#teddybio

[thefoxholecourtrp]

THIS IS YOUR GAME

Name: Edward “Teddy” Ryker Age: Twenty-One Class Year: Sophomore Position: Defensive Dealer, #10 Hometown: Oakland, California

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT

TW: drugs, trafficking, abuse, violence, death/murder

His entire life, Teddy has been trying to get as far away from the saying like father like son as possible. Teddy is the youngest of three, and all of the Ryker children grew up with their father and no mother, his own mother having left before he could even walk. Their father was a cursed man, at least that’s what he told his children, because the women always came, spent his money and had his kids, and then left. Joel Ryker tried to love his children but he was never a good man, paying for their clothes and schooling with money he made from trafficking and drug extortion. Teddy was aware of his father’s trade his whole life, drugs and runaway girls were a constant, but he managed to keep away from both—at least in the beginning. With their father so busy with his work, Teddy and his brother, Michael, were raised predominantly by their sister, Mandy, who was 14 years Teddy’s senior, and she did a better job of raising Teddy than he thought his own mother ever would.

Teddy grew up desensitised to crime and Mandy tried to keep him on the straight and narrow, making sure he got all his homework done and making him take weekly drug tests just in case he succumbed to the family business. It was already too late for Michael, he’d become involved in his father’s various business ventures when he was 13 and he was happy with the money and the power he got from it. Mandy became more concerned for Teddy as he grew from a child to an adolescent, and his indifference turned into a bad temper and an impulsive streak that was difficult to repress. As soon as she started noticing this, Mandy was down at the school signing Teddy up for the Exy team, telling him that he was going to play it whether he liked it or not. As it was, Teddy kind of liked Exy; sometimes he watched it on TV with his dad and even he had to admit that it helped with his temper—plus, he was pretty damn good at it. Things were better for a while, despite the nature of their lives everyone seemed to be getting on okay: Teddy stayed in school and on the Exy team, Mandy got to go to night classes to become a nurse and their father and brother…well, they kept doing what they were doing.

The world turned upside down when Mandy came home from her night class and found Teddy, 14-years-old at the time, crying on the bathroom floor and tripping out of his mind. After she screamed at Michael and her father for giving LSD to a child, she took Teddy and ran. Mandy knew the risks, she knew better than anyone that her father was a dangerous man and he’d probably kill her for taking away what belonged to him. He saw Teddy as property, he was meant to turn out like he and Michael and continue the family business but Teddy wasn’t made for it, he was too quiet and clever and Mandy wasn’t going to let his life turn out that way. They barely made it to Nevada before they were caught by Joel’s contacts and they were dragged kicking and screaming back to Oakland. Mandy only survived because Teddy, on his knees, begged their father not to kill her, promising that he’d do anything if he didn’t kill her. Mandy got off “lightly” with a beating and having her night class privileges revoked. That was the last time either of them disobeyed their father.

For the next few years, Mandy tried to earn back their father’s respect and Teddy did what he was told. He was allowed to stay in his expensive school, he was allowed to play Exy and that was all that mattered to him; when he wasn’t running errands for his father he tried to be on the court as much as possible. He was becoming more and more exposed to crime every day, going on runs with Michael to collect debts and deliver girls and drugs to his father’s various clients. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before but it wasn’t easy—it was difficult when you had girls begging you to just let them go home and when you had to watch your brother cut off a man’s hand because he was $20 short of what he owed. But Teddy had plans. Mandy barely spoke these days but he wanted to make her proud by going to real college and making something of himself. Maybe he’d get in on an Exy scholarship, maybe his father would say yes if he asked to go, maybe he could play for the Palmetto State Foxes.

He spent the whole of his senior year working up the courage to ask his father to let him go to college. Normal parents would already be pestering him about applying but Teddy was expected to go into the family business, and it bothered him that his father and his brother both said he was good at helping them and kept giving him bigger responsibilities. Teddy didn’t want that life, though. He waited until his father was in a good mood to ask him and, shockingly, he said yes. However, there were conditions: Teddy would finish college no matter what and he would join the business straight after he graduated, regardless of the offers he got as far as a career in Exy went. Teddy, not having much of a choice, accepted and his coach was more than happy to put Teddy forward for a place on the Foxes. Despite it all, despite Teddy’s background and who his family was, he was a good player and he wanted it, he wanted it more than anything else in the world.

SEIZE IT WITH EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT

He immediately took advantage of being away from his family. Well, physically away—his father still kept tabs on him, ready to punish him for any slip in his performance, whether it was in class or on the court. Fear kept him from doing anything remotely outrageous until the winter of his sophomore year, when he went back to Oakland for Christmas. It started with Jewel: a close friend—and, sometimes, more than friend—of Teddy’s since childhood, both of them raised in all too similar worlds of crime and dysfunction. Due to nearly-legendary feud between Teddy’s family and Jewel’s, Teddy’s father was livid about Teddy and Jewel’s relationship, and his fury almost drove him to murder his own son. As a result, Teddy was sent back to Palmetto and banned from contacting his family or his friends from Oakland until his graduation. Teddy wished he’d listened when his dad told him that disobedience this time would not be so easily forgiven.

All it took was a lonely phone call to his sister for Teddy to destroy his own world. Jewel barely made it through January, and Teddy couldn’t help but feel like Jewel’s murder at the hands of his father was his fault—and it broke him. With the murder came an investigation, the well-known bad blood between their two families enough to draw the police close to the truth, and so Teddy’s dad let Michael take the blame for Jewel’s death and Teddy was forced back to Oakland for questioning. With one brother in a jail cell and the other so traumatised that he couldn’t get out of bed, Mandy took it upon herself to end things once and for all by turning their dad in. Joel Ryker would rot in prison, but it came at a price: Mandy had to disappear. She entered witness protection and although she’d just about saved Teddy’s life, it didn’t really feel worth it to him if she wasn’t in it. His grief translated to volatility both on and off the court and increased sessions with Betsy—and, ultimately, a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder.

However, even with all of this, there was the tiniest, most dangerous, piece of hope. When everything was going haywire at Christmas, Teddy had a secret: he’d made contact with his mom—or, more accurately, she’d made contact with him. A long awaited letter from her turned into phone calls and discussion of Teddy going to Boston to meet her and her new family. Teddy had had just about enough of parents and dysfunctional family but there was something about his mother, who managed to get out of Oakland and give herself a life, that Teddy found himself drawn to. He couldn’t help but hope that there might actually be a chance at something good there, even though the prospect of having her in his life, having somewhere outside of Palmetto to call home, was as terrifying as the prospect of being able to decide his own future and live his life outside of his dad’s authority. It still is terrifying—but there’s something about it that’s exciting, as well.

TEDDY RYKER is portrayed by SIMONE NOBILI and is TAKEN