The office smelled like bread, and the air was humid and sticky. It didn’t help that the space was so small. The cubicles were packed tightly together, hardly giving the reporters room to breathe. Creaky fans lifted papers on desks and offered little relief. Jason sat at the sports desk, spotting sweat from his glistening forehead with a folded-up napkin from Stonebury House of Pizza. It was Friday, take-out day, and five greasy cardboard boxes were stacked on top of one another beside the copier. Jason gave me a weak wave as I passed by his desk on my way back to the office from a fund-raiser at the library.
“It’s so cold in here,” he said. “I keep forgetting my sweater.”
I laughed. “AC broke again?”
“Now I know why you’re a journalist. Your deductive reasoning powers are astounding.”
I messed up his pile of neat papers before I continued toward the back window where my cube was. I dropped my bag to the floor and booted up my computer. My friend Gillian was in the cube directly across from mine, picking at a slice of pepperoni, pressing the phone to her ear. She turned to smile at me, promptly dropping a piece of meat smack dab in the middle of her electric blue tunic. She waved her hands manically, searching for a napkin, while at the same time, saying very calmly into the phone, “That really is a fascinating story. I can’t wait until our readers get the chance to hear more of what you have to say.”
I turned in my seat, snickering. She said the same thing to nearly everyone she interviewed. We learned quickly how much more people talked after they’d gotten their egos stroked a bit.
Every time I came to work, I compared our cubes. Hers looked like a page out of a Staples/Pottery Barn hybrid catalog—mason jars with brightly colored paper clips, Post-it notes in the shape of flowers, journals with inspirational quotes on the cover. Her partition was covered in personal pictures of family barbeques and drooling babies. I’d always considered my style as organized and minimalistic, but next to hers, it just seemed boring.
As soon as she hung up, Gillian let out a load groan. “Mother of pearl, my new shirt.”
“Here.” I always kept a Tide-to-Go pen in my desk for emergencies.
“Thank you.” She dabbed at the spot. From her first day at the Gazette, when she spilled Chinese food all over her silk pants during her welcome lunch, I’d been telling her that she shouldn’t eat without a smock.
We were both twenty-two—I’d be twenty-three in August and Gillian in November—but she’d started to feel like the little sister I never had. She was long-legged and completely ungraceful, constantly bumping into things—she hit her head on the coffee cabinet after forgetting to close it, drawing blood—and on an interview with the county sheriff, she kept calling him Bob. His name was John.
She returned the stick. “What would I do without you?”
“You’d definitely have more stains on your clothing,” I said.
“True. Hey, guess what.” She wheeled her chair into my cube. “My page is up to five hundred likes!”
When she first started at the paper, we’d gotten into the habit of walking over to the coffee shop for lunch. It was there that, over turkey sandwiches and tea, she’d told me about her secret pastime. Getting it out of her was like fishing a compliment out of Amber.
“It’s okay,” I’d said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“No, it’s not like, something illegal or porn or anything.” Across from us, a woman with a little girl glared in Gillian’s direction. She’d whispered, “I write fan fic.”
I stared at her. “What’s that?” And why was I whispering?
“It’s like, people write their own stories based on characters in TV shows and stuff. Do you watch American Werewolves? It’s on SyFy.”
“I don’t have cable.”
Her eyes had grown wide, as if I said I didn’t have a bathroom.
“Oh. Well, have you seen Hospitals & Housewives?”
That one did sound familiar. “It’s on Thursday nights? With that really good-looking guy with the New Zealand accent?”
“Yes! I wrote about both of those. Together.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can do that in fan fic,” she said. “Like a hybrid. I write paranormal romance, in the subgenre of supernatural doctors.”
I had absolutely no idea what to say to that. She said she’d send me the link to her website, where she wrote under a pen name. I’d been scared to click on it—what if my new friend was some sort of deviant? But it was actually really good. I read two more chapters. The story was funny, like her. Irreverent and sexy, two werewolf doctors in love.
Gillian was a fantastic writer. Too good for the Stonebury Gazette, that was for sure.
