Outside, the night was dark and quiet.

I didn't have to look at my phone to know that I was too late to make the party at the Baseball House. Ellison only lived about a block and a half from the Rodeo, so I would've been able to hear music if anyone was still raging into the night. I still checked to be sure I hadn't missed anything important, though.

There were three notifications from Andre.

The first was a text that read Come to based bull hose so much free beet.

The second was a Snapchat—a blurry picture of a Hanna, grinning and flipping off the camera with both hands in what looked like a very modern and recently updated kitchen, captioned She beat St Jame!!! Pong queen of three year!!!

The third was a text he'd sent ten minutes ago.

Were gong homed.

Comforted by the knowledge that my friends had ended up having a great night in my unplanned absence, I sat down on the curb between two parked cars and tore open my bag of tacos. Then I did what I always did when stressed.

I ate.

Half of me was terrified that I was wrong about Vaughn, and that I'd just convinced Ellison we should dive head-first into an investigation that might end up being a very shallow pool we'd crack out heads open on the bottom of.

The other half of me feared that the gut feeling I'd had when I saw the poster at Pepito's would prove right.

I inhaled all three of my tacos. It probably took me all of two minutes.

When I was done, I brushed a few chunks of pico de gallo off my lap, stood, and headed home.

❖ ❖ ❖

The apartment Hanna and I had leased was not glamorous.

Between the two of us, we'd had just enough cash to afford a place three blocks east of the Rodeo, where things got as sketchy as they could possibly get in a town as wealthy and sleepy as Garland.

The building was two stories, with one wide hallway down the middle. All the windows on the first floor had bars over them, the intercom had been broken for years, and there was a wasp infestation in the laundry room. Our apartment on the second floor overlooked a gas station and had a busted air conditioning unit that rattled and groaned like a dying animal.

But it was ours, and we loved it.

I heard Andre and Hanna before I even made it to our door. Their voices carried through the paper-thin walls, loud and a little slurred.

"It says two eggs!" Andre was shouting.

"Well I can't take an egg out now, so we're going with it."

I waited a moment, smiling to myself as I listened to them bicker, before I stuck a hand under my shirt to retrieve my key from inside my bra—the only place on my person from which I'd yet to lose anything during a night of partying.

Andre shouted my name as I stepped through the door.

He was sitting in one of the short little Ikea chairs around our rickety dining table, his knees tucked up almost to his chest and a crushed cardboard box of brownie mix in his hands, the back of which he was consulting as if it were a sacred text.

Hanna stood over the counter in our kitchenette, a spatula in her hand and a wreath of ping pong balls that someone had hot glue gunned together perched on her head like a crown.

"Where did you get that?" I asked her.

She flicked her spatula out, splattering one large glob of brownie batter onto the permanently grimy tile floor, and held her chin high.

"I won it."

"You shoulda seen it," Andre told me. "She beat half the team."

"And then Kyle Fogarty—who is fine as hell, by the way—bestowed upon me this crown," Hanna added, taking on perhaps the worst British accent I'd ever heard, "Which I shall be wearing to all social functions henceforth."

Andre made a show of rolling his eyes.

"How'd that online quiz go?" he asked me. "You were gone for like an hour."

I pulled out the seat beside him and plopped down.

"Um," I said, laughing weakly. "About that..."

The scent of baking brownies filled the apartment while I spoke. I told Hanna and Andre everything—from the poster at Pepito's to my phone call with Ellison to our conversation at her apartment.

I told them about Vaughn, too.

Hanna got mad. She started ranting with such enthusiasm that she nearly knocked off her ping pong ball crown.

Andre kept quiet until I was done speaking. He admitted, very softly, that he wasn't all that surprised—Coach Vaughn had always seemed like a real tool. He made comments about female reporters. About their bodies, their make-up, their clear desire to land a husband who could afford to buy them designer clothing and new cars. Once, after a big win Andre's freshman year, Vaughn had encouraged the players to go have a beer and get some ass.

I asked Andre if he'd feel comfortable being quoted in our article about Vaughn.

He said he'd be honored.

Hanna was still fuming as we shoveled steaming hot brownies into our mouths.

❖ ❖ ❖

The media center on a Monday morning was about as calm and enjoyable as Disneyland in July, which is the last place you want to be. Trust me.

There was a small line of people waiting in the hallway outside Ellison's office. At the front stood Joey, the blond boy I'd run into on the third floor of Buchanan when I was printing my article. He had a stack of papers in his hands. Even from halfway down the hall, I could see red pen marks scattered across the first page—Ellison's handiwork, no doubt.

She stood in the doorway to her office, arms folded over her chest as she listened to Joey make his case.

