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The creepiest part was: Wymack’s house looked untouched.
Easily tipped papers towered in the study, dirty plates littered the kitchen counter, a discarded sweatshirt or sock could be found here and there, but all of it originated with the tall, tattooed home-owner. Usually that wouldn’t concern anyone but Abby, whose weekly ritual involved whipping Wymack into doing his chores. On this particular summer day a week after pre-season practice began, however, it concerned every visiting Fox.
And all of them, short to tall, old to very, startlingly young, visited.
“He’s not all that different. A little less mouthy, a little more short, still constantly wanting to play Exy… Aside from the occasional question about you-know-who, he’s basically the same.”
“We are not keeping him like this.”
“I’m just saying, it’s not a completely awful development. Look how cute he is! And he’s so well behaved - if I have a kid, I want one as nice as him.”
“Nicky, seriously. Do we have any new ideas about how to turn him back? Or what caused this in the first place?”
“Nope.”
Dan buried her face in her hands. Nicky gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
In the living room, an eight year old’s eyes were glued to the T.V. At his side sat Kevin, whose gaze was also glued to the T.V.
They were watching Exy re-runs. They had been watching Exy re-runs for two hours. Neil had a fountain of questions while Kevin had a fountain of answers, though the latter had a pinched look to his face after having to answer the same one three times over. Before that, Dan had sat with Neil and watched morning cartoons. Before that, Nicky had made him a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. Five days before that, Andrew had woken up in Abby’s home with an eight year old swimming in a nineteen year old’s clothing.
The kid hadn’t shed a tear, but more than a few Foxes panicked fiercely on what to do with someone that was clearly Neil but also clearly not.
For instance: he turned to Kevin at the end of hour two and asked, “You play Exy, right?”
Kevin’s pinched expression pinched harder. “Yes. I do.”
“Can we play Exy?”
Kevin glanced to Dan. Dan shook her head from behind her hands. He looked back to Neil and sounding more than a little sympathetic, said, “We don’t have gear in your size.”
Neil deflated.
“Oh.”
A pause.
Neil re-inflated, the T.V. forgotten.
“I don’t need gear. I don’t get hit, I’m really fast. I’m, like, the fastest Exy player ever.”
Immediately: “That’s not true. Maybe if you had longer legs.”
The Foxes were thus treated to the sight of Neil’s scowl’s predecessor, the pout.
This was Neil in miniature. It was a Neil that responded faster to Nathaniel than Neil. It was a Neil that, once he grew bored with the T.V. and started squirming, wouldn’t stop. He kicked his feet against the couch; he pretended to melt, slipping off it in the most dramatic manner possible, groaning the whole way down, much to Dan and Nicky’s amusement and Kevin’s chagrin; he hopped up and investigated the living room in full, overturning pillows and DVDs and dragging a dirty sock out from behind the couch before meticulously putting every item back and, oddly enough, restarting. He paused occasionally to show off his findings to his audience, reading off the back of a few DVD cases before deciding they were too much work and dropping them back by the TV. Just as Dan was about to propose they take him for a walk or something before he drove Kevin up the wall, the front door opened, slammed, and heavy boots trudged through the laundry room.
Then it was a Neil that jumped, head snapping in the door’s direction, sock shoved back where he’d found it and small body falling completely still the moment Wymack appeared in the doorway.
Kevin looked either concerned or irritated, and unsure what to do with either feeling.
Perhaps sensing the change in mood, Wymack hefted the paper bag of groceries in his direction like some sort of peace offering. “Hey, kid. Do you like chocolate cookies?”
“Yes,” a small hesitation, said kid’s eyes flitting nervously to the DVDs still strewn on the floor and then back to Wymack, “sir.”
“I’ll leave ‘em in the kitchen. Feel free to eat them whene– er, uh, after dinner. Same as Abby said about the ice cream.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wymack stared at him. Neil stared back. Breathing out a slow, drawn-out sigh, Wymack shook his head, gave a nod to the older Foxes and headed into the kitchen.
Neil watched him go, hands fidgeting with his shirt hem.
He then turned to Kevin and asked, “Is mom back yet?”
For the first time, Nicky saw Kevin swallow the first awful truth and say, borderline gentle, “Not yet.”
Neil nodded, hands twisting further in his shirt. They’d had to do an emergency run to find clothes that fit him. It unfortunately meant he’d worn that shirt two days in a row, with a grass stain on his shoulder and syrup smudge down his front proudly displaying the small victories he’d had around Wymack’s property.
Then, for the first time: his face screwed up like he might cry.
“Oh, no,” Nicky breathed at the same time as Kevin blurted, “Do you want to play Exy? We’ll find a racquet your size.”
Shaking his head, Neil back-pedaled a step, tripped over his own feet, fell on his butt, and looked even closer to crying. Mouth open and tiny chest heaving on mostly silent gasps, his hands raised to scrub at reddened eyes.
The Foxes present each suffered an individual panic over what to do.
“Hey, hey, Nei– Nathaniel, come on, don’t cry,” Nicky tried, stumbling forward alongside Dan to kneel next to him, “it’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll see your mom soon,” Dan shot him a glare, he shrugged helplessly.
