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”So, my dad thinks you’re gay.”
Neil stares blankly at Katie, who’s looking back at him with wide eyes and biting her bottom lip.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. He’s cool about that sort of thing, though! My aunt is gay. It’s just, he kept bothering me about my ‘new boyfriend’,” Her fingers form air-quotes. “Who I text all the time, and he wouldn’t accept that you were just a friend and kept bugging me about it and,” She groans. “It just came out.”
“You could stop texting me,” Neil says seriously.
For some reason, Katie had been seeking him out since the beginning of the year, never mind that he’d done everything he could to ward her off. He couldn’t afford people becoming attached, getting close enough to want to know more, but she’d been surprisingly unfazed with all of the walls he’d built up, neatly side-stepping into other topics.
She laughs, like he was joking—or maybe because she knows he wasn’t. “I’m like mold, Josten. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Her face turns sheepish again. “Anyway… He wants you to come over? For dinner maybe?”
Neil tamps down the urge to go to the nearest bus station to start over again. He could’ve found his way to a bigger city, somewhere it would be easier to fade into the background, but after Seattle he found himself paranoid that the same screen of anonymity big cities could provide him with would allow his father to stay hidden until he was close enough to strike again.
A town like this, where everyone knew everyone, might mean more scrutiny for Neil, but he hoped it would be a built-in warning system for him, too.
So far, it’s worked well enough. After nearly six months, the residents of Millport, Ohio have mostly gotten used to Neil Josten and his workaholic parents. He still gets some long looks—concern or apprehension—but he keeps his head down and stays out of trouble so there’s no reason for it to turn into something more inconvenient.
Katelyn’s face has gone all screwed up, like she’s fighting not to cry. “I’m sorry, Neil, I know you get anxious meeting new people—“
What?
“—and I will totally tell him no, okay? It’s just, he gets worried easily and… so do I, you know? You’re, like, my best friend—“
What?
“And I just want him to know you’re not a bad kid because you’re not, and I hate that some people assume the worst about you just because of your circumstances.”
Neil blinks, like surely if he does it enough times it’ll dislodge something from his brain that will make things make sense.
“We’re friends?”
Somehow, she looks even more like she’s about to cry. “God, Neil, have some mercy for a girl on her period, would you?”
“I’m… sorry?”
“You should be,” she says with a long sniff. She exhales, breath fogging up the air. “Yes, Neil, we’re friends. I’ll even make you a friendship bracelet, if you need something to make it official.”
***
Mr. Mackenzie gets his dinner after all when Katie begs him for help with math. According to her, she needs to get a perfect grade on the final so she can bump up her GPA before college applications are due to increase her chances for academic scholarships.
“Palmetto State in South Carolina has a surprisingly good pre-med program, and a cheer team, so I’m definitely applying there, too,” she says, finishing ticking off all the colleges she’s applying to off of her fingers.
“What about you?” She asks.
Neil shrugs.
“What does that mean?” She demands, sitting up. “You don’t know? They’re due in a month!”
“I might take a gap year,” he lies.
“Oh my God, Neil, no! Everyone who takes a gap year never goes back!”
“I doubt that’s accurate, statistically speaking.”
“Neil,” she says seriously.
Neil ignores her.
“Neil,” she says again. “You can’t take a gap year.”
He keeps ignoring her.
“What about exy?”
His fingers tighten around his pencil, turning white before he forcibly relaxes them. “What about it?”
She gasps. “What do you mean ‘what about it’? You love exy! And you’re good at it, too!”
He’s saved from having to answer by a knock on the door frame, Mr. Mackenzie peeking his head through the gap. “Dinner is ready.”
Katie frowns and points at Neil. “This isn’t over.”
***
“I’m thinking about dying my hair.”
Neil glances over to find her playing with the ends of her hair, brows furrowed.
“What do you think about blonde?” She asks, meeting his eyes.
“You are blonde.”
She rolls her eyes. “No, like real blonde, not strawberry blonde.“
Neil studies her hair and decides he can mostly tell the difference. His mom had dyed her hair blonde before and there was more yellow to it than Katelyn’s.
She notices his expression and smiles. “You’re such a guy, sometimes. You didn’t even know there were different kinds of blonde, I bet.” She spins in her desk chair once, the twirl moving her forward a few inches toward where Neil is sitting on her bed. “It’s like ginger and auburn. People call both of them ‘red-heads’ but they’re separate colors.“
Neil schools his expression, tipping his gaze back to his math homework. “Sure,” he agrees after a moment.
