by Meg Ripley
Eventually, she had stumbled off to bed, only to be awoken again by the same dream. She was in the woods, playing after a family picnic. Intrigued by the light and shadow of the sunlight falling through the branches, she had strayed down the path, even though her mother had told her not to. She couldn’t help it; Resa had to see what was there. Something exciting must be living in such a beautiful place. But there was the swoop of a wing, the flash of a tooth, and the deep bellow of a creature far more terrifying than she had ever expected. Though in reality she would have run, she never did in her dream. She stayed frozen, trying to turn her head to see the creature more fully. It always eluded her vision, never allowing more than a fleeting glimpse.
Awake well before her alarm went off, Resa sat up in bed and grabbed the notepad she kept by her nightstand. She wrote faster on the computer, but she wrote better with a pen. For the hundredth time, she tried to capture the way she felt when she saw that creature. It wasn’t just for her blog. It wasn’t just to justify her years of searching. It was going to become her novel, her big break that let her quit her day job and stay at home in her pajamas all day while she pawned off real stories as fantasy.
But once again, it wasn’t right. The words just didn’t do it justice. Resa ripped the sheet out of the notepad and crumpled it between her fingers, feeling the hard edges dig into her palms before she chucked it across the room. It missed the wastebasket and landed on the floor amongst other balls of paper, each of them holding her shameful attempts at fictionalizing reality.
Pushing off the heavy covers, Resa padded across her studio apartment and turned on the coffee pot, letting it brew while she took a quick shower and swiped on her makeup. By the time she was ready for breakfast, she was ready to write again. Her laptop waited for her on the dining table, ready to crank out more blog posts and rack up her views.
But there was a real job waiting for her, and she left the apartment an hour later. The massive skyscraper that housed The City Chronicle as well as numerous other businesses always felt ominous as she walked up to the front doors, tipping her head back to follow it up into the bright, late-summer sky. Resa had been so nervous when she had first come to interview at The Chronicle that she had thrown up in the scrubby bushes that rimmed the building. She still felt like doing it every day.
A small crowd had assembled in the elevator, and Resa joined them. She frowned when she noticed that Carmen Gray was there as well. She pulled out her phone and pretended to check her email.
But Carmen wasn’t giving up that easy. “Good morning, Resa,” she said in a singsong voice that dripped of distaste. “What are you working on today? Some little column for the back page about fairies in the park? Or is Mr. Stephenson just going to have you type up the obituaries today?” She batted her heavily lined eyes and smoothed her long, blonde tresses.
“Sorry, I’m just not interested in kissing ass all the way to the top,” Resa muttered. “Or is it sucking dick? I never did quite get all the details.” A few of the other people in the elevator turned to look, but they quickly turned their heads back toward the doors.
Carmen’s emerald eyes narrowed, but Resa’s comeback only fueled her anger. “That’s your problem, Resa. You never get all the details, and then you wonder why your byline is so tiny that even your mother can’t find it.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Resa said with a sigh. “It’s such a shame that I prefer to write the pieces I care about instead of just the ones I think will take me to the top. I hate that I’m so genuine.” The elevator doors opened, and she stepped off with a little wave to Carmen.
She hung a left and made a beeline for her cubicle. She was on time, but she wanted to get to her computer, get her assignments, and get back out of the office before she had to talk to anyone else. Resa threaded through the other cubicles, the sound of ringing phones and clacking keyboards surrounding her.
“Resa,” said a voice over her shoulder just as she sat down.
Too late. She turned to see an older woman frowning at her. Vickie had dark hair, heavily streaked with gray, and she was dressed in her usual, plain skirt suit. With her tight mouth, she was always frowning. It made most of the employees avoid her, and the fact that she was Mr. Stephenson’s personal secretary didn’t help. Resa knew, though, that she was actually one of the nicest people in the office. “Yes, Vickie?” Resa asked innocently.
Vickie’s dark eyes darted furtively across the top of the cubicle wall to the big office in the corner before looking back at her. “Mr. Stephenson said he wanted to see you as soon as you came in.”
“Did he say what he wanted?” Resa whispered. She hoped that he was going to give her a big assignment or a promotion, but she knew better.
The secretary pursed her lips even tighter as she shook her head and tapped the pencil in her hand on the edge of Resa’s desk. “I’m afraid not. At first, I was hoping he was just fighting with his wife again. But he hasn’t asked me to send her any flowers or chocolates, so I don’t think that’s it.”
“Has he at least had his coffee?” Resa’s stomach churned. Getting to work for a big newspaper was the best break she ever could have asked for, short of snatching up a contract for her dream novel. But Mr. Stephenson wasn’t pleasant when he was on the warpath.
Vickie nodded. “At least a couple of cups. Just enough to get him fired up.” She tapped her pencil one last time. “Good luck.”
Since there was no point in trying to avoid it, Resa got up and headed straight for Mr. Stephenson’s office. It took up the entire corner of their floor, and all the walls were glass. The editor-in-chief claimed he liked it that way because it gave such an airy feel to the place—this was said when he had a few beers at the company Christmas party, letting his gruff demeanor go for a moment—but Resa knew the truth. It enabled him to watch his employees without ever leaving his desk. They might hide in their cubicles while they wrote, but he knew when they came in and when they left.
