For the first time in Neil's life, he wasn't thinking about the future. He stopped counting days until the Ravens' match and scaled back on how much news he watched and read. He threw all of his energy into practices, stayed awake through most of his classes, and juggled his teammates as best as he could. He saw Andrew's lot on the way to and from practices and he was out with Kevin and Andrew most nights, so he gave his evenings to the upperclassmen.

He knew things about them he'd never bothered to learn about anyone else in his entire life. Renee's birth name was Natalie; her adoptive mother renamed her when she pulled Renee out of the foster system. Her mother was the reason she and Dan were at Palmetto State. Stephanie Walker was a reporter who'd interviewed Wymack with the ulterior motive of marketing Renee to him. Wymack flew to North Dakota during spring championships to watch Renee's team take on their biggest rivals. Dan happened to be captain of the rival team, and Wymack was impressed by her fierce performance. He signed them both that same weekend.

"It was pretty bad," Dan admitted when Renee told Neil the story. "I couldn't believe Coach actually expected us to get along, especially after her team kicked mine out of championships in my senior year."

"She took it very personally," Renee said with a fond smile on her face.

Neil tried imaging a time when they weren't friends and found it difficult. "You got over it eventually."

"I didn't have a choice," Dan said. "The Foxes didn't want girls on the line-up, and they especially didn't want one as captain."

"We had to face our teammates as a united force," Renee said, motioning from herself to Dan and Allison. "It was the only way to survive. Our friendship was a show that started and stopped at our bedroom door. It took most of the year for us to realize it wasn't an act anymore."

"I didn't figure it out until summer break," Dan said, "when I was talking to the girls about the season."

By 'the girls' she meant her stage sisters. Dan, aka Hennessey, had gotten a fake ID back in high school so she could work as a stripper in a nearby city. The hours worked well around her classes and Exy schedule, and it made the money she needed. Her aunt was unemployed and stuck at home with a newborn. Dan somehow had to support all three of them. Dan said she stopped talking to her aunt the second she moved out, but she kept in touch with her former coworkers. Supposedly they were all waiting for her to become a hotshot star.