Page 10 of Escape Velocity
He clears his throat, hoping it might get her attention. She acts like she doesn’t notice. Or maybe she doesn’t actually notice it.
“Excuse me?” Mason asks, pulling on the hem of his shirt. His eyes dart around the room, hoping that someone else looks friendlier than this woman who probably doesn’t care if he lives or dies.
“Yeah?” she asks, not looking up from her laptop, still clacking away, her typing seeming to get even louder after he tried talking to her.
“I’m looking for the chief editor ofThe Goldberg?”
“You’re interrupting her right now,” she says with her voice clipped and her fingers still furiously typing at her computer.
Mason gulps. He’s been in the officebarely a minute and he’s already royally messing up his chances of getting on the paper.
“I—I was just wondering if you had any spots open for the paper. I was the chief editor of my paper in high school, and I?—”
“And?” the girl interrupts him as he continues to scramble.
Still clacking. Still typing. Still avoiding eye contact.
He sighs. He has nothing to lose at this point. “Look—I really want to work for this paper. I’ve read your issues from the last year, and they really stirred something in me. I’m?—”
Mason laughs bitterly. “I’m not even a journalism major. This is only out of passion.”
Mason rubs the back of his neck, feeling like he doesn’t actually have a good reason to be here anymore. He’d rather just be told “no” and to be off on his merry way than spend another minute talking to this girl.
Maybe he isn’t capable of greatness in the written word like everyone thinks.
But he has to admit, there’s something about trying out for the paper and not making it that relaxes him more than actually making it. Maybe he’s not as good of a writer as his parents think or want him to be, and he can’t say he didn’t try if they didn’t want him. He could go on doing his physics degree and maybe his parents would be okay with it since they couldn’t do anything about getting ontoThe Goldberg.
Unlikely.
The girl slows her typing, like she’s finishing a final stance. “Our only open spot is in Sports. We’re looking for the best article to publish. Write an article on the firstfootball game. Write a good one, and we’ll give you the spot and publish what you wrote.”
Sports. Of course ithadto be sports. And they wanted him to write about football no less.
Callum’s face looking down at him on the football field crosses his mind as he thinks about what it would mean to only be in the Sports section ofThe Goldberg.
Another way Callum is going to get slotted into his life like he’s in a sardine tin with no way out.
Mason takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes.
“You don’t haveanythingelse? I’m really not good with…” He stops mid-sentence as she stops typing and finally looks at him.
He puts his glasses back on.
She’s not looking… she’s glaring at him.
She closes her fingers together and rests them on the desk primly. “You applied late, so everything is already taken. We only have one spot. It’s in Sports. You write the article well, or you don’t get in,” she reiterates, her voice unwavering.
Mason gulps and nods. He hates himself for procrastinating so long.
Was this all worth it? The lying and the hiding? Just to prove something?
He’ll probably have to watch an entire football game to get this article done, and a game played by Callum Brown no doubt.
Everyone’s going to be cheering for Callum, and he’ll have to sulk in the corner and look like a weirdo.
The team will probably win and then he’ll have to go back to his dorm and write a sickeningly sweet missive that boosts Callum’s already gargantuan ego, only topossiblyget a chance to get a spot onThe Goldberg.
And even if he does get in, he hates sports. He knows nothing about them. Sure, the guys are hot and were fun to look at, but to write about the gameplay itself? A whole other beast.
