AND THE GENERAL ELECTION
STAAAAARTS… NOW!
AFTER NARROWLY MISSING NOMINATION,
HAZE ENTERS RACE AS INDEPENDENT
By Sky Vasquez, Staff Writer, The Queue
The underdog fights on: with delegate voting and negotiating still in high gear, Rocky Haze took to the podium on the convention’s third night and made the game-time decision to freestyle. According to Haze insiders, the musician bagged a more formal speech that had been crafted by the party aimed at keeping the peace while delegates were still casting votes. Instead, Haze used her time to express gratitude for her supporters while also declaring her break from the party, rebranding herself an independent.
“If you still believe in me, like I do in you, join me as I continue our journey as an independent candidate for president,” she told a stunned hall that quickly erupted into cheers. Wasting no time, Haze welcomed to the stage New Hampshire Governor Frank Fisher, naming him, “my running mate and your next vice president.”
As the audience roared, seemingly thrilled at this hijacking of the convention, music cranked up and Haze announced, “We call this one, ‘Taking the Party With Me.’” She began her newest fight anthem.
“This is getting ugly, the party needs unity,
I’m out for now, don’t pout, this process just ain’t my cuppa tea
Starting something new, hope you’ll come with me too
Been independent since birth
Goin’ it alone, know my self-worth
Gonna hang tight, keep up the fight, do this right
Tonight: still got hopes for this country and dreams, not ready to leave this scene, not saying goodbye, just taking the party with me.”
She might have continued, but the sound system went dead, stage lights turned off and the voice of an announcer overtook the auditorium: “Due to technical difficulties, today’s session will be ending early. We hope to have matters resolved by the start of tomorrow’s events. Thank you.”
As attendees filed out of the convention center, two hashtags took the top trending spots on Twitter: #breaktheconvention and #rockyhazeforpresident…
* * *
Jay took a seat at the far end of the conference room and proceeded to look busy on his phone. Though the rest of the office had settled into that annual end-of-July summer slumber—folks taking vacations and long weekends, deadlines loosened—the Politics Desk churned on. The prickly Helena had called a meeting of the Poli Team now that the conventions had wrapped and the reporters were briefly back from the field. Everyone around the table all appeared so at home, catching up like old friends, laughing, smiling, trading war stories. Yet Jay still didn’t feel quite like he fit in, even though Sky’s stories had been outranking everyone else’s. It would’ve been easier if Sky had been there. He’d almost come home the day after Rocky’s speech, but instead continued on with the Haze crew to her first appearances in New England with Fisher as her running mate. Even Sky hadn’t anticipated her striking out on her own.
Helena whooshed in with a notebook, her various devices and her usual air of importance.
“And the general election staaaaarts…now!” Helena said, kicking off the meeting. “Welcome back to the faces we haven’t seen in a while…” After running through the site numbers and stats, page views, new visitors, all the ways The Queue had benefited from this unusually zany primary season, she started down another road. “Obviously you’ve all done stellar work,” she said. “Round of applause for yourselves.” She let them clap for two-and-a-half seconds, then cut off the celebration: “BUT, as you know, the field has narrowed down considerably from a ridiculous twenty-eight candidates to three. Which means we’ll need to do some restructuring to be sure our resources are being utilized to the fullest potential. We’ll be tripling up on the candidates who are left.” She laid out a rotation schedule with three reporters assigned to each candidate. When she was finished, Jay couldn’t help but notice that Sky had been left off. Entirely.
“So these three subsets, I’ll be meeting with you individually to work out the coverage through November. The rest of you—”
Jay raised his hand, polite and respectful. He was not called upon. Helena just kept talking. Finally he shouted from the opposite side of the room: “HELENA!”
She paused. “Yes, Jay, you’re free to go if you’d like.”
“No, actually, that’s the thing,” he said. His blood began to boil, and he centered himself. He had felt so off-kilter these several months as though he was method acting what it would be like not to have Sky in his life anymore, how he would handle it if Sky left him. But they had been all right. They had made it work, hadn’t they? He didn’t want to live in fear of what might happen anymore, all that mattered at this moment was making sure that Sky got to keep doing the job he loved.
