The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  “Charming,” I said, eyeing this Tony kid and making a note to keep an eye out for him. He was dressed head to toe in black. Yeah, I knew the type. Listened to “deep” music and made all the girls think he was sensitive and misunderstood. But he was steady on his feet, so I assumed he wasn’t too drunk. “But Tony is still going to make sure you get home okay, right?” I was talking to her, technically, but I looked at Tony as I spoke.

  “Yeah, uh…” Tony’s eyes darted around like he was looking for something.

  “Ha!” Dawn grinned. “Tony is in deep doo-doo because he just realized he lost his sister, and God forbid his beloved twin should fall prey to a jerk like him.” Tony’s face said “guilty as charged,” and Dawn said, “It’s okay, Tony. Go find her. I’ll be fine.” She scrambled to her feet. “I always am.”

  Jesus Christ, she was wearing a toga. Only about half the party attendees were. Hers was made from a white sheet fashioned into a minidress that was belted at the waist by a bunch of fake leaves. It crossed over her chest so that one arm and shoulder were completely bare. I cleared my throat, reminding myself that togas were not inherently sexy. They cover more than they reveal, after all. But the idea that she was wearing only a bedsheet that you could probably pull at one end and the whole damn thing would slide off her…

  “Merry Christmas, Officer Artie.”

  Ignoring the liberty she’d taken with my name, I pointed at her—got all in her face with my finger, actually. “You. Wait here. I’m taking you home.” Because no way was she going out into the snowy dark night to walk home alone. The Alpha Phi sorority house wasn’t far, but still.

  “I’m fine,” she protested. “That was my only drink of the night.”

  I let my finger actually make contact with the skin of her chest. Her eyebrows flew up. Good. Because sometimes it seemed like nothing could unsettle this world-weary eighteen-year-old. “Wait. Here.” When she opened her mouth like she was going to protest again, I added, “Unless you’d like a second ticket to round out your first semester?”

  She shook her head and slumped against the wall in defeat.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, after I’d broken up the party sufficiently and collected Dawn, we made our way out into the blessedly cold air. The ivy-covered limestone buildings of frat row were blanketed in freshly fallen snow. It was a gorgeous night, one of those perfect small-town Massachusetts winter nights that I loved. Unlike in Boston, the snow here was clean, and the dry cold had an almost antiseptic effect. I would miss winter in Allenhurst when I finally capitulated and headed home. I glanced at my watch—one-fifteen. Although Dawn didn’t know it, as of fifteen minutes ago, I was officially off duty, and for an entire week at that. I was tempted to suggest we walk and I’d come back for the cruiser, but her legs were bare. Man, these kids. How had she gotten here to begin with? So I led her to the car.

  “Do I have to sit in the back?”

  I answered by opening the front passenger door for her, and she shot me what might have been the first genuine Dawn Hathaway smile I had ever been in receipt of.

  “Alpha Phi?” I asked after I’d scraped the ice off the windshield and situated myself in the driver’s seat.

  “Wilmer Hall,” she said, naming a dorm on the other side of campus. “Freshmen don’t live in fraternity and sorority houses. The college requires freshmen to live in the dorms. Anyway, it wouldn’t work logistically, since pledge period is six weeks. You have to live somewhere while you pledge.”

  “Right.” I had known that, but the ins and outs of Greek life weren’t generally front of mind.

  “And also?”

  I turned to her. The smile from before was gone. She regarded me with slightly annoyed-looking raised eyebrows.

  “I didn’t get in. I didn’t get a bid after rush week. And since I’d focused one hundred per cent on Alpha Phi, I didn’t get a bid from any of the other houses, either.”

  I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. The idea of Little Miss Dawn not getting something she wanted was oddly satisfying. “I’m sorry,” I said through my laughter. “Was it the ticket in September?”

  “I’m sure it didn’t help,” she said. Then she slumped against her seat, shoulders curving forward in resignation. “They said I wanted it too much.”

  “What?”

  “And also that I wasn’t pretty enough.”

