He tugs on it once, as if to draw Neil’s attention to his grip, then releases the focus Aaron knows it costs him to grab solid objects.

His hand doesn’t look different, except when it disappears, sliding through the fabric and the skin and bones at Neil’s wrist.

Aaron doesn’t know exactly what he was expecting.

He can see Neil trying to hide his surprise. He doesn’t yank his hand away, but he does startle, a flinch he tries to smother. Andrew steps back, his eyes never leaving Neil’s face. Neither of them say anything, but their silence is a play Aaron wasn’t invited to attend. Well, Aaron has been the reluctant audience of far too many moments in his life.

“Andrew’s dead,” he says, the ugly words tumbling out of his mouth like marbles spilling out a bag. “He died in the car crash that killed our mom. I’m the only one who can see him.”

Neil glances at him quickly, like he’s just remembered Aaron is standing right there.

“Not anymore,” he says, turning back to Andrew.

Aaron wants to deck him. He doesn’t, because the Foxes need the striker and he doesn’t relish the idea of spending his free time in detention.

Andrew and Neil are still staring at each other like they’re the only two people on Earth. Understanding is painful and blinding, and hot on its heels comes the realization that Aaron can use this to hit where it hurts.

“I don’t know what you think you’re both playing at,” Aaron says, clambering past the seats to the stairs. “Did you take too many balls to the helmet? Andrew’s a ghost. You two don’t have a future together.”

This time he gets a reaction. Not from Andrew—Aaron has given up trying to get reactions out of Andrew a long time ago—but from Neil, who fixes Aaron with the kind of icy stare he usually reserves for Riko.

“I would ask you if you’re being obtuse on purpose or not, except I don’t think anyone can be genuinely this idiotic.” Neil gestures between Andrew and Aaron. “I never pretended I have any kind of future, alone or otherwise. The two of you, though? You can’t advance if you’re still holding onto each other. If Andrew’s a ghost, he doesn’t have a real choice. But you can do something, if you’re not too cowardly for that. Because at some point, you’ll have to let each other go.”

Aaron leaves before he can do something violent that he’ll regret. Over the sound of his shoes on the stands, he thinks he can hear Neil ask Andrew,

“What did it feel like?”

What a weird asshole. In a sense that Aaron refuses to think too deeply about, Andrew and Neil deserve each other.

*

Aaron spends the rest of his lunch break in the library. It’s far from being a perfect cover: anyone who cares to find him will think of the library first. But at least it’s a larger space than his cramped room and the librarians’ glares easily dissuade people from engaging in conversations.

He picks a book at random in the science aisle and sits at a table with other panicked students hurrying to finish homework due for the next period. One of them is filling in and marking a map for her Social Studies, and the sound of her pencils scratching against paper soothe Aaron’s nerves until his anger dulls into numbness.

No one in the library knows him. No one knows what he admitted to at lunch in front of all the people he can sort of consider his friends—at least, people he’s on friendly terms with.

It all changes when he steps out of the library fifteen minutes before the bell rings. He has half a mind to go to the cafeteria to get his coat and bag, or maybe to the lost and found office, where hopefully his team dropped his stuff so he could find it.

He’s halfway there when he realizes that anyone from the team could have known and thought to reach out to Kevin and left Aaron’s stuff in the privacy of their dorm room.

He stops in the middle of the hallway, causing a small commotion as people hurry around him.

“Fuck,” he says out loud.

Several students glance at him, surprised, but of course the only person who speaks up is a teacher.

“Language, Mr. Minyard,” someone says in accented English.

Aaron glances over his shoulder. He recognizes the broad shoulders and easy smile of Erik Klose, the German teacher Nicky is all but dating.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

Klose siddles up to him, winking discreetly as he falls in step with Aaron. “It’s fine,” he says. “I just have to hold the pretense that I’m a respectable teacher.”

Dating Nicky is enough to endanger anyone’s professional reputation, Aaron thinks cruelly. But if the man is foolish enough to do it, then there isn’t much Aaron can do for him.

“We haven’t had time to talk much lately,” Klose continues.

“That might be because you’re not my teacher.”

Rude impertinence is never the way to go with teachers you want to get rid of, but Aaron’s day has gone from bad to worse. He wants to believe it can’t go much lower than it already is, though Aaron knows it’s probably wishful thinking.

“True,” Klose says however, like Aaron contributed constructively to the conversation. “I’ve actually wanted wanted a word with you for a while.”

“What for?”

Klose grows a little uneasy just for a second, like he wasn’t expecting to have to explain himself. Horrified, Aaron realizes that Klose is trying to bond with him.

“Well, as you may know, I’ve been seeing your guardian—”

“My cousin,” Aaron interrupts. “He’s barely five years older than me. He’s my cousin.”

“Your cousin,” Klose repeats with a smile. “Nicky means a lot to me.”

“He better, since you’re seeing him. We have a word for that in English, you know. It’s called ‘dating.’”

Klose still won’t lose his easy smile. “I wasn’t sure if you would be comfortable with me using this word to talk about your cousin.”

“Why not? It’s not like Nicky’s shy with the details.”

Aaron has heard all about their earlier dates. He tolerated it for one week before he put his foot down and shortened the time allotted to Nicky’s love life to an hour a week, preferably spread over several days.

“Your cousin is a wonderful man,” Klose says, slowing to a stop in front of the doors leading outside to Aaron’s freedom. He angles his body to turn right toward the language wing, clearly conveying that this terrible conversation is soon to be over. “I intend to stay around as long as he’ll have me, so I thought it was past time you and I talked.”

“Nicky’s life is his own,” Aaron replies frankly. “He can date you for as long as he wants, I don’t care. Unless you suddenly replace Ms. Kaufman, in which case I reserve the right not to show up to class. Lucky for you, I’m a senior. Now, I’m sorry but I had a terrible lunch and I’m missing my bag, so I have to go.”

To Klose’s credit, he really looks concerned when he asks, “Is everything alright?”

“My brother died eighteen months ago,” Aaron replies, one hand on the door handle. “Did you know that? Nothing’s ever been alright.”

Saying the words out loud doesn’t make their truth easier to bear, but Aaron finds that he doesn’t much care about it at the moment. He pushes the door open, crossing the lawn full of students to the Tower. His bag better be in his room. His coat as well, he adds as he shivers in the cold autumn afternoon.

He’s sick to death of this day. Ironic, really.

No one is inside when he finally makes it inside the Tower. The elevator is empty and waiting for him on the ground floor, a small mercy to his dark mood. He literally punches in the button for the third floor, hissing and wincing when the tender part of his hand makes contact with the panel. He inspects it as the elevator goes up, watching the ring of bruise molting his skin black and blue.

