by Amy Spalding
Almost everyone laughs at that, and I feel a slight twinge of guilt. Mr. Wheeler might occasionally be smeared with pizza grease, thinks that a frumpy cardigan is professional menswear, and talks in front of me about his love life, but—no. If he doesn’t care about legacy, he doesn’t matter.
“The truth is that people don’t seem very interested in the paper anymore,” I say. “We printed less this week, and we still had too many left over.” I picture the papers tossed into the recycle bins behind the school and shudder.
“So let’s get them interested.” I take out a portable whiteboard I bought this weekend and set it up. “What are some ideas?”
In my head, this was the moment when everyone’s voice would ring out loudly, and I’d frantically scribble every excellent thought until the board was full. By now I really should have learned to stop assuming things would go how they did in my head.
Finally, Marisa speaks up. “What about letting other people get more involved? People love seeing their own face, right? Maybe every week we interview a student or let them have a guest column or both?”
“Great,” I say, writing People like to see their own face! on the board. “What else?”
“We could poach someone else,” Kari Ellison says.
“Someone else?” Amanda asks. “I was poached?”
I try to come up with something about the grand tradition of bringing the best talent on board from wherever we can, but Carlos speaks before I can.
“Well, yeah,” he says with a laugh. “I thought that was pretty obvious. Feel complimented!”
Amazingly, that seems to settle Amanda, as well as Tessa, who looked a little twitchy for a moment.
It takes at least twenty minutes, and the board never fills the way it did in my fantasy, but we eventually have a few ideas. I’m about to take a vote to see which we should try first when a freshman’s hand shoots into the air.
“Um, Julia? Jules? Are you going out with Alex Powell? Because even though he’s on TALON, I’m sure people would read an interview with him, and…” Her voice trails off as she notices Carlos, Thatcher, and me staring daggers at her. I know it’s not professional to stare daggers at an underling, but it must be more than marginally better than crying.
“I’m not going out with Alex Powell,” I say. “For the record. For everyone’s records.”
“People do want to read about him, though,” Marisa says. “Maybe someone could still interview him? Everyone says he’s nice.”
“He isn’t nice,” I say. “He’s part of TALON. He’s the enemy. We aren’t interviewing him.”
“Maybe not an interview,” Carlos says. “Maybe some dirt. Why’s he here? What’s he been up to? Why isn’t he famous anymore? Investigative journalism at its finest.”
“You’re the layout editor,” I say.
“I’m part of the Crest revolution,” he says with a grin.
“Hey,” Thatcher says. “I’m friends with the guy. I know he’s the enemy as far as the Crest is concerned, but… let’s focus somewhere besides Powell. Okay?”
“Unless there is dirt,” I find myself saying. If Alex could betray me so easily, if he could say things just because he knew I wanted to hear them, what else is he capable of? We should all be prepared.
After we vote on which idea we’ll take to Mr. Wheeler tomorrow, people start slowly filing out. The carless’s parents pull up outside to pick them up. I transfer the whiteboard’s list to my red notebook while Thatcher helps Carlos clean up.
“Hey, um,” I say as Thatcher walks back into the living room from the kitchen. “I know he’s your friend. Sorry if that was…”
Thatcher shrugs. “Can’t imagine there’s actual dirt on Powell. And I’m sorry for whatever happened, so if you need to let the freshman go on some Chaos 4 All scavenger hunt, be my guest. You need help out to your car?”
“I’m fine; the whiteboard’s collapsible, and it came with its own carrying case,” I say, and I realize I’m far too enthusiastic about the whiteboard and its capabilities, so I wave good-bye to him and Carlos and take off.
Once I’m home I help Mom with eggplant parmigiana, though Darcy ends up working too late to eat with us. I’ve never kept secrets from my parents before, but I think they’re far too enamored with Mr. Wheeler to support our revolution. Also, perhaps, revolution is too strong a word for extra newspaper meetings off-campus that just seem like regular newspaper meetings minus Mr. Wheeler and plus fruits and pastries.
