Whistleblower ✓

10 | gameday

It wasn't even light outside yet, and somewhere in our apartment building, someone with an impressively loud speaker was blasting Garland's fight song—a frustratingly catchy cacophony of tubas and cymbals and every wind instrument I could name.

I rolled over in my bed, checked the time on my phone, and pulled my duvet up over my head with a groan.

The first home football game of the season was usually something I looked forward to. I loved the thrill of being part of a crowd. I loved standing shoulder to shoulder with fifty thousand other people and feeling like we were family, as we cheered and chanted and chugged watery beer under the heat of the midday sun.

Hanna and I had made a pact freshman year that we'd get to the stadium early, every game, so we'd be somewhere in the first five rows of the student section. That way Andre could always find us in the crowd.

I loved Gameday.

And so I probably would've jumped out of bed whistling along with our fight song, if it weren't for the fact that I'd spent the past four nights staring at the ceiling all night as I imagined all the ways that this article about Vaughn could blow up in our faces.

Distantly, and muffled through my duvet, Hanna's mattress creaked and groaned on the other side of the room. Two footsteps thudded against the floor, and then there was a weight on top of me and my blankets were yanked back from my face.

"Rise and shine!" Hanna bellowed. "It's Gameday!"

I blinked up at her, disgruntled and still half asleep.

"Your breath is heinous," I said.

"Yeah, yours isn't too hot, either. C'mon. Only five hours until kickoff. Go shower so I can curl your hair."

❖ ❖ ❖

I've never been to the Vatican City, but I can only guess that the crowds at Garland University on the morning of a home game must look an awful lot like Easter Mass at St. Peter's Square. Except I don't think anyone's doing keg stands outside the Basilica.

Then again, I've never been a very good Catholic, so what do I know?

The point is—campus was crawling with people, from baby-faced freshman to ninety-year-old alumni in wheelchairs, all of them gathered under pop-up tents and shady oaks trees with their coolers and portable grills.

As soon as Hanna and I set foot on campus, we became two more specks in the sea of dark green.

"How is it this hot already?" I grumbled, shielding my eyes with my hand. "It's, like, nine in the morning."

Hanna tugged her tube-top up with a frustrated huff.

"I really wish I had boobs," she grumbled.

"No you don't," I said. "My boob sweat is unreal right now."

I'd worn my usual Gameday outfit—Andre's practice jersey from freshman year, with his last name and number on the back. It stilled smelled vaguely of sweat despite the number of times I'd run it through the wash, but it was comfortable and large enough that I could drink as much beer and eat as many snacks as I wanted without worrying about bloating.

Hanna, on the other hand, had chosen a black corduroy overall dress and a Garland green tube-top. She looked entirely too trendy to be gallivanting around muddy lawns on campus in search of friends and free alcohol.

We were halfway across the quad outside Buchanan, both of us slinking along under the hot sun like animals in search of a watering hole, when Hanna tugged my arm to point out a cluster of fifty or so students gathered in the middle of the grass under a green pop-up tent surrounded by rickety beer pong tables and cornhole boards.