Varsity lost 1–0 and the JV game was a 2–2 tie. Ben had acquitted himself with a couple good stops. Both teams walked back to the gym, and Ben showered as quickly as he could. He walked through the hallways before they had to get back on the bus. All the equipment in the weight room was the same brand, and the padding on the benches, armrests, and ankle bars of the weight machines was a consistent Turnbull-orange vinyl. They had an annex with four basketball courts and a three-lane running track around the outside. Ben passed a door with a sign on it that read FILM/VIDEO REVIEW. It was locked.

And in a little vestibule outside a door marked DIRECTOR OF ATHLETICS, on a coffee table between two very new fabric-stuffed chairs, a fan of magazines was spread just so. Second from the top was the Turnbull Annual Report, which Ben slipped into his bag before jogging back to the bus.

*  *  *

Ben again sat in the spoke-back chair in front of Phelps’s desk, now with Markson in the chair next to him, but no Dennett. There was no warmth in Phelps’s face. They would have smelled Ben’s bad breath if they had been close enough.

“You need to be honest this time, Ben.”

Ben wanted to be able to say he had been honest last time, but he just nodded.

Aston had already brought Phelps into his office, and they had talked over game plans if papers picked this up. Aston had tried to call Ahmed’s parents twice but had only been able to reach the sheik’s chief of staff, a Mr. Rafsanjani. Phelps knew they had very little room for error on this.

In Hutch and Evan’s room, the two of them hadn’t been able to stop laughing about it, knowing it was mean, but still, there was no other option. The way Ahmed had been so placidly looking at the postcard just before: it was perfect. Maybe Ben had suggested something in the Chute…Something about how walking out of newb boxing was bullshit? The last thing he would ever do was take credit.

But out of sight Ben had started to say to Ahmed, how about a pair of running shoes instead of the cordovan monk-straps? How about Hot Rocks or After the Gold Rush instead of the busy, wavery-voiced, string-and-cymbal stuff he listened to?

“Students protect each other, Ben,” Phelps now said, “but this isn’t just putting a bucket of water over someone’s door. Force-shaving someone’s head is brutal.”

“Whoever it was had the hood of his sweatshirt up. You couldn’t see his face.”