Whistleblower, page 24
“And telling them what? That I’m trespassing?” Whittaker asked, eyes narrowing and the corners of his mouth twisting up in a self-satisfied smile. “The university offers public access to this campus between the hours of six a.m. and ten p.m. I’m not breaking any laws.”
“I have the number for President Sterling’s direct line,”
Ellison countered. “He has the authority to kick you out of here. You have five minutes before I make the call.”
Whittaker’s lips pressed into a thin, grim line.
Ellison looked at me and tipped her head, motioning for me to get inside. I scrambled around Whittaker and into the lobby of the student union. I heard the glass door thud shut behind me, and then Ellison was at my side, shepherding me past the curious looks of students who’d stopped to watch the confrontation and into the elevator. When those doors slid shut and she and I were alone, I went to tuck my hair behind my ears and realized my arms were shaking.
“Deep breath,” Ellison instructed.
I didn’t understand how she could be so unruffled, but then I noticed that she was moving without her usual strength and sureness. There was a hesitance to her steps, a slowness when she lifted her hand to press back a piece of hair that’d fallen in her face. As we marched across the media center floor together, students looked up from their computers and beanbag chairs to watch us with shameless curiosity.
There were three cardboard boxes stacked outside Ellison’s office door.
She waited until we were tucked inside, door closed, to say, “Owens has removed me from my post, effective tomorrow. He’s giving me the day to pack up my things and write a statement congratulating my replacement.”
“What?”
Ellison motioned to the chair across from her desk. I sank into it, swinging my backpack around and into my lap and hugging my arms around it.
“Why didn’t you text me?” I asked, hating that I sounded clingy.
“I’ve been trying to chase down President Sterling all morning,” Ellison explained. “He’s not returning my calls, and his assistant won’t tell me where he is or how to contact him.
He’s avoiding me.”
She swept a shriveled flower that’d fallen from her potted orchid into the palm of her hand and deposited it gently in the trash can beside her desk. I watched her and saw traces of anger glinting in her eyes—a ferocious outrage that’d burned hot and bright but had, at some point between the time she’d found out and now, smoldered to ashes.
I couldn’t say she looked defeated, because Ellison Michaels was never defeated. But she looked tired. She looked like she wanted to take off her battle armor and rest, just for a few minutes. But we didn’t have that luxury.
“How did this happen?” I asked softly.
Ellison shook her head. “One of the women you quoted—the ones from the country club—came out and said you’d misquoted her and her friends. The others haven’t said anything, but given that they’re all Garland elite, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve decided to step back. And the university is claiming Sarah was never employed by the athletics department, so her story isn’t plausible. They can’t disprove that she was a student, and they won’t say if the event she described is something they ever held, but they’re adamant they don’t have any trace of her in the student employment records.”
“How is that possible? Did she—” I cut myself off. I couldn’t ask that. Wouldn’t.
“Seven million dollars,” Ellison said.
“What?”
“That’s how much revenue football brings in for the university, after you factor in the cost of keeping the team up and running and in brand-new Nike jackets. It’s far from the most lucrative program in the country, but Vaughn’s grown it a lot in the last decade. Which is why his salary is in the ballpark of three million a year.”
The university didn’t want to sack him. Ticket sales might drop. Merchandise might sit on shelves. Investors and sponsors would start reconsidering their partnerships with the school’s athletic program. Vaughn was just a man, but he’d become an icon for our school. Of course the university wouldn’t dig deep for dirt. They’d probably been the ones to sweep it under the rug.
My anger was a riptide. It swallowed me whole. I wanted to take a baseball bat to the Leopold the Lion statue in the center of campus. I wanted to set Buchanan on fire and watch millions of dollars in university-owned property burn.
I wanted to march into President Sterling’s office and tell him that I was angry, and that I was not going to let him silence us.
