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 Allan 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.