It makes her laugh as she spins her chair back toward her desk. “Anyway, I feel like I need a change for college. You know?”
Neil knows plenty about needing to change, but he doesn’t think the concept holds the same meaning for her.
“My sister and I… we used to be close. Did I ever tell you that?” She says suddenly, drawing her knees up to her chest.
Neil shakes his head.
“We’re only a few years apart in age. We were always ‘Annie and Katie’ growing up, like you couldn’t say one without the other. And then mom left and she started high school and I was left behind with nothing but shiny new diagnoses. She started going by Annika after she made the cheer team her freshman year. She was always hanging out with them all the time. She was never home anymore. Our dad felt so guilty he just let her do whatever, and she exploited that every chance she got. It was like we didn’t exist to her anymore.”
Neil isn’t sure if he’s supposed to say something. He’s never had to comfort someone before, and he isn’t sure if he wants to start trying now. Before he can decide, she continues talking.
“She’s the reason I decided to start cheer. I thought, maybe if we had something in common she would start talking to me again. But it didn’t matter. And even though everyone knew we didn’t get along, they still expected me to be just like her. She doesn’t even come home from college on breaks. And I get it!”
She throws her hands up. “That’s the worst part! Who else could understand better? I hate this town. I hate the people in it who look at me and know every horrible thing about me and my family. I hate—“
She takes a shaky breath. “I hate that it took mom leaving for dad to stop drinking. And sometimes all I want is to find the furthest college that will give me a scholarship and never come back, just like her. I just—I feel so guilty. He’s trying, you know? And she’s not even around to talk to about it, to help me decide if it even matters or not.”
She sits back down with a thump, covering her face with her hands. “God, Neil, I’m sorry. I’m such a fucking—” Her voice cracks.
“Well,” Neil says haltingly. “That’s what… friends are for, right?”
She tilts her head up, a smile forming through her tears, and Neil thinks he understands why his mom was so careful to avoid Neil making friends with other kids.
Katelyn Mackenzie is probably the biggest mistake he’s made since his mom died, right up there with playing exy, and reminding himself he can’t keep either of them is like forcing himself to deep-breathe with broken ribs.
***
Neil wakes up with a sense of unease that pervades every part of his body.
It’s bad enough that when he goes on a run, he takes his mother’s gun with him, its holster hidden by the loose fit of his sweatshirt. He only lets himself turn back when all he can feel is the pounding of his feet against the pavement.
He’s drying off from a shower when his phone rings. It takes a minute for his heart to stop trying to escape his ribcage, still beating hard even as he answers, towel retapped around his waist.
“So, I have a very serious question for you,” Katie says as soon as he answers.
He waits.
“Do I have to get really sad because you’ve forgotten your own birthday?”
“No…?”
“No you didn’t forget?”
He doesn’t answer. Technically he didn’t forget his own birthday—he forgot Neil Josten’s.
She lets out a long sigh. “Okay. Well, great news is I already got sad thinking about it last night, so we can skip to the part where you’re at my house eating the cake I made you.”
“Or you can go back to being sad and leave me out of it,” Neil suggests.
“Nope!” She says, popping the ‘p’. “I’ll come get you if I have to, and then Mrs. Z will call my dad and tell him I stole his car again, the nosy liar she is.”
“I don’t think it counts as a lie if you did it.”
She gasps. “Excuse you, I have never stolen his car! I stole his spare set of keys. I just borrowed the car.”
Neil rolls his eyes. “Half an hour,” he says, only because she’s stubborn enough to show up to his fake address and, well, find out it’s fake.
He gets dressed and grabs his keys and phone. He hesitates but eventually decides to leave the gun in his duffel bag instead of carrying it in the holster. He’d still have it with him that way, without the risk of Katie discovering it.
She’s glaring when she opens the door, likely due to him hanging up on her, but he moves past her with a flick to the end of her braid.
The cake isn’t really a cake, just a pile of sliced and peeled fruit with whipped cream spooned on top. The whipped cream is a bit sweet, but the fruit is cold, the platter pulled fresh from the fridge.
Neil eats two plates and Katie seems pleased.
Her dad wished him a happy birthday but left on a call not long after, leaving the two of them by themselves to eat and chat—or rather, Neil to eat and Katie to chat.