  “Wait. What?”

  “Have you seen this year’s pledge class? They weren’t wrong.”

  “Are they actually allowed to not let you in based on some subjective measure of beauty?” I was appalled. “To begin with, that’s not legal.” Also, Dawn Hathaway might have been a pain in my ass, but, with her trim little waist, her small but perfectly proportioned curves, that gorgeous mane of yellow hair, and those killer hazel eyes that were always perfectly made up, she was a gorgeous pain in my ass. But of course I wasn’t going to say that.

  She huffed a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, no one will admit it to outsiders, but welcome to Greek life.”

  “Well, you’re better off.”

  She rolled her eyes, which made me feel like I was about fifty years old.

  “I don’t need them anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit.” I stopped at a red light and glanced at her. “Need them for what?” Did she have some kind of secret agenda? She seemed like the type who might.

  She started to answer; then she shook her head like she was thinking better of it. “I joined the newspaper. The Allenhurst Examiner. You know it?”

  Ah, that explained why she’d referred to me as “Officer Artie” earlier. The editor of the paper, Jenny Fields, was always calling me that. I let her get away with it because she was a great kid. She was always fighting for some cause, standing up for the little guy. I often had to break up a protest she was organizing, but we had a lot of respect for each other and had actually developed quite a friendly relationship. “I read it every day,” I said, answering Dawn’s question truthfully. I wasn’t kidding when I told my family that I was part of the community at Allenhurst College. I loved the Examiner—it was small but mighty. Although I was frankly shocked that a girl like Dawn would lower herself to do something as serious as journalism.

  “I talked them into letting me start a gossip column. It’s gonna start spring semester.”

  Ah. That was more like it.

  “So it’s actually better that I’m not in a sorority,” she said. “If I were, I’d be kind of limited in my gossip range.”

  “Your gossip range?”

  “Yeah. You know, some of those houses are pretty insular. This way I’m kind of a floater.”

  “A floater?” Listen to me. I had been reduced to repeating everything this girl said as I navigated slowly through the icy streets. But that was because none of it was making any sense.

  “Yeah, like, I’m making connections with people who live in all the houses, and some non-Greek people, too.” She turned to me, clapping her hands together. She looked like a little girl on Christmas morning. “Gossip is all about connections. Sources. You have those, and you’re all set.”

  “Set for what?”

  “Social power.”

  Jesus. Inside this little blond girl there was a Machiavellian schemer.

  “So I really wasn’t drinking at that party,” she went on. “Tony—he’s a photographer at the newspaper—talked me into doing that one shot you saw, but it would have stopped there.” She cocked her head and smirked. “It turns out if you’re the only sober one in a party full of wastoids, you can get a lot of info.”

  Wow. It wasn’t that I thought she was stupid. I’d never thought that. But maybe she had more real wisdom than I’d given her credit for. “You headed home for the holidays?” I asked, suddenly interested in what kind of background had spawned this beautiful young mercenary.

  “Unfortunately.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and she sighed. “I don’t have the best relationship with my father and stepmother.”


  “Where’s home?”

  “New York City.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “There is no mother. And Daddy is…busy.”

  I wanted to ask more, and I almost did. I told myself that my questions were rooted in my commitment to community policing. That this was a prime example of why I hung on at Allenhurst despite the almost-unendurable pressure from my family to join “the family business,” aka the Boston PD, where my father, brother, and one sister served. I didn’t want to be just a warm body with a gun chasing after bad guys who had already done the deed. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but for me policing was about people. About hearing their stories and helping them make good choices. And I felt like the kids here were at an age where you could still make a big difference in their lives.

  Still, I was pretty sure my interest in Dawn’s background wasn’t about being a good community cop. What does “busy” mean? Do you have any step-siblings? What do you mean “there is no mother”? That’s not biologically possible.

  “It’s like he doesn’t even see me, you know?”

  This happened sometimes with these kids. They needed someone to talk to, and sometimes it only took the slightest nudge to open the tap. We had arrived at her dorm. I pulled up in front and cut the engine.

