Page 29 of The Pucking Coach's Daughter
U OK?
How do they know what’s like me or not? I don’t reply. Can’t. It feels too personal to admit what just happened. And, besides, I have a feeling they’ll be finding out sooner rather than later.
Did Andi send the photo to Oliver?
Or is she going to post it herself?
“Okay, here we are.” Shonda sits beside me with a clipboard. There seems to be a blank form attached to it, and she poises her pen above the first line. “Eleven twenty-seven p.m., janitor calls campus security at the arena. Responding officer, Shonda McDermid,” she points to herself, “finds female student…”
“In a compromising position?” I joke.
She sighs and passes me the clipboard and pen. “Listen. This is important, we just… we can’t have this sort of thing happening. Do you understand? Help us stop this. FSU has a no-tolerance policy for bullying.”
I bite my lower lip. “So they’d get in trouble? If it was a student.”
“It would be brought before the Dean of Students and a decision made from there, yes.”
She pats my shoulder again, leaving the clipboard held loosely in my lap. “I’ll give you some time, okay? Just write down everything you remember.”
I want to be home. I want to shower in scalding water and wrap myself in a fluffy robe I stole from a hotel once, and then crawl into bed and not emerge for a week.
At the very least.
I fill out the top part. Name, student ID number, date. Location of incident. I start to write out what happens, but when I get to the part about coming out of the bathroom, when Andi and Miranda are waiting in plain sight, and Kate is still hidden, I freeze.
If I write down their names, I will officially, actually be a snitch.
That will only make things worse. Besides, do I blame Andi, who’s arguably just a pawn in this scheme against me? Or do I blame Oliver Ruiz?
Or do I blame Kate, who manhandled me the most?
Or do I fucking blame myself for giving those playbook page photos to Carter?
I rise.
Shonda, who has been chatting with her colleague quietly, turns to me. Her eyebrows hike. “Done already?”
I’m shaking my head no before her question is finished. “I don’t want to file a report. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything, and I’m not going to press charges. Everything is fine.”
She takes the clipboard from me and scans what I’d filled out.
“Sydney Windsor,” she says. “Why?—?”
“Frank’s kid,” the other guard supplies. “Hockey coach.”
Her lips part. “Who would do this to the coach’s daughter?” She faces me. “Are you not naming names because you don’t know? Was it someone from the visiting team?”
“I—no. I’m not saying anything. I don’t want to make this into a bigger deal…”
“We’re going to have to notify your father,” the guy says. “Protocol.”
“Fuck your protocol. It was a harmless prank, nothing more.” I snatch the paper back, ripping it up and crumpling the pieces into a ball. I drop it in the trash on my way out, and I pick up a jog as soon as I’m outside.
But the jog turns into a sprint pretty damn quick, and it seems like I make it back to my apartment in record time. It doesn’t matter that my whole body is screaming at me to slow down—it isn’t until I can see my building’s front door, and the person sitting on the steps waiting for me, that I pause.
The goalie.
Penn Walker?