The Girl Who Saw the Ghost
The scoreboard read 58–56, and Dex's heart was a fist pounding against the inside of his ribs.
The Lady Vipers had the ball with forty-seven seconds left. Rio dribbled at the top of the key, her eyes scanning the defense like she was reading a book written in a language she'd just learned. The other team—the Eastbrook Eagles, all five of them tall and clean and properly equipped—had stopped laughing at the girls in mismatched jerseys somewhere in the third quarter. Now they just looked confused.
Dex stood on the sideline with his arms crossed, trying to keep his breathing even. The static in his head had been building since halftime, a low hum like a radio tuned between stations. He knew what that meant. He knew what was coming.
But not yet. Not with the game on the line.
"Rio!" he shouted. "Run the ghost!"
Rio's head snapped toward him. For a second, just a second, he saw the doubt flicker across her face. The ghost plays were his invention—moves he'd pulled from the blackouts, patterns Marcus Webb had run forty years ago on a court that no longer existed. The girls thought he was a savant. Rio knew better.
She knew he was seeing something.
Rio nodded once and called the play. The Lady Vipers shifted into formation—Yolanda setting a screen at the elbow, Tamika cutting baseline, Jess and Priya spreading the floor. It was a simple trap, a two-man game that forced the defense to make a choice. Marcus had run it against the 1984 state champions, and Dex had watched it unfold a hundred times in the dark behind his own eyes.
The Eagles' point guard, a girl with a ponytail so tight it pulled her eyebrows up, bit on the screen. Rio slipped past her, drove the lane, and pulled up for a floater that kissed the backboard and dropped through the net.
58–58. Twenty-nine seconds left.
The crowd—what there was of it, maybe forty people scattered across the bleachers—erupted. Dex heard his own voice among them, hoarse and raw, shouting something that might have been a word or might have just been noise.
Then the static surged.
It came fast this time, faster than before. The gym lights seemed to dim at the edges, the crowd noise dropping to a distant murmur. Dex grabbed the scorer's table to steady himself. He could smell cigar smoke. He could hear a different crowd, a bigger crowd, roaring for a game that had ended forty years ago.
*No. Not now. Not yet.*
He forced his eyes open. The court swam back into focus. The Eagles were inbounding the ball, their coach screaming something about a timeout. Rio was already in her defensive stance, hands up, eyes locked on the ball.
Dex's palm itched. He looked down.
A thin red line had appeared across his left palm, a fresh cut that hadn't been there a minute ago. It matched the scar he'd seen in his blackout, the one Marcus Webb had carried on his hand the night he disappeared.
The whistle blew. The Eagles' point guard drove hard to the basket, and Rio met her at the rim. There was contact—Dex saw it, a hip check that would have drawn a foul in any league with competent referees—but the ball bounced off the rim, and the buzzer sounded.
Overtime.
Dex's legs gave out.
He came to on the floor with his cheek pressed against the cold hardwood and his mouth full of the taste of copper. Rio was kneeling over him, her face pale, her hand on his shoulder.
"Coach. Coach, you with me?"
"I'm here." His voice came out wrong, thick and distant. "How long?"
"Thirty seconds. You just—you dropped." She glanced around, lowering her voice. "Did you see him again?"
Dex pushed himself up onto his elbows. The gym was still there, still full of people, still smelling like sweat and floor wax. But the cigar smoke lingered in his nose, and the echo of a crowd that wasn't there still rang in his ears.
"Yeah." He looked at his palm. The cut was still there, a thin red line that wept a single bead of blood. "I saw him."
"What happened?"
Dex closed his eyes. The memory was already fading, dissolving like a dream at dawn, but he held onto the fragments. A locker room. A trophy case. Marcus Webb standing in front of a mirror, blood running down his hand, his face young and scared and furious all at once.
"He was arguing with someone. About money." Dex opened his eyes. "About a debt."
Rio's jaw tightened. She'd heard the story before—the pieces Dex had managed to drag out of the blackouts, the fragments of a night that had been buried for four decades. She didn't laugh. She didn't call him crazy. She just nodded and helped him to his feet.
"Overtime," she said. "You good to coach?"
Dex looked at his team. They were gathered at the bench, watching him with a mixture of fear and concern. Yolanda had her hands on her hips. Tamika was chewing her lip. The quiet one—Kara, that was it, Kara—was staring at him with an intensity that made his skin prickle.
