Tomcat

by Samantha Westlake

  My heart beating, I put the game ball up on the counter, the gauge poised over the valve. However, as I prepared to take the measurement, another concerning thought occurred to me.

  What if the ball had warmed back up while I'd been wandering around inside, and the pressure was back to acceptable levels? This wasn't a proper test. I needed to check the pressure of the ball outside, in the real conditions.

  Shit. I stared around the room wildly for a moment, and then shoved the pressure gauge into my pocket, grabbed the ball off the counter, and ran back out.

  Another five minutes of getting lost in the corridors of the stadium later, I managed to emerge outside - this time, outside the exits of the stadium, looking out at the expanse of the parking lot. I moved over to a side bench and set the ball down, glaring at it and trying to will it to cool off faster.

  After another five minutes of hopping around and trying to keep warm, rubbing my arms and directing angry glances at the unmoving football sitting beside me, I couldn't wait any longer.

  "That's got to be long enough," I muttered to myself, pulling out the pressure gauge and sticking it into the ball.

  I lifted the gauge up, wiping my finger across the display to read the result.

  Just under eleven pounds of pressure per square inch.

  I sat back, my heart pounding. I had been right! My prediction turned out to be true - the ball that had scored the touchdown for the Hawks was significantly under-inflated! The Hawks were really cheating!

  What do I do now?

  For a few wild seconds, I considered trying to sneak the pressure gauge back inside the equipment room. I came to my senses, however, and instead just chucked the thing into a nearby trash receptacle. Even if someone found it, they wouldn't connect its disappearance back to me.

  The ball, however, proved to be a more difficult item to hide away. Eventually, I snapped some pictures of it, making sure that both the signature on the ball and the Blasters stadium behind the ball were visible, and then carried it off to the busses that shuttled the players, coaches, and other Hawks team members back and forth from the hotel. I stowed it in one of the compartments above the seats, making a mental note of the bus number so I could retrieve the ball later on for the auction.

  What next?

  I didn't have any idea. I honestly hadn't even imagined that I would make it this far - or that I'd actually discover any evidence of the Hawks not playing fairly. Who would I tell? Who do I confront, if anyone?

  Returning back into the stadium, this time heading up to the sky box to try and work some feeling back into my nearly frozen fingers, I tried to think through my options.

  Option one: I tell no one, and take this secret to my grave. On one hand, this seemed least likely to cause any problems for me, personally. But I didn't know if I could truly keep a secret like this for the rest of my life, not telling anyone. Furthermore, if someone else found out that I knew about this cheating and hadn't told anyone else, I could be held as an accessory to the fact.

  At least, that's what I assumed based on all my late night cop show binges.

  Okay, moving on. Option two: I don't tell anyone on the football team that I know about the cheating, but I write an article and send it off to the editorial team on ESPN. This sort of story was the kind of thing that could make careers - or break them. I'd probably get a very cold shoulder from the football leagues and any associated groups, but I could maybe get some national name recognition for this story, possibly even turn it into a book deal.

  Would that be enough to pay for the rest of my life's expenses? I didn't know, and somehow, I didn't suspect so. Maybe if I was a more established journalist, I could keep a career going after this scandal broke. But given my inexperience, I didn't have enough contacts to weather the resulting storm.

  So option two didn't seem promising, either. What else could I try?

  Option three: I tell the team that I know about what was going on, tell them that it's wrong and that they should stop. How would that work out?

  I honestly didn't know what the fallout from doing this option would be. If it turned out that the team somehow didn't know about the balls deflating in cooler weather, I might be safe from any real repercussions, maybe even receive a bit of thanks for pointing out the issue.

  But given how much Chase, the equipment managers, and other players handled the ball, I just couldn't imagine that they didn't know about the deflated footballs. So what would happen if I told them that I knew about their cheating?

  If I told them, I suspected that I'd still end up cast out of my job, discredited and silenced.

  Great, I sighed. Screwed either way.

  I watched the rest of the game with half my brain, as the other half worried over possible options. At least the rest of the game went well; the Hawks defense did an admirable job of holding off the Blaster offensive pushes, and Chase went on to throw two more touchdown passes. By the time the fourth quarter ran to an end, the Hawks had established their typical lead over their competitor. Some of the Blasters fans were already streaming out of the stadium, unwilling to watch their team lose.

  I posted excited responses and comments on the game on the different social media accounts, but my expression remained glum. A couple of the other reporters even commented on this. "Why the negative face?" one asked. "Your team just won!"

  I made up some lame excuse about worried over our future chances, and ducked out of the sky box before they could ask me anything else.

  My dark mood persisted through the rest of the afternoon. I got a text from Chase after the bus arrived back at the hotel, inviting me to go out with him to celebrate, but I didn't reply. I just lay on my bed in my room, staring at the ceiling, trying to think through my different options.

  What if I told him? Chase? Would he turn me in, dump me out to dry?

  I didn't know the answer to that question. On one hand, his entire career could be tainted by this scandal, if it got out. He, more than almost anyone else, had motive to want me silenced and disenfranchised.

