Chapter 14
Hadley
I didn’t slam the building’s front door.
I wanted to, but I didn’t. Mostly because they were already halfway broken, and I didn’t want to be blamed for destroying university property on top of everything else.
But emotionally? Spiritually? Existentially? I slammed the hell out of that door. Only someone with something to hide would want me off the assignment. Coach Sutherland definitely had something to hide, and he kept fueling my obsession to find out what it was every time he pushed back against me.
Except he was wrong. There was a story here; even if it was about why the coaches at Wrighton University were a bunch of misogynistic, disgusting old men, there was still a story.
It was absolutely my story.
Maybe not for a grade, maybe not for the class, but the moment I saw that scratched-out name, something clicked inside me. A switch in my brain flipped on to ‘activate.’ I snorted at myself, but the truth was something one of my first professors had said, and I’d never forgotten it.
Stories find you.
Good ones, dangerous ones, the kinds people bury for a reason.
They find you because they want to be told.
With that thought burning in my mind, I made my way to the library.
There was a recess on the third floor with no view — unless you counted staring at the wall a view — that was tucked away at the very back of the philosophy section.
It had a single desk and chair, two power outlets, and no one ever used it because it had a strange, musty smell.
I made my way there and was delighted when I was right — it was empty, and I settled into work.
Within ten minutes of leaving Flannigan’s office, with the illusion of dropping this thread hanging between us, I had my laptop open, roster packet beside me, and half a dozen tabs pulled up like a digital cemetery.
My hands were still shaking with leftover rage — or adrenaline, or both — but my mind was sharp.
Whether there were scratch marks over the name or not, I had managed to trace the letters enough times to figure out what it said last night, and it had haunted me ever since.
Mason Sterling.
Let’s find out all about you, my elusive little mystery. At the moment, I had a name, and I wouldn’t leave here until I had more.
I typed it into the university student directory. Nothing. I checked the athletic department’s archive. No record. I thought about it and looked through old game logs. Nothing. It was as if he had never been here, which was impossible — because I was holding a roster that said otherwise.
I leaned back, rubbing my forehead. “Okay, Mason,” I whispered. “Who were you?”
I checked the local news archives next — the unglamorous, uncomfortable kind, those buried behind paywalls and scanned from old print.
Still nothing. No injuries reported. No transfer announcements.
No scholarship terminations. No medical explanations.
No graduation. No expulsion. Just . . . silence.
A void.
Players didn’t vanish. Stories did.
I flipped the roster page again, looking at the scratched-out ink and the harsh pressure behind it. Someone had wanted that name illegible. Someone with access. Someone who believed ink could erase a person.
There was one more place to check: campus disciplinary records.
The public ones were heavily redacted — student privacy laws and all that — but there were patterns if you knew what to look for.
Dates. Codes. Repeated language. I pulled up the digital archives, scrolling through a year’s worth of bureaucratic jargon.
Then I found it.
A case was closed abruptly in the spring of that year. An unnamed male student athlete. An unnamed female complainant. A sudden withdrawal. A note: Resolved Internally.
My pulse kicked.
I cross-checked the date.
The same month, Mason Sterling’s name was removed from the roster packet.
A cold, sick feeling spread through my stomach.
I didn’t want to jump to conclusions — I’d promised myself, promised Professor Flannigan, promised every ethics manual I’d ever read .
. . But the shape of the story was forming whether I wanted it to or not.
A sexual assault accusation. An investigation marked Resolved Internally. No charges or follow-up, no transparency, and a player erased. Not disciplined. Not punished. Not suspended. But removed from every record as if he were a glitch in the system.
I closed my eyes, letting everything sit with me for a moment. This was the kind of thing universities buried under the rug with bureaucracy and PR spin until everyone forgot the victim existed. I opened my eyes and looked at the packet again, a new resolve building in my chest.
Flannigan could take me off the assignment. But this? This wasn’t just an assignment anymore. This was a truth someone had buried, and I was going to dig it up.
