The Hockey Captain's Forbidden Girl

Chapter 4: What Everyone Else Remember

"Okay, you've been staring at that same paragraph for ten minutes." Priya dropped into the chair across from me in the newsroom, coffee in hand, eyebrows already raised in the particular way that meant she wasn't leaving until she got an answer. "Spill."

"I'm working."

"You're not working. You're doing the thing where your eyes are open but your brain checked out around the second sentence." She stole a sip of my coffee without asking, a habit I'd stopped fighting freshman year. "This about the hockey piece, or about Ethan Carter?"

"Why would it be about Ethan Carter?"

"Because you said his name like it physically hurt you, and also because Mason mentioned you two had some kind of moment outside the library yesterday, and Mason notices approximately nothing, so if he noticed, it must have been loud." She set the coffee down and leaned forward, elbows on the table, fully invested now. "You've also been jumping every time your phone buzzes since Tuesday. That's new."

"I have a lot going on."

"You always have a lot going on. You don't usually flinch." She said it lightly, but her eyes stayed sharp, the particular attention of a friend who'd known me long enough to catalogue every deviation from normal. "So. Talk, or I start guessing out loud in front of the whole newsroom."

I set my pen down. "Can I ask you something? And you have to actually answer, not just deflect into a joke."

"Depends on the question."

"Do you remember a girl named Ava? From a few years ago?"

Priya's expression shifted, quick, careful, the coffee cup pausing halfway to her mouth. "Ava Sinclair?"

"I don't know her last name. Ethan's ex."

"That's her. God, I haven't thought about her in ages." Priya set the cup down slowly, like she was deciding how much of this conversation she actually wanted to have. "Why are you asking about Ava?"

"I'm just curious."

"You're a terrible liar, you know that?" She studied me a second longer, then apparently decided curiosity won out over caution. "She transferred out sophomore year. Really suddenly, actually, like one week she was around and the next she just wasn't. There were rumors."

"What kind of rumors?"

"The usual kind. Some people said she got caught cheating on an exam and got quietly expelled instead of formally, which the school does sometimes to protect the stats. Some people said family stuff, a sick parent, something like that. And some people said—" Priya stopped, glancing toward the door like she was checking who might overhear, an instinct I recognized because I'd been doing the exact same thing for two days straight.

"Said what?"

"That it had something to do with Ethan. That whatever happened between them wasn't just a normal breakup." Priya lowered her voice further. "I never believed that part. I've never heard anyone on the team say a bad word about him. Never heard a single bad word about him from anyone on the team. But Ava never came back, not even for graduation stuff, and normally people at least come back for that. My roommate freshman year was in her orientation group, said Ava used to talk about Hartwell like it was the best decision she ever made. And then she was just gone, no goodbye, nothing on social media, nothing."

"That's strange."

"It's more than strange, it's specific. People who get quietly expelled usually still say goodbye to their friends. People running from a sick parent usually still post about it eventually, once things settle. This felt like someone erasing themselves on purpose." She shrugged, the way people do when they've turned a mystery over enough times to give up on solving it.

"Do you know where she is now?"

"No idea. She deactivated everything. i********:, the class group chat, all of it, right around the time she left. Like she wanted to disappear completely." Priya tilted her head, studying me again. "Why does this matter so much right now?"

"It doesn't. I told you, I'm just curious. It's background for the piece."

"Uh huh. Background for a season preview about the hockey team, which definitely requires researching a girl who transferred out three years ago and has nothing to do with anyone currently on the roster."

I didn't have an answer for that one, and Priya, mercifully, let it go, though the look she gave me on her way back to her desk told me this conversation wasn't actually over, just postponed.

I sat with it the rest of the afternoon, turning Priya's words over the way I'd been turning the anonymous texts over, trying to fit them into some kind of shape that made sense. He still hasn't told you the worst part. You're blaming the wrong person. A girl who vanished so completely she'd erased every trace of herself rather than face whatever had actually happened.

I thought about the version of that summer I'd carried for three years, certain and unshakable right up until yesterday. I thought about Ethan's face in the film room, the particular fear that had nothing to do with a hockey interview. I thought about a girl named Ava who used to love this campus enough to talk about it like a homecoming, and who left it behind so completely that even her own orientation group had nothing left to say about her except that she was simply, suddenly, gone.

I didn't know which version of the story to believe anymore — Ethan's carefully guarded almost-explanations, or Priya's secondhand rumors, or the anonymous stranger who seemed to know more about my own life than I did. Three stories, three different shapes of the same three years, and not one of them lined up with what I'd believed with total certainty until four days ago.

My phone buzzed on the desk, and I flinched hard enough that Julian glanced over from his monitor, pen paused mid-edit, one eyebrow raised in silent question I waved off before he could ask it out loud.

It was just Mason. Dinner's still on for Sunday, right? Mom wants a headcount.

I stared at the message a long moment before I answered, some part of me disproportionately relieved it wasn't the other number, and another part of me, quieter and more unsettling, almost disappointed.

I typed back a quick yes, and then, because I couldn't stop myself, opened my search bar and typed a name I had no real right to be looking up.

Ava Sinclair Hartwell.

The search returned almost nothing. A single old photo from a campus event three years back, tagged and half cropped out of frame, Ava laughing at something off camera, dark hair, easy smile, the kind of girl who looked like she'd never once had to work for anyone's attention. Ethan stood visible just at the edge of the shot, not touching her, not looking at her, looking instead at whoever was holding the camera with an expression I recognized because I'd seen it aimed at me exactly twice — once outside a library, once at the boards after a scrimmage that felt like a lifetime ago.

I zoomed in without meaning to, studying his face in a photo three years old, trying to read something in a version of him I'd never actually met.

I closed the tab.

My phone buzzed before I'd even set it down.

Unknown Number.

You're looking in the wrong place.

I sat completely still, the newsroom noise fading into something distant and unimportant, one thought landing harder than everything else combined. Whoever this was hadn't just noticed I was upset. They knew, somehow, exactly what I'd searched for, and exactly when I'd searched for it.