The Last Best Story, page 1
Dedication
FOR FREDDY
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Maggie Lehrman
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
One
NEW TEAM TAKES OVER GAZETTE MANAGEMENT
Rose and Grant had heard all the possible variations on the joke that no one read the paper anymore. Anyone looking to take them down a peg or two would have to dig deeper for an insult. (For Grant, mention his late growth spurt. For Rose, imply plagiarism.)
“If it’s true that no one reads us,” Rose said, perched on Grant’s editor-in-chief desk in the Gazette room, “then why do you care what we publish?”
Grant smiled from his seat at the desk behind her. Vice-Principal Hackenstrat, the newspaper’s nominal adviser, stood in the doorway wearing a wrinkled suit and holding the proof pages that the Gazette was required to run past him before sending the issue to the printer. It was the last issue of the year, affectionately known as the grad issue, and since Rose and Grant were juniors, it was the first issue they’d worked on since Grant had taken over as editor in chief.
They hadn’t discussed it, but both of them were willing to be expelled over the contents of the paper, though they suspected it wouldn’t come to that. Hackenstrat didn’t have nearly the same investment in his side of the argument; he was doomed before he began.
The vice-principal rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “You can’t write this. You’re advocating for leaving our school vulnerable.”
“No, we’re refusing to endorse your ridiculous plan to invade students’ privacy,” Rose said. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It’s not ridiculous.” Hackenstrat waved the papers to emphasize his words, but the pages flapped in his face. “After what happened in Columbine, at Virginia Tech, at Sandy Hook—”
“Those are all awful tragedies,” Grant interrupted him. “But we already do lockdown drills, like every other school in the state. No one else does what you’re suggesting.”
“If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about,” Hackenstrat said.
Rose shook her head. “That’s, like, the definition of a slippery slope.”
Hackenstrat’s proposal to the school board to increase the school’s security included a requirement that all students give up their online passwords, along with more standard requests like regular random locker checks for any reason and metal detectors at every exit and entrance. Rose and Grant’s editorial pointed out that Hawks High wasn’t any different from any number of high schools in the state or the country—in the middle of suburban sprawl, a reasonable distance from Chicago and its uptick in crime, but not far enough into the country for students or their families to have any significant hunting culture. Although it was a big school with kids from all sorts of backgrounds, everyone had always gotten along fairly well. Treating every student as a potential threat seemed a huge overreaction.
“I know you think of yourselves as adults, but you’re children, and you’re under our care. We get to choose how to keep you safe.”
Rose crossed her arms. “Where’s your evidence that having our passwords would save anyone? Why not come up with ways to help kids who are struggling, instead of turning the school into a police state?”
“Watch it, Rose,” Hackenstrat said sharply. “You’re hardly in a police state. The fact is, you don’t know who might crack. I don’t know; no one knows. Maybe it’ll be no one, or maybe it’ll be the quiet kid in the back. So I want us to get all the information we can.”
“You’re treating everyone as if they’re already guilty just in case someone snaps.”
“Wouldn’t you rather be safe and constrained than free and dead?”
“No,” she said, sticking out her jaw.
“Oh, come on, Rose—”
“Mr. Hackenstrat, this is a super fun fight, but are you going to censor the paper or what?” Grant asked.
Hackenstrat sighed and ran his eyes over the proof pages. “The issue is not the paper itself, or even your right to publish facts,” he said. “Editorials are opinion pieces. So it wouldn’t be suppressing the facts for me to forbid you to publish it.”
Grant leaned back in his chair. “So. The censorship road, then.”
“We’ll figure out a way to get our piece out there,” Rose said. “And then everyone will know that you’re responsible for stifling honest debate.”
“You’ll get more attention for censorship than the original editorial would get, for sure,” Grant said.
“Is that really what you want?” Rose asked.
Hackenstrat went pale as the full ramifications of the story played out in his mind. Grant and Rose could see his thoughts dribbling out into a puddle on the ground.
There would be plenty of students and parents and teachers who agreed with Hackenstrat’s argument, but there’d be a significant majority who would rally behind the paper. Freedom of the press, privacy of the student body. There’d be calls from parents. Calls from the superintendent. Maybe the hot-button topic of school safety would mean that outside reporters would jump on it. Hackenstrat saw his job security plummet. He saw the peaceful summer ahead of him, ruined. He slumped against the doorframe and gazed mournfully at Rose and Grant.
“Are you two going to be like this forever?”
“Yes,” said Rose.
“When we’re done with you,” Grant said, “we’re both going to go to Northwestern and major in journalism and then hopefully annoy editors and publishers together for the rest of our lives.”
“Wait a minute, though. What do you mean? What are we ‘like’?” asked Rose.
Hackenstrat struggled. “So . . . so . . .”
“Dogged?” Grant suggested.
“Clever?” Rose chimed in.
“Charming?”
“Beautiful?”
“Perspicacious?”
“Vivacious?”
