The Name Under the Trophy
The locker room in Dex's head smelled like wintergreen and blood.
He came to on the gym floor with his cheek pressed against the warped wood, the taste of copper on his tongue and the echo of a crowd dying in his ears. The overhead lights buzzed. The girls stood in a loose semicircle around him, sneakers squeaking as they shifted their weight. None of them moved to help.
"Coach?" The smallest one, a girl named Yolanda with braids and a too-big practice jersey, said it like she was asking if a dog was rabid.
Dex pushed himself up on one elbow. His knee screamed. His head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the inside of his skull and left the handle in. "I'm fine," he said, because that was what you said when you weren't, and he'd been saying it for fifteen years.
"You dropped like a sack of potatoes," said another girl. This one had a shaved head and a silver hoop in her nose. Her name was something with a J. Jasmine? Janelle? Dex's memory was a sieve these days, and the blackout had shaken loose whatever was left.
"I tripped." He got to his knees, then his feet. The world tilted, corrected itself, tilted again. "Loose floorboard. This place is a death trap."
The girls exchanged looks. They didn't believe him, but they didn't care enough to argue. That was the thing about coaching a team that had never won a game—nobody expected anything, least of all the players. They drifted back toward the rack of basketballs, and Dex limped to the sideline and grabbed the metal water bottle he'd filled with something that was not water.
The smell wouldn't leave him. Wintergreen and blood. And underneath it, something else—cigar smoke, cheap and acrid, the kind that clung to a man's clothes for days. He'd smelled it in the blackout. He'd seen things too, flashes that came back in fragments now that he was conscious: a locker room with wooden benches, a trophy case with a shattered pane, a kid on the floor with blood pooling under his head.
And a voice. Young, scared, saying the same thing over and over: *You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to do that.*
Dex took a long pull from the bottle. The whiskey burned going down, and for a second the smell faded. Then it came back, stronger, like it was living in his sinuses now.
He needed to find out who Marcus Webb was.
---
The janitor's name was Otis, and he'd been working at Meridian Flats High School since before Dex was born. He was a thin man with a face like a crumpled newspaper and hands that shook when he wasn't holding a mop. Dex found him in the boiler room, sitting on an overturned bucket, eating a sandwich that looked older than the building.
"Mr. Calloway." Otis didn't look up. "You're supposed to be at practice."
"Practice is over." Dex leaned against the doorframe. The boiler hummed behind Otis, a low mechanical heartbeat. "I got a question for you."
Otis took a bite of his sandwich. Chewed. Swallowed. "I got answers, but they ain't always the ones people want."
"You know a kid named Marcus Webb?"
The sandwich stopped halfway to Otis's mouth. For a long moment, the only sound was the boiler and the distant thump of a ball against the gym floor—one of the girls, still shooting around. Then Otis lowered the sandwich and set it on the bucket beside him. His face had gone the color of old milk.
"That name's been dead forty years," he said.
Dex felt something cold settle in his chest. Not fear—he'd been afraid plenty of times, and this wasn't that. It was recognition. The feeling of a puzzle piece clicking into place that you didn't know you were holding. "So he's not missing anymore."
Otis stood up. His hands were shaking worse now, and he shoved them into the pockets of his coveralls. "Who told you that name?"
"I saw it. In a—" Dex stopped. He couldn't say *in a blackout*. He couldn't say *a ghost showed me*. He was already the town drunk, the washed-up has-been who'd taken a job coaching a team nobody cared about. He didn't need to be the crazy one too. "In an old program. In the storage room."
Otis's eyes narrowed. "There ain't no programs in the storage room. I cleaned that room out myself, back in '05. Nothing but broken chairs and a rat's nest the size of a basketball."
"Maybe I'm wrong." Dex shrugged, turned to go. "Sorry to bother you."
"Mr. Calloway."
Dex stopped.
Otis's voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper. "Whatever you think you saw, you didn't see it. That boy—Marcus Webb—he ran away. That's what the paper said. That's what everybody said. And that's what you're gonna say if anybody asks you about this conversation."
"Why?"
Otis didn't answer. He picked up his sandwich, looked at it like he'd forgotten what it was for, and dropped it in the trash can by the boiler. Then he walked past Dex without another word, his footsteps echoing down the hallway until they faded into nothing.
Dex stood in the boiler room for a long time, listening to the hum and thinking about the look on Otis's face. It wasn't just fear. It was the look of a man who'd been carrying a secret for so long it had grown into his bones.
---
The principal's office was locked, but the lock was older than the building and yielded to a credit card Dex had stolen from a gas station three weeks ago. He told himself it was for the team—he needed to see the records, needed to understand what he was dealing with—but the truth was simpler. He couldn't let it go. The name was stuck in his head like a splinter, and the only way to get it out was to pull.
