Page 28 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I’ll be honest. With my mouth free, but her just watching instead of doing something? It’s really fucking with me. My eyes fill with tears, and my chest tightens.

“Please get me out,” I beg her. I twist my fingers together, although I can barely feel my pinkies. “Help me. Please.”

The janitor puts her hand on my shoulder. “Shonda is calling the EMTs. There’s a lot of tape on your skin, and we’re afraid… it could cause more damage if we pull it. They can free you better.”

I gulp. She goes to her cart and returns with a Styrofoam cup of water, complete with a lid and plastic straw. She puts the straw at my lips, and I suck down the ice water without question. My throat is raw, although I don’t think I made much noise.

Maybe I did.

The security guard returns with two EMTs. They cut me free enough so I can stand on wobbling, half-asleep legs. They remove my jeans and sit me on the stretcher they wheeled in to get the rest off of my legs.

All the while, they pepper me with questions.

I close my eyes. Them removing the tape strips, even delicately, stings worse than anything else today. I have hives on my legs where the adhesive reacted. They advise that I might bruise, too. One looks at my cheek, checks my eyes. I figured I don’t have any sort of concussion, but they confirm it.

“You’re good to go,” one says to me. “Shonda?”

“We need you to come to the campus security office,” Shonda says.

I hop off of the stretcher and put my jeans back on carefully, my cheeks burning with shame.

She puts her arms around my shoulders. “This has been a traumatic event. We need to file a report, and it’s important to get the details accurate. Come on, honey.”

I open and close my mouth. My lips are raw, still sticky with a bitter taste from the glue.

I’m also really fucking tired.

I don’t know where my phone ended up. I pause and mention it, and she quickly searches the bathroom. She finds it two stalls over. The screen is cracked diagonally, but other than that seems to be in working order.

It’s almost midnight.

I suck in another breath, although it comes in shuddering. I should’ve fought harder. I basically just gave in at the end, didn’t I?

Shonda leads me out of the arena through a side exit and into the campus security SUV. I lean back against the seat and touch the cheek Andi slapped. My legs are some mix of itchy and painful, every rasp of my jeans against the skin like sandpaper, but it’s my cheek that seems to draw most of my focus.

We park on campus, and Shonda ushers me across the lot and into the Admin building, down a slight ramp, and through the first door on the right. The office seems quiet, with another security guard manning a desk. Although he’s kicked back, his feet up on the desk beside a stack of folders, he quickly drops them and offers me a concerned gaze.

“Sit here,” Shonda says.

I almost fall into the cushioned chair she gestures to. I check my phone again, having to scroll through another onslaught of blocked callers and unsaved numbers to find five texts from Perri asking where I am. Then two from Dad…

God.

I swallow around the lump in my throat.

I reply to Perri that I had a bad run-in and went home early. I thank Dad for inviting me. For trying. I find Unknown’s thread, and they, too, seem to be questioning where I am. Because their last text hangs unanswered:

Unknown

Savory or sweet?

Followed by, hours later:

Not like you to go missing like this.

Such an important question left unanswered…