  But he also cared about me - at least, I believed that he did. Would he be so cold-hearted as to cast me aside because I knew his secret? Did he really care about me, as more than just another mark on his bedpost?

  I didn't know the answer to that question, either.

  But the longer I lay in my bed and thought in circles through my options, the more stark my choices became. I could either say nothing and hope that the secret never came out, or I could tell Chase that I knew his secret, and hope that he wouldn't cut me out of his life and burn all bridges behind me.

  What the hell was I going to do?

  I needed to talk to someone else about this. For a moment, I thought of going straight to Chase, but no - I needed an unbiased opinion, someone who wasn't directly involved in this.

  I pulled out my phone and called Miranda.

  "Katy? What's up?"

  "Listen, Miranda, are you free? Can I ask you some questions? I really need to talk to you about something." A glance at the clock revealed that it was around 4 PM right now, which meant it was close to seven in the evening back on the East Coast.

  "Um, I was about to head out to dinner, but I can talk for a few minutes." Miranda sounded a little distracted, but she didn't turn me down. "What's up?"

  "It's about Chase-"

  "Did you sleep with him yet??" she exclaimed, cutting me off.

  "What? No, why would you even ask that?"

  "Oh, come on, it's obvious that you're crazy about him," she insisted. "I've just been waiting for the excited call when you tell me that you jumped his bones."

  "Well, now, I don't think that it's going to happen," I revealed. "Listen, Miranda, I think that Chase..." I shuddered for a moment, but I had to tell someone, "...might be cheating at football."

  For a moment, Miranda didn't say anything. "Hello?" I called out. "Are you there?"

  "I just pushed back my plans for tonight," she answered. "Now, tell me everythin
g."

  I sat back down on my bed, flopped backwards onto the sheets, and told Miranda all that I'd found out so far - the deflated balls, how Chase angrily brushed off the question, my suspicions, how I stole the game ball and tested it to verify that my guess actually was correct. Miranda listened for the whole time, barely speaking except to ask me to repeat a detail here or there.

  "So, that's everything i've found out so far," I finished. "Now, what do I do?"

  She thought for a moment. "You need to confront him," she finally said.

  "Really? But I don't want to!"

  "Katy, Ben Franklin said that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead," Miranda replied. "And if this cheating thing is true, more than three people know the secret - and that means it's going to get out, sooner or later. Better for you to be the one proven right in your accusations than to be the one caught in the scandal."

  She was right, of course. "Thanks," I said, although the words sounded a little sour.

  "Trust me. It's the right thing to do." She ended the call.

  I tossed the phone aside, once again just staring up at the ceiling. Miranda was right, of course. I knew that she was right.

  But still, I wanted to ignore the whole thing and pretend it hadn't happened.

  What would Chase say?

  Chapter Twenty

  ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

  Chase rode the elevator down a few floors, a note of disquiet clouding his thoughts. He knew that he should be feeling jubilant about the most recent victory, but something just didn't sit quite right in his mind.

  It was something to do with Katy, he thought to himself. His interaction with her on the field seemed fine - she appeared as her normal, bubbly, excited self - but now, looking back at it, he felt like something about it had been off.

  And now, she wasn't returning his texts.

  He reached her floor, heading over to her room and knocking on the door. He heard her footsteps on the other side of the door, but she paused for a moment before opening it, and he saw a shadow flit across the other side of the peephole.

  Was she intending to not even speak with him in person? What had suddenly changed, what had he done wrong?

  After another second, however, the door opened, and he saw Katy standing there. "Hey," he greeted her, a smile blooming on his face - although inside his head, the little alarm going off jumped up a few octaves.

  Her face looked drawn, unsure of something, but definitely on edge. Something was most definitely wrong, even though she made an attempt to smile back at him.

  Chase stepped into her room. "What's going on? You haven't returned my texts. We won the game, remember?"

  "I saw," Katy replied. Chase reached out to pull her into his arms for a kiss, but she stepped back and evaded his grasp. She turned and padded over to her bed, sitting down and looking back at him. On the ground, Chase saw the football that he'd signed rocking back and forth, near her leg.

  He walked over and sat down on the bed beside her. He thought about trying to reach out for her again, but Katy's posture made it clear that she wasn't interested in any physical romance at the moment. "What's wrong?"

  She didn't speak for a second, but he waited, letting the silence build. Finally, Katy leaned forward and picked up the ball from the ground, setting it on her lap and holding it with both hands as she looked back at him.

  "Listen, Chase, I need to ask you something," she began, her eyes staring into the ball.

  "Shoot."

  "A couple of weeks ago," she began hesitantly, still not meeting his eyes, "I asked you about how I noticed that some of the footballs in the locker room felt soft, and wondered if they might be deflated. You acted kind of strange, and dodged the question."

  Chase carefully didn't let any emotion show on his face, but he felt his spine stiffen a little, and the prickling in his head increased. He didn't like where this line of questioning seemed to be headed. "What about it?"

  "Well, I've done some more reading, and that observation kept on rising back up in my head," Katy continued. "I know that if a ball isn't fully inflated, it could offer an advantage to the team using it - easier to catch, easier to hold and throw."