The office was dark, lit only by the glow of a streetlamp through the window. A desk, a computer that looked like it had been purchased during the Clinton administration, a filing cabinet with a drawer that stuck halfway open. Dex went through it methodically, his fingers moving over manila folders and yellowed paper. Budget reports. Attendance records. A memo about the new scoreboard that had been proposed in 1998 and never funded.
And then, at the bottom of the drawer, a folder with no label.
Inside was a photograph.
It was a team photo, the kind that hung in every high school gym in America. A row of boys in white jerseys, arms crossed, trying to look tough. A coach in a tracksuit, kneeling in front. The banner behind them read: *1984 State Champions—Meridian Flats Vipers.*
Dex's eyes went to the back row, to the kid standing on the far right. Tall, lanky, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. The name printed under the photo was *M. Webb.*
Marcus Webb.
And standing directly in front of him, one hand on the championship trophy, was a boy with a crew cut and a jaw like a cinder block. The name under his face read *H. Briggs.*
Harlan Briggs. The name was familiar in a way that made Dex's stomach turn. He'd heard it in the blackout, in the fragments of that locker room. A voice, older and angrier, saying *You don't know what you're talking about, Webb. You don't know what you're messing with.*
Dex stared at the photo. Marcus Webb, smiling like he didn't know he was about to die. Harlan Briggs, holding the trophy like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And then he saw it.
The trophy in the photo was the same trophy he'd seen in his blackout. The same one that had been shattered on the locker room floor, the same one that had been covered in blood.
But that was impossible. The trophy in the photo was the 1984 state championship trophy. It had been awarded, celebrated, locked in a case. Dex had seen it himself, in the hallway outside the gym, gleaming under a layer of dust.
Except—he looked closer. The trophy in the photo had a small dent on the base, just below the gold figure of a basketball player mid-shot. The trophy in the hallway case had no such dent. He'd noticed it the first day, because he'd noticed everything about this building, cataloging it like a man who'd spent too many nights in too many strange places.
The trophy in the photo was not the trophy in the case.
Dex put the photo back in the folder, closed the drawer, and sat in the principal's chair. The leather creaked under him. The streetlamp flickered outside, and for a second he thought he saw a figure standing in the parking lot—tall, lanky, watching the window.
When he blinked, it was gone.
---
He found Rio Vance at the bus stop, sitting on the bench with her backpack at her feet and her headphones on. She was the one who'd quit mid-drill, the one who'd run circles around everyone and then walked off the court like she'd decided the whole thing was beneath her. She was also, Dex had noticed, the only one who'd looked at him with something other than pity when he'd collapsed.
He sat down on the bench next to her. She didn't look at him, but she pulled one earbud out.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said.
"I'm not supposed to be anywhere." Dex leaned back, stretched his legs out in front of him. His knee popped. He winced. "You know a kid named Marcus Webb?"
Rio's expression didn't change, but something in her posture shifted. She turned to look at him, and for a second he saw it—the same flicker of recognition he'd seen in Otis's eyes. "Why you asking?"
"Because I saw his name somewhere. And I got a feeling he didn't run away."
Rio was quiet for a long moment. The bus hissed to a stop at the corner, doors opening with a pneumatic sigh. Neither of them moved.
"My grandma used to tell me stories," Rio said finally. "About the 1984 team. She said they were the best team this town ever had. Better than any of the boys' teams since. She said Marcus Webb was the best player she ever saw." She paused. "And then one day he was gone. Just like that. No goodbye, no nothing. Everybody said he ran away, but my grandma never believed it."
"Why not?"
Rio shrugged. "Because he was supposed to play in college. Had a scholarship and everything. She said a kid with a scholarship doesn't just disappear." She looked at him, and there was something hard in her eyes. "Why you asking about him? You got some kind of thing for old mysteries?"
Dex thought about the blackout. The locker room. The blood. The voice saying *You didn't have to do that.*
"I think," he said slowly, "that I might be the only person who can figure out what happened to him."
Rio snorted. "You're a drunk who coaches a team that's never won a game. What makes you think you can solve a forty-year-old mystery?"
"Because I saw him." Dex said it before he could stop himself. "I saw him, Rio. In a—in a dream. He was in a locker room, and he was bleeding, and there was a trophy on the floor."
Rio stared at him. The bus pulled away from the curb, and the bench was suddenly very quiet.
"You're crazy," she said.
"Probably."
"You're seeing things."
"Definitely."