As the mention of her, Neil cried harder, the air between each gasp hiccuping on a start-and-stop wail. When Nicky reached for him, a hand snapped out to swat Nicky’s away, Neil’s intermittent silence broken with a screamed, “Don’t look at me!”
Hands up, both Nicky and Dan fell back. “Okay, okay, whoa, shh, you’re okay.”
From the doorway, Wymack demanded: “What the hell did you do to him?”
“I don’t know! He just started crying!”
The appearance of Wymack intensified Neil’s cries further, his legs pushing him back until he hit the wall. Realizing that, Wymack retreated immediately, though Kevin could see him through the doorway, his hands laced behind his head and lip bitten.
A child’s ceaseless crying did that to a person. And Neil definitely looked like he was gunning for a full, who-knew-how-long tantrum.
Andrew and Aaron made their reappearance from the garage, finally. Aaron snapped, “Hey, brat, quit it,” while Andrew moved, focused as a dog on the hunt, from door to miniature, sobbing Neil.
(Aaron’s comment received a glance and startled, temporary pause. But when he restarted, there was no true decrease in volume.)
The kid screamed at him to go away and stop looking, too. Not reaching for him, Andrew calmly and evenly told him that if he wanted to cry, he needed to do it in the study, not the living room. He then asked what the problem was, to which Neil sobbed out, “Mom,” and “He said,” and “kitchen,” as the only discernible words in a sea of gibberish.
“You want to go home?” Andrew asked.
Cheeks tear and snot-smeared, Neil nodded.
“Alright. That’s fine. But first, you have to either stop crying, or go to the study. Do you want to go to the study?”
“I want to go home!”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no good reason why not, but you can’t. Do you want to go to the study?”
At last, Neil nodded.
“Alright. Do you want one of us to go with you?”
Neil shook his head, sobs dialing down to hiccups and gasps.
“Do you know where the study is?”
Neil shook his head to that, too.
“I’m going to go with you. Okay?”
A long, long pause, wherein Neil’s tears made fat tracks down his puffy face and he seemed to contemplate Andrew’s whole person. Finally, voice defiant, he declared: “No. I’m going to go myself.”
Andrew tsked. “You’ll get lost.”
A big sniffle, but even more defiant: “No, I won’t. The house isn’t that big.”
Andrew shrugged at him, and stood. “Prove it.”
Stumbling up on unsteady legs, Neil beelined for the hallway not connected to the kitchen, his head down and fists balled. He didn’t once glance to the others, though he stopped at Aaron’s side to snap, “You can’t help me, either.”
Aaron blinked down at him, then said, “Fine. I wasn’t going to.”
“Liar.”
“Brat.”
Neil jabbed a finger at him, poking it into his side. When Aaron swatted it away with a warning look, Neil bared his teeth in something like a grin. Then and only then did he glance back to the living room, seem to remember where he was, and, grin dropping, hurried on into the hall.
Sparing Kevin a glance and one raised eyebrow (as if he just knew he’d offered Exy in exchange for silence), Andrew followed Neil at a much more leisurely pace. After a moment, face affecting a look of indifference, Aaron wandered after them both.
Nicky gaped behind them. Dan let out a short, shocked laugh.
“That,” she shook her head, “was weirder than Neil being bite-sized.”
“You have strange definitions of weird, Wilds,” Wymack commented from the kitchen. Excitement done, he broke out the cookies for the adults.
Post-cookie crying fit aside, Neil really was a great kid.
The second he was told to stop doing something, he stopped, and he only had to be told once if he wasn’t allowed somewhere or couldn’t do a thing. Combined with the big baby blues, red-dusted curls and hints of a rougher past in the bubbled skin on his shoulder and puckered bullet wound above his clavical, one glance was enough to send all the grown children crowding around scrambling to get him whatever he wanted.
After the eighth day of no successful cure, Allison shook her head at the pitiful second-hand stuffed animals Nicky had lent from his own private collection and demanded the Foxes help her shop for toys on her dime. The result was a mishmosh of dolls, rubber dinosaurs, bright orange nerf guns, new age gaming consoles with child appropriate, Italian plumber-ridden games, an overflowing box of legos, a practice Exy racquet and gear, and whatever other bauble or fluff caught their eye (save the Minyard twins, of whom tagged along but bought nothing). Wymack’s living room became a minefield of bright, bubbly gifts.
As with a real minefield, Neil treated them like they would explode if handled without care.
Matt was the first to notice. In the Foxes’ defense, if they approached him with a toy, he’d play like any other kid: for instance, to Aaron’s great frustration, he was startling good at Mario Kart.
But the moment he was left alone to decide what to do (if Exy was off the table which it usually was, as they couldn’t keep sneaking a kid into the Foxhole Court without the media eventually catching on), he’d plop himself on the couch with Nicky’s raggedy old turtle and quietly watch television.
It wasn’t from a lack of energy. Neil was never, ever out of energy.
“Hey, kiddo,” Matt asked from beside said couch, flopping down an arm’s length away with a big, exaggerated grin. Neil started at the sudden arrival, but just as quickly matched Matt’s smile. Wymack and the other Foxes had split off for equal parts kid clothes shopping and groceries, leaving Matt with Neil-sitting duty. “What'cha doing?”
“Watching cartoons,” Neil replied with a tone that briefly made Matt wonder just how well behaved Neil actually was. Before the thought could go too far, the cartoons went forgotton in favor of his new couch buddy. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to think of something to do.”
