Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,5

My mother will call, and then she’ll worry, and that wouldn’t be fair, considering what she’s been through already.

I rush back up the porch, and suck in a sharp breath as I turn the key in the lock and shove the heavy wood door open with my shoulder.

My phone is in the kitchen, and I’m just picking it up when the house phone rings. I look at caller ID: the high school. I let it ring three times before I resign myself to picking up. After all, there could be something wrong.

Chapter 2

Michael

I yank open the heavy metal employee entrance door at the Grand Rapids Herald newsroom, my head already full of yesterday’s story and this morning’s last-minute edits.

The scent of fresh ink clings to the building, though the presses moved to a facility miles away more than two years ago.

Every morning as I walk this hall, I recall a full, bustling office, the police scanner fizzing with static, the television on to the morning news, reporters already working the phones, editors squinting at their screens.

Reality hits me when I round the corner: half the seats are now empty, the computer terminals removed and redistributed to other papers in the company. Here and there a coffee mug sits, ringed with the brown remnants of mugs swilled on deadline. There still should be a buzz of activity. But a malaise has settled on the survivors. The loudest noise is the muted clacking of keys.

I sit down and punch the button to fire up my terminal, glancing about for Aaron. I see he’s already busy with Tina, so I pull out my notes.

Gerald used to sit next to me. His computer is gone, as is his stuff. But there’s still a photo print on his low workspace wall, snapped by one of our photogs during a candid moment. Gerald is scowling at his screen, his glasses on the end of his nose like something out of Dickens. The caption reads: “I am smiling, dammit,” which became a famous Gerald-ism, uttered in response to an unbearable intern who exhorted him to smile. On deadline.

The terminal across from me, where Amanda works, has a note taped to the screen: Just on vacation! Don’t vulture my stuff.

Now that my computer is awake, I pull up my story about local election reaction, most of which I wrote last night but will polish this morning for the afternoon paper. The city council just had its vote, and one of the more bombastic councilmen was unseated. Made for some fun quotes, but I couldn’t get his city administrator nemesis to talk last night. He promised to call me this morning though, just squeaking under deadline.

Aaron has inserted a couple of editing questions easy enough to answer, so I set about doing just that.

That’s when I hear his clomping cowboy boots coming up behind me. He’s got a press release in his hand. I can see “For Immediate Release” from here.

“Hi, Michael, listen, I need you to get to a press conference at the university this morning, it starts at nine, sorry for the late notice.”

I turn back to my screen. “I need to reach Henning for comment on the election. He said he’d talk to me this morning.”

“We’ll have to go without it. The university is making an announcement, potentially funding cuts, or maybe someone important is quitting.”

Useless to argue. Our education reporter took the buyout last month. This might be an intern job, except the intern is already at the police station finding out who got killed overnight.

I sigh and hold out my hand for the release. As he gives it to me, Aaron says, “Oh, did you check out that rumor about a new strip club?”

“Yes, and it’s officially bullshit, like I told you.” I don’t bother to conceal my irritation, and Aaron ignores it as he stomps back to his own desk. Now that anonymous online forums are part of the paper’s Web site, some of the local cranks have taken to posting rumors, meaning I have to waste my time chasing them down, proving them wrong, wondering all the while how small-minded nameless trolls hiding behind keyboards became so important.

After polishing up my election story, I was supposed to spend the day analyzing building code enforcement violations for a series I want to do on housing blight and gentrification in the city.

I was supposed to do a lot of things.

I’m trying to read the release, but my snapshot of Casey distracts me. I don’t