"I'm good," Dex said. "Let's finish this."
Overtime was a war.
The Eagles came out swinging, their big girl—a six-foot wall of muscle named Davenport—bullying her way into the paint and scoring on three straight possessions. The Lady Vipers answered with the ghost press, trapping the ball handler in the corner and forcing turnovers that turned into fast-break layups.
But Dex could feel himself slipping. Every time he blinked, the gym flickered. One moment he was watching Rio run the floor, her braids flying behind her. The next he was somewhere else, a different gym, a different era, watching a boy with Marcus's face run the same plays against a team in red and white.
The score was 66–64 with a minute left when the static swallowed him whole.
He was in the locker room. The air was thick with sweat and anger. Marcus Webb stood in the center of the room, his jersey torn, his hand bleeding onto the tile floor. In front of him stood a younger Harlan Briggs—leaner, meaner, his eyes wild with something that looked like fear.
"You're going to ruin everything," Harlan said. "You know that, right? Everything we built."
"I'm not going to ruin anything." Marcus's voice was steady, but his hands were shaking. "I'm going to tell the truth. What happened in the boiler room—"
"Nothing happened in the boiler room."
"Then why did you take the money?"
Harlan's face went red. He took a step forward, and Marcus didn't back down. They stood chest to chest, two boys who had been teammates, friends, brothers on the court, now separated by something that had festered for months.
"It was a loan," Harlan said. "I was going to pay it back."
"You lost it. You lost it all, and you used my name to get it. The bookie came to me, Harlan. He said if I didn't pay, he'd break my legs."
"I'll get the money."
"With what? Your scholarship's gone. Your grades are a joke. You've got nothing."
Harlan's hand moved. Dex saw it happen in slow motion—the trophy case behind them, the championship trophy gleaming inside, the glass door swinging open. Harlan grabbed the trophy by its base, raised it over his head, and brought it down.
Dex woke up screaming.
He was on the floor again. This time the whole gym had gone quiet. The players were frozen mid-court, the refs were staring, and Rio was crouched beside him with blood on her hands.
"Coach. Coach, you're bleeding."
Dex looked down. His palm was split open, a deep gash that ran from the base of his thumb to the edge of his wrist. Blood pooled in his hand, dripped onto the hardwood, and mixed with the sweat of a game that was still going on.
"Time," Rio shouted. "We need a time."
The refs called it. The Lady Vipers gathered around Dex, their faces a mix of horror and confusion. Yolanda was already pulling a towel from her bag, pressing it against his palm. Tamika was muttering something that might have been a prayer.
"Coach," Kara said. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the noise. "There's a man standing behind you."
Dex's blood went cold.
He turned his head slowly, afraid of what he'd see. But there was nothing there—just the empty baseline, the scorer's table, the faded banner that read "1984 State Champions" in peeling gold letters.
"There's no one there, Kara," Rio said.
Kara shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on a point just over Dex's shoulder. "He's tall. He's wearing a jersey. Number 11." She paused. "He's bleeding."
The gym felt like it had dropped ten degrees. Dex looked at Rio, and Rio looked at him, and neither of them said a word.
"Kara," Dex said carefully. "What else do you see?"
Kara's brow furrowed. She was twelve years old, the youngest on the team, a girl who barely spoke during practice and never raised her voice. But now she stood perfectly still, her eyes locked on something that wasn't there, and her voice was steady.
"He's pointing at the floor. At the center circle." She blinked. "He's saying something."
"What's he saying?"
Kara tilted her head, listening. Then she looked at Dex, and her face went pale.
"He says, 'Finish the game.'"
The buzzer sounded. The refs called the game—a technical on the Lady Vipers for delay of game, which meant the Eagles got a free throw and the ball. But nobody moved. The whole gym was watching Dex, watching the blood on his hand, watching the girl who was staring at a ghost.
Dex pushed himself to his feet. His knee screamed, his head pounded, and his palm throbbed with a pain that felt like it belonged to someone else. But he stood.
"We're finishing this," he said.
Rio looked at him. "Coach—"
"Get the ball. Run the ghost press. We've got forty seconds, and we're down by two." He looked at Kara. "You see him still?"
Kara nodded.
"Tell him we're coming."
The Lady Vipers took the court. The Eagles inbounded the ball, and Rio was on them like a shark, her hands active, her feet quick, her eyes burning with a fire that Dex had never seen before. She trapped the point guard in the corner, forced a bad pass, and Tamika snatched it out of the air.