“Oh!” She says with a clap, cutting herself off mid-sentence. “I almost forgot your present!”
“I don’t need—“
“Shush,” she says, putting a finger to her own lips. “I am so not listening to someone who forgot their own birthday tell me they don’t need any gifts.”
“I don’t,” Neil insists. “I didn’t get anything for yours.”
She gives him a pitying look. “You hadn’t even realized we were friends yet, Josten. Try to use that excuse next year—not that it’ll work, but you can try.”
Neil looks down at his plate, fork pushing a whipped cream into a pile. “I don’t even know when it is,” he says quietly. He doesn’t know if he’ll even live that long, he doesn’t say.
“September 29th,” she says.
When he looks up she’s smiling.
“Anyway, birthday boy, today is about you, so let me get your gift. Stay right here, okay?”
When she returns it’s with a little square present wrapped with what she tells him, blushing, is inside out Christmas wrapping paper—“I could’ve sworn we had normal wrapping paper left but it spontaneously vanished!”—with his name in curly handwriting and a crudely drawn exy stick.
She picks at her cuticles, several already as he peels the tape and folds back the wrapping to reveal prancing reindeer.
He opens the box and looks at the woven bracelet, different shades of gray and yellow threads criss-crossing to make a pattern.
“It’s not much,” she says. “Just a friendship bracelet.” She holds out her wrist. “I have a matching one. Yellow because it’s my favorite and gray because it’s yours.”
He remembers her asking, a while back, and the way her laughter had escaped in giggles against her palm. She’d said it was ‘so him’, like it made complete sense when Neil had never given it much thought before then.
He sees the bracelet, matching exactly like she said, amongst the stack of rubber and beaded ones she always wears.
“I like it,” he says, completely truthful for once. He touches his own with his fingertips. It’s softer than he thought, and just barely bumpy from the way threads overlap.
“Really?” Her teeth gnaw at her lips again, breaking open the bitten skin in a few places.
“Will you tie it?” He asks, holding it out to her.
She beams.
***
“Okay,” Katelyn says to herself in the mirror. “Okay. Okay.” She turns to Neil. “I am not okay, oh my god.”
“You’ll be fine,” Neil says.
“Of course you say that, you’re the king of ‘fine’. I, however, am staving off a panic attack and am very tempted to pop an extra Paxil.”
“You’ve been going to those clinic things, haven’t you?” Neil asks. “You’ll be fine.” He’s not sure why she’s so worried. He’s seen her toss other girls into the air like it’s nothing and do flips and jumps and contort her body in ways Neil didn’t know were possible. He tells her as much, hoping it will calm her down but it doesn’t help.
“Yeah, but everyone can do that at this level. That’s like, the bare minimum.” She heaves in a breath and exhales just as violently. “Oh, god. I’m going to throw up.”
“Maybe you should take another pill.”
“Neil!”
He shrugs.
She mutters something else, scrubbing a hand over her face.
“Katie,” her dad calls. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
“Fuck,” she whispers. She nods to herself once, and then again. “Okay. Okay.“
She points to Neil. “I’ll see you on Monday. Don’t forget to pick up my assignments or I’ll put glitter in your bag.”
He sends her off with a wave of his hand. “Break a leg. Or don’t, rather.”
She flips him off.
***
He doodles on the edges of her worksheets just to annoy her, penciling in answers for her math homework when he’s done with his.
They’re safe in his school binder when he shoves his bag in his locker for the last exy practice of the year. The Millport High Eagles had lost the final game in regionals a month prior, but when the coach put it to a vote, half the team had wanted to keep practicing until championship season ended. To ‘finish strong’, whatever that meant.
Neil didn’t understand the grumbling from the other half of the team. He’d take as much time on the court as he was allowed. He knew it would be the last time he had access to one, unless one of the cities he moved on to had a community court—if he dared to risk it again.
The other senior, a goalie, was dragging his feet putting on his gear. “This is so stupid. It’s not like either of us even got recruited. I don’t understand why we have to participate.”
Neil doesn’t intend to respond but he wouldn’t have had the chance if he wanted to.
“Chavez, get your gear on and lead warmups. Josten, come with me.”
“What? Why?” Chavez complains. “What’s going on?”
“If it had to do with you, I would be grabbing you, not Josten.”
Neil follows silently, heart picking up its pace. “What’s going on?” He echoes when the locker room doors clang shut behind them.