Even if it meant I’d get in trouble and the whole academic center closed ranks.
I was going to find out more. My mind was whirring.
Was this what Dustin knew more about, and was avoiding me because he sensed exactly what I was walking into?
I mean, look at his behavior. The very first night I met him, he had me against the wall and had his tongue in my mouth.
Okay, Hadley, that’s unfair. You were more than a willing recipient, and when you said no, he walked away.
And he never once tried anything again. I’d heard him and his roommates shut down his sleazier teammates with their comments. No, Dustin was just a manwhore, not an assaulter of women.
Unlike some of his teammates, maybe. How many more of them were being protected by their coaches?
I pulled the roster closer, opened a new document, and titled it The Sterling File.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard as a wave of uncertainty made me feel queasy.
Did I really want to do this? I got in trouble last semester and was on academic probation.
I was definitely on thin ice now after chasing Dustin today.
I’d had my professor scold me, and I still had to face the dean because there was no way in hell Dean Cole was going to let this slide.
My resolve strengthened. I was a journalist. I followed the story, and this story found me.
“Let’s see what they tried to make disappear.
” I started typing and didn’t look up for hours; when I finally did, it was because I ran out of evidence.
Well, I didn’t really have any evidence; everything digital was gone.
Nothing came up when I googled him. My pen tapped against my lips.
The student-paper archives had copies of everything.
I knew the building well. I’d been friendly with the editor for a while, and shadowed them, unofficially, while they were here.
I packed my belongings and headed across campus. It was late afternoon, and I purposefully avoided looking at the Den. If I had any sense, I wouldn’t go anywhere near the stadium again.
The student newspaper office didn’t smell like journalism.
It smelled like dust, old carpet glue, and a hint of stale pizza someone probably left in here years ago.
But tucked behind the bright, modern workspace with its ring lights, bulletin boards, and stressed-out interns was the part of the building that mattered to me. The archive room.
I slipped inside and shut the door behind me. The click of the latch felt like sealing myself into a confessional booth.
No windows. One buzzing fluorescent light. Walls lined from floor to ceiling with metal filing cabinets, binders, and stacks of old printed issues stretching back decades.
Gold. Dangerous, dusty gold.
I set my bag down and flicked the switch for the second overhead light.
It hummed to life, casting long shadows over filing cabinets that badly needed dusting.
Most students didn’t know this place existed.
The ones who did didn’t come back here unless a professor made them.
But me? This place felt as comfortable as home.
I spent so much time here because stories lived in places like this.
Digital was fine, but the hidden stories were found in paper archives, as I recently discovered.
I searched the cabinets, looking for the year Mason Sterling’s name appeared — and disappeared.
Four years ago. The information wasn’t as bulky because, while paper was more reliable, digital formats were easier, so I knew I’d still have a limited amount of information to weed through.
I tugged open the drawer and nearly choked on a cloud of dust. Great.
Perfect. Maybe the university really didn’t want anyone going through old records — maybe they’d weaponized mildew.
Inside were manila folders, each stuffed with clipped articles, staff notes, rejected pieces, and the printed proofs of every sports page from that year.
I almost giggled with excitement. I pulled out the entire stack and lowered myself onto the floor because some tasks demanded the emotional support of sitting.
I flipped through the first few months. Football tryouts.
Player spotlights. Coach’s preseason interview.
I saw Bobby Ray Sutherland and stuck my tongue out at him.
I skimmed the Who to Watch This Year columns.
My eyes glanced over the names — people who would no longer be on campus because they’d graduated or, as Flannigan said, simply fizzled out of the program.
Then I saw it, the headline that made my pulse race: Winter Roster Announced — New Faces on Defense.
I flattened the page, smoothing out the crease, and read the list of defensive ends, guys like Mike, followed by linebackers like Noah Matthews.
There, in the second column, third name down, was Mason Sterling — DE (Freshman).
I exhaled, feeling equal parts thrill and dread.
There he was.