The ball moved. Yolanda set a screen. Jess cut baseline. Priya swung the ball to the wing, and Rio was there, catching and shooting in one motion, the ball arcing high and clean and true.
It dropped through the net.
68–67. Lady Vipers.
The Eagles called a timeout. Dex gathered his team around him, his blood-soaked hand pressed against his chest, his voice hoarse but clear.
"Twenty seconds. They're going to try to run the clock. We let them inbound, we foul immediately, and we pray they miss the free throws. Then we run the ghost one more time."
"Coach," Rio said. "Your hand."
"It'll heal."
The Eagles inbounded. The Lady Vipers fouled. The Eagles' point guard stepped to the line, her face tight with pressure, and missed both shots.
Rio grabbed the rebound.
She pushed the ball up the court, her eyes scanning, her mind working. Dex watched her from the sideline, and for a moment—just a moment—he saw Marcus Webb running the same play, forty years younger, forty years faster, forty years more alive.
Rio pulled up at the three-point line. The defense collapsed on her. She pump-faked, drove left, and kicked the ball out to Kara, who was standing alone in the corner.
Kara caught the ball. She looked at the basket. She looked at Dex.
Then she looked at the spot on the floor where she'd seen the ghost, and she shot.
The buzzer sounded. The ball hung in the air for what felt like an hour, spinning slowly, tracing an arc that seemed to bend the light around it.
It dropped through the net.
70–67. Lady Vipers.
The gym exploded. The girls mobbed Kara, who stood frozen in the corner, her arms still raised, her face blank with shock. Rio was screaming. Yolanda was crying. Tamika was on her knees, thanking a God she'd never mentioned before.
Dex didn't move.
He stood at the sideline, watching his team celebrate, and he felt the static recede like a tide pulling back from the shore. The cigar smoke faded. The echo of the old crowd died. And for the first time in weeks, his head was quiet.
He looked down at his hand. The gash was still there, but it was closing, the edges knitting together like a wound that had been healing for years instead of minutes. The blood was drying, flaking off his skin, leaving behind a thin white scar that ran from his thumb to his wrist.
A scar that matched the one Marcus Webb had carried.
"Coach."
Dex looked up. Kara was standing in front of him, the ball still in her hands, her face pale.
"He's gone," she said. "He smiled, and then he was gone."
Dex nodded. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what any of this meant. But he knew one thing: the ghost had shown him something new tonight. Not just the argument, not just the trophy, not just the blood.
He'd shown him the floor. The center circle. The spot where Kara had been standing.
The spot where Marcus Webb was buried.
"Good game, Kara," Dex said. "You just won us the game."
Kara looked at him, and for a second, she looked like she was going to say something else. But then Rio was there, wrapping her arms around both of them, and the moment was lost in the noise.
Later that night, after the girls had gone home and the gym had emptied, Dex sat on the floor at center court. He ran his fingers over the hardwood, feeling for something he couldn't name. The wood was smooth, worn down by forty years of footsteps, but there was a seam there—a line that ran across the center circle, slightly darker than the rest.
He pressed his palm against it.
The scar on his hand tingled.
And somewhere beneath the floor, something shifted.
Dex pulled his hand back. He stood up, grabbed his bag, and walked out of the gym without looking back.
The janitor was waiting for him in the parking lot.
"Coach Calloway." The old man's voice was thin, reedy, like a wind through a cracked window. "I saw the game. You did good."
Dex stopped. The janitor—Mr. Ellison, the man who'd gone white at the mention of Marcus Webb's name—stood under the single flickering light of the parking lot, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"Mr. Ellison," Dex said. "I need to ask you something."
The janitor's eyes darted away. "I'm off the clock."
"It's about Marcus."
The old man flinched like he'd been struck. He stood there for a long moment, the light buzzing overhead, the night air cold and still.
Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the asphalt.
"Mr. Ellison—"
"Leave it alone, Coach." The janitor didn't turn around. "Some things are buried for a reason."
He disappeared into the dark, and Dex was left alone in the parking lot, the scar on his palm throbbing, the ghost of a dead boy still whispering in his ear.
The next morning, Mr. Ellison was found dead in the gym's boiler room.
The official cause was a heart attack.
But when the paramedics moved his body, they found a 1984 game program clutched in his hand, open to the page with the team photo.
And in the photo, standing behind a young Harlan Briggs, was Marcus Webb.
