Me:6pm. After my shift. The interview location is my choice. I'll send you details.
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Carter:Fine. But Hayes? This doesn't mean I'm going to make this easy for you.
Me:Good. I don't want it to be easy. I want the truth.
Carter:Careful what you wish for.
I pocket my phone and keep walking, adrenaline mixing with something that feels dangerously close to anticipation.
Carter Lynch thinks he can intimidate me. Thinks he can bully me into writing what he wants.
He's about to learn that I don't scare easily and more importantly, I always get my story.
***
The article publishes the next morning.
I wake up to seventeen text messages, forty-three Instagram notifications, and three missed calls from numbers I don't recognize.
The headline reads:"Beneath the Ice: Toxic Culture in Thornhill Hockey"
Mitchell ran it on the front page with a photo of the team celebrating their last win, all smiles and glory while the subheading reads.But at what cost?
I scroll through the comments on the online version. They're exactly what I expected, half supportive, half enraged.
Finally someone said it
This is bullshit. Go interview the team before you trash them
Carter Lynch is going to destroy you
Thank you for writing this. I was hazed my freshman year and no one believed me
Feminazi journalism at its finest
I screenshot that last one for my collection of "Reasons I Drink."
By the time I get to my café shift at six, the whole campus is talking about it. I can feel eyes on me as I walk across the quad. Hear whispers that stop when I get too close.
Good. Let them talk.
Isla is already at the café when I arrive, and she looks worried. "You okay?"
"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" I ask.
"Because half the hockey team is sitting at the corner table glaring at you."
I glance over, as I didn’t see them as I walked in. She's not exaggerating. Five guys in Thornhill Hockey jackets, all staring at me with varying degrees of hostility.
Carter isn't among them. Small mercies.
"They can glare all they want. I'm here to work, not make friends."
But I'm hyperaware of them all morning. The way they whisper when I pass, the way they deliberatelymake loud comments about "fake news" and "bitter journalists."
At nine, one of them, a freshman I don't recognize, comes up to order.
