Chapter Text
It’s his first day in a new school--something he’s done enough times to lose the usual spike of anxiety. This is, however, the first time he has started school as Alex Miller, although this is also not something particularly nerve wracking to Alex. He has never gone to more than one school under the same name. After 6 years of running, he would be more worried to walk into Columbia High School with the name he had before coming here than he is to slip this new mask over his face.
Alex Miller is a quiet kid. Stereotypically poor, shy, slightly under achieving, unassuming. Dusty brown hair and brown eyes. Everything about Alex has been engineered to fly under the radar. Which is good, because without his mom to cover up his messes, he is going to need all the help he can get.
See that’s the reason he has to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep them from shaking or pulling at the cuffs of his sleeves. Why he has looked over his shoulder maybe one, two, way too many times already. It’s not the new school, or the new name, it’s the lack of another person beside him. While he always had to navigate the halls of his schools alone, he at least had him mom to pick him up, drop him off, double check he had everything he needed in his backpack (not that there were many ways to misplace the stuff in there, or many reasons to take it out at all).
It’s strange that the lack of a pair of eyes on his back is what makes him feel like he’s being watched.
But she said this had to happen. They had to split up. It won’t be for long. She had said. I have to go, but it won’t be long, and you will be safe here while I am gone. Just do as we have done, and I will be back with no issue.
And it had taken no more prompting than that for Alex to repeat her own words back at her in his own reassurance: don’t look back, don’t slow down, and don’t trust anyone. Be anyone but himself, and never be anyone for too long. They were words whispered between them often, but as he said them, he couldn’t help but feel like they were a goodbye.
That’s the thing about not being able to trust anyone: you have no way to trick yourself into what you want to believe. And what Alex wants to believe is that she will come back. That she is his mother, and she loves him and when she said she needed to go and needed to go alone she meant it and when she followed it up with ‘I will be back soon’ she had meant that too. But Alex has been raised in violence and deceit and he knows better than to fully believe anything he cannot prove to himself.
Yet even with loneliness setting in and clouding his thoughts, his first day at school goes fine. He sits in the middle of all his classes, listens intently to each teachers get to know me speech, marking anyone who might be a problem, manages to keep his own eyes on his back, on the lookout for anyone too interested in the new kid. But Columbia High is a big school, with lots of kids coming and going at the start of a new year, so they day passes without anything noteworthy. As does the second and third and suddenly the first week is gone and that shift between ‘on the run’ and ‘high school student’ happens, just like it has every year before and then Alex is three weeks into the school year and even though his mom hasn’t made it back yet, everything is going as it should.
And that, of course, is when everything goes terribly wrong.
He’s barely walked into school when he spots the sheet taped to the opposite wall. It’s not colorful or flashy but there is a picture of 2 exy rackets taking up most of the page, which is all it needs to capture his attention. Alex doesn’t let himself pause in his walk to his locker to look at it but the brief glimpse gave him enough to distract him through the rest of his classes.
He never did go back to read the flyer, but that couldn’t stop him from listening to the other kids talk about it in between classes. Try outs where at the end of the week.
Not that Alex cared. Or, not that Alex could do anything with that information. One of the first promises he made to his mom was to never pick up an exy racket. And was the one she had made Alex repeat the most before leaving him here.
It’s that promise alone that gets him through the school doors at the end of the day, headed towards this week’s shitty motel.
Running has never been so hard.
And it doesn’t get easier. There are 4 more days before try outs. Which means four days of forcing himself away from soccer field that is being converted into an exy field for the coming season. Four days of distracting himself with homework and late runs.
Then it’s Friday and Alex is too busy not thinking about exy to concentrate in his classes. The day moves slow, till thoughts of exy become impossible to avoid.
He is in ELA when his mind wanders to memories of Kevin and Riko. Alex still doesn’t know what business Riko’s uncle had with his dad that day, but it meant he got to spend the day talking Kevin and Riko about exy. He had been a different boy back then, with a different name and a different face, but a part of him wonders if they remember him. He is glad his mother took him away from his father. He never wants to go back. But a part of him wonders, if he had stayed, could he have played exy? Could he have had more days like that, with Kevin and Riko? Maybe the three of them could have played together and he could be standing by their sides right now.
As pointless as it is to think about, as painful as he knows that life—a life still with his father—would be, he still can’t help the smile that spreads on his face when he imagines himself, dressed in black and red, a racket in his hand, celebrating a win in the grand evermore court. And it’s not an image he can get out of his head for the rest of the day.
Today he takes the long way away from school, the route that avoids the exy court. He runs as fast as he can, till there’s no way to think about anything other than breathing, even exy.