In ink.
In print.
I’d found him.
He was a person who existed. He was real.
I dug deeper, flipping to the next article, next week’s issue, but he wasn’t mentioned.
Which was fine — rookies didn’t get the spotlight every week.
Mike had told me this — God bless him for being so open.
I flipped through month by month, tracking his name through time like a ghost. A few mentions here and there, he was seen as a promising player by everyone.
I didn’t really know more — just a comment about a “promising player” and Mason’s name.
Then I reached March. The paper for that week had a noticeable gap in the sports section.
Not to the naked eye — most readers wouldn’t notice anything — but to someone who lived and breathed print layout, it was obvious.
The spacing was off, and the text block had been shifted upward.
Almost as if something had been removed.
I knew how the old editor worked; I had been pretty much their shadow until they graduated last year, so I knew where to check the staff editor’s markup on the back.
In pencil, scribbled lightly, not to hide, just that time had faded it a bit, cut the Sterling piece, not cleared.
My mouth went dry.
‘Cut the piece’ meant there was a story, an actual written article, or at least a draft.
Something someone wrote — and someone higher up refused to approve. I rummaged through the folder until I found a stack of draft prints clipped together. Most were random pieces that never made it to the paper — niche game recaps, half-written interviews, jokes the editors had canned.
I skimmed page after page, my fingers shaking a little until I found a headline with a line drawn through it: “Freshman DE Makes Strong Start Amid Internal Evaluation Review.”
I read the first few sentences.
“Sources in the department confirm freshman defensive end Mason Sterling is currently undergoing additional academic and behavioral review. Coaches declined to comment on the specifics.”
My chest tightened. The next paragraph was completely blacked out with thick permanent marker strokes. It had been fully redacted. At the bottom, a single sentence: Do not print.
I sat back, heart pounding. There it was — proof that Mason Sterling hadn’t just left. Something had happened. Something the department had shut down immediately. I turned the page again, desperate for more, but the rest of the draft was gone. Torn out or never printed.
Footsteps echoed outside the archive room. I froze, instinct taking over, as the handle jiggled. “Hello?” someone called. A girl’s voice. Just a student. I exhaled softly. Not the dean. Not a coach. Not a shadowy figure here to escort me into a van. Probably a freshman staffer.
I needed to relax; my imagination was running wild.
“Occupied!” I called, trying not to sound guilty.
“Oh, okay! Sorry!” she replied, and the footsteps retreated.
I leaned back against the cabinet, breathing out the tension. I’d completely forgotten that this room was sometimes used as a quick makeout spot, and I was suddenly very glad it was, because it easily explained why it was locked and why she had accepted it.
I looked down at the half-censored article in my lap and the pile of stuff I had scattered around me. It was easier to pretend I was in here getting it on with someone than it was to explain what I was actually searching for.
They had attempted to erase Mason’s history, but the student paper had documented a part of it before the department could completely bury it.
An academic review and a behavioral review. Coaches refusing to comment — well, I had already met their coaches, so that wasn’t a surprise. But an entire paragraph blacked out? I carefully slid the page into my folder.
This was bigger than I thought, and if they’d done this to Mason Sterling, then the deeper question wasn’t what I initially thought, which was, what happened to him?
It was now, how many more names were there?
Because that football program was shady as hell. Those coaches were entitled pricks who thought their shit didn’t stink, or worse, knew it did, but were so fucking arrogant, they didn’t care you could smell it; they expected you not to comment on it.
I zipped my bag, stood up, and switched off the flickering light.
I thought about Mason Sterling. Not the story, the person. A freshman defensive end who showed up on the winter roster as a promising player and disappeared from every record by March. Someone who’d existed and been made to un-exist.
I thought about the girl whose name wasn’t anywhere to be found either.
This story wasn’t dead, and it wasn’t gone. It had just been waiting for someone stubborn enough — reckless enough — to dig it out of the archive room.
And unfortunately for Wrighton U?
That someone was me.