Whistleblower ✓

14 | group effort

Whatever Bodie had been expecting me to say, it definitely wasn't that.

To be fair, I also hadn't anticipated my outburst. It was like I'd been spontaneously possessed by the spirit of the spitfire, whiskey-chugging family matriarch in a telenovela—there didn't seem to be any other logical explanation for how I'd suddenly acquired the cojones to tell a Division I football player to, and I quote, eat a dick.

Bodie blinked at me in disbelief.

Then he flushed maroon, from his hairline to the collar of his shirt, and I tried to steel myself for whatever verbal hellfire he might rain.

But all that came was, "Sorry?"

There was a little crack in his voice.

I had the sudden and deeply inappropriate urge to laugh.

Bodie was half a foot taller than me, a hundred pounds heavier, widely adored, and wearing a suit that did wonderful things for his biceps. I had two friends, the upper body strength of a stale Cheetoh, and was dressed like my next class was an intermediate seminar on dumpster diving.

There was no way I'd actually hurt his feelings.

Besides. I was determined not to apologize, despite the fact that confrontation made me feel a tiny bit like I might burst into tears, because I wasn't about to let Bodie St. James accuse me of taking a shot at Vaughn just so people would know my name.

I hadn't realized that was a metaphorical bruise of mine, so it wasn't my fault I'd yelped when he prodded it.

I tipped my chin up and met his gaze, unflinching, and doubled down.

"I said eat a dick."

Bodie huffed and rolled his eyes, a bit too theatrically.

"Yeah," he grumbled, "I heard you the first time."

"Everything in that article has been fact-checked," I elaborated, channelling Ellison's professionalism. "We printed it because we know it's true. If you have a concern, you can email the editor-in-chief, but I'm not—"

"Oh, c'mon," he snapped. "That's bullshit."

I growled low in my throat.

Was he really so dense that he saw merit in Fogarty's theory? Did he honestly think that the Daily writers had somehow just made up an extensive series of first-hand accounts and specific details to implicate Truman Vaughn for multiple instances of misconduct?

I opened my mouth to make a counterargument, then caught the hint of someone's conversation behind us—something about gonorrhea—and remembered that we were sitting in the middle of a lecture hall.

"I'm not doing this right now," I told Bodie.

He ignored this and leaned over his desk so his eyes were level with mine.

"Vaughn is innocent," he insisted. "That article—"

"Did you even read it?"

"Yes, I read it," he snapped, so indignantly you'd think I'd accused him of being illiterate.

"Okay. Then you realize there are first-hand accounts from—"

"People can lie!"

The twinge of desperation in his voice made me hesitate.

It would've been so easy to pretend that Bodie St. James was just some neanderthal white boy with his privileged head wedged too far up his ass to see the world for what it was. But he looked up to his coach. He'd even told me during our interview that he considered him a father figure.