Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life / Unknown / Phoebe Bridgers, Funeral / Fleabag (2016) / Hanya Yanagihara / Euripides (Tr. Anne Carson), Herakles / Ryan O'Connell, The People You Will Fall In Love With In Your 20s / Joan Tierney, Mommy Issues / Alivia Horsley, Sleepover / Unknown / Taylor Swift, You're On Your Own Kid / A Summer's Tale (1996) / Harry Styles, Matilda / Rina Sawayama, Chosen Family / Smiley Poswolsky, Dear Levi / Lilo and Stitch (2002) / Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

HELL HATH NO FURY like an Exy player scorned—or in this case like Isabel Duarte.

It wasn't that she'd intentionally decided to single-handedly ruin the USC Trojans' perfect no-red-cards-ever-received-in-the-history-of-Exy reputation. Or that she'd deliberately chosen to jeopardize the team's chance at winning the Day Spirit Award for the eighth consecutive year in a row. Or that she'd purposefully gotten caught on camera saying exactly where she thought the captain of the Edgar Allen Ravens could shove his Exy racquet.

(Well. She hadn't exactly tried to be quiet when she'd said that last bit even though she'd known damn well that there was a crew of sportscasters filming nearby... but that's beside the point.)

The point is this: that Isabel Duarte hadn't meant to get herself kicked off the Trojans' Exy team at the end of her sophomore year per the orders of the Exy Rules and Regulations Committee. Then again, she hadn't meant to do a lot of other things that year, but she'd managed to do all of those, too.

(Like flunking Organic Chemistry two semesters in a row because she kept hitting the snooze button through her 8 AM lecture. Or hooking up with her team captain when she knew it was only going to make things complicated when they inevitably crashed and burned. Or watching her little sister fade into nothing more than a shell of the girl she'd been before she signed her life away to play for the aforementioned Ravens.)

She'd been so sure that she would be fine after the Incident. That she would bounce right back and be the same golden, happy-go-lucky girl she'd been before It happened. A regular ray of fucking sunshine.

Instead, Isabel became something else. Something worse. All sharp corners and serrated edges. The kind of thing that a person could fall and cut themselves on. A sullen, severed girl that no one would ever want to keep. Her jagged pieces no longer fit the cookie-cutter mold of good sportsmanship and noble virtue that the Trojans prided themselves on and held above all else despite Isabel's best efforts to just be good again rather than the lost cause that she is.

(In the end, she couldn't even blame her old team for letting her go. She'd leave herself too, if she could just figure out how.)

Isabel supposes she should be grateful, then, when the coach of the Palmetto State Foxes Exy team, possessing a soft spot for lost causes and a penchant for giving away second chances (and third and forth and fifth chances; as many chances as someone like Isabel Duarte might need), shows up on her doorstep with an Exy contract sporting Isabel's name in hand and his former-celebrity-striker-turned-assistant-coach in tow.

(Sullen Girl, meet Sullen Boy.)

Desperation is not such a foreign thing to Isabel. Rather, it's something of an old friend. One she can easily recognize in the pinched expressions and strained stares that Coach David Wymack and Kevin Day share as they wait for the verdict on whether or not Isabel will agree to join their ragtag team for her junior year.

Saying yes might be the worst decision Isabel ever makes, but at least it's Hers—one that she makes intentionally, deliberately, purposefully. Even if it's nothing more than a last-ditch effort to prove to herself that she is still someone worth keeping.

✁

MAIA REFICCO          ╱          ISABEL DUARTE / #13

                              I kneel into a dream where I
                    am good & loved. I am
                              good. I am loved. My hands have made
          some good mistakes. They can always
                                                                 make better ones.

