The war begins. Print draws first blood, but Digital is quick to go straight for the jugular.
It’s been two weeks since I officially kneeled and pledged allegiance to Jade’s forces. Well, not officially. I guess I’m more like a covert operative. But I’ve definitely double-crossed Loretta, an irreversible action I know I can’t take back, even if I wanted to. Although she doesn’t know it yet. Actually, Digital hasn’t even used it yet. I’m beginning to wonder why Kelsea even needed this information in the first place.
Loretta won the ASME, of course. In her acceptance speech, she made no reference to Jade or the Digital team’s contributions to the story. She briefly thanked the freelance writer who actually conceived and birthed the words onto the page. But mostly, she patted herself on the back. She expertly acknowledged all the young whistleblowers who are fighting the good fight, risking their own security to go on the record. What’s more, she recognized all the young readers whose thirst for knowledge and dedication to the truth motivated Vinyl to pursue the story, even when it would have been easier to pay a kill fee and move on. She comes off as a saint, purer than the Virgin Mary.
I watched the clip of her acceptance speech at 3:00 a.m. on YouTube. The time difference made it nearly impossible to keep my eyes open, but I swallowed every word. My stomach churned. What have you sacrificed, Loretta? I thought to myself between taking hits of Leila’s vape pen. Apparently, Daniel and the head of Art were both seated at her table. Malala was there too.
Since getting back to the office, she’s been in a smug mood. Her ego imitates her new inner mantra—she won this round, and she knows it. She struts the halls between meetings as if she’s stomping on the Digital staff’s necks and paychecks, daring them to get one step closer to her.
Jade, on the other hand, has gone the petty route. Upon Loretta’s return, she has straight-up refused to set foot in a single conference room if there is even a slight chance Loretta might stop by to listen in. She moves with an army of editors around her to ensure she never so much as makes eye contact with anyone on Print. Kelsea is at the helm of her battleship. I wonder if Jade knows about the choice I made, that I’m secretly on her side. All I know for sure is that right now, she won’t even look me in the eye.
Among the masses of those who refuse to acknowledge my presence is Beth. She seems irritated by my mere existence, often floating quickly past me on her way in and out of Loretta’s office. I tell myself she’s just distracted, stressed out by being so close to both war zones. But the grimace she makes whenever walking by my desk makes me feel like she knows about my treachery. And she believes I chose wrong.
The entire office is up in arms. Jade found out the head of Art was seated at Loretta’s table at the ASME Awards and that Daniel was the one who talked her into doing the video series, so she refuses to meet with either of them face-to-face. For a week and a half, nothing gets done. Stories go up on the site at half speed because editors have to wait for days for their design requests to go through. Prod has also become as intimate as a small council meeting. Our numbers are dwindling so much that I couldn’t help but suspect something’s gone awry.
So I slip up and check Loretta’s email again. Somehow, committing a crime is way easier the second time around—like how stealing lip gloss from CVS is less scary when you know the alarm won’t go off the second you walk out the door.
According to my research, the Print team has been having a lot of trouble getting Zendaya’s people on the phone. They haven’t yet scheduled a day for the cover shoot. The Entertainment editor claims her publicist won’t nail down a time and day to conduct the interview. The entire Print staff is unraveling. We are now entering crunch time, and if we don’t shoot this cover ASAP, we won’t be able to go to print in time.
But somehow, Loretta remains unfazed. She’s still riding off her victory over Jade. The stench of her arrogance is difficult to ignore, like cheap perfume.
Last Wednesday, Beth decided she’d had enough. She called a cease-fire between L and J, forcing both of them to come to the table and negotiate. I gave her a prime team meeting spot: an hour in the afternoon, right before Loretta’s secret blackout period. She still attends those, every week, without fail.
The meeting was supposed to take place in neutral territory: the Shifter-Pearce cafeteria. This was a genius tactic on Beth’s part—the people moving in and out of the lunchroom meant there would be many, many witnesses. That removed the possibility of extraneous screaming and tantrum-throwing. Although it did increase the odds of an unsavory food fight.