  The chill in his spine kept on intensifying. "Katy, what are you saying?"

  She didn't respond for a minute, just holding onto the ball in her lap. "This ball that you signed," she said, looking down at it. "I didn't mention it before, but this was one of the balls from the game."

  "I know that. I can see the stamp on it, showing that the referees checked it."

  "Well, they might have checked it, but either they didn't do it properly, or they did it in someplace else," Katy answered. "Because I took my own pressure readings of it, and it's definitely deflated."

  He reached over and picked it up with one hand from her lap, giving it a squeeze. "Are you sure? It feels fine to me."

  "Well, yeah, in here it does," Katy answered him impatiently, her eyes finally flashing up to look back at him, maybe for the first time since he'd entered her room. "But that's because it's warm in here. If you take it outside, into the cold air, it deflates - and the game isn't in a nice warm room like this one! It's outside, where the balls are deflated!"

  Shit. She'd caught onto that fact. In the back of his mind, Chase felt the steadily building pounding of a headache. If she knew about this, she had to have put the rest together. But how much was she certain about?

  "Sometimes the balls are checked before the game inside the stadium, and they can undergo changes in pressure," he answered, trying to keep his voice sounding reasonable. "But the officials and equipment managers check the balls before they go out onto the field-"

  Her eyes widened as she looked back at him. Shit. She knew he wasn't telling her the truth.

  "They don't," she replied slowly, staring at him. "You're not telling me the truth!"

  "Katy, calm down and be reasonable-"

  She jumped up from the bed, still holding the ball in her hands as she stared at him. "Do you know which ball this is?" she said, her voice trembling slightly.

  He shrugged. "I thought you just grabbed one of the extras from the equipment manager on the field-"

  "You scored a touchdown with this ball," she cut him off. "This was one of the balls that you used, in the game. You handled this one, threw it on the field. There's no way that you didn't know that it was softer, that it felt different in your hands."

  "Katy-"

  "Don't lie to me!" she screamed out, and Chase's jaw snapped shut. He could feel a vein in his neck throbbing with anger, his head pounding as he glared back at her. Behind that glare, his brain raced furiously, trying to decide how to handle this situation.

  Katy's eyes burned back at him, and then she shook her head. Strands of hair bounced around her face, and a little part of Chase wanted to just reach up and sweep those back, push them aside and kiss her and pretend that this conversation wasn't happening.

  He ruthlessly squashed that part of his mind, gagging its voice.

  "Chase, please." The anger had leached out of Katy's voice, and she sounded more like the girl he knew. A pleading note replaced the rage. "Just tell me the truth. Answer this one question for me."

  He waited, knowing what the question would be. He felt his own anger simmering, made even worse by its impotence. What could he do? What could he say?

  "Chase, are you cheating?"

  His mouth opened slightly, but no sound came out.

  What the hell was he supposed to say? Should he come clean about everything, tell her how he'd discovered before the season started that partially deflated balls felt a bit more comfortable in his hands, how he told his coaches and they decided to use the information to their advantage without telling him? Could he convince her that the blame didn't lie with him?

  Chase didn't think so. Partially, he pointed out in his mind, because he didn't believe it himself.

  He might not have made the call to use the deflated balls in the game
s, to actually make the swap for the Hawks' advantage, but he'd been one of the conspirators. Just as Katy pointed out to him, he'd known about the deception. He knew that he was cheating, and he didn't say anything about it. In the end, an equal share of the blame lay at his feet.

  Previously, when the secret seemed safe, Chase had felt okay with this level of blame. But now, with Katy staring imploringly back at him, waiting for an answer, the knowledge burned a hole in his stomach.

  Maybe he could deny everything. He could tell her that she was crazy, that the ball in her hands must have been the only one to slip through without being detected as being partially under-inflated. He didn't know if she would believe him, but he could make an attempt at convincing her.

  Would it work?

  Somehow, looking at her face now, Chase didn't think so. He guessed that, from the stress lines on her face, she'd been pondering this question for hours, if not days. How had she kept it secret from him, not telling him during the evenings that they spent together? How long had she held onto her suspicion, letting it grow in the privacy of her mind? Had she kissed him, explored his body, while thinking in the back of her mind that he was a cheater?

  She still looked at him, waiting for an answer. Chase still didn't know what to say.

  "You can't go public with this." The words slipped out of him, escaping while his mind tried to think of a better response.

  They were the wrong words to say. He saw it immediately, saw the darkening expression on Katy's face. "Chase, you think that I was about to-" she started, but he cut her off, not letting her even finish the sentence.

  "Don't talk to anyone," he warned her, standing up to face her. He towered over her, and only now did he realize how threatening that could make him appear.

  Her face grew a shade paler, but she didn't back down, angrily facing him. "If you think that you can tell me what to do-"

  "I know that I can," he cut her off. Now, he could feel his own anger bubbling up, rising to a rapid, explosive boil inside of him. She presumed to just come in here and demand that he come clean about everything to her? Didn't she know the pressures he was under, that this wasn't his decision any longer?