“So I was thinking,” she said now, and we both ignored her phone when it started to ring, “I want to add some pics to my site, to go with each story. Maybe you could draw some for me?”
I hadn’t drawn much since the art classes I’d taken in college, but a new project could be fun. Maybe it would help to take my mind off things. I hadn’t thought about much more than Jack or high school in the few days. “Sure.”
Gillian wooted loudly, and Magda from Sales shot us a disapproving look. Gillian smiled sweetly at her, then turned back to me. “All right, ready for our meeting?”
I’d almost forgotten. Our boss, Hilary, had sent us a meeting planner from her phone early this morning with the ominous subject line Catch-up. We grabbed our notebooks and started down the hall. Hilary was sitting at her desk, typing an email, not looking over at us. We stood in her doorway awkwardly. I never knew quite what to do in this situation. Walk in and take a seat? Wait until she invited us?
“Well, don’t just stand there, ladies,” Hilary said. She finally removed her eyes from the computer screen and picked up a pen, still not looking at us.
Gillian and I hurried inside her office and took our seats. Hilary had thrown her blazer over the back of my chair, and I tried to maneuver myself around it. She wore a white tank top and held her hair back from her face with one hand as she marked up the edge of a proof with the other. I tried not to gasp when she lifted her head and I saw her face. When she smiled, there were no lines. In fact, there were no lines anywhere on her sixty-two-year-old face. And her lips looked weird. Unbelievable. Today was her first day back from a week vacation, supposedly to New York to visit her sister. A detour to the doctor’s office was more likely. The town’s obsession with plastic had reached the one woman I looked up to.
“Okay, I won’t keep you long.” A bubble of sweat was caught between her eyebrows, but she didn’t make a move to wipe it away. Maybe she couldn’t feel it. “I actually have some very exciting news.”
I sat up straighter in my chair and felt Gillian doing the same next to me. Exciting news was hard to come by around here. Maybe we were getting a raise! Yeah, probably not that. I’d heard recently that the president was going to be touring a fishery in the area—maybe we’d be covering that.
Hilary clasped her hands together and leaned across the desk. “Have the two of you heard of Jack Moreland?”
I couldn’t speak, but it didn’t matter; Gillian was making enough noise for the both of us.
She shrieked. “What? Yes! I know him, of course I know him. Who doesn’t?”
Hilary seemed pleased. “Well, you see, I got a call from his manager last night. They’re going to be doing a photo shoot at Stonebury High School. You know, publicity for his album.”
Gillian nodded furiously. “That makes total sense. The whole album is about this relationship he had in high school. Oh my god, Jack Moreland is coming here!”
I tried to smile while Gillian danced—quite unprofessionally, I might add—in her seat. A pressure rose slowly in my chest as I waited for Hilary to continue.
“Yes, he is. And his agent wants us to cover the shoot, do a little interview with him. Since we are the local paper and all.” Hilary sounded extremely proud. “Gillian will do the interview. Natalie, you’ll take th
e pictures.”
Five little words I normally loved to hear sounded more like, Natalie, how do you prefer to die? There was no way I could face him again. Not now, when I knew for sure exactly how he felt about me. The years had not softened him toward me. Obviously. I couldn’t bear to see him look at me the way he did the last time I saw him. That really might kill me. I curled my fingers around the handles of my chair and watched my knuckles go white.
Gillian was having a decidedly different reaction. “Oh, man.” She fanned herself with her notebook. “I think I might pass out.”
Hilary turned to me. “I thought you’d be more excited.”
“Me?” As if there was anyone else in the room.
“I was doing a little research and see that you and Jack were in the same graduating class. Stonebury High School, class of 2009.”
“What?” Gillian stared at me.
“Oh yeah, we were,” I said casually.
“Omigod!” Gillian grabbed my hand. “Do you have any idea who he’s singing about? Supposedly, it’s a girl from high school, from right here in Stonebury.”
I shook my head. It was taking all of my energy to remain calm. “No, I don’t even really know anything about him or the song,” I heard myself say.
“But you knew him,” Gillian probed.
