But then, all at once, the room shifts.
It starts with a single chime, then another, and another, a ripple of notifications that spreads like a virus.
Every phone in the place, buzzing and beeping, a wave of sound that shreds the air.
The effect is instant, guys glance at their screens, then at each other, then back at their screens, faces blanching as the words sink in.
I finish the last wrap, rip the tape with my teeth, and only then do I check mine.
It’s a news alert. There’s only one headline that matters.
Second shooter apprehended. Identity confirmed—Caleb Holt.
The letters slide around, out of focus, then snap back, sharper than glass.
For a long second, nothing happens. Nobody speaks, nobody moves.
Then the room collapses, sound leaking out like blood from a cut.
O’Doul is the first to say anything. “Fuck,” he whispers, but it carries across the cinderblock.
Raz sits down hard on the bench, head in his hands. One of the rookies just stares at his phone, eyes wide, blinking like maybe it’s a prank, like the words will change if he looks again.
I can’t breathe. My throat locks up, chest tight, and my whole body goes cold and clammy. The stick slips from my hands, lands on the rubber floor with a hollow thunk.
The details trickle in over the next hour, fragments from the team chat, from the news ticker, from Coach's tight-lipped calls in the hallway.
Caleb had planned it, months in advance, maybe longer. His laptop was full of it. encrypted forums, manifestos from shooters he'd been studying like game tape, a digital trail so dark the FBI had already taken the hard drive.
The alibi was part of it too, he'd left his phone with a friend in Pullman, paid two classmates to cover for him, built the whole thing like a play he'd been rehearsing in his head since long before Ryan ever died.
The investigators said he'd been radicalized online, pulled into communities that fed on isolation and rage, though nobody could pinpoint the exact moment he tipped from grieving brother to something else entirely.
His own brother. He killed his own brother.
I think back to the last time I saw Caleb. He was wearing Cap’s old jacket, sleeves too long, face still baby-soft.
He hugged me at the funeral, fingers trembling, and thanked me for “taking care of the team.” He smiled when I showed him Cap’s lucky puck, the one with the chip in the side from a playoff goal.
I want to throw up. The worst part isn't the betrayal. It's the math.
Every smile, every hug, every story about Cap, all of it was real and performed at the same time. The kid who cried at the wake had already pulled the trigger.
The grief wasn't fake; it just wasn't the whole picture.
Whatever broke inside Caleb had been broken long before the shooting, and none of us saw it because he looked exactly like what we needed him to be, the little brother who survived.
He ordered pancakes at the diner and poured syrup until it overflowed onto the table.
He cried once, after a bad joke from Raz, but laughed it off. Every time I saw him, he looked smaller, like the grief was eating him from the inside out.
I want to throw up.
Across the room, Ash is frozen. He’s holding his phone in both hands, elbows braced on his knees, staring at the screen so hard I worry he’ll burn a hole in it.
Nobody knows what to say. Nobody can even make a joke. The silence gets so thick it’s hard to move through, like air has been replaced with cement.
Coach Vasquez walks in, clipboard in hand, already barking “five minutes to warmup.” She stops when she sees the room, reads the temperature like a pro. For a second, she looks confused.