“Enough,” the vice-principal said. He tossed the page proofs onto an empty desk in the front row. “I have to get back to prom anyway.”
“Oh, is that still happening?” Rose asked.
Hackenstrat rolled his eyes. “I’d threaten to write to Northwestern and warn them what a couple of insubordinates you are, but I suspect I’d only be making your case for admission for you.”
“We appreciate, as always, your valuable input.” Grant folded his hands in front of him on the desk and sat up straight. “I hope we’ll continue to have a fruitful relationship over the course of my tenure as editor in chief.”
“Be seeing you,” Rose added, as Hackenstrat left without saying goodbye.
If there hadn’t been a desk between them, Rose and Grant might’ve hugged. They might’ve finally kissed, too, which was something that had been threatening to happen for months now, the anticipation like the crackle of electricity in the air before a storm. But instead Rose picked up the proofs and held them over her head. “Victory!”
“Thanks to you for writing it.”
“Thanks to you for publishing it.”
Grant stood and came around to her side of the desk. He took the proofs from her and placed them on the desk, then reached over and pulled a piece of fiberglass from Rose’s hair. “You have something there,” he said, brushing the dust away and then tucking her hair behind her ear. “All better.”
Rose smiled up into his face and he smiled back. They were the only two people in the room (literally) and the only two people in the world (as far as they knew or cared). They had the best high school newspaper in the Chicagoland area, and they had each other. Rose had Grant, her editor in chief, who made bad ideas sound good and good ideas sound like magic, and who would help her change the world. Grant had Rose, his right-hand reporter, the best writer he’d ever met, who was always there for him even in the darkest times.
This time next year, who knew what might happen?
Rose Regnero hadn’t been back to the Gazette since she’d quit the paper two months ago.
“It’ll only take a second,” she said, squeezing JB’s hand. “I kept meaning to pick it up earlier, but there are always so many people around, and now this could be the last time I’ll ever be in this school, and no one’ll be in the room anyway, so it’s actually kind of perfect, as long as you don’t mind.”
Rose babbled when she got nervous or excited. Grant used to interrupt her when she got on a roll, but JB tended to let her get to the end of the thought, even when that thought had multiple endings piling up like a high-speed highway crash.
“It’s fine,” JB said when she took a breath. “Whatever you want.”
Rose smiled up at JB and adjusted her wrist corsage. It was made of real flowers, bought for her by JB, with a rose and lilies of the valley and all that froufrou. It matched her 1950s-style sleeveless dress. Which, in turn, matched the vest of JB’s rented tux. If someone needed a stock photo of “happy couple at prom,” Rose and JB would be an ideal choice.
Last year during prom, Rose and Grant had stayed up until two a.m. finishing the grad issue of the paper. This prom would be better.
Hawks High’s prom was held in the school gym, a cavernous room, like everythi ng in the school: built huge in the 1970s to accommodate a booming population. Long hallways, constantly loud because of voices echoing off the high ceilings. This year the student council had attempted to move the prom to a fancy hotel, and promised to cut nonessentials in order to keep the ticket price low. Rose had covered the decision-making process extensively for the Hawks High Gazette. She’d been there every step of the way, as the committee gradually reinstated every luxury (photo booth, favors, DJ, catering) until she reported, with some glee, that the cost of a ticket to this year’s prom would exceed the amount of last year’s, and the committee was forced to relocate the festivities back to the gym to even out the expense.
It had been an interesting and effective series, but not particularly popular with the student body.
Rose and JB sneaked out through the interior gym doors that led to the rest of the school. They’d arrived with the other promgoers through the doors connecting the gym to the parking lot, where most of the chaperones were posted.
“You sure it’s okay we’re leaving?” JB whispered. It was the type of dark and desolate that made people want to whisper.
“Positive,” Rose said. “I mean, technically it’s against the rules to leave the gym during prom, but that’s mostly for people who would want to go to the parking lot and get drunk and then come back. Not for people like us, only doing a quick errand.”
JB’s pause seemed doubtful.
“And besides, I’ve been at school a million times at night,” Rose said quickly to fill the silence. “I love it, actually. Walking down the halls in the dark. It’s like floating in a lake at night, isn’t it? It’s like the walls could be super far away, as if the edges have disappeared.”
She could hear herself waxing rhapsodic about a high school hallway. Shut up, Rose. She was trying too hard, and the entire point of this whole prom experience—her whole life, even—was that maybe she didn’t need to work so hard to be happy.
They kept walking down the wide, dark hall. Their shoes clicked on the floor, much louder than the echo of a pop song coming from the gym behind them. Hawks High was H shaped, coincidentally, with two long buildings, lined with alternating red and green and orange and blue windows, connected by a short central hall. The ends of the two buildings housed the school’s biggest gathering points: the gym, the small theater, the library, and the administration office. The Gazette room was located in the connecting hallway between the two buildings, commonly known as the bridge.
“Anyway,” she said, attempting a breezy tone, “I’ll grab it quick and we can go back—oh no.”