Mr. Wheeler, amazingly, likes our guest column idea, and so we have enough time to complete a column introducing the idea and calling for submissions for the next issue of the Crest. When we hand the papers out the next Monday, it’s something to tell people as they walk by, and it turns out Marisa is right. People love even the thought of seeing their own face in black and white. We had a smaller number of issues printed this week, sure, but we hand out almost every single one.
“I feel like I never see you.”
I nearly drop my books at the sound of Sadie’s voice as I head out of Mr. Wheeler’s classroom. “You scared me. And I always spend Monday lunches with the newspaper staff.”
“Mondays, sure, but we didn’t do anything this weekend, and you didn’t even respond to my text on Friday about potential color ideas.” Sadie gestures to her electric-blue hair, which is the brightest it’s been in a while. “And you haven’t said anything about this. Is it bad? Do I look like a Smurf?”
“Smurfs have blue skin, not blue hair,” I say. “So, no. Sorry. There’s just so much going on with the Crest, and I did a bunch of practice SAT sessions and started on my second draft of my admissions essay.”
“When you’re running the world someday, you’ll never have time for me,” Sadie says.
“By then you won’t care,” I say, which makes her eyes widen. But in the future, where will Sadie end up? Somewhere much cooler than me, that’s for sure. Right now I’m fairly certain our friendship completes each other, but will it be the same when we’re adults? “I didn’t mean anything bad.”
“There aren’t really any good ways to take that,” she says. “Dork. What are you doing tonight? I demand we hang out.”
“Homework,” I say.
“We all have homework. You can come over to my house or me to yours, your choice. Or something cooler, like—”
“I have no choice in this, do I?”
“None!” She grins at me before taking off down the hallway. “See you in American lit!”
Something cooler turns out to be a bar on York that doesn’t card because they also serve food, so I guess we can technically be inside. Everyone there is in black or denim or leopard print, and every girl besides us seems to have blunt bangs and perfect red lipstick. Sadie stands out because even in the dim light her hair practically glows, and I stand out because I’m wearing navy and pale blue with my blond hair back in a ponytail tied at the height the Internet deems most professional.
“I need my mom to go back to work,” she says, playing with the cherry she’d requested for her Diet Coke. It semi-looks like a cocktail now, or at least it did before she started playing with it. “She’s home all the time. It’s killing my mojo.”
“What do you need your mojo for?” I ask.
“Stop being so literal. You know what I mean! There’s just always someone around, and she’s so up in my business.”
I laugh. “That’s just what moms do. I should know; I’m a mom expert.”
“Having two moms doesn’t make you a mom expert!”
“Actually, I think it does.”
“Yours aren’t always making up for lost time. The great Paige Sheraton has to prove she loves me even though she worked insane hours for three months.”
“Darcy’s a lawyer. That’s exactly what it’s like. Sometimes after a big case she asks to check my homework, so that she’s familiar with my academic life.” I force Sadie to make direct eye contact with me. “She actually says the part about familiarizing herself w
ith my academic life, you realize.”
“I need this year to start figuring out my life,” Sadie says. “I’m not like you, you realize. I don’t have a ten-year plan.”
“I have a five-year plan,” I say. “Not a ten-year one. Not yet.”
“Jules, come on. Do you know how hard it is to figure out what you want to do when Paige Sheraton is around, being all larger than life? Suddenly I can’t tell her ideas from my own.”
“I really think that’s just a mom thing,” I say.
“You’re terrible at this,” she says as a waiter sets down her burger and my salad. “Can’t I have some sympathy?”
“I’m sorry, miss, what did you need?” the waiter asks, and we both burst into laughter.
“Sorry, nothing from you,” Sadie says through giggles, and the waiter takes off. “What do you think he would have done if I’d actually asked him for some sympathy?”