Rio was quiet for another long moment. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper, yellowed and brittle, creased along the same lines for decades. She handed it to him.
Dex unfolded it. It was a clipping from the *Meridian Flats Gazette*, dated March 1984. The headline read: *Star Player Missing After Championship Celebration.*
The photo underneath showed a boy in a white jersey, holding a basketball, smiling at the camera. The same smile from the team photo. The same face Dex had seen in his blackout.
The caption read: *Marcus Webb, 18, was reported missing by his mother on Monday. Police believe he may have run away. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Meridian Flats Police Department.*
Dex read the article twice. Then he folded it carefully and handed it back to Rio.
"Where'd you get this?"
"My grandma. She kept it. She said one day somebody would come asking questions, and she wanted to be ready." Rio tucked the clipping back into her backpack. "She died two years ago. I keep it because it reminds me that this town's got secrets, and secrets don't stay buried forever."
Dex looked at her. For the first time since he'd taken this job, he felt something other than exhaustion. It was small, barely there, but it was real.
"Rio," he said. "You want to win a basketball game?"
She laughed. It was a bitter sound, sharp as broken glass. "I want to win a lot of things. Basketball's not at the top of the list."
"What is?"
Rio didn't answer. She stood up, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and started walking down the street. After a few steps, she stopped.
"You're gonna need help," she said, not turning around. "If you're really gonna dig into this. You're gonna need someone who knows this town, knows the people, knows where the bodies are buried."
"Are you offering?"
Rio turned. The streetlight caught her face, and for a second she looked older than her years. "I'm saying I'll think about it. But if I come back to practice, you gotta promise me something."
"What?"
She looked at him, and there was something fierce in her eyes. "You gotta tell me the truth. All of it. No more 'I tripped' or 'I'm fine.' If you're seeing things, I want to know what you're seeing. Deal?"
Dex thought about the blackout. The blood. The voice. The trophy with the dent in the base.
"Deal," he said.
Rio nodded once, then turned and walked away. Dex watched her go, and when she disappeared around the corner, he pulled the flask from his pocket and looked at it for a long moment.
Then he put it back without drinking.
The name was still in his head. Marcus Webb. And now he had a face to go with it, a face that had been smiling in a photograph taken forty years ago, a face that had been bleeding on a locker room floor.
He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know why he was seeing it. But he knew one thing for sure.
The secret wasn't buried deep enough.
He came to on the gym floor with his cheek pressed against the warped wood, the taste of copper on his tongue and the echo of a crowd dying in his ears. The overhead lights buzzed. The girls stood in a loose semicircle around him, sneakers squeaking as they shifted their weight. None of them moved to help.
"Coach?" The smallest one, a girl named Yolanda with braids and a too-big practice jersey, said it like she was asking if a dog was rabid.
Dex pushed himself up on one elbow. His knee screamed. His head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the inside of his skull and left the handle in. "I'm fine," he said, because that was what you said when you weren't, and he'd been saying it for fifteen years.
"You dropped like a sack of potatoes," said another girl. This one had a shaved head and a silver hoop in her nose. Her name was something with a J. Jasmine? Janelle? Dex's memory was a sieve these days, and the blackout had shaken loose whatever was left.
"I tripped." He got to his knees, then his feet. The world tilted, corrected itself, tilted again. "Loose floorboard. This place is a death trap."
The girls exchanged looks. They didn't believe him, but they didn't care enough to argue. That was the thing about coaching a team that had never won a game—nobody expected anything, least of all the players. They drifted back toward the rack of basketballs, and Dex limped to the sideline and grabbed the metal water bottle he'd filled with something that was not water.
The smell wouldn't leave him. Wintergreen and blood. And underneath it, something else—cigar smoke, cheap and acrid, the kind that clung to a man's clothes for days. He'd smelled it in the blackout. He'd seen things too, flashes that came back in fragments now that he was conscious: a locker room with wooden benches, a trophy case with a shattered pane, a kid on the floor with blood pooling under his head.
And a voice. Young, scared, saying the same thing over and over: *You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to do that.*
Dex took a long pull from the bottle. The whiskey burned going down, and for a second the smell faded. Then it came back, stronger, like it was living in his sinuses now.
He needed to find out who Marcus Webb was.
---
The janitor's name was Otis, and he'd been working at Meridian Flats High School since before Dex was born. He was a thin man with a face like a crumpled newspaper and hands that shook when he wasn't holding a mop. Dex found him in the boiler room, sitting on an overturned bucket, eating a sandwich that looked older than the building.
"Mr. Calloway." Otis didn't look up. "You're supposed to be at practice."
