how to catch feelings

77

I sent Jared a "hey" when I got back from production Sunday afternoon.

He responded as I was putting my pizza bagels in the oven.

"Hey," he said.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Depends on what it is."

What? "Guess I'll just ask. Did you hear about the coke they found in the locker room last week?"

He read my text and then his status switched to inactive. Cool. Thanks.

So was that an answer to my question, or was he just being pissy?

I took a screenshot and sent it to Cole rather than explain the whole thing.

"Kinda fits with what I said," he replied.

"Yeah. I'm gonna do some more digging, but yeah. You might be right."

So where to dig? I could ask the other baseball players, but talking to Jared definitely would've been the easiest way to go.

Maybe I could reach out to the university police, Student Conduct. I doubted either would be willing to tell me anything, but it was worth a shot.

I'd send out an email Monday morning.

***

"I still want to know who the fuck sent us that photo," Jess said after I concluded the meeting.

The reporters and editors who remained nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. Was it the killer? Was it whoever discovered him? And why give us the picture?" Trent asked.

I sat down in a vacated chair and pulled up the picture on my phone. "If we're gonna say the picture is supposed to tell us something, then there's got to be something in the picture."

"Put it up on the projector."

"If anyone's uncomfortable, now's a good time to leave. No judgement." Jess leaned back in her chair.

No one moved.

Apparently we were all fascinated by the macabre.

I projected the picture onto the whiteboard.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then Trent cleared his throat. "Well, besides the obvious..."

Jess laughed.

"Do you see something?" I asked over her.

"I dunno. Maybe. Can you zoom in right there? By his shoulder?"

I reverse-pinched on my phone screen. "Good?"

"Yeah." Trent got up and walked around the conference table to stand in front of the board.

What the hell was he seeing that the rest of us weren't?

"It's just that you can kind of make out a footprint right there, at the edge of the blood." He pointed.

We all looked.

Sure enough, that splotch could've been a footprint. But that didn't necessarily mean anything—except why would Dax's own footprint be in the blood? That couldn't have gotten there until he was already down.

"So that could be from the killer. Or from the photographer. Or both, if they're one and the same."

"Anyone good at guesstimating measurements?"

One of the other reporters got up. "We did some sims like this in one of my criminal justice classes," Lakyn said. She toggled the smartboard settings and adjusted the zoom. "So it's about life-size now. And this footprint is... about eleven inches." She pulled out her phone. "Like a men's size eleven, eleven and a half."

"What do we do with that? Make everyone take a shoe size survey?"

"Not everyone. Just anyone who might've been involved." I spun around and grabbed a dry erase marker. I started writing names on the board: Harding, Dax's roommates, the baseball team.

"I can make a spreadsheet and put the link on our Canvas page," Jess said. "If we want to split up the names, we can all look into a couple people. There's, what, ten of us here?" She paused to count again. "Ten. And there's forty-four people to look at. Or twenty-nine, if we just want to look at the active players."

"Let's go active. Those'll be the ones Dax interacted with the most."

"Fair. Alright. So... That's three for nine of us, and two for one of us. Natalie's probably taking Harding."

"Yup." I wrote my initials next to the coach's name.

Jess opened her laptop and got to work on a spreadsheet. "I'm just gonna chuck names together. If you want to switch, work it out among yourselves."

"So, like, what exactly are we doing?" Trent asked. "To get their shoe size?"

"Whatever you feel like doing. Some of you might have these guys in your classes. You might have to email them. Make up a class project. Do an interactive art thing. It doesn't matter. Just be cool about it."

This was almost definitely crossing some lines, but I was past caring what the university thought.

Looking around at my staff, it was easy to see how excited they were to be a part of this. To feel like they were doing something. Investigating. Taking journalism beyond reporting on a visiting lecturer.

These were the people I answered to.

***

"Long meeting?" Damaris asked when I walked into the dorm at eighty-thirty.

"Kind of. You just get back?"

"Yeah, a few minutes ago." She went back to putting groceries in the fridge.

"How was your weekend?"

"It was nice. We went to Frankenmuth for the ice festival."

"Ah. Fun."

"Yeah. What'd you guys do?"

"Nothing much. Homework. Newspaper crap."

"Gotcha."

"Yup." I kicked off my boots and went upstairs to my room.

Meg wandered in with her body pillow and laid down on my floor.

"What's up?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "Just watching Tik Tok."

"I see." I pulled my Sherpa blanket up from the foot of my bed and got ready for some mindless Instagram scrolling.

"Have you talked to Cole lately?" Meg asked.

I leaned forward to look at her over the edge of my bed. "Why?"

"Just wondering."

"Yeah. We talked the other day."

"Aw."

"What?"

"Nothing. Y'all are just... cute. Y'all are cute."

"Okay." I snorted and started scrolling through my feed.

*** ***