They’d turned into the bridge and could see light spilling from the open Gazette-room door, a few feet in front of them.
“Rosie!”
Rose closed her eyes and stopped walking, but the voice got closer.
“Rosie, you here to file a late-breaking story? We sent off the grad issue already, but I bet you can convince the new editor to add something if you ask nicely. By the way, you look great. Oh-la-la, is that a corsage? Come on, open your eyes and tell me how great I look. Oh, hello, I’m Grant Leitch, Rosie’s editor in chief.”
Rose opened her eyes, and JB and Grant were shaking hands in front of the open door. Grant was wearing a tuxedo and he looked irritatingly good in it.
“You’ve met JB at least four times,” Rose said. “And I quit the paper two months ago.”
“That doesn’t sound right.” Grant did not stop smiling. “I’m sure I would’ve remembered.”
“Hi,” JB said.
“What are you doing here?” Rose asked.
“Checking on the new class. Making sure they haven’t destroyed my legacy already.”
“In a tux?”
Grant looked down at himself. “Oh, right. Well, it’s prom, isn’t it?”
“Why are you at prom?”
“Why am I—is there some reason I shouldn’t be allowed at prom?” Grant furrowed his brow, mock concerned. “Did I get banned like Marty Caulfield but blacked out and forgot about it?”
Rose made a frustrated noise. “You’ve always said you hated prom. You think it’s a joke.”
Grant shrugged. “I must’ve changed my mind.” He gestured to the open doorway. “Let’s all go in and get comfy and let Rosie tell us all about her new story.”
All of a sudden, there was no enticement that could get Rose through the Gazette-room door. “I don’t have a story. I told you. I quit.”
“Yes, but you can’t really mean that.”
“I can, actually. And I’d appreciate it if you stopped emailing me your thoughts on today’s headlines, texting me about story assignments, and filling my mentions with your every spare thought.”
“What about the telegrams? I write a great telegram.”
“Leave me alone, Grant.”
Grant rocked back and forth on his heels. “Mixed signals, Rosie. You say to stop bothering you, and then you show up here. . . .”
“We’re here for the award,” JB said helpfully, and Grant’s face lit up.
“Of course! Rosie’s Midwest Regional Excellence in Journalism Award. No way would she leave the MREJ lying around.” Grant directed his words at JB, but they were meant for Rose. “Because she cares about the paper more than anything.”
“Not anymore.”
He leaned forward so that the sleeve of his tuxedo brushed her upper arm. This close, she remembered a little too late that his smile sometimes turned dangerous. Her heart beat without her permission. “You have to miss it. The thrill of investigation. The satisfaction of finding just the right words.”
“No, I don’t, actually.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“What does it matter? School is over.”
Grant didn’t stop smiling, but the character of his smiles changed all the time. This one was conspiratorial. “School isn’t all there is in the world. Something’s bound to happen, and you’ll want to write about it.”
“You can write all you want at Northwestern. But don’t bother me about it.”
Grant nodded, as if she’d revealed the crux of the matter. “I knew it. It’s Northwestern.”
Rose’s hand lifted to rub the space between her eyes, but she remembered her carefully applied makeup and clasped her wrist with the other hand. “It’s not Northwestern. Screw Northwestern. And something isn’t bound to happen, at least not tonight. It’s prom. There will be dancing, they’ll pick a king and queen, someone will throw up at an after-party. It’s not news. It’s normal.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Then why did you come?”
For once, Grant didn’t have an answer. She looked at him, waiting. She knew him so well: his silences and his jokes, his stubbornness and his enthusiasms. That’s what happened when you spent every spare minute with someone for four solid years. They became a part of you. Even if she’d never kissed him (and they had kissed once and only once, that horrible wonderful time they never spoke about), she’d still know him better than anyone.
This particular silence meant that he was about to say something true.
“Rosie . . . ,” he started.
“We should go,” she said to JB, grabbing his arm and turning back toward the gym.
“What about the award?” Grant asked.
A winch twisted in Rose’s chest and squeezed her heart. She blinked back tears. “Keep it,” she called over her shoulder.
JB didn’t talk nearly as much as Grant did, but he noticed things. He put an arm around her shoulder as they walked back to the dance.
“Sorry about that,” Rose said, half turned into his broad chest.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m happy to be here with you.”
That’s right. They were together at prom, and all of that Gazette nonsense was over. What did she need a stupid award for, anyway? That was the old Rose: grabby, ambitious, winning for the sake of winning, laughing with Grant over something that probably wasn’t the least bit funny. This Rose would float above it, serenely letting the award (and Grant, and Northwestern, and the Gazette) drift out of her life.
Grant opened the bottom drawer of the editor in chief’s desk, shifted aside a carefully placed file folder, and stared at the Midwest Regional Excellence in Journalism Award. If he shouted, he could probably stop Rosie and her date; if he ran, he could catch up with them before they reached the gym.
