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“Welcome to another countdown to the rest of our lives,” Andrew flicked his cigarette absently as they watched the new recruits filter uneasily into the dorms, his legs swinging easily next to hers over the edge of the roof. Sometimes Andrew was unintentionally poetic and for the most part, Renee saw no harm in forgiving these slips, but rarely responded since there was nothing much to say.
The weight of another year hung heavy around her neck, soon she’d have to decide what the fuck she was going to do with the rest of her time, hours and minutes and seconds by the billions to fill with… something, and not knowing what was starting to grate on her nerves, making her feel like she was all rough parts and irritated edges. The skin around her elbows was raw and red from her newly-formed nervous habit of pulling and scratching. It was the only loose part of her when she felt adrift.
Andrew would find the insult in that, if there was one.
She picked at an old scab near her wrist and glowered down at the new recruits. On the roof surrounded by Andrew’s smoke and poetry and bravado, there was less reason for optimism.
“You think it was a bad call?”
The scab started to bleed and she tried to tell herself that she didn’t find any satisfaction in that. Tried to tell herself that her nervous fingers wouldn’t be more satisfied with the knives hidden in the wraps around Andrew’s forearms.
Below, a tall sandy sort of boy lurched under the sudden weight of another boy’s strong arm across his shoulders and beaming smile while a rather wild looking girl poked him in the ribs and a third boy with a shaved head and sharp face said something out of the corner of his mouth.
“You think it was a bad call.”
Neil and Kevin shook hands with the group, their faces in perfect masks of welcoming leaders even though she knew Kevin would rather be on the Court than hand-holding newbies and Neil’s smile was edged with worry. They’d put a lot on the line this season.
There was always too much on the line every season at Foxhole Court.
“You should tell him it was a bad call.”
The boy with the shaved head lingered behind the others, shoulders high and tight, never looking up at the faces peering down on him from above though with the attitude of someone that knew perfectly well what kind of audience he was putting on a show for.
She had the very distinct impression as he walked out of view that whatever performance lingered around his shoulders wasn’t for her.
“I did,” Renee responded finally, delicately taking the cigarette out of Andrew’s hands and bringing it to her lips.
Renee shook her head, “I don’t like it.”
Aaron was slumped in the corner of the couch, playing with his phone and ignoring the discussion. Andrew was hovering over Neil’s shoulder at the kitchen table like always. Kevin was jotting something down in his playbook while his foot tapped to an invisible drum. Allison had a file out and was sharpening her nails down to sharp little points. Dan’s worried face peered out of the laptop screen on the desk beside Kevin, her brow furrowed.
Dan may be a professional now, but she still counted herself a Fox until Kevin stopped calling her in for every team meeting. No one knew how devoted Kevin had been to their captain until she was gone.
They probably could have waited until after Andrew and Neil picked up Nicky from the airport, but Renee wasn’t willing to wait this time. Anyway, one look at that sandy kid and she’d bet Nicky wouldn’t back up her concerns anyway.
Neil shrugged, “And I respect your opinion, Renee – but they’re here now.”
Andrew raised his eyebrows at her. If he wanted her to fight the point, to remind them all what it had been like that first year with the twins and Nicky, how divided the team had felt, she wasn’t sure why. They’d nearly lost Neil and that had made them a team, it wasn’t going to be the same no matter who else they brought in, and time kept flowing on, and … damnit.
“Dan, we’ll call you back,” Allison abruptly shut the laptop screen on Dan’s worried face and wrapped her arms around Renee’s shoulders. “Just go pick up Nicky, Aaron and Kevin can play welcome wagon while you’re gone,” she snapped at Neil.
Andrew dragged a protesting Neil out the door, twirling his keys around one finger.
Aaron reached out awkwardly to pat Renee on the head or shoulder or back or something and then thought better of it. She thought she heard him whisper something like, “No one’s gonna die this time,” on his way out but couldn’t be sure.
Kevin narrowly dodged out of the way of Allison’s long legs, nose still buried in the playbook.
Renee sighed, her face still pressed against Allison’s left boob, “Worst welcome wagon ever.”
“Better than us,” Allison snorted.