His face had been scratched out with a fingernail.
The Lady Vipers had the ball with forty-seven seconds left. Rio dribbled at the top of the key, her eyes scanning the defense like she was reading a book written in a language she'd just learned. The other team—the Eastbrook Eagles, all five of them tall and clean and properly equipped—had stopped laughing at the girls in mismatched jerseys somewhere in the third quarter. Now they just looked confused.
Dex stood on the sideline with his arms crossed, trying to keep his breathing even. The static in his head had been building since halftime, a low hum like a radio tuned between stations. He knew what that meant. He knew what was coming.
But not yet. Not with the game on the line.
"Rio!" he shouted. "Run the ghost!"
Rio's head snapped toward him. For a second, just a second, he saw the doubt flicker across her face. The ghost plays were his invention—moves he'd pulled from the blackouts, patterns Marcus Webb had run forty years ago on a court that no longer existed. The girls thought he was a savant. Rio knew better.
She knew he was seeing something.
Rio nodded once and called the play. The Lady Vipers shifted into formation—Yolanda setting a screen at the elbow, Tamika cutting baseline, Jess and Priya spreading the floor. It was a simple trap, a two-man game that forced the defense to make a choice. Marcus had run it against the 1984 state champions, and Dex had watched it unfold a hundred times in the dark behind his own eyes.
The Eagles' point guard, a girl with a ponytail so tight it pulled her eyebrows up, bit on the screen. Rio slipped past her, drove the lane, and pulled up for a floater that kissed the backboard and dropped through the net.
58–58. Twenty-nine seconds left.
The crowd—what there was of it, maybe forty people scattered across the bleachers—erupted. Dex heard his own voice among them, hoarse and raw, shouting something that might have been a word or might have just been noise.
Then the static surged.
It came fast this time, faster than before. The gym lights seemed to dim at the edges, the crowd noise dropping to a distant murmur. Dex grabbed the scorer's table to steady himself. He could smell cigar smoke. He could hear a different crowd, a bigger crowd, roaring for a game that had ended forty years ago.
*No. Not now. Not yet.*
He forced his eyes open. The court swam back into focus. The Eagles were inbounding the ball, their coach screaming something about a timeout. Rio was already in her defensive stance, hands up, eyes locked on the ball.
Dex's palm itched. He looked down.
A thin red line had appeared across his left palm, a fresh cut that hadn't been there a minute ago. It matched the scar he'd seen in his blackout, the one Marcus Webb had carried on his hand the night he disappeared.
The whistle blew. The Eagles' point guard drove hard to the basket, and Rio met her at the rim. There was contact—Dex saw it, a hip check that would have drawn a foul in any league with competent referees—but the ball bounced off the rim, and the buzzer sounded.
Overtime.
Dex's legs gave out.
He came to on the floor with his cheek pressed against the cold hardwood and his mouth full of the taste of copper. Rio was kneeling over him, her face pale, her hand on his shoulder.
"Coach. Coach, you with me?"
"I'm here." His voice came out wrong, thick and distant. "How long?"
"Thirty seconds. You just—you dropped." She glanced around, lowering her voice. "Did you see him again?"
Dex pushed himself up onto his elbows. The gym was still there, still full of people, still smelling like sweat and floor wax. But the cigar smoke lingered in his nose, and the echo of a crowd that wasn't there still rang in his ears.
"Yeah." He looked at his palm. The cut was still there, a thin red line that wept a single bead of blood. "I saw him."
"What happened?"
Dex closed his eyes. The memory was already fading, dissolving like a dream at dawn, but he held onto the fragments. A locker room. A trophy case. Marcus Webb standing in front of a mirror, blood running down his hand, his face young and scared and furious all at once.
"He was arguing with someone. About money." Dex opened his eyes. "About a debt."
Rio's jaw tightened. She'd heard the story before—the pieces Dex had managed to drag out of the blackouts, the fragments of a night that had been buried for four decades. She didn't laugh. She didn't call him crazy. She just nodded and helped him to his feet.
"Overtime," she said. "You good to coach?"
Dex looked at his team. They were gathered at the bench, watching him with a mixture of fear and concern. Yolanda had her hands on her hips. Tamika was chewing her lip. The quiet one—Kara, that was it, Kara—was staring at him with an intensity that made his skin prickle.
"I'm good," Dex said. "Let's finish this."
Overtime was a war.
