Whistleblower, page 12
With our bountiful harvest secured, we headed to Andre’s.
He lived with three other second-string players in the Palazzo, the apartment complex most of the football team chose for its proximity to the practice field and the Rodeo—and because it was, in true Garland football fashion, extraordinarily bougie.
There were fountains in the central courtyard, three separate gyms, a rock-climbing wall, and a 24-7 café stocked with a selection of premade organic salads, gluten-free sandwiches, and fresh-pressed juices. Whoever had designed the complex had clearly been aiming for the Italian villa aesthetic, but had gone a bit overboard with the friezes and potted palm trees and faux candle chandeliers. The resulting blight of a building looked like it belonged on the Las Vegas strip, not four blocks from one of the best private universities in California.
Andre’s mom was a cardiologist and his dad was a San Diego real estate agent. Money had never been an issue for the Shepherds. But I never felt the financial divide between us as keenly as I did standing in the marble-floored lobby, chipped toenail polish on display in a pair of plastic flip-flops as I spelled my name out for the woman behind the security desk so she could print me up a visitor’s badge.
Hanna and I didn’t come over often, mostly because Andre’s roommates were obsessed with video games and always hogged the living room, but also because the Palazzo was such a hassle, between the guest parking and the security check-in.
When Andre came down to the lobby in sweatpants and some Adidas slides to claim us, he found Hanna and me sprawled on the couches in front of the eight foot–tall fake fireplace, basking in the artificial chill of top-notch air conditioning.
“Ugh, finally,” Hanna said. “I need your can opener.”
Andre frowned for a moment before I held out the large iced coffee we’d brought for him. Then his eyes lit up.
“We having ca phe sua da?” he asked, rubbing his palms together.
“A bastardized version,” Hanna confirmed, then grunted as she rolled to her feet and stood, jumbo bag of Cheetos tucked under her arm like it was a pillow she’d brought to a sleepover. She cleared her throat. “But we need to have a chat first.”
Andre blinked, took a tiny sip of his coffee, and frowned.
“What’d I do?”
“Your quarterback,” Hanna said, perching on the edge of the couch I was sitting on so she could loop her free arm around my shoulder, “dumped coffee on our girl.”
Andre’s head jerked back. I sighed and shrugged off Hanna’s arm.
“He didn’t dump coffee on me,” I grumbled, fidgeting with a corner of my visitor’s badge that’d started to peel off my shirt. “He just told some girls to do it. By accident. It’s fine—”
“It’s not fine,” Andre said. “Vaughn’s mad, so St. James is taking it out on you.”
“What do you mean?” I suddenly felt too cold. I set my large iced coffee on the floor at my feet and pulled a tasseled decorative pillow into my lap. “It’s because of the article, isn’t it? The quotes Bodie gave us.”
Andre nodded solemnly. “He’s not, like, blatantly making him pay for it. You saw our last game—St. James was a mess.
He got ten passing yards. Maybe. That’s being generous. I think Vaughn must’ve spoken with him before, but ever since, he’s been a total hard-ass. Everything St. James does in practice is wrong. The boy’s been in the gym every night this week. I think Gordon’s trying to play peacemaker and talk Vaughn down, but it’s not good.”
“Chester Gordon?” I asked. “The assistant coach?”
“Is that the dude Vaughn got into a shouting match with on the sidelines during the Notre Dame game last year?”
Hanna asked. “I love that guy. What a king.”
Andre looked at me again and shook his head. “It doesn’t even matter. St. James shouldn’t have messed with you. That was out of pocket.”
It wasn’t him, I thought to say. But my brain was already tackling a bigger problem: Truman Vaughn was terrorizing my source, and I didn’t have the first clue how to stop it.
—
That afternoon, Andre and I sat side by side on his bed—our faces slathered in some kind of detoxifying charcoal goop he swore would do wonders for my pores—to watch a movie we’d seen a hundred times on his laptop. Hanna had been exiled to floor until she finished her jumbo bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, because Andre wasn’t about to let her get neon-red Cheeto powder on his pristine white sheets.
