"I love you," Hanna said, "but if you don't stop moving your pinky, I'm going to snap it in half."

Being a hand model was difficult.

I hadn't realized this when I'd volunteered. I'd just wanted to shut Hanna up about how she was going to fail this figure drawing class, lose her scholarship, and get another lecture from her father about how she should've been pre-med instead of a fine arts major.

Five minutes into me holding still while Hanna ripped out pages of her sketchbook and brushed eraser dustings all over our bedroom carpet, Andre had shown up (still bleary-eyed and yawning from a post-dinner nap) and asked if he could join in. Hanna lent him a pack of charcoal sticks and one of her giant pads of newsprint paper, then scooted over so all three of us could fit on the floor between the beds.

"I'm fine if you wanna take a break soon," Andre told me, using the back of his hand to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. "Just gotta do some shading."

"Good for you," Hanna muttered, reaching for her eraser again.

She was about to start attempt number seven on my left pinky finger when Andre's phone buzzed where it lay on the carpet. He looked down at his charcoal-stained hands, then at me. I looked down at my carefully posed hands, then at Hanna. She groaned, smacked down her sketchbook, and reached across Andre's lap to check his phone for him.

"There's a party at the Baseball House tonight," she said, summarizing a text message. "Somebody named Cinder Block says you should come. He sent you the password, too."

"Cinder Block?" I repeated, snorting in disbelief.

"He's on the hockey team," Andre explained, sitting up straighter and twisting side to side to stretch his lower back. "Nice guy. I can't go to the party, though. We got the game tomorrow. Gordon said anybody who even looks like they got a hangover is getting benched."

Hanna hummed with disappointment.

"Is there gonna be a party tomorrow, at least?"

"Oh, the after party's still happening," Andre said. "Me and the boys are hosting at The Palazzo. We got, like, twenty-five handles of Svedka. So if we win, we gon' celebrate. And if we lose... we got twenty-five handles of Svedka."

I had to give Andre credit. It sounded like a foolproof plan. And I was pretty sure that after covering the game from the field with Joey Aldridge, I was going to need hard alcohol. A lot of it.

"But nobody on the football team will be at the Baseball House tonight, right?" Hanna mused.

Andre shook his head.

"Unless they wanna get benched," he said.

Hanna turned to me, mouth stretched in a wide-open grin.

"Laurel, we should—"

"No."

Her face fell.

"But don't you wanna see the Baseball House?" she whined.

I did. I'd still never been, and the fact that Hanna and Andre had gone without me the night I'd learned about Josefina Rodriguez had been eating at me. Despite how scary going to a party overflowing with friends of the football team sounded, I still got starry-eyed thinking about that house.

"I should lay low," I said, a firm reminder directed more to myself than to my friends.

"With all due respect," Hanna told me, "I know it feels like you're public enemy number one because some of the guys on the football team are mad at you, but you aren't your article. Just because everybody on campus knows about Vaughn doesn't mean they're gonna recognize you. Especially not in shitty lighting. Just put on a hat, or something. You'll be fine."

I looked to Andre for help.

"Everybody's gonna be wasted, anyway," he said with a shrug.

Hanna cocked one eyebrow, challenging me to find a flaw in her logic.

"I don't even have anything to wear," I grumbled.

❖ ❖ ❖

Hanna's corduroy overall dress made me feel like I'd accidentally ordered something online from the kids' department. It was snug around the hips and hit me well above mid-thigh, no matter how much I tugged it down. But it was black. And if I was going to borrow Hanna's clothing for the night, I was going to wear something stain-resistant, in case anyone decided to dump their drink on me.

Because apparently that was a thing I had to prepare for now.

"You're lucky I shaved my legs this morning," I quipped.

Hanna, who wasn't listening to me at all, let out a triumphant whoop whoop and yanked something from the depths of her side of the closet. It wasn't until she turned to face me that I saw what she'd found—a pastel pink baseball hat that read, in white cursive embroidery, Garland University Daddy.

"Absolutely not," I said.