Neil nodded as if he fully understood the problem. “We could… play Exy.”
Exaggerating his wince only a little, Matt shook his head. “Aaw, man, sorry, buddy. Court’s closed.”
Predictably, that made Neil frown. Unpredictably, he added a groan and his own exaggerated flop over the couch arm. “I’m going to be so out of practice. Wilson’s gonna make fun of me.”
“Wilson’s your teammate?”
“Goalie.”
“Oh, goalie? Yikes. Those types are always trouble.”
Neil nodded in pure, genuine agreement. Matt felt only a little bad; mostly he hoped the bigger Neil, whenever he returned, wouldn’t remember this.
“So,” Matt asked after an appropriate pause, “what else do you want to do?”
Fiddling with the turtle’s overstuffed paw, Neil straightened and returned his gaze to the television. After a moment, he shrugged.
Matt tried for a smile. This was part of what had clued him in to the peculiar pickiness of Nathaniel: though they all ran the ‘what do you want to do’ gauntlet with Neil (it was a bit like pulling teeth; apparently, he was pre-disposed to being a cagey little bastard), he never really picked what they did. Maybe he’d smile more at legos than video games, but that was about as far as it went. “There must be something. When you can’t go outside, what do you usually do? Video games? Legos? Books?”
Neil’s head tilted one way, then the other. Finally, he shook his head.
“I’ll do whatever you usually do,” Matt declared.
They fell back into silence. Neil’s fidgeting increased.
Matt almost gave in to the quiet, a little worried the kid would start crying (Dan had told him the story about the chocolate chip cookies, and he was not prepared to field that level of break-down) but then Neil muttered, “Sometimes Lola and me play.”
Grasping onto the comment like a lifeline, Matt barely managed to keep his tone light. “Is that right? What do you play?”
Neil’s face screwed up, but it was in thought, not tears. Eventually, he said: “I’m not supposed to tell strangers.”
Wait. What?
“You don’t have to tell me,” Matt said, feeling as though he’d just walked onto thin, cracking ice. “You can just show me.”
Turtle clutched to his stomach, Neil watched him from the corner of his eye.
Just as Matt wondered (with a bit of hysteria) if he should get a doll or a nerf gun - who the fuck knew with Neil’s mobster family - Neil set the turtle aside, slid off the couch, and padded to the kitchen.
Letting out a relieved sigh, Matt got up and followed. Okay. So Lola and him played real life cooking mama. Lola was probably a nanny, or some highly trained hitwoman (Neil had asked where ‘the suits’ were, which took them an hour to figure out meant bodyguards), or maybe both. While Matt wasn’t the best at cooking - his talents extended to macaroni and cheese with an extra-butter-extra-milk garnish - he was willing to give it a go for Neil.
All his cheer drained out when he arrived in the kitchen only to find Neil armed with not a frying pan, but a serrated steak knife.
“Ooh,” Matt breathed, his hands automatically up, palms out, the curse bitten back by last minute grace, “God. What are you doing?”
“Playing.” As if it were obvious. As if the way he held the knife, blade level with Matt’s stomach, was anywhere close to normal. “Since I have the knife, you don’t get one. Only one person gets a knife at a time. You have to take mine if you want it. That’s the rules.”
“Nathaniel, hmm, um, I don’t think I want to play. Why don’t you put that down?”
Immediately, Neil shook his head. He took a step forward; Matt took a step back. “That’s not part of the game. You just want to take it for yourself.”
Against his better judgment, swallowing thickly, Matt asked: “Then how does the game end?”
Neil’s face screwed up. The knife, Matt noticed, did not wobble.
“When the person with the knife says so.”
Neil took another step forward. Matt took another back, legs bumping into the living room’s armchair. It was absolutely terrifying. Matt was absolutely, positively terrified.
“Neil– Ne- Nathaniel, listen to me,” he stammered, stuttered and scrambled, “do you really want to play this? We don’t have to play this. We can go back to watching cartoons. Wouldn’t you rather do that?”
Miraculously, Neil stopped advancing. His eyes were on Matt’s, narrowed in suspicion and distrust.
The knife tipped downward. “You said you wanted to play.”
“No,” Matt emphasized, remaining calm by a thread, “I didn’t know what you meant by play. I was thinking… anything else.”
Neil eyed him again, all his confusion and all of his distrust painted on his face. The kid version really wasn’t too different from the big one. He was just a worse liar.
“I’m keeping this,” Neil declared, voice too loud. “You don’t get one. Only one’s allowed, and this one’s mine.” Like a challenge. Like something he’d thought before. Like he really, really didn’t believe Matt had no interest in picking it up and– what. Stab him? Oh, fuck. Lola stabbed him. Lola made a game out of stabbing an eight year old. Holy shit.
So, Matt agreed. “Okay. You can keep it. But you have to be careful with it. No… stabbing. No stabbing anything.”
Lip curled, Neil cradled the knife to his chest like it was that ratty turtle. He gave Matt a wide breadth as he edged back to the living room, climbing silently onto the couch.
Matt watched as he glared death at the only toy he’d taken a shine to, poked it with the knife, threatened it with something like only good kids get knives, glanced back to see Matt watching, and then turned back around to kick it off the couch. He then curled up, both hands unwavering around the black hilt.
