Chapter 11
Adam liked drills, there was something about the monotony of running laps around the court that allowed his mind to calm down. It took enough of his attention to keep his mind from straying anywhere else, but was repetitive enough to not be a mental strain. It was nice.
His mind was becoming a place that Adam was becoming a place that Adam didn’t mind being alone in anymore.
Someone bumped his shoulder as they passed. Gansey. He smiled at Adam and kept running. Maybe not so alone, his mind told him.
Even after all the countless practices they had been through together, it was still strange to see Gansey in a T-shirt and sweatpants. Sure, the T-shirt and sweatpants looked more expensive than any clothes that Adam owned, but Adam found that he no longer minded as much. Jealousy and resenting his friends wouldn’t get him any closer to where he wanted to be.
Adam lost himself in the monotony of running once again. This time, a small smile on his face.
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Nicky didn’t always like practice, it wasn’t like exercise came naturally to him, he was more a couch-and-processed-food-with-friends kind of guy. He didn’t like the feeling of sweat, clinging to everything it could, trying to pull his clothes suffocatingly close to his skin. He constantly complained about aching muscles. Still, he had to admit, it was good to be back.
There was something comforting about the pound of wood under his feet as he ran laps. Nicky thought he understood why Kevin liked it so much.
“Nicky, hurry it up, you pull that on court and you cost us the game,” Kevin barked as he ran past. Ah, speak of the devil and all that.
Nicky caught one of the freshmen looking at him. Sheena. Nicky sent her a smile. Better to become friends with them now than to wait for a new rift to form. God knows the team had already had enough of those. For a team so centered on camaraderie, they were sure good at pushing people away.
But maybe that’s the point, Nicky thought, catching sight of Andrew and Neil running side by side up ahead. If they could just keep coming back after they had been pushed away, then they were a real family.
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It was one of those days where Ronan just wanted to watch the world burn. One of those days where he wanted to drink himself into a stupor, and yell out hurtful words and curses, and drive the BMW off a cliff, and hit everything in sight, and relive every death he had ever seen over and over until he didn’t care anymore.
Still, he couldn’t do that. He owed it to Adam. He owed it to himself. His mind was a toxic wasteland at the moment and it was the best he could do for himself right now to stop running straight into it.
These days seemed to show up less and less nowadays, now he had Gansey and Adam and Blue. Except right now he didn’t have Gansey. He didn’t want Gansey. There was only so much love you can have for someone who promised you freedom and instead returned you to the very chains you wanted to escape in the first place. But it was Gansey, and Ronan knew that he would forgive Gansey one of these days, but that day was not today, nor would it be any time soon.
Gansey wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Ronan didn’t know what the problem was.
Still, his anger had to go somewhere. Ronan tried to pound his anger out onto the hardwood floor as he ran, but he felt a new batch bubble up inside him the harder he tried.
Ronan knew he would explode today. The best he could do was to make sure that as many people as possible were out of the firing range when it happened.
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Dan was in love with life. With Matt. With Allison. With Renee. With living in a dorm. With being almost-done with college. And right now, on the track, running laps, breathing in the cool, dry smell of wood and metal, Dan was in love with Exy. She felt the familiar burn in her thighs as she ran laps.
She let out a joyous whoop as she ran, drawing a laugh out of Matt, who was running by her side. She sent him a wink and drew ahead.
As she ran to beat Matt, she caught sight of Richard Gansey giving Adam Parrish a friendly bump on the shoulder. The two boys that were originally supposed to become foxes.
Dan had to admit, she was wrong about those two, getting a closer look, she could see that they weren’t the pampered rich boys she had expected them to be, there was a sense of otherness to them, the way they spoke (and she didn’t mean the accents), the way they bunched around each other like they were expecting trouble, the way they looked at each other like they could discern everything from the other’s eyes. Speaking to them, looking them in the eyes, Dan could see that they had clearly been through some shit.
After listening to what Allison knew about them, and what Kevin knew about them, coupled with a few google searches, a rather strange picture pieced itself together.
The wealthy son of some influential politicians is shaping up to be the picture of excellence, then something (the nature of which, Dan doesn’t know) happens and he decides that he needs to find the body of a dead, welsh king. So he travels the world, makes a few friends, and then he finds what he was looking for. End of story. However, years with the foxes had taught Dan things were never as they seemed.
The question was, what happened? From what Dan knew, the dead king business was a pretty empty playing field. One thing Dan knew for sure was that they were foxes, through and through, and she had been wrong to judge them without knowing them.
Dan was so lost in thought that she almost didn’t notice when Ronan Lynch punched Jack Peterson.