The Raven King
THE RAVEN KING
Nora Sakavic
ALL FOR THE GAME
The Foxhole Court
The Raven King
The King's Men
Copyright 2013 Nora Sakavic
Smashwords Edition
CHAPTER ONE
It looked like Halloween outside, only two months too early. Last week Palmetto State University was covered in orange and white streamers to celebrate the start of the school year. Over the weekend someone had replaced all of the white ribbons with black ones. It gave the impression the campus was in mourning. Neil Josten thought it a cheap tribute, but that might have been his cynicism talking.
He forgave himself for being jaded. At eighteen years old, he'd seen more people die than he could comfortably count. Death was unpleasant, but it was a familiar and tolerable ache in his chest. Seth Gordon's unexpected overdose Saturday night should have meant something more to Neil since they'd been teammates and roommates for three months, but Neil felt nothing. Keeping himself alive was hard enough most days; he had no time to linger over others' misfortunes.
Rock music blared to life, temporarily filling the silence in the car, but it vanished as quickly as it'd come. Neil dragged his attention away from the streamers and looked up front. Nicholas "Nicky" Hemmick let his hand fall away from the dashboard with a quiet curse. Across the backseat from Neil, Nicky's cousin Aaron Minyard shoved the back of the driver's seat. Whether it was admonition for trying to pretend things were okay or a silent show of support, Neil wasn't sure. The cousins' relationship was a tangled mess he wouldn't live long enough to figure out.
Nicky reached for the radio again. Kevin Day was sitting shotgun, so he saw Nicky move first. He pushed Nicky's hand away and said, "It's fine. Let it go."
"I don't want to do this," Nicky said, low and miserable.
No one else answered him, but Neil thought they all agreed. None of them were looking forward to today's practice, but they could only take so much time off when the season was already underway. At least Coach David Wymack was calling them back to the court on a Wednesday afternoon. Andrew Minyard, Aaron's twin brother, had his weekly therapy sessions on Wednesdays.
Generally Andrew's wild mood wasn't a problem, but Andrew's cheer didn't make him at all friendly. An excitable Andrew confronted with the death of his least-favorite teammate was a recipe for disaster. The team should have come together Sunday morning to grieve their loss, but Andrew and Matt got into an ugly brawl instead.
Wymack forcibly separated the team after that. The upperclassmen moved in with team nurse Abby Winfield, and the cousins and Kevin were banned to the dorm. Neil would have stayed at the dorm, too, but Wymack didn't want him alone in the room he'd shared with Matt and Seth. Instead Neil spent a couple nights sleeping on Wymack's couch. Neil thought Wymack's concern was misplaced but he knew better than to argue.