Neil was usually a great kid.
And then he did something like that.
There was no good response to that. There was absolutely, positively no good response to that. Matt was fairly certain he’d just starred in a B-list horror film, and the only response he should have was to call a priest.
Instead, he took his leave, retreating quietly to the kitchen and holding it together long enough to dial Dan.
“You really scared them with the knife.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But Matt asked to see, didn’t he?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be sorrier if you let that melt.”
Shoving a spoonful of half-chocolate soup, half-chocolate ice cream into his mouth, Neil kicked his feet under his chair and ducked his head.
He was good at acting like he was doing exactly what he was told. He had the others convinced, which was probably why Matt had been a blubbering mess upon their emergency return from the shopping trip. Admittedly, the incident was a big one, especially when Neil wouldn’t fess up to where he’d put the knife even under threat of Wymack asking in a stern, I’m-not-angry-I’m-asking-calmly voice.
Dan had eventually uncovered the blade hidden in a dirty sock behind the DVD cases, but by then, Neil had started in on rapid, fretful apologies and looked on the verge of tears; not knowing how else to react, they’d let him go with little more than a slap on the wrist.
Contrary to the doleful eyed, rosy cheeked routine, Andrew had caught Neil hoarding sweets in his closet, which he presumably ate before dinner, as well as touching things he was told not to the second the person turned their back. True, Neil did everything he was directly asked perfectly. However, even if something was routine - like putting dishes in the sink - he’d pretend he didn’t know what to do until told. Finally, although Andrew hadn’t proof, he was positive the reason Wymack struggled to find pens and pencils in his study was because Neil relocated them to various drawers around the house.
Which, the smaller version wasn’t even supposed to be in the study.
So.
Cherub face aside, Neil was no angel.
It was like he wanted to be caught. It was like he wanted to be yelled at.
It’s like, Aaron pointed out, he doesn’t know what to do with peace and quiet.
How familiar, Andrew thought but didn’t say. There was a line between instigation and tactlessness. That comment crossed it.
The restlessness in him grew with every passing day. He’d stopped asking for his mother after the crying fit, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign; even at his age, he seemed smart enough to have realized asking wasn’t working.
Really, it was only a matter of time before he ran.
In no way could they let him run.
“Yours is melting,” Neil triumphantly accused, his spoon dripping sticky cream onto the table as he jabbed it in Andrew’s direction.
“Yours is getting everywhere,” he shot back.
Neil grinned, spoon again shoved into his mouth. “Sorry.”
He was such a brat.
Andrew decided to say as much. Neil liked being talked to; it was when he was left to his own devices that he started spiraling into disarray. That was fortunately a quality found in most children, including the fucked up ones, and thus more a point of stress than concern. “You are insufferable.”
Around his spoon, he asked, “What’s that mean?”
“It’s you. You’re insufferable. Nathaniel Insufferable Wesninski.”
“No, I’m not. I’m Nathaniel Abram Wesninski.”
“Abram’s a mouthful.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. Insufferable’s worse!”
Andrew made a low, disagreeable noise.
Spoon finally placed back to the bowl, Neil leaned forward. “I like Abram. I don’t like insufferable.”
“Is Abram better than Nathaniel?”
“Yeah. Loads better.”
“Why?”
“Mom likes it.” Satisfied with this reasoning, Neil rocked back into his seat, the chairlegs creaking across the floor. “She uses it when she’s proud of me.”
“When’s that?”
“When I play Exy.”
He didn’t need to ask, but he did: “Is that why you like Exy?”
In a flash, the confidence disappeared into unease. He tilted his head, watching Andrew unsubtly from the corner of his eye. In this, Andrew preferred the smaller version: it was so much less work pulling out what he felt. Less interesting, too, but, well. Andrew was already invested. It was a bit late for him to weigh interest.
The kid said, voice too light to be convincing, “Yeah.”
Then he asked, because he was a brat, through and through: “Why do you like Exy?”
He contemplated his usual answer, but discarded it as too time-consuming. Knowing kids (which, admittedly, his experience was limited to this difficult one), they’d be trapped in a ‘nuh-uh,’ ‘yeah-huh’ debate for an hour. Though he wouldn’t have answered after the first minute, it was exhausting just to think about.
However Nicky and Matt managed to always be smiles for Neil, Andrew didn’t want to know. The sooner this ended, the better.
“I like it just because,” he finally answered.
Immediately, Neil replied: “That’s a stupid reason.”
Andrew saved himself from answering by eating more ice cream. He felt himself contemplate texting Nicky to take over Neil-sittig and, just as quickly, discarded it.
The brat across the table wheedled: “There has to be another reason. Tell me the truth.”
“Just because you think it’s stupid doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.”
“Then say a different one.”
“You can’t cherry pick truths.”
“Why not?”
Oh, no. That endless questioning was exactly what he’d been avoiding.
Re-focusing on what was left of his ice cream, he polished it off while ignoring Neil’s repetitive, meandering questions about his interest in Exy, then about why he played goalie, then if he knew a kid named Wilson, then an explanation of who Wilson was, a few jabs at goalies and then an unsubtle jab at Andrew, whereupon the ice cream was done and Andrew pointedly took his dish to the sink. Neil jumped up to do the same like an irritatingly happy duckling.