The Eagles came out swinging, their big girl—a six-foot wall of muscle named Davenport—bullying her way into the paint and scoring on three straight possessions. The Lady Vipers answered with the ghost press, trapping the ball handler in the corner and forcing turnovers that turned into fast-break layups.
But Dex could feel himself slipping. Every time he blinked, the gym flickered. One moment he was watching Rio run the floor, her braids flying behind her. The next he was somewhere else, a different gym, a different era, watching a boy with Marcus's face run the same plays against a team in red and white.
The score was 66–64 with a minute left when the static swallowed him whole.
He was in the locker room. The air was thick with sweat and anger. Marcus Webb stood in the center of the room, his jersey torn, his hand bleeding onto the tile floor. In front of him stood a younger Harlan Briggs—leaner, meaner, his eyes wild with something that looked like fear.
"You're going to ruin everything," Harlan said. "You know that, right? Everything we built."
"I'm not going to ruin anything." Marcus's voice was steady, but his hands were shaking. "I'm going to tell the truth. What happened in the boiler room—"
"Nothing happened in the boiler room."
"Then why did you take the money?"
Harlan's face went red. He took a step forward, and Marcus didn't back down. They stood chest to chest, two boys who had been teammates, friends, brothers on the court, now separated by something that had festered for months.
"It was a loan," Harlan said. "I was going to pay it back."
"You lost it. You lost it all, and you used my name to get it. The bookie came to me, Harlan. He said if I didn't pay, he'd break my legs."
"I'll get the money."
"With what? Your scholarship's gone. Your grades are a joke. You've got nothing."
Harlan's hand moved. Dex saw it happen in slow motion—the trophy case behind them, the championship trophy gleaming inside, the glass door swinging open. Harlan grabbed the trophy by its base, raised it over his head, and brought it down.
Dex woke up screaming.
He was on the floor again. This time the whole gym had gone quiet. The players were frozen mid-court, the refs were staring, and Rio was crouched beside him with blood on her hands.
"Coach. Coach, you're bleeding."
Dex looked down. His palm was split open, a deep gash that ran from the base of his thumb to the edge of his wrist. Blood pooled in his hand, dripped onto the hardwood, and mixed with the sweat of a game that was still going on.
"Time," Rio shouted. "We need a time."
The refs called it. The Lady Vipers gathered around Dex, their faces a mix of horror and confusion. Yolanda was already pulling a towel from her bag, pressing it against his palm. Tamika was muttering something that might have been a prayer.
"Coach," Kara said. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the noise. "There's a man standing behind you."
Dex's blood went cold.
He turned his head slowly, afraid of what he'd see. But there was nothing there—just the empty baseline, the scorer's table, the faded banner that read "1984 State Champions" in peeling gold letters.
"There's no one there, Kara," Rio said.
Kara shook her head. Her eyes were fixed on a point just over Dex's shoulder. "He's tall. He's wearing a jersey. Number 11." She paused. "He's bleeding."
The gym felt like it had dropped ten degrees. Dex looked at Rio, and Rio looked at him, and neither of them said a word.
"Kara," Dex said carefully. "What else do you see?"
Kara's brow furrowed. She was twelve years old, the youngest on the team, a girl who barely spoke during practice and never raised her voice. But now she stood perfectly still, her eyes locked on something that wasn't there, and her voice was steady.
"He's pointing at the floor. At the center circle." She blinked. "He's saying something."
"What's he saying?"
Kara tilted her head, listening. Then she looked at Dex, and her face went pale.
"He says, 'Finish the game.'"
The buzzer sounded. The refs called the game—a technical on the Lady Vipers for delay of game, which meant the Eagles got a free throw and the ball. But nobody moved. The whole gym was watching Dex, watching the blood on his hand, watching the girl who was staring at a ghost.
Dex pushed himself to his feet. His knee screamed, his head pounded, and his palm throbbed with a pain that felt like it belonged to someone else. But he stood.
"We're finishing this," he said.
Rio looked at him. "Coach—"
"Get the ball. Run the ghost press. We've got forty seconds, and we're down by two." He looked at Kara. "You see him still?"
Kara nodded.
"Tell him we're coming."
The Lady Vipers took the court. The Eagles inbounded the ball, and Rio was on them like a shark, her hands active, her feet quick, her eyes burning with a fire that Dex had never seen before. She trapped the point guard in the corner, forced a bad pass, and Tamika snatched it out of the air.
