NINETEEN

 

I tossed and turned that night. Maya was just a bitter b. Chaz had said so. But what if she was right and he did have a girlfriend? What if he was just playing me? I had to know.

Other people think it’s wrong to listen to conversations and read other people’s stuff and snoop around. I don’t. How else are you going to find stuff out? And why are people always trying to hide stuff anyway? I think I have a right to know, especially if it might affect me.

On Monday I waited for my chance. As soon as I heard Chaz walk out of the office, I ambled over to his cubicle.

“Oh, I thought I heard him here,” I muttered.

“Think he’s in the bathroom,” one of the other guys said from behind a cube wall.

“Thanks,” I said, unplugging Chaz’s phone and sliding it off his desk into my pocket.

Soon I was in the ladies’ room going through his texts. The last one was from “Kim Clark.”

Just glancing at them, I could tell that Kim was Chaz’s girlfriend. Or enough of a girlfriend for them to be sending nasty pictures back and forth.

Since I didn’t really want to see (okay, so I did want to see Chaz’s body, but not this way), I was about to turn off the phone when something caught my eye.

“H is going down,” Chaz had written just fifteen minutes ago.

“WTF U talking about baby,” Kim wrote back. “Better things 2 think about,” she sent next with a picture I didn’t want to look too close at.

“Come over tonight. I’ll take your mind off it. Don’t do anything stupid,” had come just a few minutes ago.

I scrolled back up, trying to understand what they were talking about. I went back far, looking for clues.

Chaz complained a lot about Holt. I thought Kim seemed tired of hearing about it, but I’m not sure Chaz got that.

“Wish I’d never met him or his money. Better when it was Mom and me against the world even if we was poor,” Chaz wrote.

“Your mom married him, not U. U don’t even live w/them. Can we do something FUN this weekend?? I’ll spend his money if you don’t want to,” Kim wrote back.

A couple of days before I had started my internship, Chaz had written, “Holt will regret he left the FOX in charge of the henhouse here. Gotta plan.”

Kim didn’t seem too interested, but Chaz kept hinting that he was up to something that would be bad for Holt.

I skimmed through texts with other people. Chaz’s mom, friends, even Holt. Just normal stuff. Until I found some messages with “Monique Atwater.”

“I have some concerns about possible unethical behavior w/in Chatter. There are some things I’m being asked to do at Polichat that don’t sit well,” Chaz had written to her.

“Getting up the courage and evidence to go public. Wondering if you can help,” he wrote.

“Very interested,” Monique wrote. “We can talk off the record first if you want, and I’ll tell you what I’d need for a story.”

They had made plans to get together next week.