chapter four

meghan

When I got to my car in the parking lot at the middle school, Chase lingered next to his, staring at me like he was waiting for something. What did he want from me, a fucking hug? I almost rolled down my window to ask him why he was watching me like a weirdo, but that was when I turned my key in the ignition—and nothing happened.

Oh.

That’s what he was waiting on.

A moment later, he was pulling his car into the empty space facing mine. This time, I decided to be a little more grateful. I opened my car door to holler at him. “Thank you!”

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” he said, making his way over to my car. “I’m going to have to start charging you after this one.” His boyish smile as he lifted my hood almost made me forget all the reasons I hated him. In fact, I could almost remember why I liked him in the first place. But then, I quickly remembered how much he hurt me, and the happy memories dissipated.

Yet he was coming to my rescue for the second day in a row, so I kept my mouth shut and let him do his thing. I even bit my tongue when he reminded me, again, that I needed to get a new battery and have my oil changed. “Your tires are looking a little bald, too. You’re driving a death trap.”

“Good.”

Chase just shook his head as he coiled up his jumper cables, and I heard my phone buzz in the seat beside me.

Xander: Graham wants to know your ETA. About to have an impromptu meeting. He just got done talking to Silas and now he’s pacing.

Meghan : omw

Xander : Grab me a coffee

Meghan: No

When I glanced up, Chase was looking at his own phone with a scowl. “Hmmm,” he said. “Marco wants to ‘chat.’” Marco was the head producer at WWTV—his supervisor.

“Weird. So does Graham.”

Chase and I exchanged prolonged stares. Though we’d run into each other a handful of times since the Silas Brown takeover, we’d never had a conversation about him. I could only guess how Chase felt about the guy. “What’s Silas fucking up now?”

And I was right. “I almost don’t want to know. He’s such a moron.” It was a little bit of a relief to know that whatever it was affected WWTV, too. At least that meant the newspaper wasn’t shutting down.

Chase tucked the jumper cables beneath one of his arms. “I guess there’s one thing we can agree on.”

I couldn’t imagine Silas’s presence affected Chase’s day-to-day all that much. I knew from my conversations with Jillian the WWTV staff wasn’t all that happy about having to relocate, but what difference did it make to Chase? He spent half his time driving around town and the other half slumped over his computer to edit his videos. Jillian said he didn’t really socialize with the rest of the team much. He didn’t need to.

“Why do you hate Silas?” My fingers hovered over the window button. “You guys are getting the star treatment.”

“Silas Brown stands for everything I hate,” he answered with a scowl, “and he’s trying to get me to wear a suit.”

I couldn’t control the laughter that burst from my mouth. “I can’t even picture that.”

“If that asshat wants me to wear a suit, he can buy me a new wardrobe himself.”

“Are you still sinking all your money into those little toys? What were they called… Pop-Its?”

Chase’s eyes met mine, and I wondered if he could tell I was being obtuse on purpose. I knew exactly what those ‘little toys’ were called because they took up half our bedroom years ago. He kept them all in their boxes, organizing them first by fandom and then alphabetically—he had a whole system. I wasn’t allowed to touch them. “Funko Pops,” he muttered, his voice small and monotone. “I sold them all for some… ghost-hunting equipment for me and Sean.”

He seemed so embarrassed to admit this to me, I almost felt bad for teasing him. I swallowed, trying to come up with a way to walk it back. “Oh. Smart.” Clearing my throat, I buckled my seatbelt and said, “Well, we should probably head back to work to discover our fate.”

“Yeah. Good luck.” Just as I started to roll up my window, he turned toward me to say one more thing. “Get a new battery.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

**

Graham was pacing and scratching the bridge of his nose with his thumb when I arrived, which wasn’t a good sign. We were all quiet as we took our seats at the conference table, and I exchanged a worried glance with Xander. Were we about to lose our jobs?