The ball moved. Yolanda set a screen. Jess cut baseline. Priya swung the ball to the wing, and Rio was there, catching and shooting in one motion, the ball arcing high and clean and true.
It dropped through the net.
68–67. Lady Vipers.
The Eagles called a timeout. Dex gathered his team around him, his blood-soaked hand pressed against his chest, his voice hoarse but clear.
"Twenty seconds. They're going to try to run the clock. We let them inbound, we foul immediately, and we pray they miss the free throws. Then we run the ghost one more time."
"Coach," Rio said. "Your hand."
"It'll heal."
The Eagles inbounded. The Lady Vipers fouled. The Eagles' point guard stepped to the line, her face tight with pressure, and missed both shots.
Rio grabbed the rebound.
She pushed the ball up the court, her eyes scanning, her mind working. Dex watched her from the sideline, and for a moment—just a moment—he saw Marcus Webb running the same play, forty years younger, forty years faster, forty years more alive.
Rio pulled up at the three-point line. The defense collapsed on her. She pump-faked, drove left, and kicked the ball out to Kara, who was standing alone in the corner.
Kara caught the ball. She looked at the basket. She looked at Dex.
Then she looked at the spot on the floor where she'd seen the ghost, and she shot.
The buzzer sounded. The ball hung in the air for what felt like an hour, spinning slowly, tracing an arc that seemed to bend the light around it.
It dropped through the net.
70–67. Lady Vipers.
The gym exploded. The girls mobbed Kara, who stood frozen in the corner, her arms still raised, her face blank with shock. Rio was screaming. Yolanda was crying. Tamika was on her knees, thanking a God she'd never mentioned before.
Dex didn't move.
He stood at the sideline, watching his team celebrate, and he felt the static recede like a tide pulling back from the shore. The cigar smoke faded. The echo of the old crowd died. And for the first time in weeks, his head was quiet.
He looked down at his hand. The gash was still there, but it was closing, the edges knitting together like a wound that had been healing for years instead of minutes. The blood was drying, flaking off his skin, leaving behind a thin white scar that ran from his thumb to his wrist.
A scar that matched the one Marcus Webb had carried.
"Coach."
Dex looked up. Kara was standing in front of him, the ball still in her hands, her face pale.
"He's gone," she said. "He smiled, and then he was gone."
Dex nodded. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know what any of this meant. But he knew one thing: the ghost had shown him something new tonight. Not just the argument, not just the trophy, not just the blood.
He'd shown him the floor. The center circle. The spot where Kara had been standing.
The spot where Marcus Webb was buried.
"Good game, Kara," Dex said. "You just won us the game."
Kara looked at him, and for a second, she looked like she was going to say something else. But then Rio was there, wrapping her arms around both of them, and the moment was lost in the noise.
Later that night, after the girls had gone home and the gym had emptied, Dex sat on the floor at center court. He ran his fingers over the hardwood, feeling for something he couldn't name. The wood was smooth, worn down by forty years of footsteps, but there was a seam there—a line that ran across the center circle, slightly darker than the rest.
He pressed his palm against it.
The scar on his hand tingled.
And somewhere beneath the floor, something shifted.
Dex pulled his hand back. He stood up, grabbed his bag, and walked out of the gym without looking back.
The janitor was waiting for him in the parking lot.
"Coach Calloway." The old man's voice was thin, reedy, like a wind through a cracked window. "I saw the game. You did good."
Dex stopped. The janitor—Mr. Ellison, the man who'd gone white at the mention of Marcus Webb's name—stood under the single flickering light of the parking lot, his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"Mr. Ellison," Dex said. "I need to ask you something."
The janitor's eyes darted away. "I'm off the clock."
"It's about Marcus."
The old man flinched like he'd been struck. He stood there for a long moment, the light buzzing overhead, the night air cold and still.
Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps echoing on the asphalt.
"Mr. Ellison—"
"Leave it alone, Coach." The janitor didn't turn around. "Some things are buried for a reason."
He disappeared into the dark, and Dex was left alone in the parking lot, the scar on his palm throbbing, the ghost of a dead boy still whispering in his ear.
The next morning, Mr. Ellison was found dead in the gym's boiler room.
The official cause was a heart attack.
But when the paramedics moved his body, they found a 1984 game program clutched in his hand, open to the page with the team photo.
And in the photo, standing behind a young Harlan Briggs, was Marcus Webb.
His face had been scratched out with a fingernail.