✃

Michael Provost          ╱          JEREMY KNOX

Jenna Ortega          ╱          TESS HEMMICK

Ayo Edebiri          ╱          NAOMI WILLIAMS

Hunter Schafer          ╱          ELLIE MCPHERSON

Oliver Jackson-Cohen          ╱          THE MAN IN BLACK

Kwak Dong-yeon          ╱          KEVIN DAY / #2

✶

ESME MCLEAN          ╱          SISTER

ILIANA MCLEAN          ╱          MOTHER

ESTER DUARTE          ╱          AUNT

&

THE PALMETTO STATE FOXES

Sydney Park                          Danielle Wilds / #1

Archie Renaux             Andrew Minyard / # 3

Mason Gooding                          Matt Boyd / #4

Archie Renaux     Aaron Minyard / # 5

Madelyn Cline                 Allison Reynolds / #7

Taylor Zakhar Perez          Nicky Hemmick / #8

Havana Rose Liu                  Renee Walker / #9

Jack Champion                        Neil Josten / #10

As Described                 Coach David Wymack

IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ.

TRIGGER WARNINGS
For any readers unfamiliar with All For the Game, this series is full of extremely triggering content. Please, please, please make sure to carefully read the list of triggers that comes with this series.

Your mental health should always be your number one priority while reading. Even though this fic will not necessarily contain all of the following topics or touch on them in detail, please do not read the All For the Game series or this fic if you are uncomfortable with themes including but not limited to:

Ableism, Abuse, Abortion, Alcoholism, Character Death, Depression/Anxiety/Mania and Other Complex Mental Health Issues, Drug Abuse/Addiction, Eating Disorders, Homophobia, Toxic Family Relationships, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Torture, Rape/Sexual Assault/Non-Con, Suicide/Self-Harm

A more in-depth list of trigger warnings for the series can be found at: https://booktriggerwarnings.com/The_Foxhole_Court_by_Nora_Sakavic

Any additional trigger warnings will be added if needed.

AUTHOR'S NOTES.

well...! this fic has literally been sitting in my drafts for over a year now. like it has been fully ready for publishing but for some reason i let it sit here and collect dust for no reason until i got hit by that end-of-august / almost-september feeling that made me come back to this story and these characters again. there's something about the end of summer and the start of a new school year that makes me super nostalgic. (fingers crossed that this will be my last year of school for a while—maybe even ever!—once i complete the associate's program i'm in. 🤞) if i am being completely honest, i also have been feeling a little burnt out with the complexity of some of my other fics and their overly complicated lore, so this story feels a bit more straightforward than some of my others. (at least in the sense that there is nothing supernatural, science fiction-y, or otherwise convoluted elements.) but yeah! welcome to SEVERANCE.

in case it wasn't obvious already, this is an aftg / kevin day fic. for those familiar with this series, you know aftg is an absolute clusterfuck of a story with more than a few triggering elements, but the characters and the found family aspects are so endearing that somehow it sucks you in. like i stated previously, please mind the trigger warnings. they are no joke!!!! please also be aware that this book is marked mature for a reason. (in simpler terms: there will be sex.) for that and a variety of other reasons (see: above-mentioned trigger warnings), this book is not meant for readers who are under the age of 18. obviously i can't control what people choose to read, but please do not interact with the sexual content in this book if you are not an adult!!!!

there's a lot more i could say here but i am honestly drawing a blank right now while writing this. i normally will list out all my sources of inspiration for a story but this one feels so long and abstract that i'm not sure it's even worth listing everything here. if u really are curious and want to know, feel free to ask! a lot of this book deals with themes pertaining to sisters, to mothers and daughters, to cycles of abuse, the epic highs and lows of college exy (aka student-athlete burnout), etc etc. all that good stuff!!!!

🏷️ soulofstaars wulfhall luckyvirgo fatalfIaw

special thanks to julia who has literally been waiting for me to post this since i first told her about it a literal year ago. this fic would not exist without her. i am so thankful for her infectious enthusiasm and steadfast supportiveness. LOVE U JULIA!!! and to my darling dearest paloma who never ceases to amaze me with her generosity and creativity with her gorgeous covers. LOVE U ALWAYS!!!

thank you to everyone who will read this story and for your support. i appreciate it more than you know!!!!🦊

cover by paloma / wulfhall

PUBLISHED: 08 / 30 / 2023
FINISHED: —/—/—