Friday morning, in front of the auditorium doors, Sloane intercepts me.
White dress. No makeup. Eyes already red. The whole world has wronged her.
Wren. Please. I'm asking you. Don't go in there.
I look at her.
Afraid I'll tell the truth?
Your version of the truth is going to wreck him.
She bites the inside of her lip. Her voice is shaking on cue.
He just got back to the team. Do you understand what a school-board investigation does? If they decide that night was tied to team conduct, the whole season's gone — his Penn State commit, the IHSAA waiver on the medical eval, all of it.
So I should shut up.
He saved you, Wren.
It comes out finally — a real edge.
You owe him.
I half-laugh.
The boy who saved me was Cole Whitfield. Not the number 7 machine you people use to win championships.
Sloane's face goes a paper color.
The auditorium door opens.
Holt Whitfield walks out.
Cole's father. Greenport's biggest booster. Owner of Whitfield Marine Holdings. Sits on the Eastpoint Memory Care board where my mother lives on a charity bed.
The coat is Filson, the cuffs are linen, and his eyes don't carry warmth as a feature.
Ms. Halloran.
He hands me a folder.
Sign this and we're done.
I open it.
A settlement. The alley assault, recategorized as random mugging. I waive any and all action against any current Greenport athletics personnel.
Two hundred thousand dollars.
Liv inhales hard behind me.
Holt's voice doesn't move. Your situation at home being what it is. That's a clean four years at U-Maine.
My father is dead. My mother lives at Eastpoint. Everybody in this town knows.
I look up.
And if I don't sign?
He looks at me the way he would look at a thing in his way.
The Eastpoint board reviews charity placements quarterly. Your mother's review is next month.
Liv's swearing comes out in real Maine.
I close my hand around the folder.
Footsteps behind me.
Cole. He looks worse than he did yesterday. His eyes go to the folder in my hand, and something in his face moves.
Holt's mouth tightens. What are you doing here.
Cole doesn't answer his father. He looks at me.
Did you sign it.
No.
His throat works once, hard.
Like a held breath let out.
Sloane snatches at his elbow. Cole, your dad is just trying to protect you—
He shrugs her off without looking.
The hallway goes quiet for one beat.
He steps in front of me. His voice is wrecked.
Go in. Say it.
I look at him.
You know what I'm going to say?
He presses one hand to his temple. His eyes are bloodshot.
No.
He pauses.
But I know they're scared of what you'll say.
Seven board members. Atherton. The coach. Holt Whitfield. A handful of varsity guys in the back.
Cole is in the front row. Sloane is one seat over from him with her hands knotted in her lap.
I am at the lectern. I take them through the night. Quik-Mart. Three guys. The drag toward the trailer lot. Cole.
When I get to the line — that's her, don't let her get to the hearing — Atherton's hand goes up.
Ms. Halloran. That sentence is not in the original police report.
Because the responding officer didn't record it.
Holt, evenly: Or because you have invented it after the fact.
I look at him.
The Quik-Mart has a camera over the back door.
Atherton: We have been told the unit was offline that night.
I take a USB drive out of my pocket.
The owner's local hard drive was smashed in. He didn't tell anyone he also has a cloud subscription. I have the backup. I picked it up yesterday.
Sloane's head comes up.
For the first time, Holt's face shifts.
The board chair gestures. The AV guy plugs the drive in.
The screen lights up. The picture is dark. The rain is loud.
Three hooded shapes around me. The slope. The trailer lot.
Cole comes into frame at a run.
He drops the first guy with a shoulder, shoves me back, plants his feet.
From off-camera, a voice calls, half a laugh in it.
Hurry up. Don't actually kill the kid.
It's Marsh's voice.
The room reacts. Two board members turn to look at the back row.
Marsh stands up. That's edited. That's been edited.
The footage keeps rolling. The thug Cole knocks down loses his grip on the crowbar. It clatters away into the wet asphalt.
A fourth figure walks in from the shadow at the edge of frame. A team windbreaker. Hood up. He picks the crowbar up off the ground.
He swings.
Cole goes down.
The angle is bad. You can't see the face.
But for one frame, his right wrist is in the streetlight.
A black wolf head. Ink. Inner wrist.
Every head in the room turns to Marsh.
Marsh pulls his right sleeve down over his hand by reflex.
The coach's mouth opens. Marsh. What did you—
Marsh comes up out of the chair, finger in my direction.
She put me up to it! Wren told me to do it! She wanted Cole to play hero so she could get him to go public with the relationship!
Liv: You are a liar and a coward.
Atherton smacks the gavel.
I cue up the second file.
It's audio. Marsh's voice.
Wren goes to the hearing, last year's thrown game comes out with her. Your call.
