“The sports complex?” I repeated.
He nodded, looking me up and down, as if he recognized me as the crazy girl who had screamed at Ryan outside the house a week ago.
So be it. I was past the point of caring what other people thought of me once again. It took being shoved to rock bottom to get back in that mindset, it seemed.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Anytime. Cool hair, by the way.”
I glanced up at it again from the corner of my eye. “Thanks.”
Turning away, I walked on the sidewalk up to campus, the same way I’d walked the other night after I ran away from Ryan. I walked past the swath of trees that created a dome overhead on the Row and kept going around the bend until I passed the library and stood in front of the sports complex.
I took another deep breath.
Take two.
Going inside, I looked around, wondering exactly where he could be. If he had decided to go back on the team after one week of lessening his amount of physical therapy, Ryan was going to get a piece of my mind. He wanted to walk. He wanted to travel and see the world and climb mountains or whatever in the future, and now, he was throwing that out of the window?
I pushed into the football locker room to find it quiet and empty. Bags laid on the floor alone. Practice jerseys were stacked to the right, still holding on to the faint scent of body odor. Unsure of where else to go, I moved toward the other door that led toward either the gym or out toward the field. After a step, someone pushed through.
The guy I recognized from the other day—and forever ingrained in my mind as the guy eating cheese puffs on the sports house’s couch—stared at me for a second before he continued his direction back toward his own cubby, searching through his bag. “Hey.”
“Hi, Trevor,” I said, hesitant. Then again, he didn’t look like it was completely out of the ordinary to see a random person standing in the middle of the football locker room. “I was looking for—”
“He’s not here.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice turning more high pitched and ill-humored with each complaint. I was never going to find him. With each place and step I might come across him, my chest felt as if it were caving in a little further as I lost my nerve. “I was told that he was coming here.”
“He cleaned out his locker early this morning, but then he headed out for the rest of the day,” said Trevor.
Cleaned out his locker. I looked over to the corner, seeing the number nine above the empty space. Here I’d thought he was here because he was going to ruin his leg again. But he wasn’t. He was seriously done playing, and I hadn’t been here for the day when he cleaned out his space on the team once and for all.
I put a hand to my head, letting go of the fear and anger that had festered in the past ten minutes. “Oh.”
“Yeah, I don’t know where he went, but he had one of his lists with him.”
One of his to-do lists. My body softened at the mention, though that meant he could be anywhere, on or off campus.
I turned back around to give Trevor his privacy that I’d invaded, heading toward the door. “Thanks anyway.”
“No problem. I hope you find him.”
“Me too.”
“Hey.” He stopped me as I opened the door. “I heard what Lauren and her friend did to you. That was pretty shitty.”
I stared at Trevor. I wondered how he’d found out. Was it from Ryan? Someone else? Or did Lauren think that it was cool to hurt others and show her achievement off like some odd sociopath?
“Yeah, it was.”
“Like I said, I hope you find him.” Lifting his arm up in a wave, he turned back out toward the gym he had arrived from.
When I pushed my way outside back onto campus once more, the breeze that ruffled the branches of the trees around me felt like an odd relief as I looked this way and that, debating which direction I should go next or if it would be better just to head home and regroup. I let myself wander unthinkingly along the path, along the edge of campus.
As if out of a dream, however, I stopped.
I just wanted to find him. And like magic, I did.
