The Goalie Bet novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Other Trainer

The women's soccer office gave me a name and a phone number.

I called it four times over two days and got voicemail.

The fifth time a woman picked up.

"Who is this."

"Dana Kline. I'm a student athletic trainer at Northfield."

"I know what you are. Why are you calling me."

"Because you were one too."

There was a long pause.

"Coffee shop on Fourth," she said. "Forty minutes."

She was older than me. Twenty-five, maybe. Short dark hair, a fleece with a college logo I didn't know.

She sat down with a black coffee and no greeting.

"Two years," she said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Two years since I left that program. You're the first person who's called me."

I didn't say anything.

"Tell me what she's doing to you."

I told her. The empty room. The complaints. The log. The coach.

She listened with both hands around the cup.

When I finished she nodded once.

"That's the same playbook."

"Word for word?"

"Close enough. Room complaint first. Then a record complaint. Then a third one I never saw."

"What was the third."

"Doesn't matter. I was gone by then."

She drank her coffee.

"I was rehabbing a midfielder with a knee. Jenna was dating the captain's brother."

"Wade."

"Different captain, same family. Wade's the hockey captain. Their father's on the athletic board."

I sat back.

"So when she wants somebody gone, she's got a phone and a last name."

"That's the whole thing."

She set the cup down.

"Here's what took me a year to figure out."

"Okay."

"It doesn't matter if you're innocent."

"You can be completely innocent and she still wins, because she keeps filing and the department keeps running them, and eventually somebody decides you're a problem."

"And then you're gone."

"And nobody ever says you did anything. They just say your placement ended."

"What happened to you after."

"I switched schools. Finished at State. I work in a clinic in Edina now."

"Did you ever tell anybody."

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