Aaron bet that it would take one week of Andrew calling Gansey “Dick” before Ronan punched him in the jaw.
Kevin bet that Blue and Ronan were bangin’.
Nicky bet that Adam would crack under the pressure.
Andrew bet that Adam would turn to Gansey for comfort when that happened.
Nicky countered that he’d be the better choice to soothe Adam’s ego.
Allison bet that Noah was Ronan’s secret lover.
Nicky jokingly bet that he’d explode from sexual frustration if Ronan turned out gay.
Neil bet that Adam and Blue were bangin’.
Andrew bet that Blue would try to seduce Neil.
Neil bet that Blue wouldn’t spend any time in the girls’ room.
Dan bet that Gansey would flunk out his first term.
Matt bet that Blue was actually the scariest one out of all of them. They all laughed.
Renee kept quiet.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
Ronan squinted at Renee through the dark, but didn’t respond. He seemed to only speak actual words to Gansey and Blue, so that didn’t really surprise her. There was something dark clutched to his chest and she tried not to think too hard about that.
He held out a lit cigarette to her silently and she took it because hell… they were on the roof after dark and everyone else was asleep. It wasn’t like a skinny little rich boy with a chip on his shoulder could actually hurt her.
She had the scars to prove that not much could hurt her.
“You know,” she took a drag and rested her hip against the wall next to him, “I bet you’re not as dangerous as you want people to think you are.”
Ronan didn’t say anything to that.
She finished the cigarette in silence, ears trained for Andrew’s tread on the stairs. When he never came, she turned to leave, the first dusky blues of dawn glimmering on the horizon.
“Don’t put money on that,” Ronan’s coarse voice floated through the air after her.
They played well together, Neil’s little army and Gansey’s little family. Whatever awkwardness hovered over them in the dorms and hallways lingered in the locker room and didn’t cross over onto the Court.
Better than Renee had hoped, but she could tell not what Neil had wanted.
“It’s easier to adopt things that don’t want you, than people that have already found each other,” Andrew said to her on the roof. He didn’t say anything like that to Neil – presumably.
She took a strange comfort in being the receptacle of Andrew’s thoughts.
As if that gave her a place of belonging, maybe not something that others held onto – but a someplace for them to store truths the world had no room for.
“Do your thing?” she hedged.
Take Gansey, get him drunk, hurt him in order to trust him, do your thing that you do, make him weak, show him how to live with us… with you… show him show him showhimshowhimshowhim…
Andrew avoided her gaze.
Andrew took Blue out.
Allison bet that she’d end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
Aaron bet that Ronan would punch Andrew in the jaw.
Kevin bet that Adam wouldn’t even notice she was missing.
Dan bet that they’d all threaten to leave.
Nicky bet that Gansey would hire a lawyer the next morning.
Neil bet that Noah would finally show up from whereverthefuck he was.
Andrew just shrugged.
Renee stayed silent.
“It was your idea.”
The black thing was a raven. It had three eyes. It probably had a name. She was afraid to ask what it was. She longed to hold it, it felt familiar to her.
“You thought he’d take Gansey.”
She fixed her eyes out on the horizon and smoked like it was a lifeline. Maybe it was the only one she had left.
“You don’t know as much as you think you do.”
She hated it when strangers were right about her.
He dropped something cold around her neck.
Allison bet that Renee’s new cross was from that French boyfriend.
Adam’s face went very white when he saw the silver charm dangling at the base of her throat.
Katelyn bet that Renee and Adam were bangin’.
Andrew bet that Katelyn would break her wrist at the next Vixen practice.
Aaron bet that Andrew was going to wake up to find all his clothes missing again.
Neil bet that if everyone didn’t shut up Kevin was going to make them practice an extra hour.
Kevin made them practice an extra half hour.
Ronan kept silent.
Catholicism had always been a bit too much for her. A bit too reminiscent of her old life. A bit too much like a reminder rather than a way out.
A priest told her on the other side of a confessional box that she was wrong about that. And other things. But that, specifically, seemed to bother him.
She preferred to be right.
(That was her first secret.)
(She maybe had too many secrets.)
Mysticism was too mysterious for her. She preferred the straightforwardness of hands in the air and hips swaying and smiling faces and campfires and cookouts and bingo nights to the haunted stain-glass windows and guilt-ridden piety that others sought.
