Page 129 of Cuts like a Knife
“There she is! Girl364 of the hour,” he shouts, popping out of his chair and coming towards me. “Come on, have an apple.”He ushers me into his office and hands me a Granny Smith, which I hold in one hand.
Callum is leaning against the doorframe, an inscrutable expression on his face.
“Well, Madison, you did well. You did f—ing well. Lots of good content, banked stuff for the future. You did what I asked and more and managed to get some pictures in Sentinel too.”
“You’re not mad?”
“I don’t give a shit if you want to freelance, kid. It’s obviously not affecting your work here.”
I look from Callum to Lars, then back again. My brain can’t really compute what’s happening right now.
“So… I’m not fired?” I say in a quiet voice.
“This again? What the f—? What is wrong with her, CJ?”
“No idea. I’ll take her back to the bullpen,” Callum says.
“Eat that apple, Madison. You need to raise your blood sugar or something,” Lars says as we depart365.
“So Maylee Wise and Danny Hughs are an item.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Some love at first sight s—? They told me you already tapped them for some sort of story about it?”
“Maybe a How They Met? Or something?”
“Seems a little premature, but sure.”
“Callum,” I say, stopping in the middle of the hall, half-way back to our desks. “Why am I not fired?”
“Why would you be? Because of that d—head who made an a— of himself on the yacht? No big deal, I already knew all about it.”
“You knew?”
“You think we don’t check references here, Lexi? Or try, anyway. That Kelsang f—er never called me back. But I asked around. Heard the whole thing. I have plenty of connections, you know. I’ve been doing this a long time. Unlike you.”
“So you know I plagiarized that story. And got fired for it?”
“Plagiarized. Whatever. It sounded like an honest mistake. Besides, I’ve seen Flash attribute wire stories to their own writers with no original reporting so many times, I’ve lost count.”
“Oh.”
“Oh,” he mocks.
“I think I need to go outside for a minute,” I say.
“Go ahead. Eat your apple. But hurry up. I want to have an editorial meeting at 10:00 am. I expect you to bring pitches.”
He turns off toward the bullpen, while I head straight out the front doors.
In stand in the cool sunshine, blinking, and trying to recalibrate.
I’m not fired. Literally everything I expected to happen was completely wrong. The email had nothing to do with anything. My secret wasn’t even a secret.
It’s a lot to process.
As I stand there, breathing, a shiny black sedan pulls up but I’m too busy thinking to care what pretentious loser is inside.