I didn’t even wait for Byron to find his seat before breaking the silence. “What’s going on, Graham? You’re stressing us out.”

“Ha, that’s a nice change of pace,” he said, standing behind his chair at the head of the table. This was news worth standing for, apparently—it was clear he wouldn’t be sitting for this. “Now you guys know how it feels.”

“I don’t stress you out, do I?” Byron asked as he pulled out his chair, smiling because he already knew the answer.

“No, I was talking about these two a-holes,” Graham answered, nodding from me to Xander. “They’re the ones-”

“Enough with the small talk, get to the point,” Xander urged. “Are they shutting us down?”

“No, we’re not getting shut down,” Graham said, gripping the back of the chair in front of him. “But you know what, guys? That’s not out of the realm of possibility in the future. I’m going to be straight with you—all of our jobs are on the line. People aren’t reading the paper anymore, and Silas and his board members know it. But don’t worry, he’s got a solution.”

“Here we go,” I mumbled.

“Let’s hear it.” Xander crossed his arms.

Graham took in a deep breath, and with an exhale, he said, “We’re going to create hybrid content with WWTV. The newspaper, at least the online version, will no longer be a separate entity. You’ll collaborate with their reporters for your stories. Your written content will match their reports, and vice versa.”

I was too dumbfounded to speak, and from the looks of it, so was Xander. He normally had plenty to say, but we both stared up at Graham in stunned silence, waiting for him to reveal this was an early April Fools’ joke.

But it wasn’t.

“How the fuck does this work?” I asked

“Well,” Graham said, clearing his throat, “you'll team up with your counterparts at WWTV to craft this integrated content. I understand it's a bit unconventional, but it's where journalism is heading. We all need to adapt if we want the Woodvale Times to thrive.”

There was something suspiciously optimistic about his tone. I squinted at him. “And you’re actually on board with this?”

“Well, yeah,” Graham said, glancing down at the table as he scratched the back of his neck. “They’ve made me the Hybrid Content Director, so of course I’m on board with it.”

I glanced across the table to assess Xander’s reaction to this new tidbit of info. He was still quiet, his expression unchanged. I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep my mouth shut. “You’re one of them now.”

“No, I’m still one of you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Meghan,” Graham said with a sigh. “I’m still your editor.”

“Did you get a raise with this promotion?” Xander asked, keeping his eyes locked on Graham’s face.

It took Graham a moment to speak up, and his hesitation told us everything we needed to know. He was a corporate shill now, and his lips were permanently attached to Silas Brown’s ass. Returning Xander’s stare, he asked him, “Want me to lie to you, Xander?”

“I want you to tell me you advocated for us and shot this idea down,” Xander said. I nodded in agreement.

“Okay, look.” Graham looked over his shoulder into the hallway as though Silas Brown himself might be sneaking up on him. When he accepted the coast was clear, he turned back to us, loosening his tie. “I know it’s bullshit. You think I don’t know exactly how I sound right now? Like I’m selling out? I have no choice but to go along with it. It’s this, or we’re all thrown out on our butts. But you know what I said? I said, ‘My guys might be a little reluctant to try this, but they’ll make it work.’ And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Was he considering me one of his “guys”? I wasn’t sure whether to feel honored or disgusted. I was more appalled at the way he kept saying “we” as though any of these new policies applied to him.

“What if I refuse?” Xander asked.

“Then I have to fire you,” Graham said, holding Xander’s gaze. “I would have no choice. You’re partnering with WWTV or you’re outta here.”

Across from me, Xander was completely still. I half-expected him to retort with some outrageous insult, but instead, he turned to me and declared, “I call Jillian.”

“Um, I think the fuck not?” I laughed. “She’s my friend, not yours.”

“I’m not working with your goofy ex-boyfriend.”

“You think I want to?”

“Actually,” Graham interjected, wincing at me. “It’s… already been decided for you. Meghan, I’m sorry.”

