Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies

by Laura Stampler

  Jamie raises her hand.

  McKayla shakes her head, features sharp as a knife. “I’m going to be honest. I have no interest in any of you. I’m interested in your work. You’re here to complete research for whoever tells you they need it, whenever they say they need it, and to write whatever I tell you to write. I don’t want Shakespeare, I want edgy. I want stories that go viral, that people click on. I want thousands and thousands of clicks. If you aren’t prepared for that, leave. But if you are, and if you do it well, you’ll be rewarded. Or at least one of you will be. In a way that Shift has never rewarded an intern before.”

  Jamie raises her hand again.

  “Seriously?”

  Jamie drops her hand.

  “As I was saying. The reward.” We all sit forward, and McKayla suddenly beams, relishing her captive audience. “I’ll be watching your stories all summer, and the intern who writes the pieces that get the most clicks will get rewarded not just online but in print. I’ve decided to reserve a two-page spread in the magazine to profile our most successful Shift Girl. Not only will you star in a photo shoot, complete with hair and makeup, but you’ll be featured as our ‘Teen Journalist to Watch.’ ”

  The interns let out a collective, quick gasp. Afraid to make too much noise.

  “And this won’t go in just any magazine issue. It’s going in our September issue. Back-to-School High Fashion is even bigger than May Prom. Millions of people are going to read it. The winner will be revealed in August, at the end of the internship. But you want this. The prestige of becoming the face of the future of journalism will open up more doors than you can imagine. It will impress everyone: your parents, your teachers, your future employers, who, if you play your cards right, could be us.”

  That.

  I want that.

  And I’m not going to let a few negligible deficits like no knowledge, experience, or edgy personal stories in my supposed area of expertise keep me from getting it.

  “Internships here aren’t for the faint of heart. We strive for excellence even from the lowest rung on the ladder, which you all are, so get ready to be on your A game at all times.” McKayla stops her lecture abruptly. What was finally a cool smile has transformed back to a grimace on a dime. “Why are none of you writing this down?”

  Our silence is broken as the interns crinkle through their bags to get out their notebooks. Jamie click-click-clicks and shakes a ballpoint pen, coaxing ink out of the tip. I can’t help but smile. If this is our first test, I’m going to pass. I always have my black Moleskine on me. Every good journalist carries something to write on. But when I reach into my bag, I don’t feel its smooth-to-the-touch cover. It’s not like my keys, which always swim away from my fingertips like a goldfish. The Moleskine isn’t small. It has nowhere to hide.

  “How am I supposed to take you seriously if you don’t come prepared?” McKayla says to me and me alone. Everyone else is scribbling away. “First impressions are everything. And you—which one are you?” She looks at my name tag. “And you, Harper, are . . . nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “And don’t say sorry. Shift Girls are not sorry. Haven’t I told you this already?”

  I feel my chest flush as my mind races. That notebook, which I definitely put in my bag this morning, contains almost all the physical evidence of my personal writing. This is not happening.

  “Oh no, you’re not about to cry are you?” McKayla says.

  “No, I . . .”

  “This is your one pass. Grab a notebook from the supply closet on your way out and be sure to have it with you at all times, because I won’t be so nice next time.”

  “I have extras if Harper needs one,” Gigi says, sporting a smug smile as she holds up a four-pack of long reporter’s notebooks. “I always come prepared.”

  “Did you come prepared with a spare outfit in your Mary Poppins bag too?” McKayla’s eyes go from Gigi’s gigantic purse to her wrecked shirt, smacking the grin off Gigi’s face. “Listen, ladies, as representatives of the company, Shift Girls always have to look their best, in and out of the office. Don’t be the stain on the pristine Shift image.” She levels her gaze at Gigi. “You’re lucky your ID photo will be from the neck up.”

  “Actually, that wasn’t her fault—” I begin, before McKayla hushes me and puts up her hand.

  Gigi’s eyes burn into my head. She has graduated from side eye to full-on glare.

