Whistleblower, page 8
I reared back in stunned disbelief.
“Why do they think that? Does Vaughn have any proof that it was just a charity trip?”
“It’s not like that. I’ll show you the texts. It’s just Fogarty and some of the other guys hyping each other up. I should’ve said something this morning before it got really bad, but they just added me to this group chat last week, after that Baseball House party, and—”
And Andre didn’t want to be excommunicated. Not when he’d just managed to wedge his foot in the door with the starters on the team. I gave his hand a tight squeeze.
“It’s not your job to stand up to them,” I told him.
Andre sighed, seeming equally frustrated and embarrassed.
“I should, though. You’re my friend, and that’s your investigation. And I know you. But Fogarty and these guys—they think someone’s trying to sabotage their season, or some paranoid shit like that. They’re convincing themselves the Daily—like, you and Ellison and Mehri—are making something up.”
“They think we would just make something up?”
Andre’s eyes blew wide. He tipped his head pointedly at the other side of the room, and I followed his gaze. Kyle Fogarty, Scott Quinton (the offensive tackle with the thick neck and cherubic face) and a few other first-string players were settling into a cluster of seats on the far end of the center column of seats, two rows down from us. They weren’t looking our way, which meant they hadn’t noticed my outburst, but they looked on edge. Restless. Agitated.
Fogarty’s faux hawk glinted neon green in the auditorium lights as he dropped into his seat with an audible huff, then turned to the others to say something in a low, furious whisper I couldn’t make out. I sank lower in my seat, feeling suddenly cold and jittery.
They think you made it all up.
“Why would we make something like this up?” I whisper-hissed to Andre. “We’re the fucking school paper. Why would we try to sabotage our own football team?”
Andre ghosted his fingers back and forth over the racing stripes buzzed into the side of his hair, like it calmed him.
“They’re scared. They’re just scared, is all. It’s making them stupid.”
One of the two pairs of doors at the top of the lecture hall popped open and our professor, Nick, appeared.
He was wearing his usual T-shirt and blazer combo, despite the sweltering heat outside, and he had his laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He stopped two steps into the room, an arm stretched back to hold open the door for someone behind him.
“You can just bring it down to the front,” he said over his shoulder.
My stomach dropped when Bodie St. James slipped through the door. He was carrying an old-school projector—a big, heavy hunk of plastic with a light box on the base and a stand mirror that cast an image onto a wall. The thick, corded muscles in his arms strained under the short sleeves of a white Garland University T-shirt, but there was an easy smile on his face, like helping our lanky hipster of a professor was genuinely making his day.
His dark hair was mussed, like he’d slept in that morning and hadn’t bothered brushing it. He looked well rested.
Happy. Blissfully ignorant.
“Yeah, just right there’s perfect,” Nick said as Bodie set the projector down next to the podium up on stage. “Thanks so much, Bodie.”
“No problem,” Bodie said earnestly.
I would’ve rolled my eyes at the chumminess of it all if I wasn’t so busy trembling in ice-cold panic. I watched Bodie’s face very carefully as he turned to start up the aisle toward Fogarty and the others, thumbs tucked into the straps of his backpack like a third grader on his way to school. I watched his smile dissolve, ever so slowly, into a confused frown as took in the sight of his teammates, with their dark glares and tensed shoulders.
“Bodie hasn’t heard yet,” I murmured.
Andre shook his head. “I don’t think he read the group chat.”
We both watched Bodie shrug off his backpack and lower it slowly in front of the empty seat on the aisle, like he wasn’t quite sure if his teammates were going to let him sit there.
“What’s up?” Bodie asked, his eyes on Fogarty. “Practice was canceled this morning, right? I thought the email said—”
Fogarty whipped out his phone, tapped the screen harder than totally necessary a few times, and handed it to Bodie wordlessly.
Mierda, I thought.