I almost didn’t notice when my phone lit up with an Instagram notification. A follow request from Bodie St. James.
My first thought was that it had to be a fan account or something. I didn’t believe it was really him until I clicked on the group chat Ryan had started (which he’d named, affectionately, Group Sex) and saw that, just ten minutes ago, Bodie had liked Olivia’s message about meeting up in Buchanan sometime next week to brainstorm.
Before I could overthink it, I hit Accept and followed him back. Then I flipped my phone over, trying not to wonder why he hadn’t asked Nick to switch me into another group.
“Oops,” Hanna muttered from the floor.
“You drop anything, you vacuum,” Andre snapped.
“I know, I know!”
When I was sure Andre’s full attention was on the movie and Hanna’s full attention was on analyzing the carpet for specks of Cheeto dust, I picked up my phone and clicked back onto Bodie’s profile. And then I scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled.
He’d been dorky in high school. Still incredibly popular, judging by the abundance of classmates and friends grinning and making duck lips in almost every photo, but decidedly chubbier and more awkward—at least until the summer before his senior year, when it looked like he’d dropped thirty pounds during football camp (at which all the boys in attendance had shaved their heads in what I guessed was some kind of weird male bonding ritual). Then there was the picture of him sitting at a table, Garland baseball cap on his head, grinning at the camera as he signed his national letter of intent.
Coach Vaughn stood behind him, one hand braced on Bodie’s shoulder, smiling haughtily.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
And then a notification appeared at the top of my screen—a new message. At first I assumed it must be from Ryan or Olivia. Then, with a sudden shot of adrenaline, I wondered if it could be from Bodie. But it wasn’t any of my group mates. Instead, I clicked open my messages to find that Gabi de Hostos, Joaquín’s cousin, had finally responded to me.
She wrote, concisely:
We don’t want to talk to the media. Please don’t contact me again
Chapter 13
The media center on a Monday morning was about as calm and enjoyable as Disneyland in July. A line of desperate students formed in the hallway outside Ellison’s office, each of them clutching pages scattered with red pen marks—our beloved editor in chief’s handiwork, no doubt. I shuffled into a spot at the end. Ellison, who stood in the doorway of her office with arms folded over her chest, spotted me and frowned.
“Cates! Get up here.”
I felt everyone’s eyes on my back as I skittered around the line. Ellison ushered me into her tiny, cramped office and tugged the door closed behind us, letting it shut right in the face of a forlorn freshman.
“Good morning,” I said cordially.
“Did you have the transcripts?” Ellison asked, skipping the small talk.
“Right here.” I handed her a laminated folder of papers that’d blessedly survived the ride to campus without getting crumpled. “I got statements from all four of the women from the country club. I sent you the audio clips of the recordings in an email this morning, too, along with the transcripts.”
“Fantastic.”
“I also heard back from Joaquín’s cousin,” I said, wincing as I pulled open my Instagram messages to show her the ominous response I’d received. “And it wasn’t great.”
“We don’t want to talk to the media,” Ellison read. “Well, that’s suspect. Scroll up for a second. What did you originally send her?”
“I didn’t use Josefina’s name. All I said was that I knew Joaquín and he said she might be open to talking to me about the resort. I mean, for all she knew, I might’ve been writing an article about spring break spots. But this sounds like she knows what I’m talking about, right? I mean, why shut me down and say something like that if there’s nothing to hide?”
Ellison nodded. “Message the other friends. See if anyone will bite.”
“But Gabi wasn’t just shooting me down. She said we. She was speaking on behalf of her friend group. Right? I mean, at the very least, she was speaking for Josefina.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told writers not to run with what a secondary source says until they’ve tried to get in contact with the primary source,” Ellison said. “You have to let Josefina speak for herself.”
“It just feels so insensitive to ask about . . .” I trailed off with a wince.