Eyes follow their journey across the gym, players jogging half-heartedly around the outer court so they can watch.
“Someone’s here to see you,” Coach Martin says as they exit the gym.
To someone who'd spent half his life outrunning his past those are words from a nightmare. He’s already turned halfway around, poised to run, when Martin continues.
“You’re real lucky to be recruited this late in the year. I’m surprised—well, I guess not too much considering the team.”
Neil falters.
Martin turns to look at him, doing a double take at his position. “I know the foxes are bad, Josten, but they’re still a Class I team. No need to run away,” he says with a chuckle.
“It’s a good opportunity. A chance for more training, maybe even a shot to get scouted by the pros.” He sounds like he doubts it but is too polite to say so.
“What?” Neil says.
“Did you hit your head?” Martin asks. “Put some pep in your step before Coach Wymack gets tired of waiting and leaves.”
Neil’s mind is still racing but now with the words ‘recruited’, ‘Class I’, and ‘foxes’ instead of the best way to escape whichever of his father’s people are waiting for him. Pieces are clicking, enough to make him believe his life isn’t in immediate danger, but there are parts missing. To start with, everything that would make the situation make sense, because it sounds to Neil like he’s being recruited to play exy for some university.
The man leaning against Martin’s desk is unfamiliar to Neil. The wife beater he wears shows off sleeves of tribal flame tattoos. One hand is stuffed into his jeans pocket. The other holds a file. His stance is casual, but the look in his brown eyes is intent.
“I don’t know you,” Neil says, unmoving from his place in the doorway.
“Palmetto State University,” the man says. “David Wymack. I want you to play for me.”
That rings a bell, finally. Palmetto State in South Carolina, where Katie is spending the weekend to try out for their cheer team.
“Bullshit,” Neil says. “No one gets recruited from Millport. No one knows where it is.”
“Jesus,” Martin says under his breath.
“There’s this thing called a map,” Wymack says. “You might’ve heard of it.”
“So, what? You threw a dart at a map and then chose the closest school that had an exy team?”
“He’s here because I sent him your file,” Martin interjects.
Neil stares. “You did what?”
“Your girlfriend wouldn’t stop bugging me about it. I don’t think her father told her ‘no’ enough growing up.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t mention it because I didn’t think anything would come of it. It was past recruitment season and PSU already has a healthy offensive line. Well, had.”
Wymack gives him a look but doesn’t disagree with the comment.
“It’s stupid late in the season for me to be here, I know. But Coach Martin says you still haven't chosen a school for fall. Works out perfectly, doesn't it? I need a striker sub, and you need a team. All you have to do is sign the dotted line and you're mine for five years.”
It takes Neil two tries to find his voice. “You can’t be serious.”
“Very serious, and very out of time.“
Wymack tosses his file onto the desk beside him, Neil’s name scrawled large enough in black marker to be visible from where he stands.
Neil’s tempted to snatch it up, read whatever was in it that made Wymack choose him, but there’s no point. The person Wymack researched so carefully
isn’t real and couldn’t exist much longer. In five weeks Neil would graduate and in six he would have to become someone else, somewhere very far away from here. It doesn’t matter how much he likes being Neil Josten. He's stayed here too long as it is.
Neil should be used to this by now. He's spent the last eight years on the run, spinning lie after lie to leave a twisted trail behind him. Twenty-two names stand between him and the truth, and he knows what would happen if anyone finally connected the dots. Signing with a college team would mean more than standing still. It would mean he'd be stepping into a spotlight. Prison won’t stop his father for long, and Neil can’t survive a rematch with him.
The math is simple, but that didn't make this any easier. That contract is a one way ticket to a future, something Neil can never have, and he wants it so badly he ached. For a blinding moment he hates himself for ever settling in Millport, for not trying harder to push Katie away, for ever stepping foot on a court.
His mother had warned him against attachments, against exy, and he’d disobeyed her. But what else was he supposed to do? He'd run aground in Millport after her death because he didn't know how to go on without her. This has been the only thing that made him feel real since. Now that he's had a taste of it again, he doesn’t know how to walk away from it.
“Please go away," he says.
“I know it’s a bit sudden, but I need an answer by tonight. The Committee has been hounding me and my flight leaves early tomorrow.”
“I can’t play for you.”
“Why the hell not?” Martin says incredulously. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Neil.”