“Ellison,” I croaked. “I need—”
I dropped my backpack to the floor and replaced it on my lap with the trash can she handed me with a panicked expression. I stared down at the shriveled orchid and tried to keep the granola bar I’d had for breakfast where it belonged.
“What about Josefina?” I asked miserably, my voice echoing in the belly of her plastic trash can.
Ellison was quiet. When I lifted my head, she was watching me with startlingly gentle eyes.
“You’re a good journalist, Cates,” she said. “Owens will probably email you and Mehri later today to kick you off the Daily, but I want you to know we don’t have to have an institution behind us to do important work.”
Somehow what my brain caught on was “kick you off the Daily.” Like all great female journalists who’d sunk their teeth into a forbidden story about a wealthy and well-connected man behaving badly, we were being shot down. Reprimanded.
Exiled.
I hung my head over the trash can and counted backward from one hundred.
—
I got to lecture ten minutes early, on the off chance Bodie was similarly anxious to see me and had already gotten there, but there was no sign of him. I headed straight for the third row from the back and put my backpack down in the seat to my right to reserve it for him.
The lecture hall filled. There was still no Bodie. When someone dropped into the chair to my left, I lifted my head with his name on my lips, but it was only Andre. I deflated.
“Um, hi to you too,” Andre mumbled.
“Hi,” I said. “Sorry. I’m just—sorry.”
The doors swung open again. I spotted a Garland football T-shirt among the pack of students who trudged in, but it wasn’t Bodie. It was Scott Quinton, the thick-necked offensive tackle. I sank back into my seat, simultaneously disappointed and relieved. This was torture. Halfheartedly, I watched Quinton lumber down the aisle to the spot where his teammates sat, their legs and arms sprawled and backpacks everywhere, like they’d rented the place.
“Laurel!”
I turned and saw Bodie standing in the doorway of the auditorium, hair stubbornly rumpled and headphones looped around his neck. He wore a sleeveless black Under Armour shirt and a pair of gray mesh shorts. His arms were beaded with sweat, his hair slicked back with it, and cheeks so flushed they were nearly purple.
He smiled at me. Just like that, the knot in my chest dissolved. I shoved my swivel desk back between the seats and leaned over to set my notebook on the floor. In my haste, I dropped a mechanical pencil; it rolled off into oblivion under the seats in front of me. Screw it. I’d order another pack of them online. I stood, leaving my backpack behind.
“What’re you doing?” Andre asked.
“I need to talk to Bodie,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
The second I stepped out into the hall, Bodie said, “I’m sorry I didn’t text you.”
“Did you just go on a run?”
“Yeah. Just a quick one.”
“Class is starting in, like, two minutes. You’re going to sit through it all sweaty and gross?”
“I can’t stay,” he said. “I’ve got to go meet with Gordon.”
My stomach gave a weird twist. “What about class?”
“Football’s more important right now. I’ve got a whole team behind me, and I’ve been playing like shit. I’m letting them all down.”
Frustratingly enough, I understood where he was coming from. Despite my extensive athletic failures, I knew what it was to be part of a team: the Daily. I’d prioritized the school paper over my own mental and physical health more than a few times. I’d skipped class to write articles before. How was Bodie skipping class to work out any different?
“Do you need a copy of the notes?” I offered, rather than insisting on dragging him to Human Sexuality by the cord of his headphones. “Because I can send you mine.”
“That’d be great, yeah. How are you holding up?”
So we were ready to talk about the article, then. Oh boy. I took a deep, bolstering breath and tried to plaster on a smile.
“I’ve been better,” I admitted.
“I know this morning was really tough for you,” Bodie said. “You know I’m not mad at you, right? I don’t think you made all that stuff up. I know you wouldn’t lie.”
The relief I felt was the hug of a best friend, the smell of fresh tortillas, the sunshine on your face after you walked out of your last final. I know you wouldn’t lie. It was the best thing he could’ve said.