Perfect. Of course, it’s his right hand, which will make taking notes very uncomfortable for the next few days.

His mood is decisively morose as he exits the elevator at his floor. It’s even worse when he realizes that the keys to his room are in his bag, which, for all that the knows, is inside said room. Frustration makes him bite down on his sleeve hard to avoid screaming out.

The sight that greets him when he rounds up the corner to his room takes off the edge of his mood. Katelyn is standing at his door, scrolling on her phone. His bag and coat are on the floor at her feet.

In the dim light of the corridor, she looks like a blonde angel. Aaron thinks he could kiss her.

She looks up when she hears him approach.

“Oh, there you are! I’ve been texting you, but I don’t think you had your phone on you.”

Aaron clears his throat. “It’s in my bag,” he says, nodding toward the backpack at her feet.

Katelyn nods and she hands him over both bag and coat. Aaron really needs to get a grip, but when her hands fall back down he can do nothing but stay standing in front of her, his head empty.

“You must be tired of hearing it,” Katelyn starts after a beat, “but are you okay?”

“In the grand scheme of things or right now?”

“Both. Right now is the most pressing matter, I think.”

Aaron nods slowly. “I’m tired,” he says.

Now that anger and frustration are out, it’s like there’s nothing left to support his body and mind. His head feels empty and cotton-y, incapable of seeing past the present instant, his energy completely depleted.

Aaron is not an idiot. He’s had to live with his fucked-up brain for years, a too-large number of these spent taking various drugs to cope with this hollowing feeling. Andrew’s own mental illness, although mostly undiagnosed and untreated, was evident to anyone living with him for more than a few days. Tilda was probably worse than both of them together, because where Aaron dipped his toe before drawing back and where Andrew fought back with everything he could, she’d sunk years ago.

The point is: this feeling isn’t unknown to Aaron, although he usually does his best not to let it take hold.

Katelyn watches him as he tries to muster enough energy to even decide what to do. She gets to an answer before Aaron does.

“I have a free period right now.”

It’s an invitation. Aaron blinks at her. “I have History right now,” he replies.

“Do you want to skip?”

Yes. No. Aaron’s near-perfect attendance record is taunting him. Skipping is tempting, but sometimes he sees far enough in the future for college, a possibility that’s become more and more probable as the weeks pass.

“Yeah,” he says in the end. “I can’t, though.”

“Doesn’t your cousin work in the principal’s office? Just ask him to make you a note or something.”

Aaron hesitates. Nicky can do it, but that means letting him know that something is up. Seeing his hesitation, Katelyn changes tactics.

“Alright, let’s go if you really want to go to class,” she says. “I’ll walk you, if you want.”

That does it. Aaron fumbles to get his phone out of his bag, sends Nicky a short text, then unlocks his door.

He drops his bag and coat on his desk chair, collapsing on his bed without taking off his shoes. After a moment he opens his eyes when he doesn’t hear anything.

Katelyn is standing in the doorway, looking uncertain. Aaron waves her inside, and to his relief she steps in before he can overthink his decision. She closes the door behind her and drops on his bed when he moves his legs for her.

“Who’re you rooming with?” she asks as she takes in Kevin’s side of the room, almost equally neat as Aaron’s except with more pictures of the places he’s traveled to.

Katelyn nods knowingly when he tells her. “I should have known from the exy paraphernalia,” she says with a laugh, because Kevin has a USC Trojan blanket bunched up at the foot of his bed.

She stands back up to look around at Aaron’s side of the room while he battles with the laces on his shoes. She’s a quiet presence in his back, looking at the titles of the books on his shelves and glancing out of the window at the view of the grounds.

She places one hand on the windowsill, Andrew’s usual haunt. The sight makes something ache in Aaron’s chest. Neil’s biting words float at the front of his mind until Aaron forcefully banishes them.

After a while, Aaron sits up against the head of his bed, huddling around the plush extra pillow Nicky got him when he started at Palmetto. Katelyn drags the desk chair so that she can sit in it and extends her legs to his bed. A show of intimacy that respects his need for human distance.

“Do you want to talk about him?” Katelyn asks.

“I spend so much time thinking about him,” Aaron answers to avoid saying, talking to him.

“There’s a difference between thinking and talking. Sharing is the important notion here.”

Aaron tips his head back against the headboard. If he flicks his eyes downward, he can still see Katelyn, but otherwise his words are addressed to the ceiling.

“We weren’t even raised together. We’re twins—we were twins—but Andrew was given up for adoption. Why him? Why did she keep only one?”

Katelyn doesn’t say anything. Aaron answers his own question; no one can really do it except for Tilda, and she lost that capacity eighteen months ago.

“Who the fuck knows. A nosy cop reunited us when we were twelve, and Andrew came home to live with us when he was fifteen.”

“Why not earlier?”

“Foster care,” Aaron replies. “Did a stint in juvie, for whatever illogical reason made sense to him at the time. Andrew was—” Aaron searches for the right words. Using the past tense to describe the person Andrew used to be isn’t that difficult: dying deprived him from a large portion of his character, all the little quirks which made him alive. Aaron found him soulless when he was alive, but he only understood how much of an error it was when Andrew came back as a ghost.

In the end Aaron can’t find the words, so he just waves them into existence.

“Difficult?” Katelyn suggests.

Aaron laughs humorlessly. “That’s an understatement.”

He looks down at her. She’s crossed her arms over her chest, not defensively but pensively. Her blonde hair is darker than Aaron’s, which is so fine it looks white sometimes. She’s not haloed in the light or anything so poetic, but she looks more real than Aaron feels. He aches for her living warmth.

Maybe Nicky, with his strangling hugs, is right. Aaron is touch-deprived. It’s a state so familiar that he doesn’t think twice of it most of the time.

“Anyway, he came to live with us for a few months before the accident happened. Mom was driving—” Under influence; not the first time she was punished for it, although this time it had stuck— “Andrew was in the front. They were both dead before the EMT even arrived.”

Aaron mimes the impact with his hand, the right one barreling in the fingers of the left. He feels the bite of his fingers where they make contact with his skin.

Katelyn’s eyes are wide open. “Where were you?” she asks.

“In the back.”

“I’m sorry,” Katelyn says after Aaron’s decided he’s not going to add anything to his tale. She reaches out with one of her legs on the bed, touching his shin with the tip of her socked foot. The touch electrifies something inside Aaron’s chest; he shuffles closer to her, sitting at the edge of his bed until their knees are almost pressed together.

“You’re very brave,” Katelyn tells him as Aaron bears the touch, his breathing turned shallow.

“Not really.”

“I knew you wouldn’t think so,” she replies, “but I’m saying so and I’m always right.”

“Always?”

“Mmhm.”