Ellison sighed. “Laurel, you’re going to meet so many people who think journalists are nosey, conniving assholes. But I know you. And you know you. You’re not an asshole. You’re not going to send Josefina anything offensive, and you’re not going to harass her if she says she doesn’t want to talk. But you have to give her the chance to make that decision for herself.”
I hated when Ellison was right.
—
It took me a few tries to find a good bench on campus, since all the ones under trees were splattered with bird shit (and the ones not in the shade were scalding hot from the sun), but eventually I found a place to park myself for fifteen minutes while I waited for Andre to get out of his typography class so we could walk into Human Sexuality together. I texted to let him know where to find me: a narrow, hedge-lined walkway between two redbrick buildings near the architecture school.
Andre replied, Be there soon just gotta fix this fucking kerning.
Confident that I had plenty of time before the perfectionist in Andre would be appeased, I pulled up Instagram and typed in Josefina’s name. Her account was still set to private. I could message her, but it would sit in her requested inbox—she might not see it for days, weeks, months. No. I’d contact her another way. Facebook, maybe. Did people our age use Facebook anymore? LinkedIn. Surely she had a LinkedIn.
Her name was excessively common, but with a bit of hunting, I was able to find the Josefina Rodriguez who was studying communications at the University of California, San Diego. She had her school email listed.
I gave her my cell number, my school email, my personal email, my Instagram, my Snapchat, the address of my editor’s office, and the address of my apartment. Then I typed: Sincerely, Laurel Cates. I stared at the sign-off, hating how formal it sounded. How impersonal and distant. So, on impulse, I wrote a postscript: You’re not alone.
With a little whoosh, it was out of my hands.
I exhaled and clicked back to my inbox. Sandwiched between two spam emails was an unread message from Diana Cabrera, the subject line of which was a sunglasses emoji followed by a martini emoji. It was the photos from their night out. They’d all been taken in a dark bar with the flash on. I squinted at my screen as I tried to make out the collection of washed-out blurs. Tori and Cheryl grinning over their cocktails. Jessica with shot glasses in both hands. A mirror selfie of Diana in what looked like a crowded women’s bathroom. There was a group of younger-looking girls huddled at the sinks, but I didn’t recognize any of them from Gabi’s social media. I scrolled to the next photo—a group shot of all four women with a man standing in the center of them: Truman Vaughn, pink faced and staring with glazed eyes and a wide grin. There was a wet streak down the front of his blue button-down shirt where he’d spilled something, and sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Yuck,” I said aloud.
That was the last of the photos.
I turned my phone off, flipped it over, and counted out my breaths. When that didn’t settle the sudden swell in my chest, I riffled through the emergency snack reserve at the bottom of my backpack, even though I knew food wouldn’t ease the ache in my gut. This wasn’t hunger. It was anxiety.
I took two bites of my granola bar before I felt nauseated.
I sighed and looked out across the pavement in front of me, toward the hedges bordering the other side of the walkway.
The leaves rustled. A lone squirrel emerged, his tail twitching and his beady little eyes fixed on me. I snapped off a tiny corner of my granola bar and chucked it at him.
And so, when Andre arrived a few moments later, it was to find me sitting cross-legged on a bench, dutifully distributing granola crumbs to a gang of four squirrels who were circling me like little furry sharks on the hunt.
“What Snow White bullshit is this?” Andre demanded.
“It’s not funny! They won’t leave me alone.”
“Because you fed them, dumbass.”
Andre plucked the remaining half of my granola bar out of my hand and took an enormous bite of it, then stomped his feet. The squirrels scattered.
“Has your group figured out your project yet?” he asked as he trailed along beside me toward the biological sciences building, crunching away on my granola bar.
“No. Yours?”
“Pretty sure we’re doing something on the sex toy industry.”
It was bad enough I had to work with Bodie. I couldn’t imagine having to spend the next few months discussing vibrators.