  McKayla looks down at her loose, gold watch, which hangs off her thin wrist like an oversize bracelet. Must be time for Taylor and Karlie. We’re scooted out of her office with the promise that her assistant will set up one-on-one meetings for each of us with McKayla this week to go over specifics for what we’ll bring to the site this summer. “If you last the summer.”

  The treadmill desk lady is now lightly jogging as she yells at someone on the phone, but after that meeting, I think we’re sweating more than she is.

  What have I gotten myself into?

  6

  “DID YOU OWN IT? BECAUSE you look like you owned it. Your outfit’s on point.”

  I FaceTime Kristina the second I step out of the Bosh Building’s rotating doors.

  “My outfit might be on point, but I wasn’t,” I reply, sitting on the fountain’s ledge, speaking quietly into my headphones’ mic in case anyone from Shift passes by.

  I tell her that the other interns hate me, the boss hates me, and I kept doing that thing where I get nervous and blabber a lot, followed by that thing where I get nervous and fall into complete silence.

  “And to top it off, I was at peak klutzy mode.”

  “Like, lovable leading lady in the first quarter of a romantic comedy clumsy?”

  “Like, worse than sixth grade volleyball clumsy.”

  “Ouch.” Kristina pulls off her hairnet to let her scalp breathe, causing her blond hair to cascade across her purple Skinny B’s work shirt. She took a break as soon as I called.

  “Things will get better,” she says. “Especially when you start writing. Any word on what you’ll be doing there yet?”

  I could divert the conversation. I could just talk about how I have the chance to have my face in Shift freaking magazine, which I need to tell her anyway. But I want to be honest.

  And so I say, almost in a whisper, “Dating.”

  Kristina is silent.

  “I’m going to write about dating,” I say louder. “I’m Shift’s new dating expert.”

  And then Kristina bursts out laughing. The power of her giggle fit makes the camera phone shake back and forth. I even hear a snort.

  “Kristina, stop it!” (She doesn’t stop.) “I’m serious. They picked me to be their summer teen dating blogger. Like, the resident expert of summer flings.”

  “Wait, you weren’t joking?” Her head pops back in the camera’s frame. Kristina puts on her concentrating face. “Sorry, I thought . . . um . . . how did that happen exactly?”

  “I don’t know.” Okay, so I want to be honest-ish, but it isn’t quite working. “I think it was a random-selection thing? And no one else was interested?”

  The improvised words come spinning out of my mouth with surprising ease.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh.” Kristina is still laughing, but at least she’s trying to cover it up. “It’s just, well, don’t you need to date in order to be the dating blogger?”

  “I’ve been on a date,” I say defensively. But then I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach. The sides of my mouth fall as I remember.

  Apocalypse Homecoming.

  Homecoming’s the biggest event on Castalia High’s social calendar. Limos are rented, dresses are long, and hairdos are highly flammable.

  Every year, Kristina insisted we go as friends; lots of girls did this.

  She said it was because she didn’t want to commit to just one guy in advance when who knows how she’d be feeling come dance night. But we both knew that she swatted down offers left and right while absolutely no guys
were buzzing around me. We just didn’t talk about it.

  Which was fine until she announced that she got us both dates.

  “Shane Barrett for me, Dave Ulman for you,” she said. “Unless you wanna swap. I don’t care, they’ll both look good in pictures.”

  “You’re tall,” I said. “Basketball players will make me look like a munchkin. Besides, he’s so not my type.”

  “Picky, picky! Kinda unfair to judge Dave before you give him a chance.”

  All right, so my personal taste skews toward an imaginary skinny jean wearer with a J. D. Salinger book in the back pocket (bonus points if it’s an obscure Salinger), and Dave only wore athletic shorts and dropped English after his junior year despite our guidance counselor’s dire predictions about what would happen to his college applications if basketball didn’t pan out. But, the list of Castalia hipster, book-loving guys of my dreams began and ended with Adam Lockler, who was otherwise engaged.