“Well, I knew who he was, but I didn’t really know him. I mean I knew him, but I didn’t really know him…”
“I’m sure he’d like to see a familiar face,” Hilary said. “So I thought you could help Gillian with the interview. Try to get him to talk about the inspiration behind his album. A little investigative reporting.” Hilary’s eyes were gleaming with hope, as if I was her ticket to the New York Times or something.
It took me a minute to find my words, because all I could hear in my head were the last ones Jack ever spoke to me. I don’t want to see you again. My head started throbbing. “Well, I don’t think it would be a good…I mean, like I said, I didn’t really know him, and I don’t think I would be the, uh, right person to—”
“Don’t worry about that,” Gillian interrupted. Her excitement made her impatient. “I’ll tell you all about him. Holy mother of pearl, he’s hot. And it’s not just that. It’s the music. It’s incredible. It tells the whole story of this girl who, at first, he thinks is really snobby, but then once he gets to know her, he falls for her. But then, he realizes how she’s really not a good person. She lies all the time and then ditches him right after prom. Ah, it’s so good!”
Gillian babbled for a while longer, Hilary patiently nodding with her. I did my best to follow along, but it was hard to hear with my heart beating so loudly, thumping along like a drum. I did, however, hear what Hilary had to say before dismissing us from her office. That we were to arrive at Stonebury High School promptly at three o’clock on June eighteenth. Next Wednesday.
…
MuchMusic Magazine Interview
Jack Moreland is More than Good Enough
In today’s world of throw-away pop hits, songs with spunk but no soul, bounce but no bite, Jack Moreland is a badly needed infusion of both. The first single from his debut platinum album, Good Enough, has been on the Top Forty Billboard Charts for weeks, and this week, it has risen to number three on the list. We caught up with the New Yorker to discuss his newfound fame and the truth about the inspiration behind what seems to be the autobiographical nature of his stunning debut.
MuchMusic: To the rest of us, your success appears to have happened overnight.
Jack Moreland: Yeah, not at all. I’ve been playing music as long as I can remember. I came to New York right after high school. So, overnight is really more like five years.
MM: Still, you’re only twenty-two. That’s very young for such a mature-sounding record.
JM: Well, I’ve been doing this my whole life, so I guess I don’t see it that way.
MM: Were you surprised by how quickly audiences embraced your first single?
JM: I really had no expectations about that kind of thing. I’ve been playing at bars for twenty people. If they dig it, I’m happy. I can only make the music that speaks to me. If it speaks to others, too, that’s fantastic. But that’s not my main goal.
MM: What is your main goal?
JM: Honesty.
MM: Well, it appears as if you’ve succeeded with that. This album sounds like a confessional, as if you’ve taken the pages of a journal written in high school and turned them into songs. It seems to chronicle a relationship gone wrong. How much of these songs are autobiographical?
JM: I definitely drew some inspiration from high school for this record. Not just things that happened to me, but things I’d seen happen to other people. All the bullshit that goes on, you know, at that time in your life.
MM: Some people are calling you the male Taylor Swift.
JM: (Laughing) That’s a compliment. I’ll take that.
MM: Well, you’ve made us believe. We were worried you were still heartbroken over some old high school girlfriend.
JM: No, I’m fine. But thank you everyone, for your concern.
MM: One more question about high school, and then I swear, we’ll move on. Your band back then, The Kerouacs. They had a fairly large following. Were you inspired by Jack Kerouac?
JM: Oh, definitely. I didn’t go anywhere without On the Road when I was a kid. He had such a spirit of adventure, and that was what I wanted to embody in my songs and in real life. Naming the band The Kerouacs was one of my biggest accomplishments back then (laughs).
MM: What are your plans now?
JM: To keep making music. The success of this album has guaranteed I’ll have at least one more chance to do it again, and for that, I’m so grateful. I’ve been writing like crazy. I can’t wait to get back into the studio.
MM: How has this record changed your life?
JM: It’s made it possible for me to do what I love without having to collect garbage on the side.
MM: That was your day job?
JM: One of them, yeah.
MM: This seems like a lot more fun.
