The football team had an away game that weekend.

I watched Andre's Snapchat story a few hundred times because Garland always felt too quiet when he wasn't barging into our apartment to eat our food and watch funny videos on his phone with the volume all the way up, so Hanna and I were sucked in, too. I watched because I missed him.

Not because he'd sat next to Bodie on the plane. Not because there was a picture of Bodie holding up a bag of in-flight peanuts in one hand and shooting a thumbs-up at the camera with the other.

Andre didn't know, yet, about the kiss.

I'd spilled every drop of detail to Hanna, but was still trying to work out how, exactly, I planned to tell Andre that his teammate had thrown the best soft serve ice cream in California onto a dirty sidewalk just to grab my face and kiss me.

Hanna, of course, had grilled me.

Was I sure I hadn't had too much sangria? Yes. Was I sure he was sober, too? I sure hope so, considering he drove us all home. Did I like Bodie because I liked him, or did I like Bodie because I liked the way he looked?

The answer was both. But mainly the former.

"Have you guys discussed Vaughn?" she'd asked solemnly.

I'd deflated like a pricked balloon.

"We'll talk about it on Tuesday," I assured her.

I was trying not to freak out about it. I knew we'd have plenty of time to talk about what had happened on Thursday night. The investigations were a knotted mess that might take months to work out. I had time to explain myself, to prove to Bodie that every word in our article had been written to help rather than hurt.

We had time.

At least, I thought we did.

❖ ❖ ❖

Monday mornings had never been my strong suit, but I'll blame the residual confused giddiness of Thursday night for the fact that I passed at least five people on campus wearing identical green t-shirts before I picked up on the trend and bothered to read them.

Across the chest, in block lettering, were the words FREE VAUGHN.

This was the first sign that something was amiss.

The second was a plastic folding table set up on the parkway, right smack dab in the middle of campus, where a handful of students were selling the shirts.

There was a line—an honest-to-God line—to buy them.

"Laurel!"

I turned. On the opposite side of the parkway, behind a second folding table to which two posters had been duct-taped, stood Mehri Rajavi. She waved at me, signalling me to wait, and then said something to the cluster of students with her before darting across the parkway to meet me.

The posters on their table read We Believe Survivors and Justice for Josefina.

"Mehri, what's—"

"This is bullshit!"

There was a horrible knot in my stomach.

"What bullshit, exactly, are we talking about?" I asked.

"The school can't close their investigation. It's been two fucking weeks! How the hell do you conduct a thorough—"

My mind was lagging a few seconds behind.

The school closed the investigation.

"They what?" I demanded, my voice very small.

Mehri twisted her lips. She'd thought I'd known.

"They closed the investigation," she repeated. "Sterling says they couldn't find any evidence supporting the tips the Daily got. He says Vaughn is totally innocent. They emailed out a statement this morning."

I hadn't checked my email.

Why hadn't I checked my email?

"I need to go," I croaked. "I'll—shit, I'll text you, okay?"

I abandoned my well-intentioned plans to go to Writing 301 and took off towards the student union, my chest tight as a clenched fist and my pulse hammering in my neck.

Two weeks. How was that possibly enough time to review all the leads Ellison and I had painstakingly dug up?

There was a beanbag chair in the elevator of the student union. I kicked it to the side and smacked the button for the third floor, then bounced on my toes as I waited for the doors to pull open on the media center.

I marched straight to Ellison Michael's office.

When she opened her door and saw me, she sighed wearily.

"I figured I'd see you soon. Take a seat, Cates."

She was calm. Too calm.

"You knew."

Ellison motioned toward the chair across from her desk. I sunk 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 trashcan beside her desk.

I watched her and knew that I'd missed her anger. I could still see traces of it 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. "Well, they either determined all the tips were sent from bogus email address—" I opened my mouth to argue, "—or they decided they're not worth looking into."

"Not worth looking into?" I repeated, incredulous.

"Seven million dollars."

"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 ignore our article.

"Ellison," I croaked. "I need—"

I dropped my backpack to the floor and replaced it on my lap with the trashcan 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.

"The good news," Ellison continued, "is that the NCAA won't let him back on a field until he's acquitted. And that's not going to happen until the Garland PD and the California Department of Justice finish tracking down the source of those tips. The school can make as many statements to sway public opinion as they want. Vaughn's not clear until the police say so."

"What about Josefina?" I asked miserably, my voice echoing in the belly of her plastic trashcan.

"I think the Mexican authorities have footage from that bar," Ellison said.

I lifted my head.

"Explain."

She pulled out her phone. When she flipped the screen for me to see, there was a Yelp page for a touristy bar in Cabo San Lucas pulled up. She pulled up a picture of the interior from the reviews.

"See that dot in the corner?" she asked, tapping on the screen, "That's a security camera. There've been seven arrests related to bar fights at this place. Summer is their busy season. They'd definitely have this thing on and recording. It'd be a liability not to."

"So why haven't the police said anything?" I asked. "If they have footage, wouldn't they announce it to the media?"

Ellison leaned forward over her desk.

"Mexican law enforcement is notoriously tight-lipped about their investigations. But they're still in contact with LAPD about getting a warrant for Vaughn's arrest, which they wouldn't be doing if they had security footage that placed Vaughn at the bar when Josefina went missing. His alibi would check out. They'd have to start looking for other suspects."

"Okay," I said, bouncing my knee. The trashcan on my lap shook, too. "So you—you think they're still going to catch him?"

"I do," Ellison said.

I took comfort in her certainty.

But then a face popped into my head—thundercloud eyes, a boyish smile, hair stubbornly rumpled. At some point today, if he hadn't already, Bodie St. James was going to learn that the university had declared Vaughn an innocent man.

He might think I'd made the whole article up.

He might think I was a liar.

I hung my head over the trashcan and counted backward from a hundred.

❖ ❖ ❖

Tuesday came, and I was a full-blown mess. Hanna had insisted on shoveling a few granola bars in my backpack before I left for class when I told her I'd skipped breakfast. I'd lied and promised her I'd eat one, but the truth was that I hadn't had any appetite since Monday morning—since before everything had come crashing down on my head. I hadn't had a full meal since the weekend.

And I hadn't seen Bodie since Thursday night.

Since we'd kissed.

I got to lecture fifteen minutes early, on the off chance he 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 amongst the pack of students who came trudging in, but it wasn't Bodie. It was Scott Quinton, the thick-necked linebacker.

I sunk back into my seat. 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 rented the place.

"Where's St. James?" Quinton asked, voicing my thoughts exactly. "Is he meeting with Vaughn right now?"

Fogarty shook his head.

"They talked yesterday."

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.

"He's coming to class, though, right?" Quinton asked.

"I don't know. Think he and Vaughn are going over plays with Gordon."

"I thought Vaughn wasn't allowed to coach yet?"

Fogarty smirked.

"He's not allowed in a stadium," he said. "Doesn't mean he can't give Gordon some pointers before the game."

That was all I needed to hear.

I shoved my swivel desk back between the seats and leaned over to cram my notebook into my backpack. 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 on Amazon.

I stood and tugged my backpack on.

"What're you doing?" Andre asked.

I wished I had a solid answer for him.

"I just—I need to go pick up a new field pass."

"Laurel, the fuck—"

"I'll text you," I called over my shoulder as I shimmied into the aisle and bolted for the door.

I had no tangible plan.

I just knew I needed to find Bodie.

_________________

Back on the suffer bus, everyone. Hope you enjoyed that scenic St. Cates overlook, but we've got miles of plot left to cover (what? I told you one kiss doesn't fix anything—just makes it more interesting).

See you on Friday.

Your friendly author,

Kate