QB10: When’s your first class?
Me: Now.
And then I realized it was nine in the morning, and Dante had already been up for hours. He told me yesterday afternoon he missed Sunday’s practice and would likely face punishment for it, but he wasn’t too bothered. He mentioned that between the two coaches, there was enough tension, and he could brush them off by saying his shoulder was recuperating.
I hadn’t even known his shoulder was the issue, and he’d been putting his weight on it, and when I panicked, he laughed and told me this was the kind of light exercise that they would encourage.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about being termed ‘light exercise.’
QB10: See you at the shed later?
Me: Absolutely
My morning classes passed fairly quickly, and as I headed to the library for my normal between-class studying, I began to turn over the problem in my mind of the grades being altered. So what if it was the ‘norm’? Itshouldn’tbe.
I sat down in my usual booth, but as I stared at my laptop screen, I couldn’t shake the fact that I needed to know more.
This was supposed to be simple. But ‘simple’ had gone up in flames the second Dante put his mouth on mine and made me forget every reason I shouldn’t be getting involved with him.
Which left me with the only thing I knew how to do when the ground shifted under me — dig.
The Academic Liaison login I’d been given gave me a wider window than most students would ever see. Mine was a wider access than most, I knew that. Not everything — not the files I knew were locked under levels of clearance — but enough. Enough to spot the cracks if you knew where to look.
And, God help me, I wanted to look.
I told myself it was professional. I told myself it was about protecting my role, about staying one step ahead of my father, about knowing more so Dante and the others could be prepared. Underneath all that was something simpler and less noble; if I didn’t dig, someone else would, and they’d be ahead of me.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard before I finally typed in my login.
I checked Dante first. I’d looked before, but then I hadn’t known everything. His academic record looked clean at first glance — and after a few more minutes, I knew what I’d told him was true. He was getting by in his classesby himself, except for the one I was tutoring him in. Noah and Dustin were also fine.
I weirdly felt proud of them, and I pushed the strangeness aside because, as I clicked through other football players, I started seeing the same patterns. Shifts. Gaps. Places where one file had one grade and the next had a completely different one.
I told myself I’d only skim, that I’d just get a sense of the scope and shut it down before I lost my nerve.
But once you start tugging at threads, you can’t stop.
At first, it was the overwrites — professors quietly changing F’s to C’s or granting ‘independent study’ credits that didn’t exist in the course catalog. There were some who had reasons for retakes of tests, and a medical waiver attached as the reason they’d been ‘allowed’ a redo. Students carrying an injury they’d conveniently picked up on the day of a test. Alone, it looked feasible; together, there was a pattern. The more I looked, the more I realized that the re-sits were never actually taken. They were just blatantly altering the grades.
I leaned back, my pulse rapid. It was clear they were being ‘helped,’ and the terrifying part? If I could see it, someone else could too.
But then I went deeper.
Buried three subfolders down inAthletic Academic Reports, I found medical waivers. Not classwork, not tutoring logs —actualinjury assessments. One, two, six of them, all stamped with the same note:Not filed.
I froze, pulse roaring in my ears.
These weren’t no-names. Some were starters, guys I’d watched play hurt and assumed it was ‘just part of the game.’ But here was the proof: they should’ve been benched. Instead, their records were scrubbed clean, never submitted, never flagged.
I clicked on another file.Financial Aid Disbursement.At least, that’s what the header said. But the ‘student recipients’ didn’t exist in the registrar’s database. No enrollment, no ID numbers. Just names. Fake names.
Jesus.
This wasn’t just about Dante skating by with a C-minus. This was systemic.
The worst part? Someone had tagged these filesARCHIVE — DO NOT DELETE, like they were meant to be hidden but not erased. A trail, if you knew where to look.
I closed my laptop and pressed my palms to my eyes, willing my heart to slow.
