The very next morning, I march up to Jade’s office and confront Kelsea at her desk. She hasn’t been responding to my texts, Google messages, or Instagram DMs. Yes, I know. I’m borderline stalking her. But I can’t help it—she’s ghosting me, and I need answers, stat.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask, announcing my arrival.
She looks up from the email she’s typing and breaks out into an obnoxiously cheerful smile. Her blond ringlets have been styled into two sections with ’90s-era butterfly clips, and she’s wearing a light-pink IRO leather jacket paired with medium-wash skinny jeans.
I look down at my own Dr. Martens creepers, velour maxi skirt, and leather blazer. She looks like the Baby Spice to my Morticia Addams.
“Oh, hey there, girlie!” she says, infantilizing me. I hate being treated like an eight-year-old pageant contestant. “Not sure I know what you’re referring to.”
I grab the collar of her white Brandy Melville crop top and pull her closer to me so she can smell the cold brew on my breath.
“Marty’s. In fifteen minutes.” I look her up and down, doing my best impression of a mobster. “Or else.”
She gulps. I turn around and head to Marty’s.
Founded in 1965, Marty’s is a dive bar around the corner from the SPP Tower that’s practically an institution in its own right. The bars are made of straight-grained, deep-red, glossy mahogany, and the booths are upholstered in velvet and barred off from the rest of the crowd. Slanted walls are lined with framed photographs of famous patrons, like Woody Allen (vom) and Alex Rodriguez. The air smells of peppermint and turpentine, and my favorite bartender, Andy, can make an old-fashioned that’s been kissed by Lucifer himself.
At 9:30 a.m., each barstool seat is empty—save for the friendly neighborhood drunk, Phyllis, who’s actually wrapping up a late night out. Every early morning can be somebody else’s late night, depending on how you look at it.
Kelsea strolls in a couple minutes late. I let out a hiss as she walks through the doors and takes a seat next to me at the bar. Phyllis opens her eyes.
“A little early for this, isn’t it?” Kelsea says.
I sip my coffee. “Why did you use that information to sabotage the Print team?” I decide to cut through the bullshit and get straight to the point. “You said you wanted what’s best for the magazine. This will destroy the magazine! You’re not looking out for Vinyl—you’re looking out for Jade. You just wanted to target Loretta but hurt the entire team in the process!”
Kelsea bats her eyes innocently. I roll mine.
“Okay, whoa,” she says. “First off, you seriously need to chill. Second, you knew exactly what you were getting into. And third, this is good for Vinyl. Loretta is an unreliable leader who is out of touch with our readership. She is narcissistic and egotistical and cares more about her own celebrity than the future of this brand.”
She’s dead wrong. I had no idea this was coming or what she’d do with the intel. Or did I? I guess, deep down, some teeny, tiny, fucked-up part of me subconsciously hoped she’d pull something like this. But nothing this bad. I thought she’d just, like, plant some heinous rumor about Loretta’s temper to Zendaya’s agent or mess up the sample sizes for her cover shoot. Not get the cover canceled altogether.
She looks up at Andy and flashes him her professionally bleached white teeth.
“Can I get a glass of fresh-pressed green juice, por favor?”
He shakes his head, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Look, SPP cares about one thing and one thing only: P&L,” she tells me.
“What is that? Something to do with clicks?”
“No. Well, yeah, sort of. P&L stands for profit and loss, aka, making money. The second the higher-ups notice a sizeable loss in profit margins, Loretta’s in trouble. The holiday issue is going to tank for Print, but with this Zendaya profile, Digital’s clicks are going to be through the roof. That means advertisers will be interested and SPP will be impressed. They’ll take note because they don’t listen to anything but money and nothing talks louder than numbers. Loretta will be out, and Jade will be in.”
I stare blankly at Kelsea. This plan is deliberately thought out. It’s so intricate, so deliciously evil.
What did she say her sign was again?
“I want to help Jade—I think what Loretta did to her is majorly fucked up—but I won’t help you destroy Print,” I tell her. “This magazine means something to me, Kelsea. This isn’t a game for me.”