"Why?" Hanna cried. "It's cute. The Art House made them for Family Weekend last year. C'mon, it'll hide your face! And it's a great conversation starter!"

"That literally defeats the purpose of hiding my face."

Hanna ignored me and slapped the hat onto my head.

"Andre! Get in here," she shouted at the doorway. "You're the tie-breaker vote!"

"We are not voting on this," I said.

And so it was decided, two-to-one, that I would be wearing a pastel pink hat that read Garland University Daddy to my first ever Baseball House party.

❖ ❖ ❖

It was all a really bad idea.

This was something I remained sure of during our improvised pregame (three shots of Fireball each while Hanna blasted an old LMFAO song on her phone) and on the walk to the Rodeo.

The Baseball House sat in the middle of the street, wide and imposing with its wraparound porch and speaker system so loud I felt the bass in the sidewalk under my feet. Little clusters of students were gathered on the front lawn, some of them looking around for friends and others feverishly typing out texts or snapping at each other.

"Just ask her roommate what the password is," I overheard one guy say into his phone. "She's on the volleyball team, isn't she? Or basketball. I don't know. She's tall, okay! Just ask."

A pair of enormous freshman hockey players stood at the front door, gatekeeping like two baby-faced bouncers.

For a split second, I imagined them spotting me amongst the line of people waiting to get into the party and telling me to screw off. But when we got to the top of the porch steps, Hanna went on her tiptoes so she could whisper Cinder Block's password into one of their ears.

And just like that, we were in.

I'd never felt so cool.

All the houses on the Rodeo were old Victorians, but the Baseball House looked like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and hollowed it out room by room, then poured a catalogue's worth of modern furniture, fresh paint and brand-new hardwood flooring into each shell.

Hanna steered me through the crowded living room, with its black leather couches and dimmed lights, and into the modern kitchen I'd gotten a glimpse of in the blurry Snapchat Andre had sent me the night he'd gotten the party invite from Bodie.

I stopped in the archway between the two rooms.

Through the sea of beautiful people and student athletes stood a granite-slab kitchen island lined with at least forty bottles of wine. Glass bottles. And not even twist-tops. Corked.

"Oh my god," I whispered reverently.

Hanna bumped her hip against mine and shot me a smile that said, aren't you glad you listened to me?

"I'm gonna find some suckers to challenge at beer pong," she told me.

While she did that, my inappropriate hat and I made our way over to the extensive wine selection.

There was a small cluster of girls gathered around the island. They were on the soccer team. I recognized one of them from a communications class I'd taken freshman year—she'd done a presentation on the pay gap between the men's national team and the women's that'd earned a standing ovation from our professor. I'd felt pretty mediocre when I had to follow it up with a three-slide PowerPoint (which I'd thrown together the night before, naturally) on the banana farming industry in Jamaica.

I crept up to the kitchen island, sliding into an empty spot beside the pack of soccer players, and looked out across the sea of wine. I spotted what looked like a half-full pinot noir just across the way.

Just as I went for it, the girl next to me reached for the same bottle.

Our elbows knocked awkwardly.

"Ooh! Sorry," she said, turning to shoot me a smile, "you can go for—"

And then she gasped.

I imagined taking a cup of wine to the face.

What came instead was, "Oh my god, I love your hat."

I spent the next thirty seconds explaining how she, too, could be the proud owner of a Garland University Daddy hat if she was brave enough to Venmo somebody she'd never met thirty bucks. The three other soccer players eventually noticed my impromptu sales pitch and joined in, asking if the hat came in different colors and if they could get a discount of some kind if they bought them in bulk.

I was so sure that, at any moment, one of them would narrow their eyes and say, hey wait—aren't you that girl from the Daily?

But nobody did.

Eventually a Justin Bieber song came on, and the soccer players thanked me for my time before migrating to the living room to dance.

When they were gone, I ducked my head, grabbed a red cup and poured myself a splash of the nearest open bottle.

It was white wine, and it was sharp and pungent on my tongue.

I chugged it anyway.

