𝖋𝖑𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 𝖕𝖔𝖜𝖊𝖗 ⋆ 𝕶𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖓 𝖉𝖆𝖞

𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓

╔═══°∴,*⋅✲══〖✰〗══✲⋅*,∴°═══╗

          Thirteen has always been Daisy's favourite number.

          It was the first jersey number she was ever assigned, as a kid stepping onto a makeshift court on the football field of the shitty high school down the street. She was only ten, and the guidance counsellor had pulled her out of her third fistfight of the week. You're troubled, Miss Greene had told her in the squishy, brightly-coloured office, you need a healthy outlet for your emotions. Apparently, playing a full contact sport with kids five years her senior was the answer to that.

          And Daisy had flourished. No matter what was going on at home, what shitty drug deal her brother was making her run or what man he was letting into her bedroom for a sum of money she'd never see a cent of, she could book it to the court afterwards and pelt ball after ball at the plexiglass barrier until she couldn't feel her arms anymore. Exy was the only thing right in her life for a long time, even without her father there to cheer her on from the sidelines.

          When her brother finally got caught, after the trial that broke her heart and ripped whatever soul she had left to shreds, Exy became her way out. That was the first time her ankle got injured, in the first game of senior year. It was a stupid injury, tripped over somebody's foot on her way to catch a ball. Her coach had taken her to the ER and Daisy had been prescribed her first round of pain relievers, and it was all downhill from there. Her grades slipped, her game got sloppy, and the scouts that came to her final match on her high school team dismissed her as a clumsy backliner without any real reason to progress to a college team.

          Unlucky number 13, one of her teammates had laughed at her before she knocked them flat on their ass.

          Unlucky number 13 indeed. But after she submitted her own tapes to colleges around the country, after a semester of slogging it through community college just so she could play for their team, David Wymack had found her.

          He'd let her keep her number, and she'd gotten to keep her sanity just a little longer.

          This is what she thinks about while she sprints at full speed on the treadmill, not an hour after the bus arrives back to campus. Her self hatred can only go so far without her doing something destructive, and she guesses that beating her body up in the gym is the healthiest way to go about it. She can see the sun rising over the horizon, the giant windows before the treadmills showing the campus at dawn.

          Once the sky is rid of it's pink and purple hues, she dries herself off with a towel and heads back to the dorms. Her body aches for rest, but her mind is wide awake. She wonders if the girls realise she didn't come home, or if they were all too tired to notice. The slow jog across campus seems to take an age, but finally she's trudging up the stairs to the third floor.

          Chatter from behind the suite door makes Daisy's stomach tie itself into knots. She doesn't want to face the girls. She doesn't want to answer the questions she knows they're going to ask. Her hand grips the doorknob tight for a few moments, before she grits her teeth and twists it.

          Dan is the first one to speak as the girls analyse her sweat-drenched, shivering figure. "You could at least leave us a note," she says. Daisy opens her mouth, but Dan beats her to it. "Don't apologise. Get a shower, you reek."

          The girl tries her best to drown herself under the spray of the faucet, but to no avail. Her fingertips scrape through her roots; her hair gets soaked, but she has no energy to actually wash it. It's somebody's fist banging on the bathroom door that finally snaps her out of her daze. She flicks the water off, wraps a towel around her body, and faces the girls after a deep breath.