The Walk On (41 page)

“Sure they do,” she said. “But they can’t reveal that information to anyone—it’s confidential student info. We have to find out.”

“And how do we do that?” Alex asked.

“Everyone’s health form must be on file in the football office,” Christine said. “And no one is ever in there from first period until lunchtime.”

“Are you saying we break in?” Alex asked.

She shook her head. “Oh no. I can get Mr. Hillier to give me a key. You have study hall third period—”

“Are you kidding!” Alex exploded.

“We’ll get Jonas to help,” she said. “He has study hall that period too. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Should we get Jonas involved in this?” he said.

She gave him a look. “What do you think he’ll say when we ask him?”

“This is nuts,” Alex said.

“I know.” She grinned. “So let’s do it.”

Alex didn’t hear a word anyone said in either of his first two classes. Christine and Jonas were waiting for him outside his history classroom after second period.

“I told him,” Christine said.

Alex remembered she and Jonas were in the same math class.

“What do you think?” he said to Jonas.

“I think we should get going,” Jonas said.

Alex turned to Christine. “Do we have the materials we need for our experiment?” he asked, just in case someone walking by might overhear them.

She nodded and held up her hand so he could see that a key was inside the palm. People were rushing by them, heading for third-period classes. A couple of heads turned in Alex’s direction, but most people were focused on getting where they needed to go.

“Come on, then,” Alex said.

They walked down the steps to the first floor and down the hall that led to the back of the building and the athletic facilities. Alex’s heart was already pounding. He’d come up with a decent excuse for missing study hall: he could say he’d gotten a call from his mother to tell him about the results from the second blood test.

The gym, where classes would be going on, was on the other side of the building. They could hear noise from there, but no one was around.

“So Mr. Hillier was okay with giving you the key?” Alex asked.

“I told him this was the only way to find out who
did
test positive. He finally agreed that we needed to know.”

They reached the door marked
CHESTER HEIGHTS LIONS FOOTBALL
. Instinctively, Alex tried the handle—locked. Christine handed him the key. Heart pounding, he put the key into the lock. He turned it and pushed—and nothing
happened. Had Mr. Hillier given Christine the wrong key? Were they being set up somehow?

He looked at Jonas, panicked.

“Turn it the other way,” Jonas said quietly.

Alex did—and this time the door opened.

The lights in the hallway that led to the offices were on, so they had no trouble finding their way. Mr. Hillier had told Christine that the players’ records were kept in an old-fashioned file cabinet in Coach Gordon’s office. When they found the coach’s door ajar, Alex got scared again: what if Coach was there? But he pushed the door open and poked his head in—empty. The file cabinet had no locks on it, and in the top drawer, there it was:
VARSITY/JUNIOR VARSITY—2014, HEALTH FORMS
.

“Bingo!” Christine said.

They each took a stack of forms and looked for a place to sit. Christine sat on the floor. Jonas plopped down behind Coach Gordon’s desk, which made Alex nervous. He said nothing and sat down in the chair across from the desk with his set of forms on his lap.

Christine was already ahead. “Blood type is two-thirds of the way down the page,” she said. “Right-hand side.”

Alex’s first form was for Timothy P. Maxwell. He recognized the name: a JV player. Only a handful of the JVs—the ones who had suited up—had been tested. He wished the varsity and JV forms had been separated out. There were probably close to a hundred forms to go through.

Maxwell had type A blood. Alex put his form on the desk in front of him and moved on. The next one was Jonas’s. He also had type A blood.

He was about eight forms in when he heard Jonas say, “Got one—Terrence Gaston.”

“Backup slotback,” Alex said.

Christine gave him a look as if to say,
I know that
, then took out a notebook and asked Jonas for details.

“He’s five eleven, 148,” Jonas said. “Anything’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.”

She nodded. They kept looking. Alex found the next one: Alan Tribble, an outside linebacker. Tribble was certainly a more likely candidate than Gaston. He was listed as six two, 215 pounds.

Alex also found the next one: it was a JV player, Kenny Holtzman.

They were all now nearing the bottom of their piles. Alex glanced at his watch: fifteen minutes were left until the end of third period. He kept going. He only had four forms left when he heard Jonas say, “Oh my God!” in about as loud a whisper as was possible.

“What?” Alex asked.

Jonas was holding up a form in the air. “I think we may have it,” he said.

“Well, who is it?” Alex asked.

Jonas put the form down on the desk and pushed it across to Alex. “Read it yourself,” he said.

Alex gasped when he saw the name at the top of the page:
MATTHEW GORDON JR
.

His eyes darted downward.
BLOOD TYPE: O-NEGATIVE
.

Christine leaned over his shoulder and gave a little gasp too.

They were all staring at one another when they heard
a door open. Jonas pointed at the small bathroom that adjoined Coach Gordon’s office. He put a finger to his lips, and as quietly and as quickly as possible, they dashed into the bathroom.

