Page 73 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“That’s deep, bro,” Declan said.
“It doesn’t suck as much as I thought it would,” I said. “Actually, it might not suck at all.”
“I know,” Finn said. “It’s hardly a stupid fluff piece.”
I cleared my throat and opened a new document in my word processor. “Yeah, definitely not fluff. Have you started an outline?”
Finn took a sip from his water glass and then daintily patted the corners of his mouth with his napkin.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I was actually going to head to the library for a bit before it closes to finish up, if you want to come.”
I glanced at my wristwatch. It was going on seven o’clock.
“Sure,” I said, shutting my laptop and wrapping my slice of pizza in a napkin so I could eat it on the way. “Sure, let’s go. Nice to meet you, Declan, Luke.”
“Likewise,” Declan said, and as I stood to pick up my tray, I swore I saw Luke give Finn some kind of wink.
Finn and I walked our trays to the conveyor belt at the far side of the cafeteria, where we set our dishes down, and then headed out through the French doors that led to the cafeteria patio and the pathway on the back lawn that led to the library.
“We should do some interviews with students on campus and people outside campus,” I said. “We could do some freeform-association thing, where we ask people to give us the first three words that pop into their minds when they think of Knollwood’s uniform. You know, dig into the subconscious perception a bit, see what connotations pop up.”
I took a bite of my pizza and almost ran directly into Finn, who stopped suddenly in front of me and turned to face me.
“Look,” he said. “I didn’t want to say this in front of my friends and look like a jerk, but I’m not sharing this byline with you. I wrote the article already, and your name isn’t going on it.”
I almost choked on my bite of pizza. I swallowed the piece that was in my mouth only half-chewed, and it scraped at the back of my throat as it went down. My eyes watered.
“Is this because I told Harper I thought your article was fluff?” I asked. “Because, that wasn’t really about you. I just wanted to write my own story, that’s all. I’m not good at the whole . . . collaboration thing.”
“I wasn’t exactly looking forward to sharing my story and my first byline with someone else, either,” Finn said. “Especially someone who came in weeks after Open Period started and missed Hell Week. But I wasn’t a jerk about it.”
“What’s Hell Week?” I asked.
“They made all the newbies wear these stupid paper dunce hats. And not just in the newsroom, but everywhere. And we had to run a lap around the building any time we wrote in the passive voice and do the whole senior staff’s laundry. Stuff like that.”
“Ew,” I said.
“Yeah,” Finn said. “So for you to just march into the pitch meeting, all holier-than-thou, and demand your own story and then call my piece ‘fluff’ when I get stuck with you—well, it’s just a little rich, if you ask me. Even if I am a freshman and you’re—you.”
“I’m—me?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“You know, you’re Charlie Calloway,” Finn said, and I could see the italics in the way he said my name, as if it meant something.
“Look, let me help write this article and I’ll do something for you,” I said. “There has to be something you want. You can tell your friends we made out if you like.”
“I’m gay,” Finn said.
“Oh,” I said. “I just thought that your friends thought we were . . . I don’t know. I’m pretty sure your friend Luke winked at you back there.”
“Luke’s an idiot,” Finn said.
“It’s just that I—I sort of need this,” I said. “If I don’t have this byline, Harper will kick me off the paper. And I need this paper to get into UPenn.”
“I’m sorry,” Finn said.
For a second I thought he was apologizing, that he had changed his mind about the article.
“‘I’m sorry,’” he said again. “Two words. You should try using them sometime.”