"I just think I should cover something else," he was saying. "The drama club is doing a production of Othello next month, and I'd love the chance to—"

"We need you on football, Aldridge," Ellison said, cutting him off. "You're one of my best field reporters. Talk to me after the season's over. Then I can see about swapping you in for someone on student productions."

I shuffled into a spot at the end of the line.

Ellison's eyes landed on me.

"Cates!" she called. "Get up here."

I felt everyone's eyes on my back as I skittered around the line. Ellison ushered my into her tiny, cramped office and tugged the door shut behind us, letting it slam right in Joey's forlorn face.

"Good morning," I said, cordially.

"Do you have the transcripts?" Ellison replied, skipping the small talk.

I fumbled with my backpack.

"Here they are," I announced, handing 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 just sent you the audio clips of the recordings in an email."

Ellison slapped the folder onto her desk.

Then she pulled a slim binder of documents out of a file cabinet in the corner and dropped it on top of the transcripts.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Pandora's Box," she said grimly. "These are tips. The Daily gets hundreds of them every year. We let people submit them anonymously, so a lot of them are a waste of time. You know, kids who failed a class they never showed up to and want to throw wild accusations at the professor to get their grades reevaluated. Stuff like—hold on—this one."

She flipped open the binder and twisted it so I could see.

"Professor Phineas Jones taught us false information about the Unites States moon landing of 1969 and then gave me an F on my final paper when I contested him. I believe he's working with the Kennedys to silence me," I read out loud.

"We didn't follow up on that one."

"Good call."

"But you get the sense of what we're dealing with here," Ellison said, slapping a hand on top of the binder. "Years of wild stuff."

I watched, increasingly wary, as she flipped to a page she'd dog-eared.

"Now read this one."

She passed me the binder.

It was an old tip, dated almost seven years ago—hand-written on an old paper form, from before we'd gone totally electronic. There was no personal information provided other than an email address that looked like it might've been initials with a string of numbers on the end.

The tip was short. Concise.

I was working an event for the athletics department three weeks ago and Truman Vaughn grabbed my ass while I was serving him his drink. I don't know if I'm supposed to tell campus police or what. Please help me.

I read it over three times.

"Nobody followed up with this?" I asked, my throat dry.

Ellison shook her head solemnly.

"Truman Vaughn is practically the patron saint of our athletic program. I don't think anyone had any reason to suspect..." she trailed off. "And then, of course, there's the fact that the Daily used to be controlled by the university. We only got our website up and running about five years ago, which is when we started having some real autonomy. Before that, the administration could pull anything they didn't like."

I blinked at her like she'd just told me the moon landing was faked.

"That's censorship," I argued.

"It is," Ellison nodded.

I looked down at the binder again.

"And this is sexual harassment."

"It is. It gets worse, too. That isn't the only tip I found."

She flipped the binder open to a new page.

And then another.

And another.

Some were long and detailed. Others were short, uncertain, punctuated at the end by question marks. The most recent one had been submitted four years ago.

I was in Cabo for Spring Break and think I did coke with the head coach of the football team? Lmao I don't know but it really looked like him!! Swear on my life.

I felt a headache coming on.

"I sent emails to every address attached to a tip about Vaughn," Ellison told me. "There are five of them. I haven't heard back from any yet, but the fact that these even exist is—" she clenched her teeth and shook her head, looking as nauseous and angry as I felt. "I'm putting all the senior editors and fact-checkers on this case. We have stories to corroborate and people to interview. Like, you know, Vaughn."

The blood drained from my face.

"Don't worry about it," Ellison insisted. "I'll take care of it. He knows who I am. I've interviewed him before, so hopefully he'll be comfortable with me."

"I have a friend on the team," I offered. "Andre Shepherd. I've already got a statement from him, but I can ask him if anyone else on the team would be willing to give us some testimony."

Ellison nodded sharply.

"Perfect. But keep it on the low. We don't want—shit. We need to talk to St. James. He and Vaughn are too close, though. If one of them gets suspicious about an interview question, they might tip each other off. We'll lose both sources."

It took me a moment to understand where she was going with this.

"So, we do it at the same time," I concluded.

Ellison nodded.

"Exactly. I'll need you to interview Bodie. Can you handle it?"

Nope, I thought.

But what came out of my mouth was, "Absolutely."

❖ ❖ ❖

Oh no, the plot has forced our MC to interview the charming quarterback who she tried to close some elevator doors on! And she's gotta do it while hiding her secret agenda (uncovering incriminating evidence about his head coach). Oh, how awful. Can't believe this happened. Well. No way around it, I guess. Totally unavoidable. Has to happen. Sorry, Laurel. Looks like you gotta take one for the team.

See y'all next week!!!

Your friendly author,

Kate