On stage at front of the lecture hall, Nick clicked open his PowerPoint and then looked up and surveyed the room. His eyes landed on Bodie, who was still standing in front of the seat on the aisle, eyebrows pinched and mouth half-open as he stared down at Fogarty’s phone in stunned silence.
“All right,” Nick teased pointedly. “Why don’t we all take a seat and we can start.”
There was a little titter of snorts and giggles throughout the lecture hall. Bodie blinked at Nick for a moment—like he couldn’t seem to remember where he was and didn’t understand why people were laughing—before he glanced down at Kyle Fogarty, who tipped his chin to the empty seat. Bodie braced one hand on the back of the chair, like his knees might give out beneath his weight, and sank down into it obediently.
“All right,” Nick said, clapping his hands and shooting us all a smile that was perhaps a little too cheery given the subject matter we were about to tackle. “Today we’re starting unit three, STIs and STDs.”
I wasn’t paying attention. I was watching Fogarty put a hand on Bodie’s shoulder and lean in close to whisper in that quick, furious way again. I had the sudden urge to chuck my mechanical pencil across the room, like hitting Fogarty in the back of his dumb green faux hawk with a tiny stick of plastic and graphite might keep him from spewing poison into Bodie’s ear.
Bodie nodded along halfheartedly as he kept reading. And then, suddenly, his head reared back like he’d been slapped.
He turned over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes like he was searching the room. Like he was looking for someone.
I watched, with a growing pit in my stomach, as he scanned each row of the lecture hall. There was a girl my shade of brunet three rows down. Bodie paused, craned his neck a little, then continued his search when the girl turned her head and he saw her profile. I propped one elbow on my stupid little swivel desk and braced my hand over my eyes, shielding my face as inconspicuously as I could. But this felt pretty conspicuous, so instead I clasped my hands in my lap and tried my best to pretend I was paying incredibly close attention as Nick read off a PowerPoint slide about genital herpes.
I risked another glance at Bodie, who was twisted around in his seat. His eyes landed on me and stopped.
I was going to throw up. Here, in the middle of lecture, like a freshman who’d hit the boxed wine too hard on Blackout Thursday.
I tried to look away but I wasn’t quite quick enough. Our eyes locked and latched for a split second—just long enough that I caught the flicker of recognition that settled over his face. Bodie St. James remembered me. Under other circumstances, this might’ve been a cause for celebration. Popping open pinot noir with Hanna, blasting a throwback playlist, dancing around our kitchen. “A cute boy noticed me” celebration. Instead, I swallowed the lump in my throat and realized that, for perhaps the first time in my life, my invisibility had failed me.
Chapter 8
Ellison lived in an apartment building one block over from the Rodeo—close enough that, on a Saturday morning, you could hear the Baseball House blasting country music. I climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Mehri Rajavi down the outdoor walkway, looking between her phone and the numbers on the doors.
“Did she summon you too?” I called.
Mehri shielded her eyes with one hand. “She sends some really fucking ominous texts.”
Together, we found her apartment and knocked. The door swung open and our editor in chief appeared before us, a tiny plastic party cup of champagne in one hand. I’d never seen her in leggings before.
“Hi, ladies,” she greeted us. “Thanks for coming.”
Her apartment was exactly what I’d expected—impeccably clean and decorated like something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue, down to the chunky knit throw on the couch and the potted succulent on the kitchen counter. There was a mountain of cardboard pizza boxes piled up on her dining table, which was twice as big as the one Hanna and I had at our apartment.
“Come on, Cates,” Ellison said, hand on my shoulder to steer me away from the door and into her living room, like she thought I might turn and make a break for it. “Cheese or pepperoni?”
“You could’ve told me we were having a party,” I mumbled.
I’d wasted the morning knee-deep in pessimism when I could’ve skipped my shitty granola bar breakfast to prepare my body for the onslaught of free carbs.
Ellison shrugged. “I thought it’d be a nice surprise.