"Practice is over." Dex leaned against the doorframe. The boiler hummed behind Otis, a low mechanical heartbeat. "I got a question for you."
Otis took a bite of his sandwich. Chewed. Swallowed. "I got answers, but they ain't always the ones people want."
"You know a kid named Marcus Webb?"
The sandwich stopped halfway to Otis's mouth. For a long moment, the only sound was the boiler and the distant thump of a ball against the gym floor—one of the girls, still shooting around. Then Otis lowered the sandwich and set it on the bucket beside him. His face had gone the color of old milk.
"That name's been dead forty years," he said.
Dex felt something cold settle in his chest. Not fear—he'd been afraid plenty of times, and this wasn't that. It was recognition. The feeling of a puzzle piece clicking into place that you didn't know you were holding. "So he's not missing anymore."
Otis stood up. His hands were shaking worse now, and he shoved them into the pockets of his coveralls. "Who told you that name?"
"I saw it. In a—" Dex stopped. He couldn't say *in a blackout*. He couldn't say *a ghost showed me*. He was already the town drunk, the washed-up has-been who'd taken a job coaching a team nobody cared about. He didn't need to be the crazy one too. "In an old program. In the storage room."
Otis's eyes narrowed. "There ain't no programs in the storage room. I cleaned that room out myself, back in '05. Nothing but broken chairs and a rat's nest the size of a basketball."
"Maybe I'm wrong." Dex shrugged, turned to go. "Sorry to bother you."
"Mr. Calloway."
Dex stopped.
Otis's voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper. "Whatever you think you saw, you didn't see it. That boy—Marcus Webb—he ran away. That's what the paper said. That's what everybody said. And that's what you're gonna say if anybody asks you about this conversation."
"Why?"
Otis didn't answer. He picked up his sandwich, looked at it like he'd forgotten what it was for, and dropped it in the trash can by the boiler. Then he walked past Dex without another word, his footsteps echoing down the hallway until they faded into nothing.
Dex stood in the boiler room for a long time, listening to the hum and thinking about the look on Otis's face. It wasn't just fear. It was the look of a man who'd been carrying a secret for so long it had grown into his bones.
---
The principal's office was locked, but the lock was older than the building and yielded to a credit card Dex had stolen from a gas station three weeks ago. He told himself it was for the team—he needed to see the records, needed to understand what he was dealing with—but the truth was simpler. He couldn't let it go. The name was stuck in his head like a splinter, and the only way to get it out was to pull.
The office was dark, lit only by the glow of a streetlamp through the window. A desk, a computer that looked like it had been purchased during the Clinton administration, a filing cabinet with a drawer that stuck halfway open. Dex went through it methodically, his fingers moving over manila folders and yellowed paper. Budget reports. Attendance records. A memo about the new scoreboard that had been proposed in 1998 and never funded.
And then, at the bottom of the drawer, a folder with no label.
Inside was a photograph.
It was a team photo, the kind that hung in every high school gym in America. A row of boys in white jerseys, arms crossed, trying to look tough. A coach in a tracksuit, kneeling in front. The banner behind them read: *1984 State Champions—Meridian Flats Vipers.*
Dex's eyes went to the back row, to the kid standing on the far right. Tall, lanky, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. The name printed under the photo was *M. Webb.*
Marcus Webb.
And standing directly in front of him, one hand on the championship trophy, was a boy with a crew cut and a jaw like a cinder block. The name under his face read *H. Briggs.*
Harlan Briggs. The name was familiar in a way that made Dex's stomach turn. He'd heard it in the blackout, in the fragments of that locker room. A voice, older and angrier, saying *You don't know what you're talking about, Webb. You don't know what you're messing with.*
Dex stared at the photo. Marcus Webb, smiling like he didn't know he was about to die. Harlan Briggs, holding the trophy like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And then he saw it.
The trophy in the photo was the same trophy he'd seen in his blackout. The same one that had been shattered on the locker room floor, the same one that had been covered in blood.
But that was impossible. The trophy in the photo was the 1984 state championship trophy. It had been awarded, celebrated, locked in a case. Dex had seen it himself, in the hallway outside the gym, gleaming under a layer of dust.
Except—he looked closer. The trophy in the photo had a small dent on the base, just below the gold figure of a basketball player mid-shot. The trophy in the hallway case had no such dent. He'd noticed it the first day, because he'd noticed everything about this building, cataloging it like a man who'd spent too many nights in too many strange places.
The trophy in the photo was not the trophy in the case.
Dex put the photo back in the folder, closed the drawer, and sat in the principal's chair. The leather creaked under him. The streetlamp flickered outside, and for a second he thought he saw a figure standing in the parking lot—tall, lanky, watching the window.