But it felt right for Ronan. Like kneeling on a cold floor was as essential to his nature as knives were to hers.
“I’m sorry,” he said when she found him, hands clasped in front of him and head bowed, knees digging a hole into the stone floor.
Renee ran a hand through the short hair at the back of his neck and didn’t answer.
Ronan could be unintentionally poetic and since there was no one around to forgive him, she did her best.
“What do you ask for?”
Andrew ducked and weaved around her hands, never too far behind her but never a step ahead. She could almost pretend that they were walking side-by-side in moments like this.
“Do you ask for forgiveness?”
She landed a swift kick to his right ribcage, just a tap, they never hit at their full potential.
There were some things that they weren’t willing to break. Not very many, but enough to nearly quantify a life.
“Do you apologize?”
She reached out to smack the smirk off his face and he caught her arm, spinning her around into a headlock.
She went limp in his arms.
Andrew was a man of rules. He counted out his steps with a personal meter and held the people around him accountable for the unspoken rules he created to keep himself safe. (And Aaron.) (And Neil.) (And sometimes Renee.)
With Renee it was easy:
1. Don’t give up.
2. Don’t apologize.
He never said, “I am the world,” but it was the lesson he expected you to learn eventually.
She never said, “I am your god,” but it was the lesson he expected her to learn eventually.
Andrew held her in his arms tightly, his forearm pressing into her neck, and it was like safety or something much more bitter, or absolutely nothing at all.
Ronan was leaning against the outer wall when they came out of the gym later, fresh bruises blooming on their arms and legs, a cigarette in his mouth and his strange pet on his shoulder. They walked back together, the three of them.
Never saying a word.
They moved around each other like two rivers that couldn’t quite come together. Except in the smallest ways. Blue in Nicky’s lap after a big win, Adam and Neil matching shadows lurking around the Court at night, Gansey and Allison inexplicably sharing inside jokes no one else understood and chalked up to their blue blood.
Sometimes Blue’s short hair seemed to move on its own without a breeze, which Renee would have presumed was a trick of light or her own imagination if it wasn’t for the way Gansey would get a little pale whenever it happened. Sometimes they all seemed to be suffering from some sort of malady that nothing could fix, except being on Court smashing into each other.
And even then…
Well, weren’t the Foxes known for finding homes for broken things?
Maybe an entire makeshift family could be just as damaged and in need of a home as an orphan.
“HEY HORROR TWINS” Blue jerked a hand in the general direction of Ronan and Adam, sitting silently side-by-side on a couch on the other side of the room. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE.”
Practice had been hell, Kevin had raged more than normal and there was something a bit frantic and chaotic about Blue that resulted in Gansey’s boys having less concentration than usual. Neil had begun to rely more heavily on Adam than anyone had realized, which pissed Kevin off and made Andrew more surly than usual. Aaron and Nicky remained unfazed. Which was a blessing in its own way, she supposed.
Everyone whipped their heads from Kevin’s monotonous speech about teamwork and fundamentals to Blue. Renee watched as Adam’s face paled slightly and Ronan made a strange gesture with his fingers, almost like he was going to reach for Blue.
“Too loud,” Blue whispered into her hands where she was crouched on the floor.
Within a flash, Andrew and Gansey were hurtling themselves at Blue while Ronan tugged Adam out of the team room; Adam tripping over his own feet slightly.
Allison raised her eyebrows at Renee and mouthed WHAT THE FUCK?
But all Renee could think was how much she’d love to see Ronan and Adam as the heroes of an independent and bloody horror film.
Adam bet Neil that Andrew had fallen for Blue just like everyone else always did.
Ronan bet Andrew that Neil and Adam would eventually run off together.
Andrew bet Ronan that he’d end up with stitches if he kept making wise-ass comments like that.
Neil bet Adam that Ronan and Andrew appreciated the sight of them together more than they’d ever admit.
Blue bet Ronan that he’d lose every bet he made with Andrew.
Blue bet Gansey that she’d get a higher score on their Medieval Lit exam.
Gansey bet Blue that she’d get a higher score on their Medieval Lit exam.