Here—let me grab you a cup of champagne. You look like you could use it.”
She disappeared into the kitchen. I turned and regarded the mountain of pizza boxes. All my worrying that morning had done a real number on my appetite, but I knew better than to turn down free food when it was offered. I stepped up to the table and popped open one of the boxes, letting the scent of hot bread and cheese and tomato sauce waft up to my face. It was hard to choose between cheese and pepperoni, so I took one of each and smacked them together, cheese to cheese.
The sandwich of champions.
“What are we celebrating?” Mehri asked, less easily distracted by the culinary offerings.
I cupped a hand under my chin to catch a string of melted cheese.
Ellison twisted her lips and said, “I don’t know if I’d call this a celebration, per se.”
“Vaughn told the whole football team he thinks we’re trying to drag up his past with addiction in order to get attention,” I piped up. “They’re convinced we’re running a smear campaign.”
“I know,” Ellison said. “Owens was furious about the article. I tried to tell him about your original pitch, and he vetoed the shit out of it. Says we’re not allowed to touch it with a ten-foot pole.”
“Oh.” The pizza settled like a rock in my stomach.
“He’s forbidding us from investigating?” Mehri demanded.
Ellison nodded. “He confiscated every binder of tips I had in my office.”
“You’re joking,” Mehri said. “Oh my god, this is a nightmare.”
“Well, yes, it would’ve been,” Ellison corrected, “if I hadn’t scanned everything and dropped it into the Google Drive attached to my personal email. But that’s not why I called you here. About five seconds after Owens left my office, I ran over to the athletics department and told them Sterling needed a few documents.”
“Why?” I asked, frowning.
Ellison forced a shaky smile as she slapped a few sheets of paper on the table.
“Because we’re going rogue,” she announced. “The girl who sent us that tip about Vaughn groping her during an event filed this report with the athletics department. They were supposed to forward it to the Title IX office, but they didn’t.”
Mehri gasped in scandalized delight. “You stole this?”
Ellison nodded. “I’m not letting the administration bury this.”
“So we’re still pursuing the story?” I asked.
“We are. But this has to be top secret now,” Ellison said, lowering her voice despite the fact that she was safe in the comfort of her own apartment.
I could appreciate that there was a lot at stake. Ellison was the editor in chief of one of the oldest college papers in California. She had much more to lose than Mehri and I did, even if her perch at the top of the Daily’ s pyramid meant she was more likely to weather a firestorm than two junior writers. I glanced between Ellison and Mehri, a strange warmth blooming in my chest that was equal parts pride and nausea.
Ellison must’ve noticed I looked like I was about to hurl, because she turned on the pep talk.
“I need you on this. Both of you. This could be huge.”
“I’m in,” Mehri said immediately.
She and Ellison turned to me. I felt like a domino in a chain. Like if I didn’t budge, nothing else down the line would.
“Me too.”
Ellison gave my shoulder a squeeze. It felt like a hug, coming from her.
“Did those women at the country club have any evidence that could confirm Vaughn was in San Diego the weekend this girl was assaulted?” she asked.
“I think one of them said she had a selfie with him.”
“See what else they have—videos, pictures, texts. We have to make sure whatever we print is bulletproof. The second this is out we’ll have people trying to poke holes in our research to defend Vaughn.”
The flare of panic in my chest was almost painful.
“Wait, are you sure you want—I mean, Joaquín’s cousin hasn’t even messaged me back yet. This could be nothing.” And Mehri’s tips, while damning, were more than five years old and from anonymous sources.
“We’re not writing this article today,” Ellison insisted, setting her elbows on the table and folding one hand over the other. “We’re investigating. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Cates.
All I need you to do right now is wait for the text and track down those women from the country club and interview all of them again. Make sure their stories haven’t changed. Record everything.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“And I need you,” Ellison continued, turning to Mehri,
“to find the girls who sent in those tips. I don’t know if any of them checked into the student health center or contacted Title IX services—”
“But I’ll find out,” Mehri confirmed. “Gotcha, boss.”