“I wish I was right all the time,” Aaron confesses. Trying to avoid hers, his eyes travel down to the ribbon holding her blouse closed at the neck and stay there. “Mosty I piss people off and get angry.”

“If you’re talking about Neil, he was way out of line—”

“I’m not,” Aaron cuts her off. “I really don’t want to think about him.”

“That’s fine,” Katelyn replies. “You can think about someone else.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“How about me?” she asks, and it’s an invitation.

Aaron says, “Yes,” but she’s the one who closes the distance between them, leaning down from her higher position on his chair.

She’s crossed her legs when Aaron moved to the edge of the bed, and Aaron places his hands on top of them, for comfort as well as support.

The first thing that crosses his mind when Katelyn kisses him is the marvel of how hot her lips are against his, and nothing else as he loses himself in the motions. It doesn’t, it cannot, last long. Katelyn’s free period is almost over and she still has to make her way all the way back to class.

But this is what they have at the moment and Aaron treasures it. One kiss turns into two, three, four, each shorter and breathier than the other, until the rhythm petters out and they break apart.

“I like you,” Katelyn says. “But we don’t have to do this today.”

She beats him to the punch. Aaron closes his mouth and sags forward, bringing his forehead to rest against her shoulder. It thrills him. Who knew?

“Thank you,” he says finally.

He doesn’t see it, but he knows that she smiles.

*

Nicky contacts him through the easiest and most effective way possible; after Aaron ignores his ten texts throughout the afternoon, he summons Aaron to the principal’s office.

He does it just before the end of his last period of the day. The teacher looks at the slip of paper presented as justification, then at Aaron. She doesn’t believe him for a second but Aaron is one of her top students and there are only five minutes left of class. She lets him go.

The hallways are empty, right before the bell, and for a moment Aaron considers going back to his room. He’s managed to avoid his teammates and speaking to people for the two periods he went back for, and if he had his way he wouldn’t break the streak for Nicky. But Nicky is insistent. Better to get it over with.

The office is empty when Aaron enters. The door to the principal’s separate office is firmly closed. Aaron can’t hear anything from inside it, which means no one inside can hear them either.

“What?” he snaps as Nicky raises his head.

“Oh, Aaron. Thank you for coming.”

Aaron stares at him as he stops by Nicky’s desk. “What are you trying to do, recruit me for a job?”

“I’m being respectful of the fact that you had the opportunity to leave the class without coming here.”

“Not too late for that,” Aaron warns. “What do you want?”

Nicky sighs. He opens his drawer, taking out his everlasting box of chocolates.

“Chocolate? They’re new, very good.”

They look high quality. The foil over some of them—the ones filled with liquor—is thin and unassuming with the look of the truly expensive. Aaron plopped one shaped like a flower in his mouth.

“Gah,” he lets out when the chocolate dissolves on his tongue. “Tea flavored?”

“Oh, those are my favorites. These are dusted with cinnamon, if you prefer.”

“It’s not bad,” Aarons says. He turns the new flavor in his mouth, trying to figure out if he likes it. Surprising, but not as disgusting as he would have thought. He allows Nicky to distract him a little further. “Which ones are the cinnamon, you said?”

Nicky looks at Aaron as he slowly makes his way through the box. “I saw Erik today,” he starts carefully, which the wrong thing to say, as always.

“Good for you. Who’s Erik?”

“You know exactly who I mean.”

Aaron remains unphased by the face Nicky makes at him. He looks for the most insulting thing to say, to cut the conversation short.

“The boy toy?”

“Hardly. Have you seen this man?”

“Nicky, I don’t care.”

“Fine.” Nicky gently closes the lid of the box on Aaron’s fingers. Not a threat, just a nudge. Aaron sneaks his last chocolate out and lets the lid come back down. “He told me what you told him about Andrew. Then I asked around and your History teacher told me you weren’t in class—don’t worry, I made excuses for you.”

“It won’t happen again,” Aaron snaps. “Sorry you had to bother for that.”

“I don’t care about that. Aaron, you know I don’t. Look at me?” Nicky’s face is so painful honest and open that Aaron’s eyes automatically move to a point over his shoulder. It’s where he would look at Andrew, if he were there. “I know you’re not okay.”

“It’s been eighteen months. Don’t you think I’m over it?”

“No, I don’t. And that’s fine.”

Aaron lets out a noise, half scorn and half annoyance. He wonders how many signals he can send before Nicky realizes he’s not interested in talking about Andrew. Not now, not with Nicky. It feels like his entire being is screaming about it. It rolls around inside him so strongly that he feels like a radio receptor would be able to capture the waves.

“Then Dan and Matt came to see me during break.”

That catches Aaron’s attention through the efforts he puts in not listening.

“What?” he asks before he can mask his surprise. “The fuck? What did they want?”

Aaron knows exactly why they might have sought out Nicky, but hearing it from his cousin’s mouth is still off-putting.

“They told me what happened during lunch. They were worried about you, because Katelyn said she would take care of your bag for you but she never got back to them saying she found you.”

“It’s none of their business.”

“Aaron, they’re your friends.” Nicky’s voice has that sad and desperate tone it always gets when they broach the topic of Aaron’s social life. “They’re worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Aaron says, knocking back his chair as he gets up. He avoids Nicky’s outstretched hand easily, using the depth of the desk between them as a shield. “That was all for nothing. Now I’m going to have to ask someone for the German homework. Thanks for that.”

“I don’t think it’s true,” Nicky calls after him as he makes his way to the door. “So I signed you up for a session with Dr Dobson tomorrow.”

That stops Aaron right in his tracks. “What?”

“Four PM, right after you classes,” Nicky says. He has the decency not to look too victorious. “I know you don’t have practice on Wednesdays.”

“You can’t just do that.”

“If you go and participate, I won’t ever do it again.” Nicky puts his hands up. “Scout’s honor.”

It annoys Aaron that Nicky is the only person in America who can get away with using the old saying and meaning it. He grits his teeth.

“I’ll go,” he says finally.

“And you’ll say something to her.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Let’s make it part of the deal,” Nicky replies. “You go and let her help you, and I won’t intervene ever again.”

“On that subject. You’re physically incapable of meddling.”

“What can I say? I’m good at it. It suits my complexion.”

“You’re terrible and I hate you,” Aaron says, finally wrenching the door open. “And tell Erik to stop ratting out on things that don’t concern him.”

“Oh, he’s actually very concerned,” comes Nicky’s muffled reply just before Aaron slams the door behind him.

“So you’re dead,” Neil says. He sounds almost unperturbed, although Andrew, who knows where to look, can see the frown born out of surprise. “What did it feel like?”

