Andrew paced the floor of his apartment. He had been able to exchange numbers with the other seven athletes after their meeting with the detectives. He’d set up a group message and suggested that they meet at his apartment that evening. After some back and forth about a time that worked for everyone, they finally settled on eight o’clock. He looked at his phone. He wanted everyone to be committed, so he asked each of them to reply with their name and their sport. The eight of them represented six different programs at the university. Andrew checked his watch; they should start arriving any minute now. He started to punch in a reminder text, even at the risk of looking like a tyrant, when someone knocked on his door. He checked the peephole and saw the tall girl who had complained about missing track practice staring back at him.
“You must be Emma.” He stepped back to let her inside and put his hand out to introduce himself. “I’m Andrew, obviously.”
“I figured,” she said, stepping inside the apartment but not shaking his hand.
He tried to casually run his hand through his hair instead of standing there with his hand out. Before he could close the door, two more familiar faces walked up. One was Wiley from his team and the other was someone he’d seen at the meeting earlier that day.
“Hey, Drew. Thanks for hosting this.” Wiley gave him a fist bump as he walked past. Andrew tried not to cringe at the nickname. “This is Jess. She’s on the basketball team.” He gestured to the girl whose dark hair was in braids and tied back behind her head. She had on grey sweatpants with an unzipped hoodie over a tank top.
“Hey, Andrew, right? I came straight from our shoot around tonight. Grabbed a quick shower, so I wouldn’t be the smelly one in the room.” She grinned and gave him another fist bump.
“Everyone’s coming, right, Drew?” Wiley asked, looking around the small apartment.
“That’s what everybody said on the text,” Emma said from the couch, not looking up from her phone. She had on dark leggings and an oversized sweater. Andrew thought she looked bored and irritated.
“I’m sure everyone will be here in the next minute or so. Can I get anyone anything to drink? I only have Gatorade or water, sorry.”
“Hey, we’re all in season here, right? No problem, man. I’ll take some water. Thanks.” Wiley told him.
“I brought my own.” Emma held up a VSCO bottle.
“Oh wow, is that vintage? I didn’t know people still carried those. Cool!” Wiley basically shouted at her, causing Andrew to almost cringe again. Emma just shrugged.
“I’m fine, thanks,” Jess said as another knock sounded at the door.
Andrew opened the door and four more people walked in. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming. I was just getting Wiley a water, does anyone else want anything? I have Gatorade too.”
A girl with wild, dark, curly hair and green eyes shook her head no. He tried to remember her name. Anna! She had been the quietest person at the meeting. He’d heard from Wiley that she was the one who had reportedly found Dr. D dead in his office. He wondered if she was still in shock.
“I’ll take a Gatorade, since you’re offering.” A muscular looking girl with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes responded. “I’m Casey. I swim the ‘fly.”
The last two people to enter introduced themselves as Derek and Alan, quarterback and wide receiver, respectively, from the football team. They both declined Andrew’s offer of something to drink. After grabbing a water for himself and Wiley as well as the Gatorade for Casey, Andrew sat down in one of the kitchen chairs that he’d previously moved into the living room area.
“Thanks again for coming, everyone. I thought that we could all benefit from knowing each other, especially now that our program seems to be in jeopardy. Like I said in the text, I’m Andrew Niles and I play mostly left field on the baseball team.” Andrew said. Wiley, Emma, and Jess followed his lead and introduced themselves to the four late-comers. Then everyone turned to look at Anna.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Anna. I, uh, I’m a pitcher on the softball team.” She gave a little nod.
“How do you propose we get this program restarted? I mean, we all know that Dr. D is dead. He was giving us the powder. It all seemed kind of cloak and dagger. Does anyone else even know about it?” Derek asked the group.
“I guarantee Whitham knows.” Emma spoke up and everyone turned to look at her.
“What makes you say that?” Alan asked. His short, blonde hair was spiked up. His brown eyes flared when he spoke.
“Didn’t y’all meet with him before you met with Dr. D? He was funneling us over to Dr. D. He knows,” Emma said as the rest of the group nodded.
“You’re right. I did meet with him first before seeing Dr. D for the first time.” Jess commented.
“Then Dr. D acted like we were extra elite, chosen for a small program for the best athletes and told us not to talk about it, so that others didn’t get jealous or whatever,” Derek said.
“But do you think Whitham has access to the powder? He’s not a sports medicine doctor. He’s not a doctor at all.” Jess asked.
“We could ask him. We could go to his office together and demand that he make this right. I don’t want to lose my scholarship. My parents can’t afford this school without it.” Derek said.
“I don’t think we should do that,” Emma said nonchalantly. She set her phone down on her lap.
“What? Why?” Several people asked.
“We’re not supposed to know about each other. Going together could scare him into canceling it altogether. We don’t really know a lot about the powder. Just that it isn’t a steroid or on the banned substances list, right? But what if it’s still illegal? We don’t want to spook him.”