Ellison nodded tightly. I caught a flicker of fear in her eyes before she tossed back her cup of champagne and reached for the nearest box of pizza.
—
I took two entire pizzas home. Ellison had gone a bit overboard with the order in her excitement (because we were rebels with a cause now) and hunger (because she’d been running off nothing but black tea, trail mix, and anxiety for twenty-four hours), and was more than happy to get rid of a few pies so she wouldn’t have to take up every square inch of space in the communal fridge.
My walk home felt like something out of a music video.
The sky was a cloudless, unmarred blue, and every manicured lawn and ancient oak tree was vibrant green and bathed in warm sunlight. The afternoon air was warm and filled with the chirps of birds and the laughs of students. I felt light on my feet, despite the weight of the two large pizzas. But that probably had something to do with the two cups of cheap champagne I’d downed.
Back at the apartment, I found Andre and Hanna in the kitchen. Andre was standing in front of the open fridge, forlornly, and Hanna had crawled onto the counter to look through the top shelves of our cupboards. The second I stepped through the front door, she inhaled sharply, like one of those TSA German shepherds when they catch the scent of a fifty-pound bag of cocaine.
“Where’d you get the pizza?” she demanded.
Andre slammed the fridge shut. “Oh, hell yes.”
I set the boxes on our rickety dining table, then took a step back so I wouldn’t be trampled as Hanna and Andre descended on them with giddy laughter and cheers.
“I’m going to go call my mom,” I announced, using a paper towel to mop up a bit of grease that’d seeped through the cardboard and stained my fingers. “I’ll be quick.”
“M-kay,” Hanna hummed through a mouthful of pizza.
“Save me a slice,” I told them.
“No promises,” she and Andre said in unison.
I slipped out the door and headed for the back exit. Our apartment building didn’t have a real garage, just a handful of parking spots tucked under the shade of the second floor along a driveway that connected to a side street. There were cars in all six spots that afternoon.
The ugliest of the bunch was mine. On my sixteenth birthday, my parents had gifted me a white 2014 Toyota Corolla with thirty thousand miles on it. They’d bought it from our neighbors—an older couple who were planning to move into a nice old folks’ home with a reliable shuttle service. My mom and dad had been nervous that I’d hate it because it wasn’t new, it definitely wasn’t cute, and it did sort of smell like old people, but I’d been so happy I’d bawled my eyes out.
I loved that car. I knew all her quirks too—like how you had to give her to the count of three after you unlocked her because if you opened the door too quick she’d panic and start with the alarms. She also doubled as a great place to have a moment alone. I’d cried in my car. I’d done homework in my car. But calling my parents was always the most fun. I wiggled into the driver’s seat, getting comfortable, and then clicked on my phone and went through my starred contacts until I found MADRE.
She answered on the second ring.
“Laurel! Your father’s sitting next to me, let me just put you on speaker.”
There was a lot of rustling and muttered Spanish before she figured it out.
“Hey, mija!” my dad greeted me, chipper as could be.
Me-juh. Patrick Cates couldn’t seem to pick up a passable Spanish accent no matter how many telenovelas we watched or how often he spoke to my mom’s side of the family. The man’s language skills were just nonexistent.
“Hi, Dad,” I said. “Is now a good time to talk?”
“Now works,” he responded. “Your mother and I just had a business lunch together. Very upscale place.”
“We went to Subway,” she clarified. “What are you up to, mi amor?”
I smiled in disbelief, because I never imagined I’d be calling my parents with this kind of news. “I just wanted to let you know that my editor asked me and another girl to write a special feature. And I think we might be on the front page.”
“Laurel,” Mom said very seriously. “We are so proud of you.”
I laughed, then blotted my eyes with the sleeve of my jean jacket. “Don’t make me cry, okay?”
