Sources Say

by Lori Goldstein

  “With pleasure!” was followed by a B movie maniacal laugh that Cat recognized. “Revenge will be mine.”

  Cat watched Ravi rise from a crouched position behind a group of freshmen on the opposite side of her fire pit. Natalie passed off the flashlight, and, slowly, three or four others joined, emerging from their various hiding spots along the beach.

  “Ninety seconds,” Natalie said before dashing off.

  Ravi turned his back while his friends dispersed. He grinned at Cat, and the light from the fire picked up the auburn-colored streaks in his hair. She felt herself relax and tense at the same time.

  “Flashlight tag,” Ravi said. “Still time to play.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I’ve got a deadline.”

  “Ten thousand hours, right? Go for it, Cat.”

  Angeline would have made a joke or scoffed at Cat for working at a party, if she paid her any attention at all. But Ravi acted like it was the most normal thing in the world to bring a computer to a beach bonfire, which she suddenly realized it wasn’t. She strained in the darkness to follow Ravi’s friends as they disappeared behind rocks and fire pits and paddleboards. Part of her wanted to hide right along with them. See what it felt like to be found.

  “Another time, maybe?” she said.

  “Definitely.” He smiled, and this time, Cat didn’t just notice that heart shape—she was looking for it.

  * * *

  Back at home, Cat put a pillow over her head to drown out Angeline, who was video chatting with Maxine. A wink, half wink, toothy grin, their inane debate over which smiley face emoji to put beside Angeline’s name in the voting app made Cat long for the days when she had her own room. She reached for her book on female journalists before remembering she’d let Emmie borrow it.

  Before she overthought it, Cat grabbed her phone and sent Emmie a text.

  Cat: Read any biographies yet?

  Emmie immediately started writing back.

  Emmie: Nellie Bly’s. What a total badass. After reporting on mental institutions and zoo cruelty, she travels the world alone? Just to prove a woman can do it?

  Cat: 72 days, 6 minutes, just like Jules Verne’s character.

  Emmie: Except she was real. Whose story should I read next?

  Cat: Alice Allison Dunnigan. First black female correspondent to get White House credentials. President Eisenhower was so afraid of her tough questions that he avoided calling on her.

  Emmie: Putting my bookmark in now. What are you doing? Studying?

  As Angeline made her case for a monocle emoji, Cat replied.

  Cat: Writing an article about the Frankengirls.

  Emmie: Such a shame. Just like the candidates scooping up their cause and making it their own. Even if Angeline’s in them, she’s taking it too far.

  Cat: Can I quote you on that?

  Emmie: If you think it’ll help. I still believe in the election. At least I want to.

  Cat: I know. My sister makes everything about herself.

  Emmie: And how does that make you feel?

  Cat: Spectacular .

  Emmie: Not fun to talk about, totally get it.

  Cat: It’s just how it is. How it’s always been.

  Emmie: Makes me feel better that my dads decided I’d be an only child . . .

  Cat: I can relate.

  16

  When Angeline Gets into a Scrap (or Two)

  14 DAYS TO THE ELECTION

  Suggestions, bitches!

  A flowered tissue box with the words scrawled in permanent marker hung on the double doors to the cafeteria.

  Leo’s response to Angeline’s Ask an Angel app. A campaign move. Just like the four dozen slices from Frank’s, all individually wrapped, stamped with “sample, not for sale” and his smiling face, that he’d handed out while standing on a chair in the cafeteria. Entirely indicative of his own brand, which, near as Angeline could tell, was mocking hers.

  She knew it.

  Could see what he was doing.

  And why.

  It didn’t make it feel like any less of a slap in the face.

  Same as that last article of Cat’s.

  She separated the braided straps of her tote bag ($99 with the 15 percent off Ask an Angel code!) and plunged her hand inside. She lifted the issues of The Red and Blue she’d been reading. What was up with Cat including that quote from Emmie? Scooping up the Frankengirls cause and making it their own? Angeline was giving them—she was giving everyone—a voice. Unlike Leo.

  Angeline’s fingers curled around her phone. She unlocked and swiped to Instagram. Her last post had garnered her most follower engagement ever. See? A voice. People were touting her as an advocate for young women with her #MoreThanOurParts. Which honestly had never really been her brand.

  She stiffened at the smiley face from tone-deaf Botox Wife and moved on to the rest of the comments. The female empowerment tags ran deep. If she kept this up, she could expand her base.

  Angeline held up her phone to take a picture of Leo’s “suggestions box.” That “bitches” might have been plural, but it felt squared directly at her.

  On the way to her locker, Angeline passed three Finding Nemo stuffies dangling from the ceiling, each being strangled by a straw. Her supporters’ response to Leo’s campaign platform. She smiled wide, keeping an eye on her comments until she heard two girls deep in conversation outside Ms. Lute’s classroom.

  “I can’t afford two hundred and fifty for prom,” one of them said.

  “Right? Ridic. Guess we better rise up.”

  “Vote for Leo, then?”

  “He does have a mom in politics. And that good hair. Seems like the right choice?”