JM: Yeah, man. A hell of a lot more fun.
Amber finished reading the interview to us, closed the magazine, and pushed it back toward the center of the table. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, hitting me in the face with it. It was hard to focus on the last few lines of the interview when all I could think about was him claiming that he’d been the one to come up with the name The Kerouacs.
“The male Taylor Swift? Oh, please. Like that’s what everybody’s dying for, a male version of her.” Amber rolled her eyes.
Who was she kidding? She loved Taylor Swift. We all did.
“He’s more likely to be a one-hit wonder,” Amber said.
Lori laughed. “Like that ‘Gangnam Style’ guy. What ever happened to him?”
“Exactly,” Amber said.
My friends could not be comparing “Good Enough” to “Gangnam Style”…but they were.
Amber was continuing. “I think it’s sad, the way he’s trying to use our hometown for publicity. When he was here, he was like a non-entity, and now all this garbage about coming back to his hometown, blah blah blah. Please.”
My chest burned as she spoke, everything I wanted to say to her stuffed inside of me. A non-entity to her, maybe, because he wasn’t rich, wasn’t on the basketball team, didn’t bow down to her. She didn’t know how smart he was, how much he genuinely cared about his friends. She didn’t know the things he dealt with at home or how it felt to be kissed by him. She’d never even heard him sing.
“I’m doing the interview with him for the paper,” I blurted out. The interview was only a few days away, but up until now, I hadn’t said anything. I’d tried to avoid the subject of him entirely, but with the entire town buzzing about the news, I figured he’d end up being the topic of conversation eventually. There was even a life-size cardboard cutout of him on the sidewalk outside of the bookstore where they’d gotten another shipment of CDs and sold ou
t of those. Even with all the excitement about him floating around town, my friends refused to think of him as anyone other than Jack Moreland and his Traveling Guitar.
“That’s kind of cool,” Sarah said.
“Are you going to get the scoop?” Lori asked, obviously envious.
Amber rolled her eyes. “Oh please. I can’t believe I’m the only one who sees this. The whole thing about the mysterious high school girlfriend is all fake. A publicity stunt. That’s why he won’t come out and say who it is, because she doesn’t exist. None of the girls would’ve touched him!”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Lori said. She nodded, her hoop earring swinging. “That makes so much sense, that has to be—”
“How do you know?” I interrupted, sick of the constant agreement. No one ever dared to contradict Amber. The three of them looked at me, but I looked only at Amber.
“Well, it was pretty obvious,” she said.
“To us, maybe. But I’m sure he had a whole life going on that none of us knew about. Obviously.”
Across from me, Sarah poured creamer into her coffee. I thought maybe she’d be the one to say something—the bashing was getting ridiculous, really—but her mouth stayed closed.
Amber started to laugh. “Jeez. Sorry. I didn’t realize you cared so much.”
That was my cue to sit back, agree with her, laugh at myself for being so overly sensitive. Instead, I narrowed my eyes. “It’s not a matter of caring. It’s a matter of him being a person. Who are we to say what did and didn’t happen to him?”
Lori and Sarah were so silent I could hear the girl at the counter placing her order. I’d never expect Lori to come to my defense, but Sarah…
Amber stared at me, her expression unreadable. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. I sat there, too, like we were kids trying to win the who-blinks-first game. She tilted her head slightly to the side, still watching me, and my heart began to race with the thought that she’d figured it out. None of Jack’s songs contained obvious references to me, but they were there if you listened closely enough: dimples that disarmed me, for instance, was part of the chorus of “Café Nights.” Dark hair, curves, being studious, all these things made appearances throughout. There was even a sly reference to the seagull on our cheerleading uniforms—I pass the time bird-watching—in “Wanting.” Nothing that someone who hadn’t been there would be able to figure out. But my friends, if they deigned to listen to the album, should have been able to put the puzzle pieces together. Amber would have been the likeliest, because she was the smartest and the most suspicious. But I knew none of them would, because the idea of Jack and me together would never, ever even cross their minds.
The Mean Girl Apologies Page 5