“No.” I already knew what he was about to say.

“Look, you guys already report the same content. As do Xander and Jillian. It only makes sense.”

“No. Nope. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.”

He let out a heavy sigh before pulling out his chair and finally taking a seat. “Do you want to know what other idea was tossed around in our meeting this morning? They suggested replacing you all with AI.” Graham paused for a second, allowing that last point to sink in. I chewed my bottom lip, waiting for him to continue. “They’re not fully convinced they need you guys, despite my best efforts to prove otherwise. This hybrid thing is the best possible outcome. I would advise you guys to just play along. Don’t give them a single reason to shut down the Woodvale Times for good.”

The mere thought of having to work alongside Chase—and not only that, but collaborate with him on my stories—made my blood boil. The compulsion to storm out of the newsroom and never look back was getting stronger by the second. Did I really need this job?

I pictured 14-year-old me, the girl who spoke in front of the entire auditorium full of people as the eighth-grade valedictorian, who said she dreamed of being a reporter for the Woodvale Times when she grew up. And here I was, doing just that. This was always the plan. First, I wanted to be the editor of the school paper, and I did that. Then, I wanted to major in journalism at IU. Did that, too. And I came right back to Woodvale to check off the last item on my dream career list.

This was all I ever wanted. To live and work in the town I grew up in, spending my days interviewing locals and telling their stories. The thing I loved most about it? Working independently. Making my own schedule. Doing exactly what the fuck I wanted.

And now that was being stripped from me.

For a while, I buried my head in my hands, half-listening to Xander and Graham argue about our new predicament. Xander seemed more annoyed about having to wake up earlier to keep up with Jillian’s schedule than anything.

“Tell you what,” Graham boomed, cutting Xander off. He removed his tie completely, dropping it on the table in front of him. “If the prospect of losing your jobs isn’t high stakes enough for ya, let’s raise them. How about a healthy competition?”

“Between us and WWTV?” I pulled my hands away from my face to raise an eyebrow at Graham. “We’ve already lost.”

“No, between the two of you,” he answered, nodding from me to Xander. “I can see all our metrics on the site, right down to the article that made someone decide to buy a subscription. Let’s see which one of you—with your respective partners—can garner the most subscriptions in the next couple of months.”

“What’s our prize?” Xander asked, stealing the words from my mouth.

“The winner,” Graham said, folding his hands, “gets to come with me to NYC, all expenses paid, to the ECJ conference this summer. Silas gifted me two tickets.”

The East Coast Journalism Conference had been on my bucket list for years. Xander had attended himself a couple of times when he was working for the Tribune, and he often spoke dreamily about it; bragging about rubbing elbows with famous journalists and drinking cocktails in the same room as Anderson Cooper. I whined about wanting to go so much last summer, Graham half-jokingly banned me from mentioning it.

“Your old Tribune buddies will be there, won’t they?” Graham rubbed the stubble on his chin as he stared down Xander, whose ever-present scowl slowly faded. Could he want this as badly as me?

Graham didn’t wait for a response from either of us. Instead, he rose to his feet and made his way over to the chalkboard at the front of the room. He found a stubby piece of chalk and wrote our names on the board like this was still a school and we were his students.

“Wow,” Xander muttered. “Flashbacks. Not the first time my name’s been written on that board.”

I was too busy processing all of this new information to respond to him. “When’s our deadline, Graham?”

“Let’s give it… six weeks?” Graham drew a vertical line between our names, extending it toward the bottom of the chalkboard. “Let’s go until the eighth of May. I’ll keep track of your subscriber numbers up here.”

The concept of a healthy competition with Xander, I had to admit, already had my mind racing with feature ideas. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea. And I’d do just about anything to get into that conference.

“Well, good luck,” Graham said. “Get out there and create some viral content. Do some damn good writing. And quit fucking complaining, you big babies.” And with that, he snatched his tie off the table and walked out.