She opened the door a crack and poked her head in. “Vickie said you wanted to see me?”
The office was in its usual state of disarray. Despite the fact that all the columnists and reporters submitted their work digitally, the editor always had numerous files and papers scattered over his desk and spilling onto the floor. He had several large, wooden bookcases that practically groaned with volumes, and yet there were stacks of even more books sitting next to them. The place smelled of ink, paper, and coffee. Mr. Stephenson was at his desk, a monstrous behemoth of dark wood with numerous drawers and a scarred top. He frowned as he typed furiously away, the lines on his face deepening with his work. He barely looked up at her and continued to type. “Sit.”
Resa obeyed. “What can I do for you this morning?” she asked pleasantly.
The editor-in-chief didn’t answer right away, but Resa knew the drill. He had heard her, and he would respond when he was ready. While she waited, she looked out the massive rows of windows that filled the outer walls of his office. They gave a wide view of the city, where anything could be happening. The longer she waited, sitting unproductively in front of her boss, the older the stories were getting.
“What you can do for me,” Mr. Stephenson finally said as he made a few final clicks on his laptop, “is tell me just what this shit is?” He spun the computer around and tapped his finger on the top of the screen. Her own website was pulled up, showcasing the title of her most recent post: “Dragons in the City: More Evidence Unearthed.”
“I admit it’s not the best work I’ve ever done,” she began. She hadn’t had as much time as she would have liked to search for the legendary creatures; her job at The Chronicle kept her busy. But she had talked to someone on the street who swore there was a secret club for dragons. They partied underground, held massive orgies, and drank the blood of their enemies. Of course, the man she had spoken to was a drunk and had probably gotten a hold of some bad beer. But it made for an interesting story, and interesting was the only thing she really needed when it
came to content.
“Not your best work?” Stephenson shouted. “Are you shitting me right now? This is utter nonsense, and you’ve put it out there on the internet for everyone in the world to see. Right there with your name on it, which may I remind you, is the exact same name that’s printed next to your articles here at the paper. How can I have one of my writers, who is supposed to be a dedicated journalist looking for the truth, churning out bullshit gobbledygook?” He slammed his hands on the desk and stood up, a shade of red flushing up from his neck and into his cheeks.
“I don’t see how it’s relevant to the paper,” she replied calmly. In truth, she had been waiting for this. It was a miracle it had taken him this long to find out, but her blog followers probably weren’t the same kind of people who read The City Chronicle. “It’s my personal blog, after all.”
“Resa, it’s got your name on it. If you work for my paper, then your name works for my paper. Don’t you get it?” He paced behind his desk. Mr. Stephenson’s sleeves were rolled back, usually a sign that he was deep into his work. But with his pants wrinkled and his tie loosened at only eight in the morning, it made him look tired. He almost looked as though he had slept in his office, something Resa had suspected him of several times.
“It might seem silly to you,” she admitted, “but this is my true passion. I have to write what I believe in, or I’d go crazy.”
“Then write it under a pseudonym,” he implored, turning back to face her again. Balding rapidly, he kept the remains of his hair buzzed short. He ran his hands over his head and sat down again, taking a deep breath as he forced himself to calm down. “Write whatever the hell you want, just don’t associate it in any way, shape, or form with my paper.”
It wasn’t his paper. He was the editor, but he most certainly didn’t own it. Still, Resa would keep that argument for later. That was one for when he was actually ready to fire her. “Mr. Stephenson, you know as well as I do how important it is for a writer to build up credits. If I put my blog under a penname, then I might as well throw away everything I’ve done.”
Mr. Stephenson put his elbow on the desk, propping his forehead in his hand. A pen rolled across his desk calendar and fell to the floor, and he let it drop. “I get it, Resa. I understand. But you’ve got to understand that I’ve been in this business for a long time. I’ve seen so many young writers come and go that I can’t even remember them anymore. But it’s the ones who are serious, the ones who work really hard and pay their dues, that move up in this world. They might not always get to write about what they love, but at least they get paid to write. That in itself—which is something you’ve already got going for you, by the way—is more than a lot of aspiring writers get. But I also know that in this day and age, people don’t have anything better to do than tear down other people’s reputations. They get their shits and giggles by exposing what they think are deep, dark secrets. A website like this one,” he tapped the computer screen again, “is going to keep you from ever getting on the front page.”
“Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could throw it all away and put everything I have into the paper,” Resa conceded, feeling heat prickle at her cheeks, “but what would be the point? People like Carmen Gray get all the good assignments anyway. You say you like my writing style, but you don’t give me anything exciting to work on. Everyone just likes her because she’s pretty.”
There. She’d said it. It had been bothering her for quite some time, but she had bitten her tongue for far too long.
“No,” Mr. Stephenson said firmly, “she gets those good assignments because she’s professional. She dresses like a reporter, she acts like a reporter, and most of all she writes like a reporter. I’ve never seen her out chasing Bigfoot or hunting werewolves. If she’s not assigned a story, then she’s out there looking for one. And I don’t mean looking for a fictional one.”