We took the stairs down to the basement of the biological sciences building and shuffled to our usual spot in the third row from the back of the lecture hall, which was buzzing with passing-period chatter. Andre settled into his seat and angled his too-long legs toward me, so his knees weren’t wedged against the back of the chair in front of him. I let my backpack slide off my shoulders and hit the floor by Andre’s feet.
Before I could plop down beside him, someone called my name.
“Yo, Laurel!”
It was Ryan Lansangan, the man of a thousand inappropriate group project puns. He and Olivia were sitting in the end seats a few rows down. Bodie loomed over them in the aisle, both hands braced on the straps of his backpack and mouth set in a grim line. He wore a black shirt and black joggers—again, moody—and had a beige compression wrap looped around his left wrist. Our eyes met. His face seemed different now that I’d scrolled through pictures of him growing up. I could see traces of the kid in him beneath the sharp features.
Somewhere in the sleepless haze of last night, I’d let myself entertain embarrassingly improbable theories about why Bodie hadn’t ditched our group. Theories that I’d usually only come up with after a half a bottle of wine—that from the very first day in the elevator, when we’d both been wet from the rain and late to class, he’d been curious about me. That despite our opposing allegiances, he was still curious, and had decided that working on this group project together would give us the chance to talk things through and reconcile our differences.
But those theories all withered under the weight of his obvious discomfort at seeing me again. He didn’t look like he wanted to talk things through with me. He didn’t look like he wanted to talk to me at all.
I turned to Andre, who’d taken it upon himself to stare down Bodie. I’m sure Andre intended to look threatening, but the way he was squinting, he sort of just looked like he’d forgotten to put in his contacts.
“I’ll be right back,” I murmured.
I marched down to where the rest of my group was gathered. Ryan and Olivia watched me approach but Bodie fixed his eyes somewhere across the lecture hall—which I was sort of glad for, because something about the weight of Bodie’s gaze on me made walking very difficult.
Given that Nick had let Bodie enroll in a full class and had also totally been willing to turn a blind eye when he rolled up fifteen minutes late to lecture, I couldn’t imagine our professor telling Garland’s golden boy that he couldn’t switch into another group for the final project. Which left only one possible course of events: Bodie hadn’t asked to change groups.
“You look cute today, Laurel,” Olivia said as I came to a stop at the end of their row, careful to leave an arm’s length of space between Bodie and me. “Love the dress.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit caught off guard by the compliment.
“Thanks! It has pockets.”
I shoved my hands into them, like this was a claim I needed to prove, and immediately felt like a moron. A quick glance at Bodie confirmed that he’d been watching my pocket demonstration. He exhaled sharply and looked back across the room to the spot where his teammates were socializing in their usual seats.
I wished he’d smile again.
“What’s up?” I asked, tugging my hands back out of my pockets and smoothing down the front of my dress.
“Okay,” Olivia said, popping up in her seat like a bottle of champagne that’d been uncorked. “I used to waitress at this Mexican restaurant in Hollywood that does the most amazing drag karaoke nights. And I was thinking we could totally do our project on drag culture! You know, like, its history in Los Angeles, and gender performance and identity, and all that stuff. The restaurant’s kind of a long drive from here but I could get us interviews with the manager and some of the regular performers. We’d have solid primary sources.”
“That’s perfect!” I gushed. Really, I was just overjoyed to hear that somebody in this group was going to pull their weight. All Ryan had contributed thus far were inappropriate jokes in our Instagram group chat, and as far as Bodie was concerned—well, at least he was here.
“It’s a pretty dope idea, right?” Ryan said, beaming.
“We could go to a drag show at a club or something too,”
Olivia added excitedly. Then she turned to Bodie and me and asked, “Are you guys twenty-one?”
Bodie nodded. I’m not sure why that surprised me—I knew he’d redshirted his freshman year, so it made sense that he was a year older than me. Still, the sudden mental image I had of him standing in a bar, drinking a legally purchased beverage that wasn’t served in a plastic cup, was jarring. Especially since I’d spent a solid hour and a half last night looking at pictures of him from high school.