  But when Kristina went so far as to get my parents on board, telling me how great it would be to “give it a try, HunBun,” I relented. And since my mind is known to wander and write its own creative nonfiction, I let myself imagine an alternate reality of Dave Ulman and our coupledom. Maybe I’d have fun and even like Dave. Maybe he’d like me back. Maybe I’d teach him to give Salinger a shot and he’d get me to start liking basketball. Maybe I’d start making glitter signs for away games.

  So I let myself get excited for the limo and the long dress and the hair spray.

  Dave brought me a corsage, we took selfies, the whole shebang. Even though I was nervous, after Kristina dragged me to the bathroom (“I said I have to pee. Harper? HARPER, COME PEE WITH ME!”) so that she could tell me to get out of my head and also reapply my lip gloss, I actually started making eye contact with Dave and completing full sentences and being smiley and flirty and agreeing to dance.

  And then, by some miracle, before I knew it, we started to Dance Floor Make-Out. In public, on my tiptoes, under twinkle lights.

  It wasn’t my first kiss, but the one before almost felt like an accident. A random spin of the bottle. Kissing Dave Ulman was the first time it felt intentional. Real.

  The running dialogue in my head (which is always running) told me that things were actually going well. Very well.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. I feel stupid just remembering it.

  “You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Kristina says loudly into her phone speaker, yanking me back into reality. “We do not think about D-Bag Dull Man. We do not think of the guys who have embarrassed us.”

  “But don’t you ever think of—”

  “Nope,” she snaps definitively. “I’m over it. Forgot all about it. And so should you! Forget I questioned the dating blogger thing at all. This is awesome and exactly what we talked about at Bobby McKittrick’s party—he was the appetizer for your summer smorgasbord of going for it.”

  “I don’t know. At home . . .”

  “You aren’t home. Do you know how many cute guys probably live in New York? And they’re probably your malnourished, brainy type, too.” Kristina’s face gets really close to her phone screen and her eyes widen. “Like right there. You should just go up to that guy right there.”

  I turn and see him. Leaning against the reflective outside of the Bosh Building, reading a book. I squint and see it’s called Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche, that German philosopher my AP Euro teacher wouldn’t shut up about. He’s skinny in the way I like guys to be, with dark brown, almost black, hair. Something about his stance (slanted slightly to the right), his expression (slightly smug), his whole demeanor, emanates intellect and cool. Interesting and exciting. Adam Lockler on hipster steroids.

  He looks up from his book and I see how insanely green his eyes are, even from behind the lenses of his sexy, thick-framed glasses. We lock eyes for a second and I quickly avert my gaze, embarrassed to have been caught.

  “You should go up to him,” Kristina goads, smiling goofily through FaceTime. “Get this party started.”

  “Ha. Ha.” I emphasize each word so she knows how little I’m actually laughing.

  “Harper, it’s time you started to carpe that effing diem. You can date whoever and be whoever. You look the part. Act it.”

  “Carpe that effing diem,” I repeat. “Maybe. In fact, I might have to steal that phrase for one of my blogs.”

  “Replication is the highest form of flattery,” she says. I hope she means it.

  In the background, someone shouts at Kristina that she needs to get back to work. Water polo camp at the pool across the street just let out and the moms need their Kale Koladas.

  “No, wait!” I say when Kristina starts putting her hairnet back on. “Just give me a five-second update on your life before I lose you. What’s happening?”

  “Nothing much. My summer is morning swim training, afternoon Skinny B’s, and nighttime whatevers.”

  “What else?” I ask when she starts combing her hair behind her ears, her signature sign of distress.

  “My dad’s been calling,” she says. “He wants to see me.”

  Kristina hasn’t seen her dad since the wedding disaster—that he unfairly blames Kristina for. “How do you feel about that? Is he coming to California for work or something?”

  “Not quite.” Kristina shudders. “He wants me to go to him. To them in Connecticut.”

  “You must be joking.” As much as I would love for Kristina to take a trip east and save me, I know that’s not going to happen. She won’t even mention the stepmonster and stepbrother by name. “But at least your dad is reaching out. That’s kind of good, right? He’s gotta be missing you.”