  What? Angeline whirled around, but the girls had already disappeared into the classroom. That was all rumor printed in The Shrieking Violet. And suddenly Angeline disliked the rival paper as much as Cat.

  She turned back around and collided with someone’s chest.

  Sammy.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Sammy was less stocky than his brother, but the buzzed sides of his dark hair matched Leo’s. He trailed his hand through the long pieces on top that fell toward his ears as he fixed his brown eyes on Angeline. More intense than Leo’s in color and attitude.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  He bit down on his bottom lip and sidestepped around her.

  She shifted to block him. “So, taking world history like we talked about? Did you get Mr. Monte—”

  “Nice, right?” Sammy gestured down the hall to the tissue box. “Tad’s a kick-ass campaign manager.”

  Her relief that it had been Tad’s idea matched her anger at Leo for allowing it.

  She tried to focus on this boy in front of her wearing an ill-fitting coat of bravado. “Listen, Sammy. What happened with me and Leo doesn’t have to affect us.”

  Sammy sniffed. “You smell that?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “No. Should I?”

  “Guess it’s the same way smokers don’t smell tobacco anymore. Hard to smell bullshit when you’re always knee-deep in it.” Sammy strutted off without a glance back.

  This wasn’t the Sammy who reenacted SNL and did stand-up routines in eighth grade. She and Leo had sat in the audience in place of his parents, giving him a standing ovation, Leo shouting “¡Felicitaciones!” the way their dad would have when Sammy won the talent competition.

  And now he thought she was a bitch.

  “Nice move, Ang.”

  Leo’s voice made the hairs on her arms stand up. He circled in front of her wearing that sweatshirt she’d been trying to get him to replace for years.

  “I just ran into him. I wasn’t looking for him.” As if she didn’t have
a right to. She’d rip into Maxine or Sonya or Riley if they sounded as meek as she did. Would tell her Ask an Angel viewer to stand up for herself. She squared her shoulders.

  “Good, and keep it that way, but that’s not what I meant.” Leo’s tone was flippant, but his eyes looked the same as always. How can that be? “I was talking about the Frankengirls. Don’t know why I’m surprised; you know how to make things explode. Or is it implode?”

  “My campaign has every right to address this injustice.”

  “Again, not what I meant. Address is one thing. Invent, an entirely different one.”

  Confusion jumbled Angeline’s thoughts. “Wait, you really think I did this?”

  “If the torso fits.”

  “Those are my friends in those pictures.”

  “Hence your abundance of photos to choose from.”

  “Nice try, Leo. I pride myself on being flexible, but that’s way too low for me.”

  “You forget, I know you.”

  That snide look on his face seemed as uncharacteristic as the angry one on Sammy’s. Yet instead of it making her sad, it ignited something inside her veins, and the blood that rushed through screamed enough. What she did to Leo didn’t define her. No matter how much he wanted it to.

  “You know what I think?” she said. “This reeks of Tad Marcus and the rest of those guys who are suddenly attached to your hip. And instead of owning up to it and apologizing, they’re keeping it going. For fun, for this ridiculous campaign of yours, because they think they can get away with it. And you’re following so closely you’re about to be crushed by their heels.”

  The muscles in Leo’s jaw tightened.

  “You want to get back at me, Leo? Fine, whatever, run against me—win, if you can. But just leave everyone else out of it, okay? Enough with the photos.”

  “It’s not me and—”

  “Save it.” Angeline clutched the straps of her bag so hard that her claddagh ring dug into her skin. “Whatever you want to think, hurting you was never my goal.”

  “I didn’t think it was.”

  “Then why—”

  He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Because barreling toward your goal eclipses everything else. I’m tired of being roadkill.”

  Angeline leaned in. “It was one mistake, Leo. One. You may be sick of being roadkill, but the truth is, only one of those tire treads belongs to me.”

  17

  When Cat’s Weekend’s Jam-Packed

  14 DAYS TO THE ELECTION

  “Leo’s going to abolish finals? Leo’s going to bring in a Food Network chef for lunch menu consultation? Leo’s a descendant of George Washington and a third-generation twice-removed cousin of Jennifer Lawrence? Three sources, people! Three named sources!”

  On the couch in their living room, Cat read The Shrieking Violet to her grandfather, her temper at a rolling boil. “How is anyone believing this?”

  And preferring it to her own?

  “I think you may be missing that this is a prime example of a little-known technique called satire.” He gingerly extracted the tablet from her tense fingers. “Let’s keep this in one piece. I’ve got me a date with an away game tonight. And I’d rather not borrow your sister’s computer since that comes with strings of agreeing to join some mixer they call a dating app.”

  “Wow, she’s always working it, isn’t she?”

  “Your sister’s intentions come from the right place even if the execution needs jiggering. Your grams was the same way.”

  Cat looked dubious.

  “Ah, you remember her with hair always curled and feet always in heels when she was actually a woman who would hide my passport in between cake pans to stop me from going on foreign assignments.”

