Whistleblower ✓

32 | free vaughn

The football team had an away game that weekend.

I watched Andre's Snapchat story a few hundred times because Garland always felt too quiet when he wasn't barging into our apartment to eat our food and watch funny videos on his phone with the volume all the way up, so Hanna and I were sucked in, too. I watched because I missed him.

Not because he'd sat next to Bodie on the plane. Not because there was a picture of Bodie holding up a bag of in-flight peanuts in one hand and shooting a thumbs-up at the camera with the other.

Andre didn't know, yet, about the kiss.

I'd spilled every drop of detail to Hanna, but was still trying to work out how, exactly, I planned to tell Andre that his teammate had thrown the best soft serve ice cream in California onto a dirty sidewalk just to grab my face and kiss me.

Hanna, of course, had grilled me.

Was I sure I hadn't had too much sangria? Yes. Was I sure he was sober, too? I sure hope so, considering he drove us all home. Did I like Bodie because I liked him, or did I like Bodie because I liked the way he looked?

The answer was both. But mainly the former.

"Have you guys discussed Vaughn?" she'd asked solemnly.

I'd deflated like a pricked balloon.

"We'll talk about it on Tuesday," I assured her.

I was trying not to freak out about it. I knew we'd have plenty of time to talk about what had happened on Thursday night. The investigations were a knotted mess that might take months to work out. I had time to explain myself, to prove to Bodie that every word in our article had been written to help rather than hurt.

We had time.

At least, I thought we did.

❖ ❖ ❖

Monday mornings had never been my strong suit, but I'll blame the residual confused giddiness of Thursday night for the fact that I passed at least five people on campus wearing identical green t-shirts before I picked up on the trend and bothered to read them.

Across the chest, in block lettering, were the words FREE VAUGHN.

This was the first sign that something was amiss.

The second was a plastic folding table set up on the parkway, right smack dab in the middle of campus, where a handful of students were selling the shirts.

There was a line—an honest-to-God line—to buy them.

"Laurel!"

I turned. On the opposite side of the parkway, behind a second folding table to which two posters had been duct-taped, stood Mehri Rajavi. She waved at me, signalling me to wait, and then said something to the cluster of students with her before darting across the parkway to meet me.

The posters on their table read We Believe Survivors and Justice for Josefina.

"Mehri, what's—"

"This is bullshit!"

There was a horrible knot in my stomach.

"What bullshit, exactly, are we talking about?" I asked.

"The school can't close their investigation. It's been two fucking weeks! How the hell do you conduct a thorough—"

My mind was lagging a few seconds behind.

The school closed the investigation.

"They what?" I demanded, my voice very small.