It’s not the question Andrew was expecting, but it’s undoubtedly one Neil would ask. Andrew has learned that his priorities are unique and obscure.

“Why are you asking?” he says instead of answering.

“I almost died several times when I was running from my father,” Neil says. His hand drift up, grazing the hem of his sweater, close to his collarbones. “I guess I just want to know what I escaped.”

“Morbid fascination? Are you nostalgic?”

Neil shakes his head. “No. staying alive has always been my main goal.”

Andrew considers him. Whatever Neil says, Andrew knows that death holds an almost mystic interest for most people, especially those who’ve seen it from close enough that they don’t consider it an abstract reality anymore.

“What would you give me?” he asks.

“What would you take?”

“Nothing,” Andrew replies. “I’m dead.”

“The game doesn’t have to end just because I know that truth about you,” Neil replies. Andrew watches him miss the point entirely. “I’ll show you.”

“Show me what?”

“My scars,” Neil replies. He gestures to his torso, which proves Andrew’s theory that his scarring extends past what is visible.

“Your near misses for my success?” he replies. Neil scowls at the wording, but Andrew continues before he can interrupt. “Alright.”

“Not here,” Neil says, looking around. They’re still standing by the bleachers, in full view of everyone. “Let’s go inside. No one will be in the locker rooms for lunch.”

Andrew follows him. When Neil goes in to open the door to the building, Andrew make sure to slither through before him, appearing out in the hallway before anyone human could do so. Neil doesn’t start. He gives Andrew with a long, piercing look and directs him toward the boys’ changing room.

They face off each for a long time before Neil starts fiddling with his coat. “It’s not”—he grimaces—“pretty.”

“Violence never is. Someone’s been lying to you if you think so.”

“No one’s lied to me about my father’s intentions toward me in a long time,” Neil replies with a cold huff of laughter. He slips his shirt off, clutching it nervously in his hands.

He’s right. It’s not pretty, and it’s significantly violent. Andrew knows pain; he can recognize it in the scattering of puckered and badly healed skin on Neil’s torso. Even so, his imagination leaves him without a truly faithful idea of what Neil endured and how much it hurt.

There’s a red, angry iron mark on his shoulder. The slashes on his stomach and the large patch of discolored skin crossing his chest are terrible proof of his chaotic will to survive, but the hot iron scar is a reminder of a domestic kind of violence. It’s one Andrew is much more used to.

His hand comes up before he can think about it. It hovers over Neil’s skin until Andrew crosses his eyes.

“Go ahead,” Neil says. He sounds slightly out of breath, but he’s determinate.

The fingers of Andrew’s hand align with the raised bumps the iron left behind. It’s grotesquely deformed, like a too-small piece of clothing stretched to fit.

“I was six,” Neil says in a low voice. “The police, the feds, or whoever, came into our house to investigate my father’s business. They used to do that a lot in those days.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No.” Neil shrugs. “I didn’t sit still well enough either. He did it as soon as they left.”

Retribution. Andrew nods. There’s nothing else left to say. He moves toward Neil’s throat. The round hole piercing the skin there—just low enough that most shirts would cover it—can be nothing else than a bullet hole.

“I was thirteen,” Neil says when he notices Andrew’s interest. He offers nothing else.

It’s self-explanatory. The gashes on his stomach are wide and crooked; Neil rests a protective hand on them when Andrew steps away. It’s easy to imagine him holding in his own blood and flesh that way, the wounds underneath his burned fingers fresh and wet.

Andrew nods. Neil slips his shirt back in, then his coat. It’s only when he crosses his arms across his chest that Andrew realizes he’s shivering.

“You’ve spent a lot of energy in not ending up dead,” Andrew says. “Dying would probably disappoint you by now.”

“Did it hurt?”

“It was a car crash,” Andrew replies. “Messy death. Of course it did.”

Neil’s face doesn’t change when Andrew recalls the most striking moments of his death. A lot of it were flashes of confusion. What he could understand, he only processed later, watching over Aaron’s unconscious but living body, to the steady sound of hospital machines.

“So is there a white light at the end of the tunnel?”

“No. The first thing I saw distinctly was Aaron.”

“Did you know it was him? In the hospital bed?”

“I thought I had an out-of-body experience,” Andrew says. “But that’s what happens when you have a twin.”

Neil’s lips quirk up in the slightest approximation of a smile.

“Why Aaron’s room, though?” he asks. “Why not the morgue, or the site of the crash?”

“I don’t have answers for your insufferable questions,” Andrew tells him. “Do not ask me.”

“I’m curious. Aren’t you?”

Andrew is well past that stage. “No.”

“Fair enough,” Neil accepts. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“Where else am I supposed to go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Are you bound to Aaron for energy? Can you exist far away from him?”

“Questions,” Andrew repeats. “Haven’t you heard? Children should be seen and not heard.”

“I’m pretty sure children are supposed to ask questions to better their understanding of the world, but alright.” Neil mimes zipping his mouth shut. “I’ll stop asking questions you don’t have the answer to.”

“Somehow I don’t think it’ll last.”

That gets a laugh out of Neil, a breathy and fragile thing without true humor. “You’re right. That’s a bridge we will cross when we come to it.”

“‘We’,” Andrew repeats. “You seem awfully sure of your importance in my future.”

“Aren’t you? Do you expect to follow Aaron around all his life? Aren’t you curious as to why I can see you?”

“Seen—”

“I think it’s worth sticking around for that,” Neil says. “At least until the end of the year. We’ve managed to meet even here. You can’t avoid me for that long.”

“—and not heard.”

“You don’t lie, do you?” Neil asks. His eyes are piercing; their heat doesn’t abate even when Neil capitulates to Andrew’s silence. “Fine,” he says. “I have to get my bag and go to class. Are you coming?”

“One of the advantages of being dead is that I don’t have to attend class,” Andrew says, dismissive.

“Alright. Then you better start brainstorming.”

“Another one of your stupidly obscure sentiments?”

“Just logic. You’re going to have to say something to Aaron at some point. He won’t let it fly.”

He opens the door and leaves before Andrew can tell him to leave. It shows he’s learning, or that he thinks he’s won. Neither is good.

*

Not many people managed to hold Andrew’s attention when he was alive; fewer even can claim to do so in his death. Aaron is one of them, out of necessity. Neil, too, has made the list, for different reasons. The third one is Betsy Dobson.

It’s curious that Andrew has come to consider her as one of his, because she’s anything but.

In the back of Andrew’s mind hangs the knowledge that he doesn’t have to be there, in the waiting area of the school’s counselor. He’s dead; a ghost passing through other people’s lives. He doesn’t have to concern himself with shrinks and therapy anymore—not that they were ever a success when he was alive.