  Cat smiled. “She wanted to keep you safe. It’s actually kind of sweet in a warped way.”

  “Same as your sister.”

  “Uh-huh, sure.”

  Tell that to the “Fraidy Cat” moniker that had stuck through most of fourth grade. By the time the kids had found a new bull’s-eye, Angeline had disappeared into her friends. Cat had clung to her own from fifth until the jokes she missed and the homework they had and the recess she didn’t share began to put distance between them.

  Cat threw herself into following in her grandfather’s footsteps, reading every one of his articles, begging him to tell her stories, flipping through that passport and learning about all the places he’d been, imagining going to them herself. She threw herself into being what her sister wasn’t: focused on something other than herself.

  Not to mention proving her father wrong. Her dreams would become her reality.

  “You trust me, Cathleen?” Gramps asked.

  “More than anyone, you know that.”

  “Then listen when I say that life needs lightness as much as it needs the truth. A balance.”

  Cat tried to focus on him, but all she could see was the new ad at the bottom of The Shrieking Violet’s page: Luck o’ the Harbor. The first of what had become a handful of new advertisers for Cat. Ones she was going to lose if things kept going like this. Because no one was reading this thing as satire; they were swallowing it whole. She half expected The Shrieking Violet to edge her out for the Fit to Print award.

  On the coffee table in front her, her phone buzzed. Seeing Ravi’s name, she swiped and immediately began typing.

  Cat: Everything okay with the print run?

  Ravi: I double-checked.

  Cat smiled, feeling a surge of the camaraderie she’d had last year. She wrote back: Thanks. See you Monday. Then she shut off all the notifications on her phone and got back to work.

  * * *

  The next day, Cat burst out of her apartment building, her mind still consumed with The Shrieking Violet. She tromped down Frontage Street, her heels striking the sidewalk with its inlay of seashells. Ravi had said he worked most Saturdays. Maybe together they could figure out a plan.

  Though the day checked a near equal number of boxes between the end of August and the beginning of October, the weather clung to summer. She headed toward the frozen yogurt shop, opening her messages to see if Ravi could meet her on a break. That’s when she noticed the text he’d sent the previous day.

  Ravi: Monday or . . . tomorrow? Few of us heading into Boston for an exhibit on editorial cartoons at the BPL. Interested?

  Her feet cemented to the sidewalk. He’d invited her to hang out with him and his friends at the Boston Public Library. He’d tried again, just like he said he would after her no to flashlight tag. And she hadn’t even responded. She’d been so obsessed with The Shrieking Violet that she’d left her notifications off. Missing his text stung more than she’d have expected.

  Maybe they hadn’t left yet. Maybe she could meet them at the train station. She started typing:

  BPL sounds fun.

  She hit backspace.

  BPL sounds fu

  BPL sounds f

  BPL

  BPL?

  BPL? What time train?

  BPL? What time

  BPL? BPL? BPL? BPL?

  Crap. She erased everything and instead logged in to The Red and Blue’s Instagram account. She clicked on Ravi’s profile—on Ravi, smiling, on the steps of the Boston Public Library. He wore his green cargo shorts and carried his same sketchbook. His caption read: “‘Editorial cartoons move the discussion forward.’ From stellar exhibit at BPL. Swipe for more.”

  So she swiped. There were three photos of editorial cartoons on the wall inside the library. The last photo was back outside: Ravi surrounded by his friends, including Natalie, dressed like an urban street musician.

  If Cat were there, would she be calling her Kate?

  But Cat wasn’t there.

  She clicked ou
t to the overview of Ravi’s feed. A mosaic of tiny squares, each filled with images of art, of Ravi with his art, of Ravi with his friends, siblings, parents. The most important things in his life for the past few months, maybe years?

  If Cat had an Instagram account, how many squares would she have? And what would be inside them? Would they represent the life she had or the one she wanted? Which Cat had never before felt might not be the same thing.

  She was no longer hungry.

  As she turned to head home, she glanced through the window of the frozen yogurt shop. Despite the warm weather, most of the tables were empty. A lone girl sat in the corner with her laptop, wearing a VOTE TORRES tee.

  Emmie.

  Cat pocketed her phone, wrapped her hand around the door handle, and pulled.

  * * *

  “The Spanish Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam,” Cat said, showing Emmie a photograph of Martha Gellhorn on her phone. “All that was probably a cakewalk compared to being married to Ernest Hemingway.”

  Emmie scraped at the last bits of her banana yogurt. “She was Hemingway’s wife too?”

  “One of them. The only one to sneak on board a hospital ship to watch the D-Day landings in Normandy.”

  “Huh.” Emmie pointed her spoon at Cat. “So that’s what awe looks like.”

  Cat’s cheeks grew hot.

  “No, own it, Cat. It honors you both—her for all she did and you for having the ambition to want to do the same.”

  “Like you and Mrs. Torres? Have you met her?”

  “Once. She broke her heel right before a speech. I got her a new pair. I’m sure I looked worse than you just did—like a heart-eyes emoji. That’s probably the same way I’ll look when I leave for college.”