Loretta begrudgingly agreed to attend, after much prodding from Beth. I’ve noticed that Beth is pretty much the only person Loretta will listen to at this point. Beth and Sarah appear to be the only two souls on earth whose opinions matter to Loretta. This gives Beth tremendous power.
I walked Loretta over to the meeting at 3:59 p.m. on the dot. We took our places at a quiet, sunny corner table. A maintenance worker whistled as he walked by. I could hear the audible crunching of a woman eating Lay’s potato chips at a nearby countertop.
Five minutes went by. Then ten. Fifteen.
Loretta went from looking mildly annoyed to majorly pissed. After about thirty minutes, she stood up and stormed away without a word. Beth and I exchanged our first look in over a week. It’s a face of grave concern. I stirred nervously in my seat.
Jade stood Loretta up.
This can only mean one thing: Something big is in the works. Has to be. Otherwise, Jade wouldn’t risk threatening Loretta like this. It’s almost as if she’s daring her to get sloppy and make a wrong move.
Loretta responds by doubling down on Print’s efforts.
Ever since the failed peace negotiation, spearheaded by Beth (who has now seemingly given up on getting the two to break bread), Loretta has been presenting me with more and more seemingly impossible, technologically savvy tasks.
We’re livestreaming at least once a day. Loretta wants Vinyl readers to see how pitch meetings work (or rather, fake, televised pitch meetings that are basically SNL skits). She asks me to film her walking down the hallway on her way to off-sites and pretending to eat her lunch. I’m surprised she hasn’t had me follow her into the bathroom to record her taking a shit! The only two places that are decidedly off the record are her smoke breaks and internal meetings—especially her blackout dates. Everything else has basically become a reality show. The only silver lining is that every time I’m featured in her stories, NoorYorkCity gets a shit ton of traffic. I think I’m up to forty thousand followers now. I guess there really is no such thing as bad press.
Loretta’s efforts aren’t in vain. I’ve noticed her social numbers have gone way up. She’s almost at one hundred and fifty thousand followers, which is still a far cry from Jade’s five hundred thousand (as she keeps reminding me) but basically proves Daniel’s strategy is working. Although he’s been sort of on me about the “composition” of her clips. “Shish,” he keeps complaining. “You need to help her find her light.” He reminds me of an angry little British colonialist cartoon.
And then all hell breaks loose on a mid-October afternoon.
It’s that time of year in New York City right before daylight savings turns back the clock. The days are growing desperately shorter. The sky lingers a little darker; people drift in and out of the streets with a little less energy and acting a lot more somber than they were at the start of the season.
Vinyl Digital is fully at the helm of Halloween content planning. Saffron is shooting Halloween-inspired beauty clips almost every day—DIY looks for Marianne Williamson, a hilarious red-tape look inspired by the Mueller Report, Kim Kardashian studying to be a lawyer. Crystal also commissioned a phenomenal think piece about why slutty Halloween costume sources like Yandy and Spirit Halloween don’t sell enough options for fat women. All women should have the right to sexualize costumes like Dora the Explorer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Spooky season has led to considerably heightened morale.
But Loretta’s ASME chess move is no secret. She keeps the award on display, right at the front of her desk, so it’s impossible to miss. It’s so incredibly gauche.
What happens is this: Loretta is stuck in an hour-long meeting with Art (I know from experience to leave some leeway for her other appointments), which I decide is an opportunity to go hang by Saffron’s desk and congratulate the whole team on their wins. I get caught up in a conversation with Lola about South Street Seaport and SPP Tower.
“I just hate coming to this neighborhood each day and passing so many Starbucks,” she complains. “It makes me sick. What happened to small businesses? To locally roasted beans? This area of Lower Manhattan is so gentrified, you’d forget it was built by immigrants who passed through Ellis Island with nothing in their pockets but big dreams. Now what’s left? Condos and Sweetgreens. When is SPP going to wake up and smell the stink of dirty capitalism? Why don’t we move shop to some place a little less touched by the middle class, like Bed-Stuy?” She rolls her eyes and continues scrolling through TikTok.
