Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 87395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87395 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Sleeping after that was almost impossible, and getting up for practice the next morning was a chore. He braced himself for the worst, but Tuesday was a repeat of Monday: the same casual cold shoulder from the cousins and measuring stare from Kevin. Neil was almost relieved when Kevin caught up to him at the end of practice. He'd just cut the water off when Kevin rapped once on his shower stall door.
"The next time I come for you, you will follow me," Kevin said.
"Why?" Neil asked.
"It's time to collect what's mine," Kevin said. "Andrew isn't going to interfere anymore."
Neil didn't understand, but Kevin didn't stick around to explain.
At ten o'clock, a knock came at his dorm room door again. Neil was watching a movie with Seth and Matt, but he made sure he was the first off the couch. He wasn't surprised to find Kevin waiting on the other side. Seth swore viciously at the sight of Kevin in the doorway. The movie's sounds abruptly cut off as someone paused it, and the couch creaked as the others got up.
"What part of 'You're not welcome here' do you not understand?" Matt demanded.
Kevin ignored them and shoved an Exy ball hard against Neil's chest. "Let's go."
Neil hesitated, but he didn't have long to decide. Seth and Matt were coming up fast behind him ready for a fight. Neil put his arm out to stop them. If Seth was in front, he might have bulled past Neil to get his hands on Kevin's throat, but Matt pulled up short.
"I'll be back later," Neil said over his shoulder.
"Are you stupid?" Seth asked.
"Yeah," Neil said. "Finish the movie without me. I don't mind."
Seth huffed and stormed away, but Matt moved into the hall to watch as Kevin and Neil left. Neil didn't look back at him but followed Kevin downstairs to the back parking lot. There were more cars now than there'd been at the start of the summer, but Neil hadn't seen any new faces around the dormitory. Whatever team was moving in was on a different floor from the Exy line and Neil wasn't in any rush to play meet-and-greet.
Andrew was waiting for them in the car. Neil was surprised even though he knew he shouldn't be. Kevin didn't go anywhere alone. It didn't matter what time of night it was; with Edgar Allen in their district Kevin wasn't going to suddenly get brave. Neil thought about the last time he'd gone to the court in the middle of the night and found Andrew watching Kevin practice. It made him wonder how many times they did this.
Andrew was in the driver's seat, arms folded across the steering wheel to make a pillow for his head. His eyes were closed and he didn't stir when Kevin opened the passenger door. Kevin leaned over and looked in at him.
"I can drive, you know," Kevin said.
"The day I let you drive my car is the day I'm dead," Andrew said. "Are you getting in or are we going back to bed?"
Kevin sighed heavily as if Andrew was being unusually difficult and climbed in. Neil got in the backseat and sat in the middle where he could see both of them. Andrew twisted the key in the ignition as he sat up and drove them to the stadium.
Kevin let them through the gates and into the locker room with his keys. Andrew waited in the foyer while Kevin and Neil changed into their court gear, watched as they gathered their racquets and some gear, and followed them to the inner ring. When Kevin and Neil went for the court door, he went up the stairs into the stands to wait on them.
Kevin bolted the court door behind them, set the balls and his racquet aside, and got Neil moving right away. They ran a couple laps along the inside of the court walls, did intervals with the court lines, and stretched out at half-court. When Kevin was satisfied, he started going through drills. They started with a simple game of catch and quickly escalated to more complicated exercises. Neil recognized only a few of them. Those he didn't know were harder to pick up and Kevin's impatience, absent the last two days of practice, put in an unfriendly reappearance.
The last drill they did was the hardest. Kevin grabbed cones from the locker room and set them each up with a line of six. The name of the game was to rebound the ball off the court wall in a way that it'd knock the cones over. It wasn't enough to have an accurate throw; Neil had to be both accurate and powerful. Neil didn't expect it to be so difficult, but he'd never needed such hairpin precision before. Rebounds were used when passing the ball to teammates across the court. Teammates were intelligent, moving targets who could react to a ball's trajectory, whereas these cones were static targets.
Neil's first time through he managed to hit a grand total of one cone. Kevin got three of his six, but he was doing it with his weaker hand, so his misses didn't make Neil feel any better.
"You have too much free time if you're coming up with drills like this," Neil said after he flunked a second round.
"This is a Raven drill," Kevin said. "No one is allowed game time until he or she can knock every cone over in whichever order the master calls. Freshmen spend weeks to months trying to earn a spot on our line."
"The master?"
"Coach Moriyama," Kevin said after a pause. Neil could hear the grimace in Kevin's response, but he didn't know if it was because Neil was making Kevin say his name or because he'd slipped up so obviously. Kevin recovered by switching his racquet to his left hand and giving it an experimental swirl. "Call them for me. Don't stop."
Neil didn't think it was a good idea for Kevin to play left-handed, even if it'd been six months since his assault, but he didn't argue. He counted the cones off in random order with only a second between the numbers. Kevin didn't wait for him to finish but moved with him, scooping balls from the ground in front of him and hurling them at the wall. All six shots landed, sending Kevin's cones toppling in the exact order Neil called. Kevin hit the last cone with enough force to send it rolling several feet.