I smile at her. “Now I’m a little sad you didn’t.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We fly through our newspaper meeting the next afternoon. When we reconvene at Carlos’s, it’s so automatic that it’s almost as if we’ve been having double meetings since the beginning of time. In Mr. Wheeler’s classroom, he and I are the only ones who stand and address the room, but in Carlos’s living room it’s me plus Carlos and Thatcher. If Mr. Wheeler had asked me to split editor duties, I’m not sure how I would have managed to agree, but here it just happened. I’ve decided not to fight it.
“I have an idea that’ll blow everyone’s minds,” says a freshman, which is a pretty bold move for someone who just started. He takes a moment to, I guess, build anticipation. I must admit it works a little. “What if one of us quits and joins TALON?”
“That’s what’s happening anyway!” I say. “How is that good?”
“No,” Thatcher says. “Like a secret agent.”
“Exactly,” the freshman says. “I’ll do it. I volunteer.”
“No offense,” Carlos says, very gently, “but maybe someone else should be the secret agent.”
“Don’t I seem like I can be secretive?” the freshman asks. “I’ve seen all the James Bond movies.”
“You’re a freshman,” I say. “Why would TALON want you? We need a better draw than a freshman with no résumé outside of 007 knowledge.”
“Ouch,” “Burn,” and “Shiiiiiit” are the only three things that I hear chorusing around the room.
“I’ll do it,” Marisa says. “I know Natalie wanted me to join.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“She asked me,” she says.
“Wait, you knew about TALON? Before it happened? Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It didn’t sound like a big deal,” she says. “And I like the Crest, and I’m hoping I’ll—anyway. I didn’t know much about TALON because I wasn’t interested in joining. I wasn’t keeping anything from anyone.”
“Okay,” I say. “Join TALON.”
“Are you mad?” she asks.
The room murmurs a bunch of noes, most audibly from Carlos and Thatcher. But I know my face lets me down. I’m not sure if it’s tradition for the graduating editor to recommend next year’s to Mr. Wheeler, but I hope that it is, and I’d been planning on recommending Marisa.
After the meeting’s over, I ask Carlos and Thatcher if they want to brainstorm further, but Thatcher’s meeting up with Em, and Carlos is seeing a movie with non-Crest friends. As I’m driving home I think I might miss Alex, but that doesn’t make any sense. He was only a week and a half of my life, and how does anything that happens in a week and a half make enough of an impression on your life to feel it after it’s gone?
Marisa’s at my locker when I get to school the next morning.
“I know you hate me,” she says. “And I don’t blame you.”
“I don’t hate you,” I say. “I was just surprised.”
“I didn’t connect anything,” she says. “Natalie didn’t give very many details.”
“You’re a very good journalist,” I say. “So actually that’s hard for me to believe.”
“I take this seriously too.” Marisa stares at me. She’s only five-foot-even, but it feels like we’re making level eye contact. “I wouldn’t jeopardize the Crest, and honestly it pisses me off that you think I would. You’re not the only one who cares, Jules.”
“I never said that I am.”
“Anyway,” she says. “I talked to Natalie this morning, and she said she has to think about it and see what positions are still open.”
“Did you say why you were leaving the Crest?” I ask. “We should have come up with a cover story for you yesterday.”
“I could handle my own cover story, Jules. I’m a junior, not a freshman,” she says. “I told her I care about new media. I’ll let you know what happens. Okay?”
“Okay. See you in fourth period,” I say. “I’m really not mad.”
“You really are,” she says. “I get it. I’m sure it sucked that almost half the staff followed Natalie.”
Obviously, I’ve known that was true, but it isn’t a great thing to hear aloud. Of course I’ve never been popular, but Eagle Vista isn’t the sort of school with jocks and preps and the other divisions that Sadie and I feared based on the movies we watched in middle school. It’s never mattered that I don’t have legions of admirers, but I guess that if I did, TALON might have gone down differently. Who would leave someone they loved?
“Do you know if she asked all of them?” I ask. There’s comfort in knowing people did choose me, or at least chose tradition and honor. “The way she asked you?”
Marisa sighs. “How would I know?”
