Page 18 of Coached By the Grumpy Gargoyle

“You can’t tell anyone.” His eyes are red-rimmed, enormous without the glasses. “Please. Please don’t report it. Reporting will only make it worse. It just... it’ll only get worse.”

I want to get up and go find Cole. Right now. But Eli is holding on to me as if I’ll leave the second he lets go, so I slide out of my chair and kneel in front of the couch. I take the hand clamped on my wrist and hold it in both of mine.

His fingers are ice-cold.

“Eli. Look at me.”

He lifts his head.

“I’m going to help you.” I hold his gaze. “You’re not going to have to deal with this by yourself. That’s a promise.”

His chin trembles. He nods, barely, and I give his hand a gentle squeeze.

“And I need you to hear one more thing. You deserve to be treated with respect and kindness. You matter, Eli. You don’t have to make yourself useful for that to be true. And when you’re ready to face him, I’ll be right there beside you.”

The crying comes back for a second, quieter this time. He doesn’t cover his face. I stay with him while he cries, and when his grip loosens, I reach for the broken glasses on the cushion.

Then I do first aid, because that part I can fix tonight. I get up to fetch the tape from my desk and sit beside him on the couch. Holding the broken ends together takes a little patience, but I wind the tape around the bridge until they stay put. It’s an ugly patch. The lenses sit crooked when he slides them on, but he looks at me through them and almost smiles.

“Thanks, Ms. Hale.” At the door he pauses, hood up. “I’m okay.”

He isn’t. He goes anyway, and the corridor takes his footsteps away. I stand beside the couch with the tape dispenser in my hand until I can’t hear him anymore. Then I put it back on my desk.

The towel is still folded in my bag. Last Monday, I told him he didn’t have to give me a name right then. Today he trusted me enough to do it. He’s begged me not to report it, but I can’t help him by keeping this between the two of us. I grab my bag and head for the athletics wing.

For once, I don’t hesitate at the junction. The wing has gone five-o’clock empty, gold and navy cinder block under every third light panel. Bram’s door is open, and I’m two steps from it when Cole Braddock walks out.

He has his gym bag on one shoulder, wings furled neat under his jacket. Six foot six, nearly filling the doorway, and he steps aside to let me through as politely as anyone could ask.

“Oh. Hey, Ms. Hale.” And he smiles at me.

It’s a great smile. Warm and easy, exactly the sort I would usually return. I can still feel Eli’s fingers on my wrist. I don’t smile back, and I hold Cole’s gaze long enough that he ought to notice.

The smile doesn’t flicker.

“Cole,” I say, and walk past him into the office. Whatever he makes of that, he can make of it on his way down the corridor.

Bram is on his feet before I clear the doorway. Behind him the whiteboard lists the players by position, BRADDOCK at the top of the column for quarterbacks. The narrow galley of the room smells like him, cedar and rain on warm stone, which is not information I need right now.

“Rory.” For a second, he looks pleased to see me. By Bram Stryge standards that’s a brass band and a fruit basket.

I’m about to be so unfair to that gladness.

I set my bag on the visitor chair, pull out the towel, and put it on his desk, on top of his legal pad. When I unfold it, the dried blood shows against the navy cloth.

“What is this?” He looks from the towel to me.

“It’s Eli Navarro’s blood.” I plant my feet. “Last Monday I found him hiding in the old-wing storage room before first bell. His nose was bleeding and his lip was split. He said he fell in the locker room.”

Bram leans over the desk to look at the blood, and I keep going.

“This afternoon he came to my office with his glasses broken in half. He cried until he could hardly speak, and then he told me who’s been hurting him. Cole Braddock. Your star player, Coach. It’s been going on since September, and you have to do something. He has to be stopped.”

Bram doesn’t move. His eyes stay on the towel, and his jaw tightens.

“No.” Quiet. Certain, the way he’d correct a date in class. “It can’t be Cole. There has to be a mistake.”

“Eli told me it was him.”