He had her there. Resa opened her mouth to tell him just where he could shove this job, but she immediately thought about her bills. Even her modest apartment would be impossible to afford without some sort of steady income. Though she had landed a few sponsors for her website, she’s only received a few dollars from her monetization. “I apologize if my interest in fiction has bled over into my job here,” she said quietly. She wouldn’t agree to change her name on her blog, no matter what, but this was at least a start.
And it was one that was good enough for him. “That’s alright,” he said impatiently, aggravated with himself for getting angry at her. Still, he was much calmer already. “You’re not the first reporter I’ve had who dreamed of bigger things in other fields. I get it. But if you want to get better assignments here, then you’re going to have to earn them.”
Resa picked at the dark blue nail polish on her fingernail, feeling like a scolded child and blaming Mr. Stephenson for it. “Alright. How do I do that?”
He pointed a thick finger at her. “For one thing, you might want to get rid of that thing in your hair.”
“What?” She ran a hand over her locks, expecting to find a stray leaf that had blown on the wind and attached itself to her.
“That blue streak. It’s not professional. I know, I know; you’re young, and you want to express yourself, but you aren’t in school anymore. Nobody in the real world wants to know what you’re like on the inside and what your hopes and dreams are. They don’t care what you have for lunch, and they certainly don’t care about your fashion preferences. I’m sure there’s something in the guidelines against it. Lucky for you, I don’t feel like looking it up right now.”
She scowled as she fingered the thick blue line that ran from the nape of her neck down to the tips of her hair. She had purposely had it done on the underside to make it more subtle, but that still wasn’t good enough for a bigwig asshole like Mr. Stephenson. She had no intention of getting rid of it. Fortunately, she had taken her nose ring out that morning and hadn’t put it back in, or he would probably be saying something about that, too. “What else?”
“You know, Resa, you don’t have to wait for assignments to fall on your lap. Get out there and find them. Just because a story isn’t a late-breaking headline with emergency vehicles and blood everywhere doesn’t mean it isn’t good. There’s plenty of room in The Chronicle for other things, too. Find something that people will be interested in. Better yet, find something they didn’t even realize they were interested in until they read the article. That’s your best ticket to becoming a head reporter.”
As irritated as she was at him for jumping her case, she had to agree that he was right—maybe not about her hair, but about other things. She hadn’t been trying all that hard to find good stories; instead, just getting through the work day and throwing whatever articles she managed to create on Mr. Stephenson’s desk to get a paycheck. Resa didn’t really take her work as seriously as she should.
“That sounds like quite a challenge.”
He watched her solemnly with his gray eyes. “Are you up for it?”
Resa smiled. “You’re damn right I am.” She stood from her chair, feeling more ready than ever to start the day. There was no reason why she couldn’t work on finding dragons and still be the best damn reporter the city had ever seen.
“Hold on. I see that spark in your eyes. Do you have an idea already?” The spark was in his eyes, too; a look that Resa didn’t get to see very often. Mr. Stephenson was usually too busy fixing the articles his reporters turned in and yelling at the marketing department to do a better job of placing the ads.
“Not yet, but I…” Resa took the liberty of walking over to the windows, staring out at the skyscape. “Wait a second.” She had once, when she thought nobody was looking, pressed her forehead to the glass and tried to look down. The effect had been dizzying, but the moment was too serious for that right now. She pointed to a building taller than their own that took up much of the view. It was all glass, sparkling in the sunshine. The massive sign on the top indicated its owner, Cobalt Computers. “I’m going to do an in
terview with Ethan Beaufort.”
“Okay,” Mr. Stephenson said slowly. “Tell me why.” He tried to look serious as he watched her from his cushy chair, but the corner of his mouth ticked slightly upward.
“Because he owns one of the biggest tech companies in the country, but nobody knows anything about him. You never see him on any of those celebrity home shows or hear much of anything about him in the news. You’ll never find him at charity events. He’s rich and mysterious.”
The editor put his hands in the air on either side of him, palms up and his fingers spread. “Why should they care? He’s just some rich millionaire, or billionaire, for all I know. Real people can’t relate to him.”
“But that’s exactly why they’ll want to know about his life.” Resa’s heart was racing. Her excitement grew the more she talked. She ran up to Mr. Stephenson’s desk and snatched a pen out of his cupholder and a notebook off the corner without asking. Questions for the enigmatic CEO were flowing out of her faster than she could write them down. “He’s not like us. That might not be the reason he’s rich, but people will take it that way. They’ll want to know what they should be doing differently in their boring, everyday lives. They’ll want an excuse to express their weirdness, citing Ethan Beaufort. If he can be weird, they can be weird.”
“And what if he isn’t weird at all?” Mr. Stephenson challenged. “What if he’s just a normal guy who uses regular toothpaste and drives a Ford and happened to get lucky? Then what happens?”
Resa tapped the tip of the pen against her lips. “I highly doubt that. But I guess if he doesn’t have a bowling alley in his basement or some fancy car then I’ll just have to find some other spin on the interview to make people interested. I can make it more about the software if I have to. What do you think?” She sat on the very edge of her seat, practically panting with enthusiasm.