Neil shakes his head. His throat tightens around words he can’t say. Spots threaten to take over his vision and he reaches out to grip the doorframe, stumbling back a step when both Martin and Wymack start toward him with concern.
“Get out of your head, kid,” Wymack demands. “Tell me one good reason and I’m out of here.”
“I’m not good enough to play on a college team,” Neil finally manages on his third try. “I’m inexperienced. My stats are shit. You should’ve thrown my file out the second you saw it.”
“Debatable. True. True. And maybe, but your coach was smart enough to send more than your stats, and the tape showed me something more important than whatever the bullshit on paper said. You play like someone with everything to lose even when players twice your size beat on you. That’s the kind of drive I want to see on my line. And,” he says with a twist of his lips. “You’re a fast little shit.”
“It’s not a good idea,” Neil says, unable to meet the man’s gaze.
“Your opinion has been duly noted and dismissed. Anything else, or are you going to start signing stuff?”
The smart thing to do would be to tear Wymack’s contract into a thousand pieces and leave.
Leaving meant living, but Neil's way of living was survival, nothing more. It was new names and new places and never looking back. It was packing up and going as soon as he started to feel settled. This last year, without his mother by his side, it meant being completely alone and adrift. Or it should’ve.
But Katie had been there. She’d kept digging in her feet every time Neil tried to push her away. She’d taken the empty shell of ‘Neil Josten’ and breathed life into him until he started to let himself feel like the name meant something more than just another thing to call another ghost. He didn’t know if he was ready to give that up.
He doesn’t know if he’s ready to give up Exy again, either. Wymack's contract is permission to keep playing and a chance to pretend at being normal a little while longer. Wymack said it’s for five years, but Neil doesn’t have to stay that long. He can duck and run whenever he pleases, can’t he?
“Well?” Wymack asks.
***
Neil is retching into a toilet when Katie’s call comes through.
He’d forced himself to attend practice, needing both the outlet and the easy access to the locker rooms afterward. He’d pushed himself hard enough that his legs cramped, knocking him on his ass after he spent an extra twenty minutes running the bleachers after practice ended.
Then he’d spent the last thirty minutes going between typing in the number for the closest of his mother’s contacts, spitting bile into the toilet, and apologizing to a woman whose bones he burned in California.
He could imagine his mother's rage if she knew what he’s doing. He remembers too well the savage yank of her hands in his hair. All those years spent trying to keep moving and hidden, and now he’s going to destroy their hard work. She would never forgive him for this, he knows, but that does nothing to stop the clenching feeling in his gut as the words spill out of his mouth anyway.
He rinses his mouth out with cold water, swallowing some to try and soothe his throat before he answers the phone.
“Neil!” She says. “We finally made it to the hotel. We had to take a major detour because of a pile up. I’m glad we came up early.”
“When did you have Coach Martin send my file to PSU?”
There’s a sharp inhale on the other end. “Oh my God.”
“When?”
“After Christmas break. Why? Did something happen? Are you—“
“Why?” Neil hears the sharpness in his voice, doesn’t do anything to soften it. “What gave you the right to—“ Neil breaks off, closing his eyes as they start to burn.
“Neil,” she says, helpless to stop the crack in her voice. “I am so sorry. I just want you to do what you love. I wanted you to want that for yourself but I didn’t mean—“ A sniffle. “I’m such an ass. I shouldn’t have done it without asking.“
Neil breathes for a minute, trying to separate the sick feeling in his stomach from the rest of his feelings. He’s angry. He’s scared. He wants to take it out on someone and Katie is there. She would take it from him, any vitriol he had to give.
But he said yes. He signed with the Foxes. For better or worse, he’s the one who hammered that nail into his coffin, even if Katie had given Wymack the hammer.
“Neil, please say something. Tell me you hate me. Just… please say something.”
“I don’t hate you.”
A sob crackles over the phone.
“You’re my friend,” he says, hanging his head. “The only one I’ve ever had.”
“Don’t say that,” she begs. “I’m already crying.”
“So,” he continues. “I don’t want to give you up.” He’d already admitted to himself but saying it out loud to her felt like handing her his mother’s gun. He runs a hand over the back of his neck, trying to shake the feeling loose. “And if I’m angry with you, I’d have to be angry with myself, too, for signing the contract.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m playing exy for Palmetto State University,” he says quietly. It sounds like a dream. It tastes like damnation.