“But wouldn’t SPP moving to Bed-Stuy, in fact, contribute to the gentrification?”
Lola looks up for a second. She nods, mulling over my words. “Right on,” she says.
Our conversation is interrupted by a hoarse shriek. It’s Seb, the Entertainment editor.
“It’s up, you guys! It’s up!” He claps with excitement. The entire cluster breaks out into applause. I push through the rest of the bodies to catch a glimpse of the action. The second I’m close enough to the computer screen, I stop dead in my tracks.
This is not happening.
Without saying a word to anyone, I bolt straight back to my desk. Saffron trails behind me.
“What’s going on?” they ask, confused. I don’t bother pausing to answer.
I reach my desk. As I suspected, Loretta is still meeting with Art. She hasn’t seen it yet, but in about fifteen minutes, she will. I solemnly take my post.
I’ve hardly been sitting for more than a few seconds when both Beth and Daniel come running toward me.
“Have you seen this?” Beth points frantically at her phone. I nod.
“This is a fucking PR nightmare,” Daniel says. “And the worst part is—she actually looks hot. And not just to the heteros. How am I going to explain this away? Just say that the two most important departments at Vinyl are in some sort of pissing contest?”
I sort of shrug. “It’s not like I have any real power here, Daniel.”
If only he knew the truth.
The three of us sit outside Loretta’s office, sharing deafening silence, as if waiting for a hurricane to hit or a bomb to detonate. Instead, all we can hear is Loretta laughing about foliage puns and ad layouts. I breathe out a quick sigh of relief. She clearly hasn’t seen it yet.
Daniel taps his foot anxiously. Saffron clears their throat. We collectively jump, having forgotten they were even here.
“Let me see it again,” they whisper to me. I pull it up in a new window and turn over the laptop to them. I can’t bear to look.
GEN Z-ENDAYA & the Followers of Tomorrow’s Leaders
Below the headline there’s a gorgeous photograph of Zendaya posing by the Gowanus Canal, disposal bins and graffiti painting the background like a vignette. The pictures were taken by Ryan McGinley and probably cost a small fortune. But below the headline, above the key image, sits the dynamite that will be used as a catalyst to burn Print to the ground.
As told to Jade Aki.
“Focking bloody ’ell,” Daniel mutters to himself.
I turn to Saffron and widen my eyes, willing them to read my mind. I wish we could run to the beauty closet to debrief, but Loretta could be out of her meeting at any minute. I’m not allowed to leave my desk.
“Did you know about this?” I whisper.
“No, Seb and Jade have been keeping this airtight,” they whisper back. “I just knew they had someone big. Why are we whispering?”
“Because Z was supposed to be our December cover star!”
“I know! Kelsea told everyone, like, a couple weeks ago.”
“What?!” I ask, shocked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I honestly forget,” they say. “You know I don’t care about celebrity stuff. What’s the big deal, anyway?”
“The big deal, Saffron, is that this will go one of two ways,” I explain furiously. “Zendaya will either refuse to do the cover now, because why would she offer two exclusive interviews to Vinyl in the same fucking month? Or, let’s say she doesn’t back out, Loretta will still come off looking like an idiot for letting Jade beat her to the scoop. It’ll be yesterday’s news.”
“We can all hear you,” Beth says sharply. I shut the fuck up and sink into my seat.
This is all my fault. I knew picking a side of this fight wouldn’t be easy, but I guess I just didn’t expect it to feel so shitty. Was this really the answer? Print is going to have to scramble to find someone big for their holiday issue. They’ll have to spend so much more money. SPP won’t be happy. This was a dirty, dirty move.
Plus, there’s one question swimming around in my mind that keeps popping to the surface. One even more terrifying than the question of what Print will do now.
How will Loretta retaliate?