But Aaron was particularly insistent when he came to see Andrew. The very fact that he sought him out made Andrew’s interest flicker back to life. The fact that he initiated an argument without giving Andrew the opportunity to leave mid-sentence was even more interesting.

“Nicky told me to go see Dobson,” he said. He was standing in the middle of the lawn, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. Night was falling, but this was still a fairly open space. He could have easily been found out talking to the air next to the large oak tree, but it didn’t look like he minded.

It’s rare for Aaron to grow a spine and confront Andrew, especially on a matter like this one. So Andrew did him the favor of listening.

“You’re coming with me,” Aaron said. “To see Dobson.”

“Am I.” Aaron had learned new tricks. He waited Andrew out. “And what would I do there? Count the ceiling tiles?”

Aaron made a hasty gesture. “Don’t play dumb.”

Andrew wasn’t, but he was also willing to give Aaron this one chance of standing up for himself. It’s the keystone of Aaron’s slow course for independence during the past months. Andrew is distantly curious to see it play out.

Dobson’s office is in calm part of the main building. When Andrew comes in, Aaron is already in the waiting area, glaring out of the window. Andrew crosses his eyes in the reflection; it lasts only a moment before they glance away.

Behind Aaron, the door opens. Dobson's jovial face welcomes them; for a moment she looks straight at Andrew before her eyes drift down to Aaron, already getting up from his seat.

“Welcome, Aaron,” she says with her gently firm voice.

Andrew slithers in the gap when she goes to close the door behind his brother. He makes sure to brush against her, but not every living human can feel him, and Dobson shows no indication that she does.

The rituals of the beginning of a session never change. Andrew guessed Dobson's OCD the first time he met her, but it's always fascinating for someone who's caused as much chaos as Andrew to see how carefully aligned the items on her desk are.

She takes place in a seat in front of the beat-up Chesterfield couch where Aaron drops in, and crosses her hands in her lap. The usual configuration, to the inch; with half-heartened curiosity, Andrew wonders how he would have reacted in Aaron's place, seemingly alone with yet another shrink to try and pick his brain.

Aaron is not holding back. He barely waits for Andrew to situate himself—not where he usually does, behind the shoulder of Aaron's interlocutor, but on the other side of the room, close to the window—before he says, point blank:

“Andrew's here today.”

“Ah,” Dobson says. “Then I'll greet him as well. Where is he?”

Aaron glares at her, as he always does when she plays along, and gestures vaguely to Andrew.

"Hello, Andrew. Do you want me to take out a pen and some paper today?"

"I can do it myself," Andrew tells her. He picks up what he needs on the neat desk, slowly moving aside the pen holder and the office phone.

Dobson's face betrays nothing. It never did, even when Andrew hurled her books down on the floor to prove his existence on a fateful afternoon. Aaron had opened up to her about Andrew during a moment of weakness, but both brothers knew that Dobson didn't really believe in ghosts. She'd told them as much when Aaron had asked. She never said what she believed exactly before Andrew's presence grew too obvious to ignore, but Andrew guesses she probably thought he was a figment of Aaron's imagination.

If not for Neil, Andrew would have believed it as well.

Dobson clearly sees the notepad and the pen move, so Aaron doesn't feel the need to translate. The conversation is heavily unbalanced for Andrew, made both silent and difficult, but by now Andrew is used to the situational unfairness of his existence.

He's still not sure what he's doing in the room, though, so he stays close to the window, placing down the writing items next to him to show his unwillingness. Dobson won't necessarily pick on it, but Aaron, who's had to rely on writing down his parts of conversations for the past year and a half, will know what it means.

“Well,” Dobson starts once the twins' silent exchange is over. "Do you want anything to drink, Aaron?"

“No,” Aaron snaps. “And before you ask, Andrew cannot drink.”

“I know.” Dobson is unperturbed by Aaron's idiotic rudeness. Andrew thinks he could grow to genuinely like her. "Shall we begin instead?"

Aaron gives the nonverbal go-ahead but he lets her fish out for answers.

“Your cousin told me he asked you to come to this session, Aaron. Can you tell me why he thinks it necessary?”

“I'm not in his head.”

“Of course. Did you two discuss it?"

“Is there anything Nicky does not discuss?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“Poor Aaron is all shaken by his brother's tragic demise," Andrew says. "Haven't you heard?”

Since he doesn't write it down, Dobson doesn't. But the words hit their intended target; Aaron's look is wounded and dirty. He's used to ignoring Andrew in the middle of holding a conversation, though, and does not verbally react.

“Does it have to do with Andrew?” Dobson prompts.

She's clearly seen Aaron's side glare.

“When doesn't it?”

“Those defensive question-answers are not as clever as you think they are,” Andrew points out.

“Can you tell me more about it? You've told Nicky that you didn't wish to continue those sessions about Andrew in the past. Has something changed?”

Aaron finally reacts. He sighs deeply but doesn't unfurl from his hunched up position, arms still crossed over his chest.

“Nicky's boyfriend is invasive and nosy,” he says. “He blabbed something to Nicky that made him worry too much.”

“Is there no truth to what alerted him?”

”You mean, am I still haunted by my brother's death?" Aaron's words are full of biting irony. “I don't know, can you tell me?”

“Get over yourself,” Andrew tells him at the same time that Dobson pipes up, “So you ended up speaking of Andrew with Nicky's boyfriend, which made him worry about you.”

“People don't always react nicely to death.”

Dobson nods once, like it's a serious point in the conversation and not the lamest attempt at sarcasm Aaron has inflicted upon the world.

“But I'm not here for that,” Aaron adds.

Well.

“Why have you decided to come then?”

“The problem isn't Nicky's wrong assumptions or his talkative boyfriend. I wouldn't have had an encounter with him if someone else hadn't caused a commotion.” This time, he doesn't let Dobson ask one of her questions. “What the fuck is up with Neil, anyway?” he asks, directly to Andrew.

Dobson turns to follow Aaron's look. She's staring at the window, slightly to Andrew's left, but it doesn't matter. Aaron has both of their interests right now, but the cold dregs of anger—distant, like the memory of anger—rising in Andrew brush her off as secondary.

“He's your teammate,” he tells Aaron. “If you don't know him by now, I can't help you.”

“That's not what I asked and you know it,” Aaron accuses. “How could he know enough to be able to shout your name in the middle of the cafeteria, and not enough to actually do it?”

“We've had this conversation before.”

“You avoided this conversation before, just like you're doing now. Stop sidestepping and tell me.”

Andrew stares at him. Driving the words home into Aaron will prove difficult, but this situation is proof that it's needed. The fact that Aaron is worked up enough over the situation to seek external help, the help of a woman he clearly cannot stand, speaks volumes of the inevitability of this confrontation.