  She doesn’t answer. Someone calls Kristina’s name again, and she flips her mouth back into a smile. “Okay, now I for real have to go. The blender awaits!”

  The screen goes dark before I have the chance to ask more.

  When I look back for the green-eyed Nietzsche reader Kristina spotted for me, he’s no longer leaning against the building but is following an important-looking man and his minions out of the building.

  I should have talked to him.

  Carpe that effing diem. But in baby steps.

  7

  I’M EXHAUSTED, AND NOT JUST because I bunk with a plump pug who suffers from severe sleep apnea—although Aunt Vee says the vet has recommendations to get Princess’s snoring under control.

  My first week in New York is a whirl of memorizing subway maps (I’ve either gotten off at the wrong stop or taken a train in the wrong direction every day); memorizing designer names (after the Hermès incident, Aunt Vee has decided to make me fashion flash cards: “I used to help your mother study too!”); and memorizing Shift rules so I can be the best intern McKayla has ever had.

  Most of our orientation with the office and staff is led by a member of the editorial team who has been at Shift the longest. But even though her hair is gray, the reporter’s face is really young. And not in a Botox-y way.

  “I love your granny hair,” says Brie, Beauty, during a training session where we tell random factoids about ourselves to get to know one another better. “So on trend.”

  Comparing your superior’s hair to your grandma’s should not be a compliment. But in the world of Shift, this geriatric dye job is clearly intentional, and apparently popular.

  “How long have you worked here?” Abigail asks.

  “Five years longer than McKayla,” Granny Hair says. “Since back in the day, when a person could write maybe one story a day. Under McKayla, make that more like six if you’re on the viral news team. And that’s not including when she’ll call you at two in the morning when she needs you to write about a newly trending topic. But I’ve survived since her takeover, so that’s something. It’s . . . uh . . . challenging.”

  “Six stories aren’t challenging for me!” Jamie says. “And viral’s the section where I have the best shot of getting a job here by the end of the summer.”

  And there’s the inter
esting factoid about overambitious Jamie. Even though she’s only nineteen, Jamie has already graduated from college and is gunning for full-time employment at Shift after her internship ends. She thinks that if she wins the magazine intern profile, they’ll have to hire her.

  My eyes go from girl to girl as I match them up to their “fun facts.”

  Brie is the social chair of her University of Texas sorority and an aspiring YouTube beauty vlogger, who has the ability to make anyone look like a totally different human being with contouring. (She showed us the videos.)

  Gigi is a rising high school senior like me but at a boarding school in Switzerland—“The French part. Obviously.” She’s half Filipina and half Nigerian, and has lived on every continent except Antarctica. She once owned a pet peacock.

  Abigail wants to be premed when she goes to college, but her parents made her take this internship after they bought it at her high school’s silent auction. (“Trenton Bosh’s kids went to Holland Prep too.”)

  Sun-Hi, who prefers going by Sunny (even though her face is in a perpetual frown), just finished her freshman year at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

  I can’t think of anything interesting to say, so I panic and tell everyone I’m the editor of my high school paper (lie) in California (true).

  “Where in California?” Granny Hair asks.

  “San Francisco.” (Lie. Why am I lying?)

  “Love SF,” Granny Hair says, and then thankfully moves on to show us the most important features of the office.

  My favorite spot by far is the Shift open kitchen.

  Stocked with free-flowing, complimentary food and drinks, the kitchen has exposed me to a whole new world of luxury organic snack foods I never knew existed, and has been a major enabler of my Diet Coke dependency. It also has a state-of-the-art seltzer machine that pours out bubbly water with specialized flavor combinations—the kumquat-lime is not to be messed with—and a regularly replenished up-for-grabs table filled with leftover lunches from meetings and pastries sent from public relations firms trying to get reporters to write positive stories about their clients via carbohydrate bribery. (“The calories don’t count if it was sent by a PR person, right?” people ask, staring longingly at rows of uneaten, designer brownies.)