“Well, I guess you’ll be experiencing it soon enough. Season starts soon.”
I looked over again and found Logan staring at me.
“What’s his deal anyway?” I asked Max. “If he’s so coveted, why does he look so lonely?”
“You’re probably the first person to ever say that,” he said. “Fitz is never alone and is definitely far from lonely.”
I looked back at Logan with that thought in mind. He was still staring at me. I didn’t care how many people he had around him, he definitely looked lonely. I knew the look because it was the same one I’d walked around wearing for as long as I could remember and I was definitely never alone. Max walked in their direction.
“Hey, guys, mind doing a quick interview for the paper?”
“Sure, but only if your pretty friend asks the questions.” One of them broke away from the group and walked over to us.
It was the one who looked like Thor, but with dark hair. He had defined features that made him looked like a rugged Viking, even without a beard. Another followed with a chuckle. He also had hair down to his shoulders, but he was dirty blond. They both looked like perfect California surfers. I remembered seeing them in my parent’s backyard, both wearing dark suits, looking like they were guarding secrets as they stood in the shadows. I should have gone up to them then, but Travis made it impossible.
“I wouldn’t know what to ask.” I waved the camera. “But I’ll take your picture.”
“That’s a start.” He grinned, putting a hand out for me to shake. “I’m Nolan.”
“Amelia, but you can call me Mae.”
“Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”
“Thanks.” I dropped my hand.
“Sure you don’t want to get one question in?”
“About hockey?”
His gaze darkened. “About anything.”
“Dude.” Logan stepped forward, putting a hand on Nolan’s shoulder. “Let them do their job so we can go.”
My eyes jumped between the two of them. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask them, starting with my brother’s accident, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate for this setting.
“About hockey,” Nolan said, shrugging Logan’s hand off his shoulder.
“Well, I don’t know a lick about hockey and whatever question I ask would sound ridiculous.”
“Maybe you should check out our games.”
“Apparently, it’s part of my job.”
Someone in their group of friends scoffed behind him. I didn’t even bother to see whom but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was Logan himself.
“Are you excited to get back on the ice?” Max asked, clicking the recorder.
“Sure. I’m always excited. We have a good squad again this year. It’ll be fun to bring the championship back.”
“Do you think losing last year will make you work ten times harder to get it back?”
“Fuck yeah,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. We’re ready to bring that trophy home this year.”
The rest of the guys cheered behind him, throwing their fists in the air. I snapped some pictures and looked at the little window where it appeared. It looked more like we were at a frat house than a sports mixer, but it would have to do. Even Logan had his fist up and was smiling in the photo.
“Thanks for your time,” Max said, clicking the stop button.
“There’s a party tonight, if you want to come by. Eleven o’clock, Senior Hall.”
“Maybe,” Max said.
“I was talking to Mae,” Nolan said, “But you can come too, Max.”
“I already have a party I’m going to, but thanks.”
“This one will be better.” He winked as he walked away. “Take good pictures of my ass. It’ll sell more papers.”
“Hey, Mae. You wanna grab dinner tomorrow night?” Max was putting his recorder in his backpack. “I mean an early dinner. Around seven?”
“Um, I guess so.” I smiled.
I wasn’t in the mood to party or have dinner with anyone, but if doing those things was going to get me answers about this society and Lana, I’d do them. I dressed for the party in the most casual thing I could find—black skinny jeans, black vans, and a white crop top. No designer anything. Well, except for my jeans and the crop top, but nobody would know that. I was going to blend in with the crowd tonight. After I applied my make-up and finished brushing my hair, I opened up my brother’s computer and searched Google for Morse code. I plugged in the dots and dashes, just as I wrote them down.
The Lab
What? That didn’t even make any sense. What lab? I opened up a separate tab and searched “the lab”. A ton of things came up, from children schools to makeup schools. None of it made any sense. The lab. Why would he waste precious seconds on that? Was he trying to make me laugh? I shook the thought away and Googled Logan Fitz. My screen instantly filled with Logan. Logan Fitzgerald turns down NHL contract, stays in school. I clicked on the article, where Stephen A. Smith called him nothing short of an idiot for turning down millions in order to go to school and risk getting hurt and not being able to get paid millions. I kept clicking.
His social media profiles were all set to private, but I was able to find a ton of pictures of him from a Toronto newspaper. Apparently, he was the Lebron James of hockey, his career followed all through high school and being scouted by NHL teams ever since his blades hit the ice freshman year. I wondered if Stephen A. Smith was right. Why had Logan bothered with college at all? What was the point of a degree if you were guaranteed to make millions?
According to his profile on the school website, his full name was Logan Moriarty Fitzgerald. I laughed, assuming one of his parents must have been a Sherlock Holmes fan. Why would they name their kid after the villain? It definitely fit though. He had a mysterious aura about him that matched his namesake. Even in his official photograph, he didn’t smile.
He was six foot four, two hundred and twenty pounds. I always found it fascinating that athletes gave away their weights and heights so openly. I zoomed in on his picture. His dark hair was longer than he wore it now, his green eyes deep, even there, like they encompassed an entire forest. There was nothing else to see, but on a whim, I decided to go to my brother’s Instagram account and look around. There was a picture of him and Logan that I’d apparently liked last December. I vaguely remembered seeing the picture but hadn’t really paid attention to it. I liked anything Lincoln posted out of solidarity. I kept staring at the picture. They were both smiling as they joked around about something. It was obvious there was a friendship there. I wondered why he’d never mentioned him in the past. Unless their friendship had turned awry.
I went down a rabbit hole until I landed on an old headline: Patrick Fitzgerald accused of raping woman. Former hockey star turned businessman accused of statutory rape. Businessman, Patrick Fitzgerald, acquitted of rape charges. There was a knot in the pit of my stomach as I clicked on his picture. Evidentially, Patrick was Logan’s older brother, older by ten years, according to the news report. I wondered if this was the guy who was friends with my older brother George. He was handsome. The kind of handsome that made women in juries not convict because they didn’t believe a person who looked that good had to take something without permission. It was a slippery slope, of course, because anybody with that kind of money and power would be able to take something without permission and get away with it. I wondered what Logan’s take on it was, and why I even cared to hear it. It was that thought that made me shut down the computer and head to the party.