The Snap, page 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by Elizabeth Staple
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
doubleday.com
Doubleday and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Book design by Soonyoung Kwon, adapted for ebook
Cover images: (stadium) dlewis33 / Getty Images; (blood) Mrspopman1985 / Shutterstock; (name tag) Jariya / Adobe Stock
Cover design by Madeline Partner
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Staple, Elizabeth, 1984– author.
Title: The snap : a novel / Elizabeth Staple.
Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2024].
Identifiers: LCCN 2023040435 | ISBN 9780593686171 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593686188 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women sports executives—United States—Fiction. | Sexual harassment in sports—United States—Fiction. | Football teams—United States—Fiction. | Murder—Fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.T3674 S63 2024 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20240116
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023040435
Ebook ISBN 9780593686188
ep_prh_7.0_147840383_c0_r0
Contents
Dedication
Part I
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part II
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Part III
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
_147840383_
For Arthur
PART I
In Loving Memory
Red Guillory
SYRACUSE, N.Y.—Beloved Syracuse Bobcats head coach Red Guillory died on September 30 at the age of 51.
Guillory was born in Harrisburg, Penn. He was a star linebacker at Baylor University, where he earned All-American honors in both his junior and senior seasons. A first-round draft pick by Seattle, he helped the team to two conference finals and a Super Bowl before persistent knee injuries ended his playing career.
Guillory pivoted to coaching, beginning as a defensive assistant with Seattle before working his way up to Bobcats head coach at age 36. With two Super Bowl championships, three conference finals and seven division titles, Guillory is the winningest head coach in franchise history.
Guillory was also a giant in the Syracuse community. Known for his philanthropy, he spearheaded the Bundle Up Bobcats winter coat drive in partnership with Wegmans. His annual Red Rover, Red Rover field days raised more than $4 million in charitable contributions to Central New York youth sports programs.
The entire Bobcats organization mourns the passing of Coach Guillory, and extends its deepest condolences to his wife, Lexi, son, Connor, and daughter, Kelsey. We share our grief with all Bobcats, past and present, as well as the whole of Bobcats Nation.
CHAPTER ONE
NOW
A frigid October rain beat against my office windows as I read through the team statement again. I was looking for anything that could be given the pull-quote treatment or taken damagingly out of context, but it was as benign as it had been on the last fifteen reviews. Still, I swapped grief out for sadness. Wouldn’t want to sound hysterical.
My cursor hovered over the word died. Even as I edited his obituary, it wasn’t sinking in that Red Guillory was gone. Over the past fifteen years he’d become such an indelible part of Bobcats football that when he closed his eyes, the stadium should have disappeared in a puff of smoke. Sitting here without him—doing our work, preparing for the next game—was like swapping out the sun for a flashlight and pretending nothing had changed.
An invisible paragraph hovered, full of stomach-twisting details I wouldn’t be putting in the release. That Red’s death was being treated as suspicious. That he’d bled out over a period of hours. That he’d surely suffered.
“Hi, Poppy.” Chloe the Intern walked to my desk without poking her head in or pausing at the doorway. She’d been calling me by my first name since we shook hands at her interview, when I’d had to suck my automatic “Please, call me Poppy” back from midair before it humiliated us both.
She leaned on the edge of the desk, long, elegant fingers splayed. They matched her pale, waiflike body. A curtain of cornsilk hair hung almost to her waist, where the tiniest slip of milk-colored skin flashed whenever she lifted her arms.
“I’m on my way down to the pressroom to set up. Did you want me to change out the background? I could find something black?”
“Why would we do that?”
“Well, you know, the red and the white are kind of bright. Like, for today. With everything.”
Back when I’d been in Chloe’s seat, I would never have made that suggestion to the director of media relations—which, I reminded myself firmly, was the great thing about this generation. They didn’t wait patiently to be asked, they spoke up, and that meant their voices were heard.
Even when they themselves were wearing winter-white pants and an electric teal blouse.
I set my face to a soft neutral, my voice to mentorship warm.
“We want to use the team colors right now because it sets a scene, it visually signals to our fans that we’re in this together. This clip is going to be replayed for years and years, so we want something that looks timeless but also brand-forward. But mostly,” I smiled, the effort of it making my head pound, “it’s what Coach Guillory would have wanted.”
* * *
*
Less than five minutes after I blasted the statement to our distribution list, the light on my phone blinked.
“It’s Bernie,” called our admin, Edward, from his desk outside my office.
