9. Sydney
nine
sydney
I’m not found until well after the game ends… by a janitor who shrieks her head off. She swears in Spanish and practically sprints out of the bathroom before I can get her to undo the tape.
This. Sucks.
She returns with another woman ten minutes later. The second is in a security uniform, and they both stare at me for a long moment.
“I need to make a call. Take the tape off of her mouth,” the security guard tells the janitor in a low voice. “Carefully.”
No one came in during the game, which I can’t decide is a good or bad thing. Like, on one hand… I kept expecting someone to walk in, get a good fright, and then help me out. But the worst-case scenario would’ve been between the second and third period, when the restrooms are at their busiest. In that case, I think some FSU girls would probably take some enjoyment out of it.
At that point, it would become one of those things where bystanders don’t fucking do anything because no one else is.
She slowly peels off the strip covering my mouth.
“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…
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?
Sweat dampens the hair at the base of my neck and along my temples, but I slow my breathing in an attempt to not appear weak… or out of shape. Not that he saw me running like my hair was on fire…
Don’t give them any ideas .
He looks up when I stop at the base of the stairs. He seems to unfold, getting bigger—and the added height of the steps he has on me doesn’t help.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
“Sent on a mission by your father, princess.” He trots down the steps and tosses a bundle at me. My jacket, complete with my keys in the pocket.
I had left it at my seat… which means he might not buy my excuse. Not if he sent Penn here. And why would he do that if… if he thought Penn might hurt me?
“He trusts you?”
“More than he trusts you,” he counters. “I haven’t stabbed him in the back and almost got him fired.”
I tilt my head. “What?”
He rolls his eyes, slipping past me. “It’s not rocket science. You’re the source of the issue and you share his last name. Not only that, but you cost FSU our playoffs run. That fucking means something, especially when St. James was the one to knock us out.”
I rotate. “Did you go in my apartment?”
“Yeah, I stole your panties.” He scoffs. “No, Sydney. I’m not obsessed with you like everyone else.”
“Sure seems like it,” I say under my breath. And louder, “Weren’t you just threatening me this afternoon?”
He’s already heading down the sidewalk away from me, but his condescending laugh floats back. I shake my head and hurry to unlock the front door.
But not before the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
I pause just inside and stare out at the darkness. I swear I can see something…
Someone?
But the more I look, the more I convince myself I don’t see anyone. That weird feeling goes away, too. I ease the door closed and head upstairs.
The good news: I have a day to myself.
The bad news: another shoe is about to fucking drop, in the form of an embarrassing photo. And maybe a story circulated by Andi or the hockey team, to boot.
Why else would she take a picture and go through the trouble of humiliating me?