“I agree. We need to keep our knowledge of each other under wraps for now. No one has told anyone else about the powder either, right?” Andrew asked. They all nodded in agreement.
“Good. Like Emma said, we need to be careful with what we know. We can’t let word get out about the powder, or we could lose access to it.”
“What about Ithaca?” Emma asked. “How do we know that he didn’t talk about it?”
“Do we know he was in the program for sure?” Derek asked.
“I saw him once.” Everyone turned to look at Anna, who hadn’t spoken since introducing herself. She was sitting in the corner of the couch with her legs pulled into her chest. “I had gotten to Dr. D’s late one time for the pickup. I thought I could still get there before the half hour window closed…and I did! But he must have been early. He was waiting outside Dr. D’s office when I came out. I wouldn’t have known it was him until I saw the announcement about the athlete dying. It was definitely him.”
“Are you okay, girl? Did someone drive you here? You look a little shook.” Casey asked her.
“I’m fine. I can drive. My roommate was hovering over me all day. It’s good that I got out. I shouldn’t stay for too long though. She might get worried and come looking. I told her that I had a team meeting, which is weird for a Saturday night, you know?” Her words tumbled out in a quiet manner and everyone leaned in to hear her.
“Okay, so Ithaca was in the program. What do we know about him?”
“Virtually nothing,” Alan said.
“I know his girlfriend, well, I have her phone number. Her name is Marjorie.” Emma spoke up. “And the other guys on the track team were talking about him today. One of them is friends with his roommate. Ben somebody or other.”
“Spivets? I know that guy. He’s in one of my business classes.” Wiley said. “He leads a study group that I go to sometimes. I could stick around after and see if he knows anything without really asking about it, you know?”
“What about the girlfriend?” Jess asked.
“I bet Ben knows her. He seemed to be pretty good friends with his roommate. I hadn’t realized it was the same guy. The study group meets at their, uh, Ben’s dorm, in the common area downstairs. The next one is tomorrow night. I can find out some more about her.”
“Hey wait. I think I know her roommate. Earlier today, I was at the Starbucks over on Washington and there was this other student there from my calculus class. Tiffany is her name. She was on the phone telling someone about how her roommate’s boyfriend died the day before. She was really animated, so it was easy to hear the conversation.” Casey told them.
“Are you sure it’s the same person? I mean, it would be a big coincidence, I guess, but still, we don’t want to go down the wrong path.” Andrew asked her.
“I’m SURE. She said that the kid collapsed on the track and died. That didn’t happen to anyone else yesterday, did it?” Her blue eyes glared angrily at him.
“Okay, great. We can get to Marjorie through Tiffany. For now, let’s leave Stephen’s roommate out of this. If he doesn’t know anything about the powder, there’s no reason to make him suspicious.”
“I could always just call Marjorie. She came to a couple of the track team parties, so she is an acquaintance.” Emma offered. “That way we don’t have to include Tiffany unless Marjorie won’t talk to me.”
“I agree with Emma. Let’s start there and see where it leads. The fewer people we pull into this, the better.” Alan said.
The rest of the group nodded their heads, agreeing with Alan. They needed to keep a lid on the information or risk losing the program altogether. Andrew started to adjourn the meeting when Derek stood up.
“What was your take on the detectives that talked to us today?” Derek asked. “I don’t think our guy knows anything about the supplement. He asked about the nutrition program but never said anything about the powder. Neither did I, of course.”
“The hazel-eyed beauty we spoke with didn’t know about it either.” Jess spoke up. “Or that’s my impression. She never mentioned it. They know we’re all in this nutrition program, but to them it’s like dietary management, nothing more.”
“Hazel-eyed beauty? Excuse me?” Wiley teased.
“Hey, I’m just saying, the woman has pretty eyes and a pretty face.” Jess defended herself. “Don’t be jealous that you had to get questioned by the huge man. That guy could put you in your place.”
“Ahem.” Andrew cleared his throat. “Any other questions? If not, then let’s keep in touch via text as much as possible. Hopefully, the program won’t have any more hiccups.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. If Marjorie wouldn’t open up to Emma, then they would get to Tiffany through Casey’s connection to her. From here on, they would only meet if something big came up.
After everyone had filed out of his apartment, Andrew pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts, finally settling on one.
“It’s me. We had the meeting like you suggested.”
“And? Is everything safe?”
“So far, yes. We’ve mapped out a plan to talk to Ithaca’s girlfriend.”
“He had a girlfriend?”
“Turns out, yes.”
“Now that you mention it, the track coaches said something about her yesterday. Well, keep me posted. I don’t want this to cost you your scholarship.”
“I said that we’ve got it under control. What are you doing?”
“I’m working on it, okay? I’m looking into it. You weren’t able to get it back, so I have to find a work-around for it.”
“I wasn’t able—” Andrew sighed when he realized the call end had just ended. This had better be worth it.