The audio cuts. The room is dead silent.
Marsh sinks back into his chair.
But Cole is not looking at Marsh.
Cole is looking at the screen — at the still frame of himself, on his hands and knees in the rain, blood across half his face, dragging himself toward me.
The last second of that frame.
His mouth shape is clear.
Don't be scared.
Cole's hand starts shaking against his thigh.
Sloane lunges to grab his arm. He pushes her off without looking. He stands up.
I—
He gets one syllable out.
His knees go.
He goes down on the auditorium floor.
They take Cole to Mercy Coastal.
The doctors say acute stress reaction with memory bleed-through. They say the brain is doing the thing it does when it has been told one story and shown another.
Holt clamps a lid on the hearing footage.
The footage is online by midnight anyway.
The school is on fire by Monday. Marsh is at the county sheriff's. The Maine Principals' Association announces an audit of last year's championship roster.
I think the worst is over.
Then I run into Sloane in the hospital corridor.
She has her face on for me. The pretty mask is in her bag. Her eyes are pure hate.
Happy now?
Take it up with Marsh.
She laughs. It is not a good laugh.
Wren. You think when he remembers he's going to come back to you?
I don't answer.
She takes a phone out of her bag. Old phone. Cracked screen.
Cole sent me a text the night it happened.
She holds the screen up to me.
If I forget Wren, don't let her near me.
The sender is Cole. The timestamp is 7:14 p.m. the night of the alley.
The blood goes cold in my hands.
She watches my face.
See it? It wasn't me taking your spot. He moved you out himself.
I take the phone out of her hand.
She lets me.
There is a photo below the text. Me, in front of the Quik-Mart. Talking to a man in a hood.
The hooded man's profile is one of the guys from the alley.
Sloane's voice is soft.
He saw you with them that night. He came down anyway. Because he is dumb. Not because he trusts you.
I am holding the phone with my fingertips going to pins and needles.
I did talk to a guy that night. Out front of the Quik-Mart. He asked me if there was a pharmacy still open. I pointed at the CVS sign on Pier Road and Main.
That was it.
The door behind us opens.
Cole is standing there in a hospital gown. IV port still on the back of his hand. His eyes go to the phone.
Sloane's tears reload in real time.
Cole — I didn't want to. Wren made me show you.
I look at him.
His voice is gravel.
Phone. Now.
Sloane stalls.
Cole—
Now.
She gives it up.
He scrolls. Reads. Reads again.
He smiles. Soft. Cold.
Sloane.
She flinches.
He looks up.
I don't text with periods.
Sloane has gone the color of the wall.
Cole flicks the phone toward the deputy who has just stepped in from the corridor.
Text was forged. Photo angle's off — looks like a still pulled off a school camera and re-shot. Pull her account.
Sloane breaks. You're defending her because you remember! You remember!
Cole looks at her.
I don't.
The two words land in my chest harder than I want them to.
He hasn't remembered us.
He just knows himself well enough.
The deputy is already asking Sloane to step out for a conversation. As they pass me she leans in close enough that only I hear.
Wren. Don't get smug. He's most afraid of remembering you.
I don't follow it up.
Because in the room behind us, Cole is propped against the doorframe and his face is the color of a wall and the nurse is running.
She gets there first. She tries to walk him to the bed.
He looks past her, at me.
You stay.
I haven't moved.
He pulls a thin smile. Worried I'll say more bad things.
Worried you'll go down again.
He's quiet a beat.
Then sit far away.
I sit at the window.
He lies back on the bed. He closes his eyes. His hand is in a fist around the sheet.
Long minutes.
Then, low: When I woke up, every person in this town told me you were my girlfriend.
I look at him.
Yeah.
They showed me pictures. They showed me video. They told me how much I was supposed to love you.
Yeah.
And there is nothing in my head where you should be.
His eyes open. The whites are blown red.
Wren. That feels disgusting. It feels like every person around me is forcing me to love a stranger.
My chest gets tight. What I say is, So you humiliated me.
I thought if I made it bad enough, you'd leave.
I left.
His throat works.
You left, my head got worse.
The room goes still.
He fishes under his pillow. He brings out a Polaroid that has been folded soft from being carried in a pocket.
It's me. In the passenger seat of his Bronco. A half-melted soft-serve from Bayside Creemee in my hand. I am laughing at something off-frame. The summer.
He turns it over.
On the back, in black Sharpie, in his handwriting:
If I wake up and don't know you — don't believe me.
I stop breathing.
I found it, he says. In the inside zip pocket of my equipment bag. The handwriting is mine.
When did you write it.
He shakes his head.
Can't get there.
His voice drops.
But whoever I was when I wrote that — I was scared.