Adam bet Noah that Gansey didn’t understand how betting worked.
No one laughed.
They all went out. Andrew’s Foxes and Gansey’s family. Squished into a booth and then on a dance floor like they were just one thing instead of a strange concoction of oil and water.
“You think we belong to Gansey,” Adam spit out words that he disliked. He was the easiest person to read. He was the strangest mystery she’d ever met.
Renee shrugged and watched Nicky’s head bounce up and down between the dancers in the flashing lights.
“Like how you belong to Andrew,” he took a swallow of his beer and Renee wondered a moment about the delicate movement of his throat.
She felt like she was drowning in poetry, all these delicate boys around her screaming so loud and saying nothing at all and none of it rhyming.
“I made him a promise,” Adam looked down at his beer, avoiding her gaze.
Renee considered warning him, putting her hand on his shoulder and imparting on him how dangerous a thing a promise is.
Number One.
Blue spent more time in the girls’ room with Allison and Renee than they originally anticipated. The way Gansey and Adam doted on her (and how Ronan looked at her when he thought no one was watching), they expected her to be in their room more often than not.
“Eighty percent honesty?” Blue collapsed onto the couch and tucked her spikey head onto Renee’s lap. “I didn’t expect to like living with other women.”
Allison hummed something from her chair, but didn’t look up from the fine and delicate art of toenail polish application she was currently undertaking.
Renee’s hand slipped absently into Blue’s hair.
“I mean, I never really had friends until … so it’s really nice being here with you.”
“Small family?” Allison inquired, in a tone that Renee knew was genuine interest.
Blue snorted in an unladylike and thoroughly endearing way, “There are thousands of them. Women and bras and children and…” her eyes flicked up to Renee’s face and then away, “… it’s much quieter here.”
Sometimes the weight of eighty percent honesty was too much and other times it felt like there was far too much missing, like she could reach and reach and reach into the depths of Blue and never find the end.
(Could the universe fit inside of a girl?)
Don’t give up.
“Have you figured it out yet?”
Ronan belonged to shadows the way that Adam belonged to sunlight and Kevin belonged on the Court and Neil belonged to Andrew and Katelyn belonged to motion and Allison belonged to energy and Gansey belonged to the people around him and Nicky belonged to the moment and Blue answered to no one.
There was a scab under her left elbow that sometimes Blue rubbed with her thumb while they watched terrible reality tv with Allison and drank wine out of plastic cups.
“Have you ever asked yourself…”
She hated half-finished things. Always saw the end of everything she could, every book and movie and game and conversation and thought. The unfinished bit was always the hardest to swallow.
“If you really want to know the answer?”
He always smelled like green things and darkness and freshly-cut grass and metal and smoke. So many contradictory things, so many sharp and fragile things. He was like glass, like a stained-glass window in the churches that knew his knees so intimately.
Did any one place in the world know her as thoroughly?
“Maybe you already know.”
She woke up laughing and crying.
Number Two.
Allison shook her head, “You do it.”
Renee looked at the door to Gansey’s room dubiously and sighed. Allison had already disappeared down the hall into their room, washing her hands of the entire enterprise.
She knocked hesitantly, trying not to remember Matt and… well. She hadn’t been inside since Gansey and his gang had taken over. As far as she knew, no one but Blue ever visited.
The door opened a hair and she pushed it opened gently, finding no one on the other side.
Not weird at all, nope. Not weird.
Renee tiptoed inside and shut the door behind her silently, eyes widening as they became conscious of what she was seeing.
In place of where the living room with its worn out couch and matching desks had once been, there had cropped up what looked to be a magician’s workshop with a queen-sized mattress flung haphazardly in the middle. A large line of orange duct-tape ran through the middle of the room, disappearing periodically under piles of books and what looked to be like a model town built out of cardboard. The two desks had been pushed together in one corner and were covered with more books and papers and strange looking instruments.
A soft snore came from the rumpled pile of blankets on the bed and as Renee crept past towards the back bedrooms, she spied three bare feet poking out and the sight felt far more intimate and revealing than if they had been sprawled naked in full view.
