Page 147 of Study Buddies

“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it true. Two people I trust, Tori and Jayden, both said you worked really hard on those papers. And that your grade for the first one was a B. So if you’re giving up based on the conclusion that you can’t pass, you might want to think again. Or better yet, talk to your tutor.”

Kyle was silent, and I hoped he was thinking about what I said. Then a question occurred to me. “If you’re just going to quit, why bother trying to prove it’s false?”

“If someone has the ability to clone my voice, they could make it say other things, right?”

I sat back in my chair. I hadn’t thought of that, but yeah, whoever did this could do worse.

“Say I did stay on the team. Couldn’t they just pretend to record me saying some racist shit or something like that? Then I’d be kicked off the team anyway—plus, that would be a really fun thing to come up at job interviews in the future. Or they could use my voice to trick someone I care about.”

I didn’t ask who that might be—it was pretty obvious. “Okay, you’re right.”

“Can you prove that this recording is doctored?”

“Yeah, probably. It’ll take a while, though, and the audio quality’s not great. Where’d you get it?”

“An assistant coach came to the meeting. He got it afterwards and sent it to me.”

“It would help if we had the original file that was shared with the school, but there should be some tells on this version. Send it to me and I can look for artifacts. Maybe find a mismatch between waveforms—it would help if you’d record yourself talking for a few minutes so I could compare the two.”

“Yeah, sure.”

I pushed his phone back to him. “Just send me the file.”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“No, I mean it,” he said, his tone serious. “Whether you’re doing this for me or for her—I appreciate it.”

Wow, that was unexpected. And it was probably my cue to leave before we started shouting at each other again.

But when I pushed up from my chair, Kyle spoke. “Wait.”

“What?”

He hung his head, cursing under this breath. “Shit. I don’t know if this is the right thing to do or not.”

“What?”

He sighed. “Or maybe it’s the wrong thing for the right reason or some kind of crap like that.”

“What’re you talking about?” It would be really nice if he’d get to the point.

“I never slept with her,” he said quietly.

I bristled. “You want some kind of award for that? I’m sure you’ll get in her pants if you try hard enough, with your track record.” Why the fuck was he bringing up sleeping with Tori now?

Suddenly, his face changed. “Not Tori. Natalie. I never slept with Natalie.”

My blood heated. What thefuckwas wrong with him to lie about something like that now? “Yeah, right. Even though you said you did. Andshesaid you did. But let me guess, you two were just in your bedroom playing checkers, right?”

“No, she wanted me to fuck her, but I didn’t.”

“Stop. Just stop. This is all ancient history, and unless you’re bringing it up because you like constantly arguing, the matter is settled.”

“It’s settled because I’ve just told you the truth. She wanted me to sleep with her. I didn’t.”

His fucking audacity was making it hard to think. “And why would she want that? Because you’re so irresistible that women will throw away a three-year relationship just for a chance to fuck you?”

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