That was when Andrew realized Nicky and Aaron had returned from shopping and had been, for some time, watching.
Andrew ordered Neil to the living room; he scampered off without complaint, giving Nicky and Aaron a quick, quieter hello before - from the sounds of it - cannon-balling onto the couch.
He was probably wrestling with that ugly stuffed turtle. He treated it like a lifeline. Andrew really didn’t understand.
“Aww,” Nicky cooed, his arms ladened with Kohl’s bags. Turning back from the living room to gently bump his elbow against Andrew’s, he ignored the small glare it got him. “That must have been the most he’s talked with anybody in one sitting. I think he likes you, Andrew.”
“For the next four hours, he’s your problem.” Nicky nodded, perhaps infected by the kitchen’s restored calm. As a bit of Andrew didn’t do well with peace and quiet, either, he couldn’t help adding: “Careful he doesn’t get any more knives.”
Nicky turned sheet-white in a manner of seconds, ducking toward Aaron to ask in an undertone if Neil was back to playing that particular game.
Andrew took the chance to slink out to his car.
If a pint-sized version of Neil Josten later appeared and shyly asked for a ride to which Andrew had to oblige, Andrew saved his complaints for when he and Nicky were alone.
(And if Abram spent the majority of the ride with his head stuck out the sun-roof, that was no business of anyone’s but the wheat fields they passed.)
Although Wymack’s couch had become home for the pint-sized version of their friend, they relocated him to Abby’s house when the coach was called away for a three-day conference five states over.
In order to make him feel comfortable (and to not leave him alone in a new environment with just the Monsters for company, because no matter how good Abby was and how much Andrew clearly favored Neil, old concerns remained – this, thought but not said by two of the girls), it was decided that move-in day for Neil would double as a team-wide sleepover.
Luckily: Abby approved.
The Monsters roosted in the bedrooms during the summer, but Nicky volunteered their blankets for extra padding and, grumble though Kevin and Aaron did, saying no to the kid who curiously asked, What’s a sleepover? was much harder than expected.
The day was good. The day involved impromptu, child-friendly Exy-slash-tackle-and-roll games in the backyard, a noisy and energetic cook-out, and not one problem from any quarter.
Until bed-time came,and Neil refused to let the day end.
He wouldn’t be quiet. He wouldn’t lay down. He came up with more and more ridiculous things to do, bolstered at first by Nicky’s happy encouragement and then by Allison’s amusement at what a firecracker he was turning out to be. It seemed like Neil had opened up; which felt like a silly thing to think about an eight-year-old, but looking back to the days previous, something about him had been tense. Like he’d hated every hour in front of the T.V. but hadn’t want to talk about it – but now, oh, he was fully willing to up and race away from the bedrolls.
Thank goodness it hadn’t taken another full year and teammate death to gain Neil Josten’s trust. The small version couldn’t possibly last that long. Right?
Charades was funny until the clock hit midnight. Then the adults were just as tired as the kid should’ve been, and an ultimatum of everyone report to their beds had to be set.
Neil dragged his feet and sulkily complained, which was a first. For all his cheekiness, he hadn’t ever whined.
Well. Now he had. It didn’t make the Foxes budge, and soon enough, he was tucked into his spot in the middle of the floor.
Curtains were drawn in preparation for the dawn. Lights were shut off. Chatter died out. Phone screens went dark. By and by, quiet settled over those on the floor (the majority), armchair (Kevin) and couch (Andrew).
When Renee checked, her phone informed her it was four-forty in the morning. She woke up from a myriad of possible reasons, beginning with Nicky’s snoring and ending with Dan’s unconscious shifting every ten minutes, but what kept her from cocooning up in her blanket was the empty space she spied between Matt and Aaron.
(Neil in this form liked Aaron muchly, if the way he never left the twin alone was an indication. He’d personally demanded Aaron sleep next to him.)
(He’d also shot a smug look toward Andrew when Aaron shrugged and agreed, but really, the whole thing was endearing.)
Straining her ears, she heard the clock tick in the kitchen and the pipes settle in the walls. She did not hear the sounds of a bathroom break or late-night snack.
That was, in her experience sleeping in large piles of mismatched run-away children, not good.
Naturally, she investigated.
Leaving those behind her sleeping soundly, she crept on socked feet across kitchen and into foyer. As Neil’s grass-stained shoes were still by the door, she backtracked to the hall and up the stairs, careful by habit to avoid squeaking floorboards.
She mostly succeeded.
(That was good: not being as careful and noticing but not caring. That was incredible.)
She found him not by his fault but by process of elimination. Abby’s room was off-limits, its door shut tight. The bathroom looked untouched. Nicky and Aaron’s room was empty on a glance. Same with Andrew and Kevin’s room. Before she checked their closets (or, more likely, decided he would take the time he needed and brew something hot in the kitchen for when he showed up), the linen closet that had been emptied earlier caught her eye.
Silently betting her money against an imaginary Dan and Matt, she pulled it open.
The fluff-topped figure inside hid his face in his knees, little arms wrapped tight around his legs.
Renee’s heart didn’t clench. Some sick part of her was happy to find a familiar sight: this child’s fear was something she understood, engraved in her from years of being in his place.