The first door was open and inside the old couch and tv were crammed in, a fine layer of dust covering everything and a pair of dirt-caked shoes flung in the corner. Across the hall, a quick glance at the bunk beds and carefully organized desk screamed of Adam, even if the man was nowhere to be seen.
At the end of the hall the door was slightly ajar and from within there came the soft sound of several voices murmuring to each other. Renee tapped with her middle finger on the dark wood and called out a quick warning before pushing the door in.
Adam was crouched, shirtless, in front of Ronan’s strange bird, clicking with his tongue while Ronan lounged in his perfectly-made bed, watching on with hooded eyes. Something rustled in a corner that Renee swore was empty.
It said a lot about the strangeness of Ronan that the most surprising part of this scene, was not the giant tree growing out of the carpet in the far corner, its branches creating a canopy over most of the ceiling or the faint sound of someone whispering in what sounded like Latin, but was actually Adam’s blushing face and bare chest.
“Well,” she crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head in mock disappointment. “Now I wish I had put money on the two of you.”
Ronan grinned at her wolfishly.
(It didn’t matter so much why she came, but how she ended up staying.)
Don’t Apologize.
She walked him back to the dorms from the decrepit old church he liked a few blocks from campus. Sometimes she felt like she owed him, though she couldn’t say what for.
“What do you ask for?”
He looked up at the clouds, maybe they held mysteries and stories that only he could hear. Maybe the clouds spoke Greek instead of Latin, or some long-lost language native to people forgotten. Nothing seemed impossible anymore.
They walked in silence and it felt as heavy and as easy as sparring with Andrew.
“Nothing,” his elbow rubbed against her arm and it felt like repentance in the strangest, saddest way, his fragile skin against her scarred casing. “I don’t ask for anything.”
She asked for everything.
Maybe neither one of them was doing it wrong.
Aaron never got to see Ronan punch Andrew and was thoroughly disgusted that of all the people in the universe, Andrew actually took to Ronan like a brother.
Kevin didn’t really care who was bangin’ who, anyway there’s a game tomorrow.
Nicky helped Adam through midterms.
Andrew bet that Ronan would flunk out after one semester and Gansey took it and Adam muttered darkly and everyone laughed.
Allison forgot that she didn’t know who Noah was.
Nicky did not explode when he found Ronan and Adam making out in the hallway, but it was a really close call.
Neil told Blue darkly that she deserved better than Gansey.
Andrew slung his arm around Blue’s shoulders and told her she deserved better than Gansey.
Ronan bet that Gansey could beat them both at poker. (He couldn’t.)
Dan came to visit and hugged Gansey so hard he had bruises on his ribcage.
Matt met Blue and told Dan in secret that he was right, she was the scariest one. Dan just nodded solemnly.
Renee just laughed.
“Well?”
Renee laid her head back and let the grass tickle her neck. “Well what?”
The sun beat down against her eyelids and skin and she soaked it up like it was a lifeline, like it was the only one she had left.
“Do you feel forgiven?”
Andrew hated the words sorry and please and forgive. He hated a lot of things. Most of the things he hated he presumed ran through her veins, giving her strength.
She didn’t respond.
That’s never what she was asking for.
Sometimes a girl just wants the whole world and in the end, can’t help but feel like a god.
That’s the dangerous thing about girls.
Kevin bet that Renee would never adjust to the new recruits.
Andrew bet that Renee would be the last to figure out it was Blue holding them together and not Gansey.
Neil bet that Andrew would never admit he loved Blue best.
Ronan silently noted that Blue was the easiest thing in the world to fall in love with and Noah agreed with a little breeze that fluttered past his ear.
Allison bet that it would be Adam that would convince Renee to let them stay.
Dan bet that Gansey and Renee would never have a normal conversation.
Gansey bet that Renee was the thing holding the Foxes together and not Andrew.
Neil immediately slapped $50 into his hand.
Adam bet that they'd be a unified team after their first loss.
Aaron bet that they'd be a unified team after their first win.
Katelyn bet that they'd be a unified team once Renee took a chill pill.
Blue thought Katelyn was either the best part of the team or the worst and talked to Ronan about this a lot.
Noah bet that they were already a full family that first day and it just took them all a ridiculous amount of time to realize it.
No one heard him, but he was used to that.