When he blinked, it was gone.
---
He found Rio Vance at the bus stop, sitting on the bench with her backpack at her feet and her headphones on. She was the one who'd quit mid-drill, the one who'd run circles around everyone and then walked off the court like she'd decided the whole thing was beneath her. She was also, Dex had noticed, the only one who'd looked at him with something other than pity when he'd collapsed.
He sat down on the bench next to her. She didn't look at him, but she pulled one earbud out.
"You're not supposed to be here," she said.
"I'm not supposed to be anywhere." Dex leaned back, stretched his legs out in front of him. His knee popped. He winced. "You know a kid named Marcus Webb?"
Rio's expression didn't change, but something in her posture shifted. She turned to look at him, and for a second he saw it—the same flicker of recognition he'd seen in Otis's eyes. "Why you asking?"
"Because I saw his name somewhere. And I got a feeling he didn't run away."
Rio was quiet for a long moment. The bus hissed to a stop at the corner, doors opening with a pneumatic sigh. Neither of them moved.
"My grandma used to tell me stories," Rio said finally. "About the 1984 team. She said they were the best team this town ever had. Better than any of the boys' teams since. She said Marcus Webb was the best player she ever saw." She paused. "And then one day he was gone. Just like that. No goodbye, no nothing. Everybody said he ran away, but my grandma never believed it."
"Why not?"
Rio shrugged. "Because he was supposed to play in college. Had a scholarship and everything. She said a kid with a scholarship doesn't just disappear." She looked at him, and there was something hard in her eyes. "Why you asking about him? You got some kind of thing for old mysteries?"
Dex thought about the blackout. The locker room. The blood. The voice saying *You didn't have to do that.*
"I think," he said slowly, "that I might be the only person who can figure out what happened to him."
Rio snorted. "You're a drunk who coaches a team that's never won a game. What makes you think you can solve a forty-year-old mystery?"
"Because I saw him." Dex said it before he could stop himself. "I saw him, Rio. In a—in a dream. He was in a locker room, and he was bleeding, and there was a trophy on the floor."
Rio stared at him. The bus pulled away from the curb, and the bench was suddenly very quiet.
"You're crazy," she said.
"Probably."
"You're seeing things."
"Definitely."
Rio was quiet for another long moment. Then she reached into her backpack and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper, yellowed and brittle, creased along the same lines for decades. She handed it to him.
Dex unfolded it. It was a clipping from the *Meridian Flats Gazette*, dated March 1984. The headline read: *Star Player Missing After Championship Celebration.*
The photo underneath showed a boy in a white jersey, holding a basketball, smiling at the camera. The same smile from the team photo. The same face Dex had seen in his blackout.
The caption read: *Marcus Webb, 18, was reported missing by his mother on Monday. Police believe he may have run away. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Meridian Flats Police Department.*
Dex read the article twice. Then he folded it carefully and handed it back to Rio.
"Where'd you get this?"
"My grandma. She kept it. She said one day somebody would come asking questions, and she wanted to be ready." Rio tucked the clipping back into her backpack. "She died two years ago. I keep it because it reminds me that this town's got secrets, and secrets don't stay buried forever."
Dex looked at her. For the first time since he'd taken this job, he felt something other than exhaustion. It was small, barely there, but it was real.
"Rio," he said. "You want to win a basketball game?"
She laughed. It was a bitter sound, sharp as broken glass. "I want to win a lot of things. Basketball's not at the top of the list."
"What is?"
Rio didn't answer. She stood up, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and started walking down the street. After a few steps, she stopped.
"You're gonna need help," she said, not turning around. "If you're really gonna dig into this. You're gonna need someone who knows this town, knows the people, knows where the bodies are buried."
"Are you offering?"
Rio turned. The streetlight caught her face, and for a second she looked older than her years. "I'm saying I'll think about it. But if I come back to practice, you gotta promise me something."
"What?"
She looked at him, and there was something fierce in her eyes. "You gotta tell me the truth. All of it. No more 'I tripped' or 'I'm fine.' If you're seeing things, I want to know what you're seeing. Deal?"
Dex thought about the blackout. The blood. The voice. The trophy with the dent in the base.
"Deal," he said.
Rio nodded once, then turned and walked away. Dex watched her go, and when she disappeared around the corner, he pulled the flask from his pocket and looked at it for a long moment.
Then he put it back without drinking.
The name was still in his head. Marcus Webb. And now he had a face to go with it, a face that had been smiling in a photograph taken forty years ago, a face that had been bleeding on a locker room floor.
He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know why he was seeing it. But he knew one thing for sure.
The secret wasn't buried deep enough.