There were a few approaches to take. The first to enter her mind, the most familiar and easy, she shuffled into her never do pile.
(She wished, rather, she had brought something warm to offer; she certainly didn’t fit the bill, not like her adoptive mother had.)
Summoning what she had been taught over old reflex, she kept her voice gentle and hands to herself. “Hi, Nathaniel. Nightmare?”
At the sound of her voice, he shuffled himself back farther.
She remembered: don’t look at me.
Nathaniel, she thought, felt things very strongly. The older he became the more he learned to repress, not express.
“You don’t have to come out right now.” He stiffened. He listened. She continued. “But when you want to, you can meet me in the kitchen. It’s much more comfortable there.”
She paused. He didn’t move, like a rabbit holding still in hopes that the fox would continue by.
“Do you want me to shut this?”
She waited.
Downsides, a clock ticked, ever louder in the quiet.
In front of her, hesitantly, face still in his knees, he shook his head.
So she left it ajar as she doubled back, moving as slow and quiet as she had in her approach.
By the time he appeared within her line of sight, thin and wary as a wraith and clinging to the stair’s banister as if it would keep him from falling, she had managed to boil water on the stove without waking anyone else up.
(Well, she was fairly sure Andrew had woken up, but he let her handle it.)
(Or, more likely: he was seeing how she would handle it.)
“Hot cocoa?” She asked in a carrying whisper. Neil ghosted to the doorway, clinging to the frame. He nodded. She snagged the box off the top of Abby’s fridge.
To keep from making too much of a racket at the lovely hour of five-thirty, she took the mugs out to the porch. Neil followed more readily, eyes wide as dinner plates on the steaming mug she handed him.
She warned him about it being hot; in true kid fashion, he took a sip anyway.
At his grimace as he burned his tongue, she felt herself relax into an honest smile. It was a peculiar feeling - it matched the pink and purple sunrise precisely.
They decided to use their day of from Exy practice to take Neil to the county fair.
“This was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”
“Even stupider than–?”
“Yes, Nicky. Even stupider than vodka-tequila shots.”
None of them were fans of county fairs, exactly, but there were rides and cotton candy and popcorn and harmless, inbred animals to hold one’s nose at. On paper, they couldn’t imagine a place better to bring an energetic child that loved rolling around in the grass.
In a thin, I’m trying to keep calm and miserably failing but I refuse to acknowledge it voice, Nicky said, “I was thinking of when we let Neil and Kevin run commentary after the Raven’s second loss of the season.”
“Since vodka-tequila made Kevin submit an entire video to the hottest Exy Youtube channel, I’d put it at third on the list.”
“You make a fair argument, Aaron Minyard. I amend my previous sentiment to agree that, yes, this was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”
It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
No one said that. Partially because Aaron would never say it and Nicky was too distracted to think it, and partially because everyone else had split off into pairs to desperately comb the fair grounds for their wayward child. Blame had flown before then, of course: he was supposed to be at the ring toss with you, Matt! no, he was with Allison! I haven’t seen the pipsqueak since the cream puffs! that was hours ago, are you saying you didn’t even notice–
But then Renee pointed out the twins had already left to look, and blame didn’t matter as much as finding him.
Nicky had found Aaron alone behind the cow barn. Andrew and he had split by the ferris wheel, he said, to better cover ground. Since it was completely Andrew’s fault for losing the kid (their grown teammate, jesus, every day that passed made it feel more impossible to turn him back), he had better be the one to find him.
Nicky racked his memory for a possible cause to Neil’s disappearance and came up short on anything involving his violently inclined cousin. “How’s it Andrew’s fault?”
Grumbled, Aaron distracted with eye-balling every booth they passed, “He kept a close enough eye on the rest of us. How’d he fuck up with an eight year old? It’s downright insulting. To us.”
“… You do remember the months you spent sneaking off to meet Katelyn, right?”
Aaron didn’t acknowledge him.
Nicky opened his mouth to offer a further opinion on the possibility of Andrew’s fault, but nearly tripping over his shorter cousin when Aaron stopped dead cut him off.
“Give a little warning, why don’t yo– Neil!”
Indeed. Neil.
Well, still in bitty form. But safe and present, glancing their way at his nickname, and bolting immediately upon spotting them, scrambling under a ring-toss booth and between corndog carnies and someone half their size should not be that quick.
They would have lost him entirely if a burlier figure hadn’t shot out from behind a game booth with all the force and grace of a backliner and swept the kid quite literally off his feet. But Andrew did, dangling Neil haphazardly in his arms.
As Nicky and Aaron pulled to a stop next to them, Neil began to struggle like a snared rabbit.
Upside: he did not start screaming.
Downside: he did start biting. And scratching. And kicking.
“Good thing you’ve got thick skin,” Nicky tried to joke, feeling the humor wither even as he spoke.
Andrew gave the kid a shake, the struggling somehow flipping him so Andrew held him by the legs, not the arms. The kid, a bonafide monster, clawed at his shins and shoes.
“Are you going to call the others, or not?”
“Right.”
Nicky dug out his phone while Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose and Andrew focused on righting Neil. A shoe popped him in the chin; he dropped Neil and, before he ran, scoped him back up.
“It’s like we’re meeting for the first time all over again,” Andrew grit out at the leech with teeth stuck into his arm. “It’d be in your best interest to knock it off before I find a racquet.”