It hits me that even though I’ve seen her work her butt off for the Crest, I don’t know Marisa well enough to realize she could be so annoyed at dealing with this. With me.
She walks off before I can say anything else, which is possibly for the best because I might actually be mad at her. I feel something, at least, and it’s not just that people wanted to stop working with me—or at least didn’t mind. What if I could have seen TALON coming? Why does it feel like someone could have warned me about the way my year would go, but no one thought it mattered enough to tell me?
My friends show up, and everyone’s in such good moods even though it’s morning. Sadie has a whole bag of scones that she’s sharing—I guess Paige still isn’t filming anything—but I have no appetite, even upon hearing that they have a Meyer lemon glaze. Sadie and Em have the senior year ahead of them that they’d expected. Neither of them have to save a legacy, practically single-handedly.
With a broken heart.
I’m on my way to lunch later when Natalie walks right up to me.
“Julia,” she says. “Do you think that I’m an idiot?”
“No,” I say. “Of course not. Your grades are very good.”
“Why would Marisa, who had zero interest in TALON mere weeks ago, suddenly be interested in joining?” she asks with a smirk.
“She cares about new media,” I say quickly.
“I saw you two talking earlier,” she says. “And as if the only viable candidate for editor next year would move over to TALON.”
“You were a viable candidate,” I say. “For this year. And you moved over.”
“I didn’t ‘move over,’ Julia,” she says. “I founded TALON.
And, anyway, everyone knew you would have pushed your way into that position no matter what, so what was I sticking around for?”
“Who’s everyone?” I ask as I realize that maybe I don’t want to know.
Natalie smiles as she crosses her arms. “I’ll let Marisa know that her less-than-punctual application to TALON has been declined. Good luck with the Crest, Julia.”
“Good luck with the downfall of respectable journalism,” I say. “I’m sure it’s exciting being a part of that.”
I walk to the cafeteria and sit down at the table even though of course Alex is there. Everyone seems to be talking
about a video going around of a baby falling over a cat. I’m in no mood to pull it up on my phone, or even to exert the effort to look at it on Justin’s phone. A baby falling over a cat feels like a metaphor for my whole life right now.
“Ugh,” Sadie says. “I’m already sick of all our lunch options.”
“Live every day like it’s Taco Day,” Justin says. “Because soon it will be again.”
“I don’t think it works like that,” Em says to him.
“They should let us pick the options,” Sadie says. “At least sometimes.”
“Oh,” I say, and I realize from everyone’s expressions that I say it loudly. Too loudly. But epiphanies are hard to keep to oneself.
Even an epiphany about lunch specials.
As I start scribbling into my red notebook, I feel eyes on me. Well, everyone is watching me, but I feel specific eyes on me. Alex’s gaze is distinctive; I wonder if it always will be.
“Voting for lunch is a good idea,” Alex says.
“I don’t need your approval,” I say as I’m figuring out who we’d have to ask. Is it someone in the cafeteria or much higher up in administration? Would it be a limited choice between existing options or could we ask for more adventurous meals? Maybe we could get local food vendors and restaurants involved.
“Of course not,” Alex says. “Whoever pulls it off first would have a lot of people’s approval.”
His words are a lightning bolt down the center of my heart. TALON is the enemy, obviously, and therefore Alex is the enemy. But never before has Alex acted so… TALON.
“It’s my idea,” I say.
“You didn’t even say it out loud,” he says. “You said ‘Oh,’ really loud, and that was it. I could have come up with it too. Clearly, I did come up with it too.”
The rest of the lunch table is watching us closely, looking back and forth like we’re the most ridiculously over-the-top couple fighting through half of a Bachelor in Paradise episode.
I gather my things, because I’m sure Mr. Wheeler is in his office. But Alex gets out his phone and texts casually. I remember when I was the one getting his casually sent lunchtime texts. Are there girls on TALON he thinks are cute? If he liked me because I cared about things, what must he think of Natalie? How could he not like Natalie?