My best friend had introduced me to the local hero over a drinking game. Everyone seemed surprised I didn’t recognize the first-string quarterback with the Disney-prince cleft chin—let alone spend my night flirting with him.

He only piqued my interest when he offered to help with my assignment. A real local, he’d grown up three miles south and could show me spots the usual stories ignored.

That he was four when Twentieth Century Fox made the movie about the yearly bike race, the Little 500, didn’t stop my interest. I wanted to tell a story that went beyond the sorority house where the local boy serenaded his girlfriend or the stretch of road where the kid raced the semi.

When Troy proposed a day trip that Saturday, I agreed, even shook his hand when he spoke the seemingly innocent phrase “It’s a date.”

One thing all victims of sexual assault have in common is a kind of guilt-ridden hindsight, full of self-doubt and self-blame. Twenty years later, the voice inside me repeats the same questions.

Did I lead him on in some way?

Was that handshake the unspoken consent to rip my clothes off?

Troy drove, even took an unnecessary detour past Bloomington South High. No coincidence, a billboard at the end of the football stadium listed Troy Woods—BHS’s own Hoosier—among their greats.

High school had been one thing, but IU remained far from the best program in the Big Ten. Troy wouldn’t go on to the NFL. He mentioned something about an arena league scout, something else about a coaching opportunity. Two miles from the quarries, I realized his tour had less to do with the town than the townie himself.

Troy knew his way around the massive abandoned stonecutting facility on Tapp Road featured in the film. He and his friends had brought girls to the site in high school—so many he’d lost count.

“This is the place Paul Dooley goes—”

“I’ve seen the movie, Troy.”

“—’cause he doesn’t understand his son.”

He jumped onto a concrete platform, stepped over a rusted iron beam. Chalk mushroomed where his size 15 shoe landed. Stooping over a pile of small pieces of white rock, he placed a chunk in front of him, pulled a plastic bottle out of his pocket, and took a sip of lemon-lime soda.

“Watch this.”

He poured Sprite on the stone, then described the chemical reaction like a fifth grader with a science fair project. The calcium carbonate, aka the limestone, reacted to the carbolic acid in the soda, causing the stone to break down.

He smiled at me the same way previous boys had after pointing out constellations or doing pull-ups. This was his finishing move.