Hateful, eyes glassy with tears, Neil pointedly twisted his arms one more time.
“People are looking.”
“Oh, are they. We’ll just explain that this is actually our fully grown teammate shrunk down and that, yes, this is fairly typical behaviour no matter his size.”
A nervous chuckle eked out of Nicky’s throat. “Or, we could be his adoptive parents!”
Aaron scoffed. “Yeah. Like anyone’s going to believe that. We’re better off explaining the magic.”
Then Dan picked up with a frantic, Did you find him?, and Nicky stuck his finger into his other ear to better hear and speak with her.
Neil, red-faced and chest heaving for massive gulps of air, momentarily let go to stare at Nicky. For one blessed second, his struggling died down.
Andrew reminded him of where he was and what he’d been hoping to accomplish with another little shake. Watery eyes turned up to him, a little chin wobbling.
“Use your words.”
(It should be noted: from where Neil bit, Andrew’s arm dripped red.)
Neil did not. Head dropping, fight gone, he didn’t seem capable of articulation beyond hiccups and wet, tear and mucus filled coughs.
But then he proved himself wrong by gasping out, every word a thin inhale, “Thought, I, saw, mom.”
“We kept telling you, your mom isn’t here.”
“Why? Say why!”
“Because,” blunt as a bat to the head, “your mom is–”
Aaron cut him off with a pointed step in the pair’s direction, fists balled at his side and a terse, “This isn’t the time or place,” grit out between clenched teeth.
Nicky’s voice trailed off at the sight, the description of where they were stuttering to a stop as the two brothers squared off.
Equally transfixed, Neil’s gaze jumped between the two of them.
“He’s eight.” Not calm. Not indifferent. The words were everything Aaron Minyard tried not to be. “And you’re talking about his mother.”
“He’s not stupid.” Calmer. Deadlier or, maybe, deader. “Holding off on telling him brought us here. Holding off longer is only going to make more trouble.”
“Telling me about what?” Neil sniffed, sounding like everything his age was supposed to be. “What about mom?”
Andrew’s eyes fell down to the bundle in his arms, hazel meeting blue.
A moment passed. Nicky, still distracted, attempted to restart the description.
“Later.” Neil’s eyes jumped to Aaron, of whom slowly reconstructed his indifference. “Once we’re back at the house. We’ll tell you.”
A beat.
He added, “If you’re good.”
(Hands still tight around Neil’s wrists, Andrew stiffened.)
Taking it as a promise, tears aside, Neil was. The Foxes left the fair soon after gathering by the cousins and their found ward.
The ride home was tense.
But then, it was nothing compared to dealing with the aftermath at Abby’s.
The Foxes panicked on the way home from the carnival. They panicked while parking in Abby’s. They panicked their way into the house and fixing Neil a late lunch. They panicked into fostering him on Kevin, whose panic was more preemptive discomfort, so as to better panic in the kitchen.
Aaron did not panic. He was engaged in a staring contest at Andrew, of whom elected to ignore both the contest and Aaron.
Matt, being neither a Minyard nor good with panic, said: “We have to tell him.”
“Since when?” Dan demanded.
“It’d be better if he knew,” Renee murmured. “It’s gone on long enough as it is. The only variable is the method.”
“You’re talking about this like it’s a problem with a good solution. We’re talking about telling a little boy his parents are dead.”
“I don’t think he’ll mind much about his dad,” Nicky quipped, “on the bright side.”
“Can’t Kevin just play Exy with him until he falls asleep?”
“We already did that last weekend.”
“Oh, and Kevin’s obsession with Exy is unreliable?”
“No, but tiny Neil’s is.”
“Arguably.”
Allison made a noise of disgust. “We’re overthinking this. Le’s just… tell him.”
Briefly, silence.
None of them wanted to be the one to tell him. Imagining the questions he’d have was nightmarish. Being the one who told Nathaniel Wesninski that he’d never see his mom again and that there wasn’t even a gravesite to visit was, simply put, horrific.
“What if--” Nicky started and stopped. Four pairs of eyes turned to him. He glanced to his side with utmost bemusement.
He said, “Uh. Shit.”
And then, “I think Aaron made a choice for us.”
He backpedaled quickly from the kitchen and tore out for the backyard.
The rest of the Foxes, cursing the Monsters’ name, followed.
Kevin put up a feeble fight against Aaron’s determination and Andrew’s cool indifference, but before he could do much more than hiss, “Why are you interrupting our game for this,” Neil left his spot on the field to venture closer.
As the one who had left the kitchen precisely because the others’ overt concern put an itch under his skin and a bad taste in his mouth, Aaron ignored Kevin to drop down to a knee next to Neil. Andrew, for his part, shut down Kevin’s protests with a glare.
Now eye-level with the grouchier twin, Neil pushed his helmet off while Aaron said, “There’s something you need to know.”
“Mom’s dead?”
Aaron, caught mid-response, was left agape.
Andrew paused.
Kevin’s discomfort grew.
Finally, from Aaron: “Yeah.”
Neil nodded. “Makes sense.”
The house door opened, voices tumbling out in loud and upset protestations. Kevin glanced back, but the other three didn’t budge.
Eyes on Neil’s, Aaron added, “Your dad, too.”