  “It doesn’t matter what I do,” she went on, making no move to get out or even seeming to register that we had arrived. “Good grades, bad grades.” She made it sound like she’d tried both. “Tickets for underage drinking.” She rolled her eyes, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “He just never…sees me.”

  It seemed impossible that anyone could be in proximity to Dawn Hathaway and not see her—hell, not be pretty much all-consumed by her. She took up so much space, in spite of her petite build. But I couldn’t say that. And maybe what she was saying was true. There were a lot of shitty parents out there.

  “Ugh!” She waved a hand in front of her face as if she were disgusted with herself. “Listen to me. I’m exhausted from exams, and I’m getting maudlin.” She unbuckled her seat belt and pulled on her mittens. I had to laugh at the combination of her heavy, knitted mittens and her mini-toga. “Anyway, not being seen turns out to be a real advantage in the gossip business, so it all works out. Thanks for the ride.” She hopped out of the car but leaned back down to look in. “And thanks for not giving me another ticket.” She smiled—my second real Dawn Hathaway smile—then slammed the door. I watched her sashay her toga-covered ass up the path to the dorm’s front door.

  And with that, I put another semester—my thirteenth; wouldn’t Dad be thrilled?—at Allenhurst to bed.

  Chapter Three

  May 1982

  Dawn

  “Goddamn it! Hurry up, Dawn!”

  I looked down from my perch above the football stadium to see Tony raking his hands through his hair and staring down the block as he bounced on his toes like an agitated prizefighter. I couldn’t see what he was looking at. From my vantage point, the view was blocked by the pedestal that was Ace’s home, which rested high above the stadium gates. Or the pedestal that had been Ace’s home—my trusty crowbar and I were nearly done prying him loose.

  “Gotcha!” I said, relishing my victory. An Ace was serious currency around campus.

  “I think that’s my line,” said an all-too-familiar voice.

  I braced myself for the body that belonged to the voice to step into view.

  And there he was, a wall of muscle with his mirrored shades on, even though it was overcast.

  Damn. Was this guy everywhere? Why was he always catching me red-handed? It didn’t matter where the party was, what the prank was, he always knew. And why was it always him? The police force at Allenhurst employed eight officers. I knew, because I’d checked. Before Jenny, the editor of the school paper, would let me have my gossip column, she’d made me write a story for each of the paper’s sections. It was this dumb rule she had—if you weren’t a journalism major, you had to “do time” in each section before you settled into your beat. It was supposed to give us sympathy for how the other sections operated or something. Anyway, while on general news, I’d done a story about the police department’s new cruisers. They’d replaced their two AMC Matadors with Chevy Caprices. Ooh la la, stop the presses.

  Somehow, Jenny’s little rule never resulted in anyone rotating through the gossip page, which was fine by me. Since I’d launched the column, the paper’s circulation had quadrupled. And it wasn’t because of stories on the new cop cars. Yeah, Jenny might have been the editor of the paper, but I was its star.

  Anyway, the point was there were eight cops at this school, and six thousand students. So why the heck was Officer Perez—I tried to call him Officer Artie once, like Jenny did, but it felt wrong—the one always busting my ass?

  My ass that was in real trouble at the moment. There was no way to spin this one. I was on top of one of the huge pillars that bracketed the stadium, and I had a crowbar in one hand and our school’s mascot in the other. At least from this vantage point, Officer Perez wasn’t his usual gigantic self, taking up all my space and air.

  But, actually, he still kind of was, as impossible as it should have been. I had to drop the crowbar because I was feeling a little dizzy. I clawed at the brick, panicking a moment before I grabbed solidly hold of it.

  “For fuck’s sake, Dawn, be careful!” Wow. I’d never heard Officer Perez swear or even lose his cool. I’d also never heard him call me Dawn. It was nearly the end of sophomore year. So for two school years, it had always been Miss Hathaway. “It’s about to start pouring,” he said, and boy was he irritated.