“And, seriously,” Bodie pressed on, “you’re still the best journalist I know. It’s not your fault that girl came to you and lied. You couldn’t have known—”
“I’m sorry,” I croaked, shaking my head. “What?”
Relief turned to ice in my veins.
Please don’t do this, I thought. Please.
“It’s not your fault that girl sent in a fake tip,” Bodie repeated.
“There’s nothing wrong with Sarah’s tip. There’s nothing wrong with any of our tips.”
Bodie’s eyebrows pinched. His smile looked uneasy now.
“She never worked for the athletics department,” he told me, repeating what’d been in Sterling’s statement.
I ripped my hand out of his like he’d electrocuted me.
“And you think the school’s telling the truth?” I demanded.
“Garland makes millions off Vaughn. They’d want him back as soon as they can, don’t you think?”
“Sterling wouldn’t lie, though,” Bodie insisted. “The school could get in huge trouble for that kind of thing. He wouldn’t risk jail time.”
“Unless he knows he can get away with it.”
Bodie shook his head in disbelief. It stung like lime juice on a paper cut.
“Vaughn’s a dick to you, you know,” I added bitterly.
Bodie winced. “He’s my coach, not my dad. He’s supposed to be tough on his players. It’s an entirely different relationship.”
“That doesn’t excuse the way he treats you.”
“You don’t know how he treats me,” Bodie shot back in a tone that was snappy, for him. “How many times have you actually spoken to the guy? You’ve seen the absolute worst in him, and I get that, okay? But you didn’t see him drive me to the airport at two in the morning so I could fly home when my dad had a stroke, and you don’t see him helping me schedule my classes and find tutors—”
“Of course he’s going to help you with your grades! That’s not for you. That’s for him. He needs a quarterback.”
“He’s important to me, and I’m important to him.”
“You’re an investment for him.”
“And what am I to you?” Bodie demanded. “You realize that the Daily is getting a ton of clout for this, right? Every single person involved gets to put I helped with the Vaughn article on their résumé. You’re all going to get jobs wherever the fuck you want them. How many times have you quoted me now? How am I not an investment to you too?”
It was a blow I hadn’t anticipated. I’d never once considered Bodie St. James might think that I was using him, but, in an instant, I could see it the way he did. Because he didn’t know that I cared about him. That I really, really cared him—the kind of care that made a nest in my brain and haunted my thoughts while I was in lecture or driving to the grocery store with Hanna or caddying for retired couples or shampooing my hair.
I cared about him so hopelessly it hurt. And he thought the worst of me.
“You caught me,” I deadpanned. “It was all about my résumé. Definitely not about the girls and what they went through. Who gives a shit, right? I just really wanted people to throw coffee on me and—”
Key my car. I almost said it. But the humiliation was so fresh it made my eyes wet. I tried to blink them back, because I refused to let Bodie think I was playing the tears card, but it was too late.
Bodie’s face went slack. “Laurel—”
“Don’t you dare,” I interrupted with a jab of my finger in the center of his sweat-soaked chest, “try to make me feel guilty. Your coach is a horrible human being. That’s not my fault. It’s his. And yours, for not picking up on all the signs.
People who think horrible things and say those horrible things also do horrible things. It’s not fucking rocket science.”
Bodie scrubbed a hand over his eyes.
“How would you feel if—if Hanna was accused of doing something awful?” he asked, searching for more level ground to have this conversation on. “Wouldn’t you defend her?”
“Well, first off, that would never even happen,” I said, sniffling despite myself. “Because Hanna treats everyone on the planet the same way she treats her friends. But if somebody accused her of something this awful, I definitely wouldn’t jump on TV two days later to tell the world the people who exposed her were full of shit.”
Bodie’s jaw ticked as he ground his teeth.
I turned on my heel.
“Laurel,” he called after me.
I stepped into the elevator and smacked the button to close the doors. Bodie stepped forward like he might come after me.
“Don’t,” I snapped.