“Got it.” As always, I took a moment to prepare. Let my eyes sweep across the top of the bookcase and its miniature skyline of trophies and awards. Focused on the framed feature from Inc. magazine picturing me in a power suit, arms crossed, under a headline screaming It’s All About Ms. Benjamin. I slid open my desk drawer to peek at the Post-it note I’d left for myself that read Slow. Confident. Calm. Then I smirked as I raised the receiver, because it’s scientifically proven that expressions can be heard over the phone. “What’s the matter—you found a typo?”
“No, it’s not about that. Shit, though—I still can’t believe it, Poppy.”
“I know.”
A dog barked in the background, and the image of Bernie’s home office bloomed—a small room with seventies-style wood paneling near the back of the split-level he shared with his wife, Sheila. From his desk, he’d be able to see out to the pool deck where we’d celebrated her Hawaiian-themed sixtieth birthday.
“Fifty-one! That’s a kid. He wasn’t sick, was he? He always seemed so…robust.”
“I haven’t gotten any details.”
It was half true. When our general manager called before dawn, he’d been characteristically direct: Red’s dead—Lexi found him this morning. She’s saying it’s murder, but since her criminology degree is from fucking Blue’s Clues, let’s keep a lid on that until the adults get there.
I knew Asbel well enough to know he wasn’t as dismissive of Lexi’s theory as he sounded, and he certainly wouldn’t waste time having me bury rumors he thought were untrue.
“Listen,” Bernie was saying, “I know how petty this is going to sound, and I’m sure you don’t want to be dealing with anything extra right now—”
“That’s correct.”
“—but Twitter picked up the Raj thing, and my editor wants me to write something on it.”
“Seriously? Today?”
“You’ve met Bob. He’s like a face tattoo that says Make Good Choices.”
“Okay, well, Raj is a full moron—maybe clue Bob in on that.”
“That’s why he wants me to write it—Raj gives great quotes. And your team’s one and three. There hasn’t been a lot else to write about. Until today,” Bernie allowed, with a note of guilt.
“Is that why you floated the idea of firing Red last week? Nice headline, by the way—Is it time for a Bobcats Red Wedding?”
“I don’t write the headlines, and that was a fair article, Poppy. I’ll tell you what, though, I have reflux over it—terrible. The whole thing is terrible.”
“Don’t be too rough on yourself.”
“If you really want to make an old man feel better, what are the odds I can get Raj on the phone?”
“Not great, Bern.” I reached for a pile of mail at the corner of my desk and flipped through. Tinged as everything was today with shock and grief, this was my actual job, and it felt good to be doing it rather than figuring out how many buses we’d need to get two hundred employees to a funeral. “I’ve already talked to Raj, and he’s apologized to the school. He’s going to sponsor their spring science fair, where the top prize will go to a project that demonstrates the earth is not flat. It’s a non-issue.”
A small envelope slipped out the bottom of the pile. It was handwritten, with a return address somewhere called Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. My brow creased. I didn’t know anyone in New Mexico. I checked the postmark, but it was smeared, and as Bernie went on about clicks and podcast streams, I pulled open the envelope. It gave easily, like it hadn’t been properly sealed, and a small paper maybe twice the size of a Post-it fluttered to my desk.
The message was only a few words, cryptic little things. Weighed against the more bombastic fan mail—just last week there’d been a three-page rager on our helmet redesign from someone who’d had the prior version tattooed on his head—it was hardly eyebrow raising.
I know what you did.
Tell the truth or pay the consequences.
You have five days.
It was one out of a thousand weird letters and phone calls that came to the stadium every season, but this one came on the same day that Red Guillory was found dead. And in fifteen years, it was the first addressed to me.
“So, anyway,” Bernie said, “if you could make some of the position coaches available for us, it would help fill in the gaps until a new head—interim head, whatever—is named. And Mel is going to speak too, right? Do you know when that’s going to be yet? Is he releasing an owner’s statement, or does the team statement apply to everyone? And what about Asbel? Actually, if I could pick between Mel and Asbel, I’d probably take Mel because he’s really starting to lose it and there’s a good chance he’ll—”
“Bern. I’m going to have that for you soon, but we haven’t made any decisions yet. I’m sure you understand this is all a shock and we’re figuring it out as we go. But we’ll get a schedule out shortly.”
As I hung up my work phone, my cell danced across the desktop. Texts to the group chat.