If Jonas was scared, he didn’t show it. Christine looked the way Alex felt: terrified. Jonas had grabbed his backpack and his forms and carried them into the bathroom. When Alex saw that Jonas had the forms, he gasped again: he’d taken Matt’s, but the rest of his were on Coach Gordon’s desk.

He started to go back, but Jonas seized his arm. It was too late. Someone was walking into Coach Gordon’s office.

“Alex? Are you in here? Christine?”

Jonas looked at Alex and mouthed the word
who?
As in, who could possibly know that Alex was in here?

They listened again.

“Guys, it’s okay,” the voice said. “It’s me. Mr. Hillier.”

Alex breathed a huge sigh. Christine almost collapsed into his arms in relief. The three of them walked out of the bathroom.

“I figured I’d better check on you guys,” Mr. Hillier said. “Coaches usually don’t come in before eleven, but if someone came in a little early—”

He stopped, looking at the form in Alex’s hand.

“You find something?” he asked.

Alex nodded and handed him Matt’s form.

Mr. Hillier looked and whistled. “You think he’s the one?”

“He’s the only one of the four O-negatives that makes any sense,” Christine said. “The others aren’t that important or aren’t that big, or aren’t either.”

Mr. Hillier nodded and read from the file. “Matt’s six two, 195 pounds. To be honest, I’d say he’s more like 210.”

Alex was shaking his head. “I can’t believe Matt—”

“Would take steroids?” Mr. Hillier asked. “I can. Think of the pressure his father puts him under. What I
don’t
believe is that he had anything to do with switching the labels on the vials. For one thing, I don’t think he’d have the opportunity. But even if he did, this isn’t who Matt Gordon is.”

“Then who?” Christine asked.

Mr. Hillier looked around. “We need to put these files back and get out of here. You three all need to get to fourth period. Let’s all meet in my office at lunchtime.”

They didn’t argue.

As they walked out of the office, Alex’s head was spinning.

Matt? It had to be a mistake. Then again …

When Alex, Christine, and Jonas walked into the newspaper office at lunchtime, Mr. Hillier was ready.

“Let’s go,” he said. “As soon as word gets out that Alex has been cleared, people are going to start trying to hide.”

“Where are we going?” Alex asked.

“To see Buddy Thomas,” Mr. Hillier said.

They all just followed him.

Buddy Thomas was alone in the training room, opening up boxes of the tape he wrapped players’ ankles with.

When he looked up and saw the four of them coming, he didn’t say a word. Instead, he turned his back, pulled down another box, and said, “Coach Hillier, all due respect, we don’t allow girls in the locker room.”

“Buddy, we only need a minute,” Mr. Hillier said, ignoring the comment about Christine.

“Haven’t got it,” Buddy said, opening another box of tape.

“You can talk to us right now,” Mr. Hillier said. “Or to the police in about an hour.”

Buddy looked up quickly. “The police?” he asked. “About what?”

“About tampering with blood samples. About falsifying evidence against an innocent student.”

Buddy looked truly baffled.

“Coach, I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his tone completely different than it had been thirty seconds earlier.

“When the blood samples were taken from all the players two weeks ago, you were left in charge of them until LabCorp picked them up,” Mr. Hillier said. “I know that from the other coaches. And we found out from LabCorp that your signature is on the form for turning the samples over to the messenger.”

“So?” Buddy said. “What does that have to do with falsifying evidence? I never touched the stuff. It just sat in the training room until the guy came to pick it up.”

“How long was that?” Christine asked.

Buddy shrugged. “I don’t know.” He thought for a second. “Maybe an hour. What’s going on?”

Christine didn’t answer, just plowed on. “Were you in the training room the whole time?” she asked.

Buddy shook his head. “No. I had work to do. Once all the nurses cleared out, I called the lab for the pickup and worked on stuff in my office. What is this, an episode of
Law and Order
?”

“Was anyone else around?” Christine asked.

Buddy actually thought about that one, then shook his head.

“No. I’d already sent the kids who help me here home. Everything was done. Coaches had all left. Except for …”

He stopped.

“Except for who, Buddy?” Mr. Hillier asked.

“No one,” Buddy said. “No one. Look, I’ve got work to do.…”

Alex hadn’t said a word until then.

“Buddy, please. Someone switched the labels on the vials in there. That’s why my blood came up positive—because it wasn’t mine.
Someone
had to switch them. Please tell us who was here that night.”

Buddy looked at Alex.

“I never thought you were guilty, Myers,” he said. “I really didn’t.”

“Who was here, Buddy?” Mr. Hillier said very softly.

Buddy leaned on top of the training table. “I had no idea why he went into the training room,” he said. “I really didn’t. He said he’d left something behind.”

“Who?”
they all said.

“It was Jake,” Buddy finally said. “Jake Bilney.”