After I'd drained my cup, I hummed thoughtfully (like I had even the slightest idea what I was supposed to be looking for in a wine other than a price tag under five bucks) and then moved on to a peachy pink bottle with cursive on the label.

Rosé.

I swished it around in my mouth. Considered gargling it. Remembered I was in public. Restrained myself.

Next were the reds. The first one I poured into my plastic cup was a deep, dark burgundy that sent a little shiver of anticipation up my spine. I stuck my nose in the cup and inhaled deeply a few times before I drank.

Dios mío.

God was real, and he was in this kitchen.

I put another splash of red wine in my cup, then picked up two more bottles and added a bit of each into the mix, swishing everything together.

"Wine not?" I murmured under my breath, borrowing the phrase from a t-shirt I'd seen at Target, and tossed back a sip of my unholy jungle juice.

Then I frowned.

How many drinks was that? I wasn't having full servings—just, like, shots. Wine shots. I tried to count them on one hand, but got tripped up when I couldn't remember if I was on the third or fourth count of five.

Oh well, I thought, and had another gulp.

I found Hanna in the living room, on one end of a collapsable beer pong table beside a stone fireplace with a glass mantle.

At the other end of the table stood two very tall, very relaxed young men (swimmers, judging by their wide shoulders and well-developed lats) who were clearly underestimating the BP powerhouse that was my best friend.

"Team meeting," I said. "What's our strategy?"

"I'll do the shooting," Hanna said. "You be cute. Enjoy yourself."

These were mutually exclusive things.

I chose the latter and started swaying side-to-side to the pounding beat of a Kanye West song, working myself up to more of a hula-hooping motion.

Clearly, our opponents didn't think the pair of us were much of a threat since Hanna barely came up to their elbows, even in her platform sneakers, and I was dancing like a middle-aged white dad fresh out of knee replacement surgery. The two swimmers across the table laughed with each other as they readied their ping pong balls and straightened their cups, looking like they couldn't wait to make two drunk girls chug lukewarm beer.

So it was that much more satisfying when Hanna singlehandedly took them out in just four turns.

While the two of us hooted obnoxiously and high-fived over our untouched triangle of cups, the taller of the two losers came around the side of the table and held out his hand in concession.

"Good game," he told Hanna.

My best friend, who was already pink in the face and was not often flustered by boys, blushed bright red.

"Nice effort," she replied.

I was definitely in favor of Hanna replacing her Art House stoner booty call, Danny, with Mr. Good Sport over here. Which meant it was time for me to excuse myself for a moment and let the two of them talk.

"I'm gonna top up my wine," I whispered, clapping Hanna on the shoulder and then winking far too conspicuously.

Hanna reached out to pinch my side.

I dodged her, squealing with laughter, and darted into the crowd.

It'd turned into the perfect night.

Hanna and I were kicking ass and taking names at beer pong, she was totally gonna bag a hot swimmer, and I had managed to interact with other human beings without incident or lasting impression, in spite of the gaudy hat and too-short overall dress. I felt invisible again. It was a welcome relief after two weeks of paranoia since the Vaughn article hit the Daily homepage.

Back at the kitchen island, I plucked up another bottle of wine, scanned the label like it even mattered, and filled my cup up halfway.

And then, from the living room, came the war-cry of someone who had clearly pregamed way too aggressively.

"What's up, bitches?"

I nearly snorted out my wine.

It was Kyle Fogarty.

_________________

Sorry for splitting this chapter into two and leaving a cliffhanger but, like, we see where this is going, right? We're smart. We know who Kyle came to the party with. And we know our darling Laurel is gonna be absolutely hammered when the wine hits. So grab your lawn chairs and your popcorn. It's time to watch—what's their ship name, anyway? Laurdie? Borel? Yikes.

Anyway. It's 2019! And I'm SO happy to be back to work on this story. I told myself that two or three weeks off over the holidays was a necessary thing to avoid burnout, but then I spent the whole break anxious because I wasn't writing. Now I'm rusty. But the good news is that I'll be finishing WHISTLEBLOWER within the year! I've got big plans for this book (and I don't just mean my aggressively long outline).

Your friendly author,

Kate