Andrew probably has forever to mull things over, but Aaron's vision is still encased by the living's blinders: time passes quickly. For someone like Aaron, who’s considered his own death by overdose in the past and is the lone survivor of a car crash, Andrew guesses it’s even precious.

“I don't see how it's any of your business,” he tells Aaron. “I started talking to Neil because he can see me. He didn't know what I am, and I didn't explain.”

“How can you—” Aaron starts, but he stops abruptly. “It is my business, and fuck you if you don't understand that.”

“A very eloquent answer.”

Aaron stands up suddenly, jumping to his feet, coiled in tension like he's mounted on a spring. His hand doesn’t shake when he points at Andrew with his finger.

“You don’t get to do that,” he spits. “You don’t get to meet people behind my back and share candy and backstories. You don’t get to act all surprised that I’m angry when you blindside me like this. Answer me!”

“Aaron.”

Dobson’s voice snaps Aaron out of his anger, but only for a moment. Andrew’s attention wanders back to her as well, sitting in her low chair between them like the referee to the world’s most unbalanced game.

She’s not taking notes, but the serious look on her face is far from the unruffled calm she usually shows.

“Aaron, Andrew,” she repeats. “Is it possible to sit down?”

“Oh, Dobson, you really should have let him finish,” Andrew replies as Aaron takes his seat. “You have to let hypocrisy run its course, otherwise you can never cut it off at the head.”

He makes a gesture at his throat to emphasize his words. Aaron looks away.

Dobson isn’t the kind of therapist who tries to drive the sessions away from her patients. Aaron may not see that, but Andrew’s past experience with shrinks and counselors makes him aware of it. The pause was necessary because Aaron’s anger hit the wall of Andrew’ icy calm. Aaron should really know by now that his temper will lead him nowhere.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Andrew says. “Have you forgotten about the cheerleader?”

“It’s an entirely different situation.”

“Is it?”

“I haven’t told her anything about you that she can’t find online with a little digging.”

“Do you want a medal, for having a choice where I did not?”

Aaron laughs humorlessly. “Oh, I have a choice now, do I?”

“Your choice to look in her direction,” Andrew says, speaking louder to drown out Aaron’s voice. “Your choice to make her look back. Your choice not to turn her away blind.”

“Can you hear yourself? What the fuck is your problem?”

“You’re a hypocrite. Do you want me to write it down, so she can know as well?” Andrew sweeps the notepad from the windowsill. It flutters uselessly to the ground, its pages rustling. “It will look good on a report, next to your name. Aaron Michael Minyard, spineless hypocrite.”

Dobson doesn’t startle when the notepad falls to the ground, but her eyes follow the movement. She doesn’t try to interrupt again; she can probably read the determination in Aaron’s stance, the rigid tension of his shoulders that speaks more than his forceful words.

Andrew doesn’t like it. He’s been expecting it, in a way. If he indulged in his imagination, he would have entertained the thought of the day when Aaron would stop looking over other people’s shoulders and expect to see Andrew there.

But Andrew doesn’t have an imagination, and fantasies and daydreaming have long lost their appeal.

He isn’t surprised. This was a long time in coming, from the first confrontation with Riko over Kevin to Aaron’s reluctant acceptance of his team. The fact that Aaron was learning to stand up for himself was interesting enough during the fall that Andrew is still here in this room, discussing things he never thought he’d have cause to discuss, but the end results leave a smear in his mind.

“Stop it,” Aaron says after a while. His voice is low. “It doesn’t mean anything.” Andrew isn’t sure what he’s talking about, until he adds: “It can’t mean anything. You’re dead, and he’s a high-school student. What do you expect will come of it?”

Neil’s earnest face every time they’ve talked comes unprompted to Andrew’s mind. The hard line of his mouth when he talks about his past and his father, and the way his scars looked on his skin, dead skin looking more alive than Andrew has felt in a long time.

Andrew focuses on the thought rather than pushing it away.

“What do you expect will come of your joke of a relationship with the cheerleader?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. You’re done stopping me from living.”

“Your sheer idiocy protected you until now,” Andre replies, “but push me again and I won’t allow it much longer.”

“Why are you doing this?”

The truth slips out of Andrew’s mouth easily. “Fuck you,” he says. “You said, ‘don’t leave me.’ You don’t get to complain when I’m doing what you wanted.”

His tone is colder than ice. Aaron, in contrast, seems to be almost buzzing with unspent protestations, but he grows still at the words.

“I was high on pain medicine. You were dead. I thought you were a hallucination. This isn’t a bargain with the devil,” he spits. “I haven’t sold you my soul.”

Andrew’s mouth twists cruelly. “Haven’t you?”

“No.” Aaron shakes his head, like it’ll add weight to his petulant words and his refusal to see the truth. “That’s an unfair bargain. I refuse to accept it.”

“This isn’t how it works.”

“Isn’t it? Don’t tell me there are rules for this kind of things. Precedents to consult, maybe?”

“If you feel like the bargain between the two of you is unfair or unproductive,” Dobson says, “you could change it.”

“What?” Aaron glances between her and Andrew. “What are you talking about?”

“The terms of the promise you made seem unfulfilling to you, Aaron. I guess they’re the same for Andrew. You two wouldn’t be there facing off today if they weren’t.” She looks down at her lap, the pristine notebook she hasn’t written anything on for the duration of the session. Even one-sided, the conversation is in the reach of her understanding. “Why not let an unbiased third-party weigh in?”

“‘Unbiased’,” Andrew repeats, as Aaron snorts derisively.

“You both seem to have promised each other something different,” Dobson explains. "You've reached an understanding without fully spelling it out beforehand. It's now being threatened by Andrew's closeness to Neil. I've been told he referred to Andrew's existence, which he ought not have been aware of, during lunch."

“And Katelyn,” Andrew adds. Aaron ignores him in favor of asking, “So what?”

The pen is heavy in Andrew's hand. It's been a while since he's had to focus to carry something as delicately balanced as a pen. Cigarettes didn't prepare him well enough. The letters are awkward when he traces them on paper; Andrew's out of practice.

The movement catches Dobson and Aaron's attention, but hers is the only one that counts. Andrew can see her lips move slightly when she takes in the two words he's noted down on paper for her benefit, the same ones he's just told Aaron.

His girlfriend's name staring up at Aaron angers him.

“Shut up,” he snaps. He reaches for the page, ripping it out. “It's entirely different.”

Dobson seizes the opportunity. “Is it?” she asks. “Do you see getting close to Katelyn and Andrew getting close to Neil as fundamentally different?”

“He's a ghost," Aaron says. "Of course it is.”

“Perhaps you should consider what they each bring to the both of you. Aaron?”