  Before I could say anything—or even blink—he had scaled the gate and was next to me doing his air-sucking and space-taking thing from closer proximity.

  “How the hell did you get up here?” he demanded, his eyes blazing. He had taken off his shades, so I could see his eyes, which almost never happened. I leaned in to get a better look. The only other time I’d seen him without his glasses was when he’d driven me home after the Delta Chi Christmas party my freshman year. I’d kicked myself later for not noticing what color his eyes were.

  They were brown. Not that that was a surprise, given his apparently Latino heritage. But I’d wanted to know what kind of brown. The answer was a warm medium brown flecked with that tiniest bits of moss green, like oxidized pennies.

  “How did you get up here?” he repeated, his voice going all low and growly this time.

  “Um, the same way you did?” I ventured. I wanted to say that I was actually an expert at scaling these gates. That even though he had only caught me twice, this was my fourth Ace theft. I should have waited for the middle of the night this time. I was getting overconfident. I had been impatient because this Ace was going to win me the scoop of the semester. Or would have, had the long arm of the law not arrived.

  The long arms, plural, which were currently snaking around me. And they were such nice arms, really, if you could set aside the fact that they were probably going to arrest me once we hit the pavement.

  “Drop the snake, Miss Hathaway,” he ordered. “We’re heading down.”

  I tried—and failed—to shrug out of his grasp. “You’re not a fireman, Officer Perez. I can climb down by myself.” As was so often the case, Officer Unfriendly appeared unmoved by my logic. “You can hardly throw me over your shoulder like a sack of potatoes and—ooof.”

  Apparently he could. Stubbornly, I kept hold of Ace, though I did let the crowbar clatter to the ground—the ground I noticed was conveniently devoid of Tony, my partner in crime and the one with the umbrellas in his bag in case the sky opened up as it had been threatening all day. The weasel.

  A clap of thunder punctuated our descent.

  When Officer Perez’s feet hit the ground, he didn’t release me right away. As the rain started, he loosened his grip just enough that I started sliding down his body—his body, I couldn’t help noticing, that was as hard as granite. Many
of the boys in my class who weren’t athletes were sprouting little paunches. The Freshman Fifteen had been real, and some of them had gained another Sophomore Six. But there was none of that going on here. This guy was one solid mass of muscle.

  I shivered as he lowered me the last couple of inches to the ground.

  “Jesus Christ,” he snapped, taking off his windbreaker and throwing it over my shoulders as lightning lanced across the sky and the raindrops grew fatter. “If you’re going to commit larceny, at least dress for it.”

  Larceny. Crap. That sounded bad. Underage drinking was one thing. It was almost expected in college, unless you were a total loser. I wasn’t entirely sure how I would spin larceny with Daddy. But the silver lining, I supposed, was that he might have to actually pay attention to me for longer than it took to write a check.

  “Why the hell do you kids all care so much about these pieces of junk?” Officer Perez asked, tugging Ace from my grip. And he did have to tug. Damn, I needed that snake. My column was going super well. When I got to my morning classes, everyone was always reading it and exclaiming over its contents. If I could get the story I was currently chasing, even Daddy would have to be impressed. Maybe especially Daddy, given how much he liked to talk about how he’d worked his way up from the journalistic trenches to get where he was today.

  But of course I was no match for the human mountain. And it wasn’t like he was going to let me keep the spoils of the larceny he was about to charge me with. So I opted for the truth. “Don’t take this the wrong way—I don’t mean to malign your gender or anything—but college boys are stupid.”

  “Ah, one thing we agree on.” He had taken his glasses off to scale the stadium, and now he was putting them back on, which was more disappointing than it should have been. But leave it to Officer Perez to wear sunglasses in a storm. He seemed totally impervious to the rain, which was coming down in earnest now.

  I pressed onward. “There’s a certain species of boy for whom Ace the Anaconda is, like, a badge of honor. They collect Aces.” I shrugged when he scoffed. “I said it was stupid. Anyway, Aces are like currency. I do the gossip column in the paper, you remember?”