Suddenly, a cry rings out from the other side of Loretta’s frosted-glass door. We all grimace.
“I think she’s seen it,” Beth says. “Who wants to go first?”
Before any of us gets a chance to answer her, Loretta sticks her head out from behind the door. Her red lipstick is smudged. She taps the glass manically with her fingers.
“Noora, I need you to move all my meetings for the rest of the day and call an all-hands huddle with Print. Beth, Daniel, get in here.” She looks up at Saffron for a second and snarls. “Do I know you?”
Saffron shakes their head and bolts. Probably best not to engage.
“And love,” she says, before slamming the door. “Do. Not. Move. An. Inch.”
I sit still, contemplating my fate. Loretta is going to try to find out who spilled the beans about Zendaya. If she ruffles the right feathers, she might find out it was me. If she has Cal go through my computer history, she might even be able to find out I went through her email. I’ll be fired on the spot. Not only would I disappoint Loretta, my parents, and Leila—who is literally relying on me to bring in an income right now—but I’d really be letting down myself. Writing has always been the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s basically the only God I believe in.
I was four years old on 9/11, just starting kindergarten. I had Ms. Sheila for a homeroom teacher, and my parents had bought me a Powerpuff Girls magenta backpack in a desperate attempt to help me fit in with my peers. The ride from Crown Heights to the Upper West Side took over an hour, without traffic. There were many bumps along the way, and I often threw up my breakfast immediately once I arrived at class. The day the towers collapsed, I was the last kid to be picked up. Public transit was shut down. I had to walk home—through the Central Park, down Fifth Avenue, across the bridge. I remember clutching my baba’s hand and watching as the smoke swallowed the sky. From afar, it was beautiful, peaceful.
Two things changed that day: how others see me, and how I see myself. No one ever treated me or my family the same way again, even if it hasn’t always been overt. We went from being American immigrants to foreign-born intruders. A first-grader asked me whose side I was on during recess. A stranger spit in my father’s face while we were crossing the street on my way to the Ninety-Second Street Y.
And I was different too. Paranoid, afraid. Everything felt frightening to me. I developed phobias of frivolous activities. Creaking floorboards became the telltale signs of an axe murderer. Good-bye was just another famous last word. I could no longer sleep, so instead I read—every night, in the dark, until it killed my eyesight so much, I had to get glasses. I read tales of faraway galaxies and lighthearted rom-coms with flawed but loveable protagonists. And I read magazines—Vinyl, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Nylon. I read everything I could get my hands on. Words became my allies. Writing became a trusted friend.
I look up at the clock—it’s been hours since Loretta turned her office into a war room. I’ll probably have to stay late, past eight or nine, to type up notes and tidy the office. Outside the ceiling-to-floor windows of the SPP Tower, it starts to pour. At first, the sound of an October shower calms my running mind and feeds the nostalgia I’ve indulged for the past hour. But the trickling sound of raindrops against the shatterproof glass begins to place whatever weight it took off my shoulders and place it back onto my bladder. I cross and uncross my legs. The last time I went to the bathroom was this morning—how is that even possible? And why did I drink so much coffee after getting to work?
I’m just going to run to the all-genders’ bathroom real quick. It will be quick and painless. No one will even know I was gone.
“Noora?” Loretta calls from behind her office door. “Sarah’s bringing everyone dinner. Can you wait till she arrives then escort her up? Thanks, sweetie.”
I sit very, very still, focusing every ounce of energy in my body and soul into not peeing. My mind begins to meditate. I focus on my breathing—in and out, as if I’m delivering a baby.
The phone rings, breaking my concentration. I feel my entire body clench then release. My facial muscles begin to relax, as they usually do post-orgasm. Then I feel wet.
Loretta pokes her head out of the door.
“That’s her,” she says, pointing to the phone still ringing off the hook. “Why aren’t you answering?”
Her nose curls up as she sniffs the air around her. I scoot the lower half of my body under my desk.
“Is it just me, or does it smell like urine in here?”