“Katelyn's my girlfriend.” He seems to find the strength or inspiration for his words as he says them. “I'm done always looking over my shoulder for you whenever I'm with her.”

Dobson nods. She looks in Andrew's general direction.

“A respite,” Andrew says.

“From?”

“You.”

Aaron rears back in surprise. “What?”

“What do you think?”

Dobson speaks up again. “If I may—”

“No,” Andrew interrupts her. “Tell her no.”

Unsurprisingly with such a direct order, Aaron obeys. “Let him speak.”

Dobson looks between the two of them, but she backs down. In their situation, she doesn't have much of a choice; she's good, but even she is limited to one half of the conversation. She knows that if she pushes, she could do more harm than good.

There is no outward reaction from Andrew, so Dobson seems to accept that Aaron is speaking the truth.

“I made you a promise that day that I would stick by your side,” Andrew starts. “No matter how you interpreted it. This is me keeping my word. Neil is a distraction, but not one that will break this promise.”

“Are you sure about that? I'm not. You went after him at lunch.”

“I went after you.”

“You sent me away and you stayed behind with him.”

He did. Andrew can still see Neil's troubled expression and his direct words. He never holds back with Andrew; they always hit their target.

“It needed to be done.”

“Not really,” Aaron says, but for once the fight since they've started this cyclical conversation the fight seems to have left him. “Is that it? Is being with Neil something you want for the future?”

“You said it yourself. I don't have a future.”

“Neil does. Borrow it for an instant if you can't project yours. What do you want? To stay by his side instead of mine?” Faced with Andrew’s lack of response, Aaron presses on. “I won’t deny you this.”

“You don’t have the power to do anything.”

“If Katelyn is a violation of our deal, then Neil shatters it even more,” Aaron replies. “You keep him if I can keep her. Is that right?” He turns toward Dobson. “An equal deal?”

She nods. “From what I understand—”

“Oh, but you don’t understand anything.” Aaron dismisses her with a movement of his hand. “No other terms. No complicated promise. If we can exist without one another, let’s do it.”

“You can’t,” Andrew predicts. “Who are you without the constant reminder of your survivor’s guilt?”

“I’m willing to find out.”

It dawns on Andrew with a disagreeable jolt: he’s serious. This is the most ready to fight Aaron has ever been in Andrew’s presence, and, he’s willing to bet, ever, and it’s for his own sake and the cheerleader’s.

“You’ll regret it,” Andrew says. He crosses the room in a flash. Suddenly, he has enough of this situation. “I won’t be there to see it.”

“If you leave that room,” Aaron says quietly, “then you accept my terms. It doesn’t mean you and I can let go of each other entirely. I’m one of the only people who can see you; that’s impossible.”

“Full of illusions.”

“I’m just being realistic. Do you accept?”

Andrew doesn’t answer. He leaves instead. Dobson speaks, her voice reduced to a vague murmur through the wood, but he doesn’t stay to find out what she says.

He needs to be alone for a while; no bluntly stubborn Aaron, no Neil with his infuriating questions and pointed remarks. Everything is on the brink of change. Andrew didn’t use to think it was compatible with being dead. Then again, he used to think death was the last step of existence, and he’s storming out of a joint therapy session.

Growth, Dobson would say in her calm way of hers, can take many forms.

The Foxes’ fall season is good, although not entirely perfect. They go through one loss and a draw at the beginning of the season, due to their fractured team, but they’ve gone through with honorable efforts by the time December comes around.

Riko is as much a nuisance to the team as his skill is advantageous to them. He has no true team spirit to speak of: the Ravens’ pride sufficed him, but his footwork and passes are impeccable.

Well, they would be impeccable if he were paired with the right partners, but try as he might Neil isn’t at his level yet and Kevin’s injury—physical and psychological—hinders him on court when he has to play with Riko.

The Foxes’ outright hostility toward Riko complicate things further.

“We need to build this team together,” Neil says to Dan one day at lunch.

It’s only the two of them; none of the others have the same lunch period and Dan is adamant that Neil needs to learn some captain skills before next year.

“We won’t go anywhere without cohesion,” he continues when Dan doesn’t say anything, focused on her fries. “Team work. All of that. The Foxes are good, but not good enough.”

“Thanks,” she says. Neil shrugs. She has to be aware of the truth, or she has some problems Neil can’t help her with. “But haven’t you noticed? We are building team work. You weren’t there last year, so you don’t know how it was. This is progress. Incredible progress.”

“Your standards must be lower than mine.” Dan acts offended, but she breaks the act a second later by smiling at him around a fry. “The defense line is cohesive, but offense is a mess.”

“It’s Kevin and Riko—what do you expect?” Kevin is difficult, but it’s not him Dan blames. “That’s actually exactly what I was saying.”

“What?”

“In a way, Riko’s arrival has done wonders to the team. I’d rather go the long way without his poisonous presence on my team,” she adds when Neil opens his mouth to counter her. “And I hate what he’s done and keeps doing to Kevin. But I’ve never seen the team rally around one player like we did back in September when he first showed up.”

Neil remembers. The Foxes’ small team was hardly a united front against Riko; half of them got involved in something just because of Riko’s detestable presence; the rest, especially the freshmen, wisely stayed to the side.

Dan looks sure of herself, though, and Neil has to admit that the general capacity of the team to refuse to tolerate Riko’s behavior has increased, so he doesn’t say anything.

It’s not surprising, then, that in-fighting breaks in as soon as the referee blows the whistle to end the last game of the season, Ravens versus Foxes.

Neil takes a moment to breathe, gulping in the cold winter air as he surveils the court.

It’s a Fox victory, although the shock of it hasn’t died out in the stands yet. The last point was scored by Kevin at the nick of time. A goal in the last ten seconds, born out of desperation and what Neil thinks is a pretty healthy dose of revenge.

Spectators in the stands are up on their feet, stomping and yelling. Some of it must be in their favor; in the confusion, Neil can’t make it out.

He jogs to Kevin, who’s still standing in front of the goal where he scored.

“Good job,” Neil tells him. “That was an incredible point.”

“That was a sloppy game,” Kevin replies with his usual stern tone.

“That was a disgrace,” a voice calls out from behind them.

Neil turns. Kevin doesn’t, but that’s to be expected. Riko is still in his gear; behind him, Neil can see that the other subs have joined their team for a celebration at mid-court.

“Oh,” Neil says, mock-surprised. “Are you still there? I thought you’d have gone to the showers by now. No one needs you.”

Riko was sent out of the game with a red card barely halfway through the first half. His mark had to be carried out of the court after his illegal check. If it’s how Riko treats former teammates as soon as they’re on opposite sides of the court, Neil isn’t sure being on the same team as Riko Moriyama has ever done anyone any good.