Neil's head tilted. He squinted. He hugged his arms. “Really?”
Aaron nodded.
Neil didn't seem to believe him. But after a moment, he nodded back.
While the remaining Foxes stomped down to the group, Neil picked up his helmet and went to tug on Kevin’s shirt. “Can we get back to Exy? You still need to work on dodging.”
Blowing out a breath and regaining an exasperated scowl, Kevin went with his pull. Turning his back on the others’ shocked and confused faces helped ease his discomfort (or maybe that was just going back to what made sense: that was, Exy). “As I keep telling you, dodging the ball isn’t part of the game. Just because you ignore me doesn’t make it less true.”
Neil blew a raspberry at him.
The Foxes left on the sidelines glanced toward one another. All eyes made their way to Aaron before long, though it was only Nicky who managed to ask, “Did you tell?”
Aaron moved his own gaze from the two racing around the backyard to his cousin’s. “Didn’t have to. He knew.”
“Sorry?”
“Your panicking went over worse than the news,” he said, pointedly, “as far as I can tell.”
Usually that would make Allison scoff or Dan protest his blaming them, but as they watched Neil playfully toe the line with Kevin’s need to correct and need to win, there wasn’t any room to say Aaron’s assessment was wrong. They couldn’t bring themselves to leave out of the vague sense that Neil had to have a bigger reaction; but, as the sun moved over the sky and Kevin declared Neil in need of rehydration and a snack (much to Neil’s distaste), nothing more on the topic was said.
“Are you feeling alright?” Dan asked at one point, crouching to talk one-on-one with Neil.
“Yeah,” Neil replied, giving her a weird look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Her immediate response was to wave it away, but she tapered it down. “It could be a shock.”
Neil stared at her. “What could be?”
She made an inarticulate gesture, fighting for the words.
After a moment of incomprehension, his mouth formed into a small oh. “Mom being dead?”
So blunt. Rendered speechless, Dan nodded.
Neil shrugged, eyes skittering away and hands tangling with his shirt. “It’s fine. She always said it could happen.” Then he asked, “Are you sure about my father?”
“We're sure.”
Neil shook his head, face turned down, bottom lip caught between his teeth.
It was how he'd looked before his tantrum with Wymack. Recognizing it, Dan ran a hand through her hair, restless and uncertain. Before she could venture further into the line of questioning, however, he loudly declared that he wanted to play with the legos. Matt, from the living room, echoed happy agreement.
The topic was dropped.
That night went the same as the one before, everyone piling haphazardly into the living room. The atmosphere was tense, but only among the college students; Neil once again refused to settle down, jumping between sleeping bags and armchairs and the couch. For some, the commotion was a welcome distraction. For others, it was an aberration on their nerves. It reached the point that Allison finally snapped, well and truly snapped, at Neil to settle down and get ready for sleep.
The tone quieted the boy for a moment, but then - also for the first time - he turned his back on her anger and continued to wreck havoc.
Matt had to throw him over his shoulder to carry him to bed. He kicked and screamed in laughing protest until his feet hit his bedroll; then he fell silent, so abruptly and deathly the other Foxes worriedly offered to keep playing.
All offers were turned down. Burying himself in his plush comforter, Neil made himself all but disappear from their world.
Unwilling to force him into interacting when he didn’t want to, the Foxes went, one by one, to sleep. Most were amazed they managed to.
One didn’t manage until he gave up on sleeping with so many other bodies in the room and tip toed upstairs to his usual bed.
That one woke when a person pushed open his door. Clad in an oversized shirt and dragging a stuffed turtle, Abram asked if he could sleep with him. It took a few seconds of contemplation for a realistic answer; after, however, the bed creaked as Andrew made room.
“We’re sleeping,” he warned as Abram clambered up and snuggled close, “not playing.”
The kid fought to reply through a yawn.
“What was that?”
“No playing,” Abram chided sleepily. “Don’t be a hy-po-crit. Stop talking.”
The turtle took residence between them. The room's darkness wasn't as complete as it could have been; with an odd feeling woven between his ribs and in his lungs, Andrew reached to smooth back a few curls from Abram's forehead. He sighed, a sound as soft and forlorn as someone his age could make, and curled closer, seeking warmth and comfort.
He'd come to the wrong person for that. Andrew didn't bother pointing it out: whether Neil or Abram, he never listened.
“Brat.”
Abram shushed him with a muted giggle.
Not smiling but not frowning, Andrew shushed.
Andrew woke to someone his size clad in only a loose t-shirt. Seeing he had woken, Neil transferred his muzzy frown from the turtle on his chest to Andrew’s heavy-lidded hazel.
“Not that I’m complaining, but,” and here, he waved the turtle’s ragged arm in Andrew’s direction, “why are we in Abby’s house?”
He was as scarred as Andrew. He was, technically, more scarred than Andrew.
It was too early to contemplate.
Eyes closing, Andrew rolled over.
“Ask the others. I wouldn’t want to ruin their surprise.”
He didn’t have to look back to see Neil’s uncertainty and hesitation, but, really, the others would fall over themselves to welcome Neil back and then torture him over the pictures taken and stories made of him in miniature.
They did.
And if a few made comments to the tune of I wish you were smaller again, I feel like we were just getting the hang of parenting, they were mostly joking.