“But it is, isn’t it?” Giddy, she claps her hands. “Because the thing is, babe, if you don’t keep spying for us, I’m going to go to Beth and tell her what you did. And you’ll lose your job. Sounds like the end of a game well-played to me, don’t you think?”
“You’ll be implicating yourself, idiot,” I say. “You set me up.”
Kelsea pouts her lips, giving me a look of pity. I want to smack it off her face.
“It’ll be an anonymous tip. You won’t be able to prove I put you up to it.”
“I have the Slacks. The texts.”
“No, you don’t. You wiped everything because you were nervous about getting caught.”
Fuck. She’s right. I did do that.
“I took screenshots,” I fib.
Kelsea laughs.
“No,” she says. “You didn’t. You’re bluffing, it’s so obvious. Come on, Noora. It’ll be your word against mine. And who is Beth going to believe: Jade’s assistant of over a year, whom she adores? Or Loretta’s newly minted lackey who isn’t even that good at her job?”
I choke on my sip of coffee, snorting brown liquid out of my nose and all over the countertop. Kelsea uses her napkin to dab at her jacket. She must sense my desperation in some way, know I need the money so I’m not willing to walk away.
This bitch actually set me up. I’m trapped.
“So, essentially, you’re using me to deliver clickbait,” I surmise.
“Now you’re getting it!” She salutes me with her water. “Just pretend you’re the brown Nancy Drew, sniffing out the scoop.”
With that, Kelsea gets off her stool and walks back out the door. Just as she leaves, Andy resurfaces, holding a glass.
“I couldn’t find green pressed whatever, but I got orange juice,” he tells me.
I thank him and chug the OJ then use Loretta’s corporate card to cover the check. I think she can afford it.
When I arrive back at the office, I’m surprised to find Loretta is already in. I’m even more confused to discover there are handymen in tow, there to assemble a working padlock on her office door.
“Uh, hi.” The one on the left is really cute and has pecs the size of my head. Damn, I have got to stop objectifying the men in this office.
“Noora? Is that you?” I hear a muffled voice from behind the airtight, sealed door. “It’s okay, boys. Let her in.”
She smiles upon seeing me, taking my hands in hers. Her palms are cold. They feel lifeless, as if all the blood has been drained out and replaced with some sort of artificial plasma.
“We can trust her.”
I walk into Loretta’s office to find she’s seemingly turned it into a bunker overnight. There are rotating cameras set up all over the room, facing every which way. A new vault-like safe has been propped up beneath her desk, with an impressive-looking combination keypad. Blackout blinds have been installed on all the windows. Does she really think Jade is going to send a drone to spy on her?
Actually, don’t answer that.
“What’s all this?” I ask, taking a seat. I already know the answer, of course, but always good to verbally acknowledge when someone’s gone full-blown paranoid.
“I’m taking extra security measures, sweetheart,” she says. “From now on, this office will be our headquarters. Entry will be inner circle only. Capisce?”
I gulp, looking around. What’s that blinking red light coming from the closet against the wall by the door? It looks like a hanger, and yet, the handle appears to be aimed at her desk. Is that a bug? Are we being recorded?!
“Noora, I’m going to tell you something, but you must keep it solely between us,” she begins. I nod. “The December issue is hereby canceled.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. “Canceled, as in, cancel culture? Like, Notes app apology for being racist, canceled? Or, like, not being produced anymore, canceled?”
“I frankly have no idea what you just said,” she says, waving off my questions. “But given the current scandal, we’ve decided to allocate the funds we were going to use for the holiday issue toward something even better.”
Loretta flaps her arms around, hardly able to control her enthusiasm. I’m growing more and more concerned.
“We’re throwing an Experiences event! For the first week of November. And we’re hoping it’ll go viral! Even more so than that silly Zendaya story.”
“But that’s only two weeks away.” I think about all the time, effort, and money that would have to go into really pulling this off. “Who’s running point on this?”
“I am.” She glances at the security camera pointed directly at us then lowers her voice to a whisper, as if we’re being watched. “Well, we are. Actually, make that just you.”