I can’t believe it. I’m in meetings all day but call if you need to. That was Annika.
I’m in total shock, wrote Sarah. Just completely stunned. How are you functioning?
Are you still going tonight? And would you rather reschedule this weekend?
It was Dayanna’s message that snapped me out of it. Of course I was going tonight, and how could she think I would miss the weekend? People were depending on me.
I’m fine. The period at the end of my text did its job, and the group chat fell silent.
I let the note and its envelope flutter into my overflowing trash can, then put my head down on my desk for a slow count to ten. Then I sat up, blinked hard, and turned my attention to the impossible business of navigating Bobcats football without Red Guillory.
CHAPTER TWO
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
The internship started on a Wednesday.
I had to be there by seven a.m., which explained why I was stumbling around my new apartment—the second floor of the home of Dave and Flossie Anderson, lovers of Camel cigarettes and Precious Moments figurines, respectively—at ten minutes before six. At twenty-two years old, I’d been up this early, but never woken up this early, and the drowsiness mixed with first-day anxiety left me wobbly. I fumbled with the buttons of my Zara dress, shrugged into my blazer, and added a headband on my way out the door.
There was plenty of signage leading from the highway to Micrans Stadium, and I followed it into an ocean of asphalt parking lots where the stadium rose from the ground like a massive silver spaceship.
This was where I worked.
Now that I was here, pulling into the “staff only” parking area, everything felt alarmingly real. I could already imagine tonight’s text from my dad (“How to go, kiddo!”). He’d want every detail—who I’d met, what I’d done. How I fit into it all. Dad was a high school coach, and our football was grass stains and bootlegs. This was a billion-dollar industry that drew a hundred million viewers. When I took a last look at the hulking stadium, a sunbeam bounced off the upper deck, a mocking wink.
The lobby had thick carpeting and plush seats, and while I waited I cycled through positions: shoulders back, hands folded at knee, feet together. Straight back listing left, elbow not-so-casually on arm of chair. I was experimenting with my purse on my lap and one hand through the strap when the revolving door spun and admitted a stocky guy about my age with the preppy confidence of someone who knew his way around a boat. Another intern, I thought, my heart lifting, thank God. Then I noticed the red Bobcats ID clipped to his belt loop, strained to read it, and looked up to see the puzzled smirk of someone wondering why a stranger was staring at his waistband. Before I could stammer anything guaranteed to make the situation worse, the guy saved me from myself, gave an awkward laugh, and walked on.
Any confidence I’d been faking was shot, and I gripped the arms of the chair like I was about to be launched into space. At the sound of a whistle traveling down the hallway, I pressed my shoes hard into the carpet, and a moment later the whistle entered the lobby, its source a blond man with skin so tanned he resembled a burnt roll.
“You’re Poppy,” he said as we shook hands. From the way his hairline inched up, I guessed he was in his late forties, and his teeth were unnaturally, distractingly white. “Poppy Benjamin. Man—that might be the most football coach’s daughter’s name I’ve ever heard.”
“My mom is southern,” I said by way of explanation.
“Got it, got it. It’s cool, though. I mean—Brent. Also weird.”
I didn’t think my name was weird, but I forced a laugh.
“I’ll tell you what,” he went on, “I’d rather be the swimsuit judge at Miss Medicare than get here this early. But that’s why we have you, right? Let’s walk.”
The offices were surprisingly corporate. I didn’t know what I’d expected—Astroturf carpets and people walking around in helmets?—but other than the hulking stadium attached to the building, it could have been any other workplace. Media Relations had its own annex through two secured doorways, and Brent paused to scan a badge at each. “Your badge—we’ll get that next—is all-access, since you’re going to be doing papers and press clips. They have to be on Mel Aberford’s desk by the time he gets in, and he’s a thousand so that’s early. Like, grapefruit juice early. I’d shoot for six thirty, just to keep it tight.”
“Yes, for sure,” I said quickly, recognizing the name of the team’s owner. To get here by six thirty, I’d have to leave my apartment no later than five forty-five, a thought that made my teeth ache.
Over the next few hours, Brent shared a thousand details—the weekly schedule, how to use the giant copier, the credentialing process. I itched to take notes, but he spoke so confidently (“And you know, obviously, a season credential would be for legacy media, national guys, people like that, but we use day passes for the rest—unless they’re in the division or we’ll probably see them in the play-offs. And then for the photographers…”). I nodded and nodded and nodded, because I so badly wanted to be someone who just got it.