The doors shut.
I wished I hadn’t left class. I wished I’d known, at La Ventana, that this was all going to happen—that the university would claim there was no proof a man who was situated to bring in millions of dollars of revenue for the athletics program had done anything to warrant his removal. If I’d known on Thursday, I would’ve done things differently.
I would’ve kissed Bodie a little bit longer.
I shouldn’t have kissed him at all.
Chapter 24
On Friday morning—approximately twenty-four hours before the first tee time for the Garland Country Club’s charity golf tournament—Rebecca sent me in search of a missing box of fake flowers that she thought were somewhere in the window-less storage rooms in the basement of the clubhouse. I spent the first hour of my shift alone, covered in dust, with a framed and autographed photo of decorated Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte watching over me as I riffled through boxes and giant plastic storage tubs.
It was a relief when I located the flowers just in time to head upstairs and watch kickoff. Garland had an away game against Arizona State, who’d been struggling harder than we had this season but would probably still kick our collective ass.
I found PJ unloading fresh bottles of alcohol onto the shelves behind the bar. The retired population of Garland, California, consumed an absurd amount of top-shelf tequila—mainly due to the fact that the Real Housewives of Garland were obsessed with post-tennis frozen margs.
“Yo,” I greeted her, sounding a bit too much like Ryan (my group member, not the Olympian) for my liking. “How’s it going?”
“Hi,” PJ croaked. “I’m thriving.”
“Yikes. What’s wrong with your voice?”
PJ tried—and failed—to suppress a hacking cough. “It’s nothing. My throat’s a little sore. I think I’m just dehydrated.”
I wasn’t sure if this meant she was hungover or getting sick.
For both our sakes, I hoped it was the former—working at the club when PJ wasn’t there was like cannonballing into a swimming pool without any water. In other words: not even a little bit enjoyable. I couldn’t make it through this weekend without her.
“Morning, ladies!”
Speaking of unbearable, Rebecca bustled into the bar with a smile on her face. She wore her long, dark hair in twin French braids and had a white streak of sunscreen across one cheek. She never wore makeup, since she considered it false advertising—a fact she brought up every time someone made a remark about how strong PJ’s eyelash game was.
I’d never had the balls to ask Rebecca who, exactly, she thought she was selling herself to. False advertising. Fuck off. Women weren’t Big Macs. Just because I looked better on Instagram than I did during Writing 301 on a Monday morning didn’t mean I was any less delicious.
“I found the flowers,” I announced.
“Oh. You can put them in the back room. I think we have enough for now.”
“Son of a bitch,” I muttered under my breath.
“Did you hear the news?” Rebecca asked, pushing her Ray-Bans onto the top of her head. “I’m sure you’ve heard, Laurel. I guess all those tips were fake after all. What a relief, right?”
No. It was not.
“I knew they’d clear Vaughn,” Rebecca continued. “I knew he was being scapegoated.”
I was good at biting my tongue. Every once in a while my anger (or a few too many alcoholic beverages) led to a slipup—like the time I’d told Bodie St. James to eat shit.
And the time I’d called him a coward. And a dumbass, en Español. But, for the most part, I prided myself on knowing when something wasn’t worth my harshest words. So I kept my mouth shut.
But PJ, ever a real one, combed her fingers through her hair and said, in her best impersonation of the airhead former pageant girl Rebecca thought she was, “Don’t you think it’s suspicious that they never passed on that Title IX claim the way they were supposed to?”
Rebecca’s eyes flashed but she shrugged it off. “Doesn’t matter, does it? The girl’s a liar.”
“Oh look!” PJ cried. “The game’s starting.”
She grabbed the remote and turned the volume up so loud that Rebecca had no choice but to abandon the conversation.
—
“Well, fuck me,” PJ said two and a half hours later, a wry smile tugging at her lips as she gazed up at the TV screen mounted over the bar. “We’re actually going to win one.”