Well, no. He’s sure of that fact.

The fact that Riko is still in his gear is ridiculous. He struts on court as though his foul play hadn’t sent a player out to the hospital. But Riko was better suited to the Raven colors than the Foxes’: he sees red easily.

“Do not mistake your presence on this court for acceptance,” he spits. “You’re a know-nothing who shouldn’t be allowed to hold this racquet.”

“You literally got yourself expelled from the big game of the season ten minutes in,” Neil says, almost amused. “Big talk, little player.”

Riko’s face distorts grotesquely behind the grate of his helmet. He rushes forward with a strangled cry. Neil takes a step backward, exhausted and unwilling to get into another fight. An almost full game against the Ravens has left him sore and bruised.

Riko never reaches him.

Hands grip Riko’s shoulders. Neil sees the white gloves first, the familiar creaks in leather. They contrast on Riko’s orange-clad shoulders, but not as much as the determination on Kevin’s face does.

“Enough,” he says. He shakes Riko a little as he pulls him off Neil, then lets go. They’re both too shocked to do more than stare at him. The next moment, the Foxes pound on them.

“Neil,” Dan screeches, holding his arm and pulling him aside. She pats him down quickly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Neil reassures her. “You should ask Riko. That was a nasty shock on his fragile ego.”

Dan looks over her shoulder. Kevin has been separated from Riko by an unsubtle wall of Foxes. Matt has an arm slung over his shoulders and even Aaron stands guard, face closed off as he stands directly between the two strikers.

“It’s so large, it can take a little beating,” Dan says. She grins, catching Matt’s eye and gesturing to the door where the referee is signalling them to move off the court. “Let’s go.”

The Foxes shuffle their strikers out. Riko brings up the rear, a murderous look on his face.

“Orange and white really doesn’t suit him,” Dan whispers in Neil’s ear. She has to bend down a little and their helmets clink together, but she manages. “Word is Coach had issued him an ultimatum already and tonight’s red card is not going to go down well. He’s practically off the team already.”

“Source?”

Dan winks. Neil looks around for their Coach; he finds him discussing sternly over the phone. Nothing less important than the future of one of his players would keep Wymack from celebrating their victory. The source of Dan’s words is obvious; Wymack smiles at his team when they file past him towards the changing rooms.

Elation is a balloon stretching in Neil’s ribcage. He answers Dan’s parting hug with a squeeze of his own before following Kevin into the men’s locker room.

*

“One day,” Andrew says as Neil zips his bag closed in the locker room, “he will get what he deserves.”

Neil looks up. A quick look around tells him he’s the only one left. The door banged closed on Aaron a few seconds ago. Standing there is the reason why. It’s been a few weeks since Andrew came back to Neil’s side after the upsetting truth came out, and from what Neil knows they’ve yet to talk. Maybe he’ll ask someday. Not now.

“Is it a threat?” he asks instead.

“A promise.”

“To me or to Riko?”

“To everyone involved. Getting rid of him would be a favor to the world.”

“I didn’t think you cared so much,” Neil says frankly. It’s no teasing; only the bare truth. Andrew won’t respond to such a brazen denunciation of his care, though, so Neil adds: “Are you able to murder people? I wonder.”

“I can hold a knife and stab him. I can trip him down a flight of stairs.”

“That did happen to him this fall,” Neil says, laughing when he catches the look on Andrew’s face. “Oh, that was you. Brilliant. You made me starting line, you know?”

Andrew dismisses the words with a careless wave of his hand. “I don’t care about your precious exy.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“He fouled Aaron in practice.”

“I remember. That was a nasty fall, especially considering Aaron’s the one who’s supposed to trip people.” Neil snorts. “He was lucky he didn’t sprain anything.”

“An eye for an eye.”

“A head for an eye,” Neil corrects, the familiar words of his father burning his tongue. He slings his bag over his shoulder and walks up to Andrew. “Tell me when you do it. I want to watch.”

He’s close enough that Andrew can turn his face away, his blunt nail digging in Neil’s cheek. Andrew is always cold; a balm on Neil’s skin, which remembers the bite of fire.

He smiles at Andrew, taking in his familiar features. Aaron and Andrew are identical twins, but they don’t look exactly alike. A trained eye, or one who cared, could have seen the differences easily when they were both alive. With Andrew a ghost, it’s even more obvious.

Andrew doesn’t belong entirely to this plane of existence. Whether Aaron wished him into existence in his drugged despair or Andrew clung onto this world for his brother, Neil doesn’t know. The result is standing here in front of him: silent and solid, despite his immateriality.

They’ve started a new game. It’s closer to training, but Andrew won’t like that; Neil never voices the word. Andrew learned how to pick up objects himself, but touching people was often hit or miss until they decided to try it more seriously. Tripping Riko down the stairs back in the fall must have taken a lot of focus and maybe a few tries.

Now Andrew can touch people for an extended period of time. Neil’s felt the coolness of Andrew’s fingers against his own enough times that it’s a comfort. He can let himself be touched in return, something a little more complicated. But progress is progress. Neil, who takes his exy training seriously, recognizes it even when Andrew grows silently frustrated.

It’s a game of patience. Andrew has nothing else to look forward to, and who knows what the future holds for Neil? A few months ago, he was facing a death much more violent than Andrew’s. Wreck is a common word in their native tongues.

They leave the locker room in silence. On the other end of the hallway, two figures turn back when they hear the door slamming behind Neil: Aaron and Katelyn, caught in post-game exhaustion as they hold hands.

“Neil!” Katelyn greets him, cheerful as always. “Good game.”

“Thanks for the cheers,” he tells her.

Exy games wouldn’t be the same without the blur of Vixens hyping up the crowd on the sidelines. Neil never catches sight of their full routines except when he’s benched, but he’s come to learn and rely on their energetic movements.

Katelyn beams at him. Aaron scowls. Nothing out of the ordinary: when Neil checks, he sees that Andrew is still standing at his side.

“You got involved again,” Andrew tells him.

“What did you say to Riko?” Aaron asks Neil. “To get him so mad.”

By now, Neil has enough practice with multiple-leads conversation to know it’s an answer to Andrew and not a side-step.

“The truth. He’s not worth anything much on the court or off it. Someone should have told him ages ago before his delusions started.”

Katelyn bites down on her lips to hold in her laughter.

“Kevin held him back, though,” Aaron says.

“Yes, an unexpected feat for courage.”

“I think it’s good,” Katelyn says. “I was glad for him.”

“Because he was there to prevent Neil’s head being bashed in or because he’s finally standing up to Riko?”

“Both. That’s why you got between them as well,” Katelyn replies.

Aaron looks at Andrew over Neil’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s why.”