He had replayed it in his head more times than he would ever admit to Wade or Cole. The particular stillness in Joe’s voice when she told him he still had a chance to step back. It bothered him in a way he could not name. A small burr caught under his skin that would not shake loose no matter how many times he laughed it off in front of his friends.
So he waited. And on a Tuesday afternoon, several weeks into the semester, not long after the gym floor incident that still had half the campus talking, he found his opening. The cheer squad shared a locker room with the women’s volleyball team, a narrow space with two rows of gray lockers and a bench running down the middle. Bags were left there during practice, unlocked the way they always had been because nobody at Asheford had ever needed to lock them before.
Cole Ashby had a younger cousin on the volleyball team, a fact almost nobody on campus knew. And it was through her, without her understanding what she was really being asked to do, that Cole learned which locker belonged to Joe Callaway. And when the locker room would sit empty during afternoon practice, it took him four minutes. He did not need longer than that.
He slid a folded sheet of paper into the outer pocket of Joe’s gym bag. Photocopied pages that looked at a glance exactly like the answer key to an upcoming physical fitness evaluation. The athletic department required every squad member to complete an evaluation that determined eligibility for the competitive travel roster. It was not the real answer key. It was close enough to pass for one, close enough to raise questions, and that was all it needed to be.
He told no one but Grant and Wade what he had done. Grant smiled when he heard it. The particular satisfied smile of a man who believes he has finally found the lever that will move the thing he could not move by force. “She wants to play the quiet, tough girl,” Grant said. “Let’s see how tough she looks getting dragged in front of the athletic board.” Wade laughed. Cole did not laugh quite as easily this time, though he said nothing.
The following morning, an assistant coach doing a routine locker check for a missing equipment bag found the folded pages inside Joe’s gym bag and following protocol reported it up the chain without knowing anything about how it had gotten there. By that afternoon, Joe was called into Coach Marsh’s office.
“Sit down,” Coach Marsh said, and there was something careful in her voice, something that made Joe’s stomach tighten before a single word of explanation had been given. Coach Marsh set folded pages on the desk between them. “These were found in your bag this morning.” Joe looked at them for a long moment, genuinely confused. “I’ve never seen those before.” “They look like the answer sheet for Friday’s fitness evaluation.”
“I didn’t put those there,” Joe said. And her voice, for the first time since Coach Marsh had known her, carried something close to alarm, though she kept it tightly controlled. “Coach, I wouldn’t do that. I’ve never even seen the real evaluation.” Coach Marsh studied her for a long moment. Eleven years of coaching had taught her to read faces the way some people read weather. The small shifts before a storm arrives.