“NO!” Jay stood up, surprising himself. All eyes focused on him. “We’re good, we don’t need the extra help on Haze.”
“It wasn’t really a request, it was more a directive, to stand down on this,” she said, frosty. “We’ve got more seasoned reporters—”
“I’m not going to sit here and let you take this away from Sky, who is killing it. Sky, who delivered this news break to you in the first place, who has had a perfect record of number one Queue stories and whose work has been flawless.” He leaned in her direction, slamming his hand on the table for emphasis.
“Jay, look, you guys were new to the political team, you did a great job,” she said. “But this is just how things work in this department. It’s different from the Culture portal. Here, there are constant reassignments. It’s business, not personal.”
“From a business standpoint, I guarantee you won’t get the access Sky has gotten if you put someone else on Haze,” he said, firm.
“Jay,” she snapped. “That’s enough.”
“No,” he said. “You know what? I’m gonna hijack this meeting until you agree.” A switch flipped. “I’m going to filibuster. I’m going to keep talking about Sky until I have your promise he continues on the beat he has been kicking ass on.” He took out his phone, brought up The Queue app, searched for Sky’s bylines.
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave—” Helena started.
“Let’s take a trip down memory lane and read his work, shall we?” Jay said, ignoring her and the snickers from the others. “I’ll start with the first one. There are probably, let’s see, at least one or two a week since the end of January, at least thirty? ‘Life of the Party,’” he began to read, projecting in a grand voice.
They tried to talk around him. They asked him to leave again. They glared. Until finally Helena put her head in her hands. “FINE! Make this stop!” she said. “We’ll keep you guys on, just stop.”
Jay smiled, sat down. Didn’t even say thank you. You don’t thank a thief for giving back something that was yours to begin with, he thought.
He vowed not to tell Sky. Sky finally had the confidence to do this work. Jay wouldn’t let anything erode that.
* * *
The week of the convention marked a painful few days for Cady, emotionally and physically. If she had not completely embarrassed herself at Preamble, she might’ve called over and begged them to deliver some hair of the dog to her office the next day. She had woken up on her couch, still in her clothes from the day before, not sure where she was and unclear about just how much of the past twenty-four hours had been a dream.
Horrifically, she realized, it had all been real.
She considered calling in sick to work but, like a person grieving, she needed to keep busy doing the things she always did. To have some bit of normalcy and stability. Today Madison Goodfellow would be showing the viewing audience how to make a Southwestern salad using one of those kits from the supermarket with the sour cream, tortilla strips, cheese and dressing already portioned out in little Baggies and then placing it in the kind of pricey sterling silver bowl that resembled the one given to female Wimbledon champions.
Madison gave Cady one of her signature bear hugs when she saw her, and told her to call later if she needed anything. Hank was coming to town, so she had to get back to their condo.
Cady called Reagan as soon as the show ended. She picked up right away:
“Cady, how are you?”
“Uhhhhh,” Cady groaned, head in her hands.
“I was afraid of that,” Reagan said. In the background the twins chanted “MomMY MomMY MomMY more cookie more cookie more cookie!”
“Shh-shh, sweeties, Mommy’s talking to Aunt Cady. Aunt Cady had a bad night.” The twins chanted “baaa nigh baaa nigh.”
Cady loved Reagan but wasn’t sure she could handle these noisy background vocals with such a hangover. She cut to the chase. “So I did something last night after I left you guys and I need you to make me feel like I don’t need to enlist in the Witness Protection Program and disappear.”
“One night stands are not that bad. Who was it?” Reagan said, maternal.
“No! It’s not that bad.”
“Okay. Sorry. Shoot.”
Cady outlined the events, to her best recollection, after leaving Madison’s place. “And so then I may or may not have thrown myself at Parker, still a little hazy on details,” she said.
“What’s the problem? He’s supercute, have some fun, good for the soul,” Reagan said, then paused. “Ohhh, wait, was he catching what you were throwing?”
“Um. Negative,” she whispered, embarrassed.
“Ohhh. Well. I am shocked. I thought he would be all over you. Shit. Maybe I’ve been a mom too long, my instincts are off,” she said. “Well, maybe you thought you were being forward but you were actually being too subtle. I could see that happening with you.”
“Yeah, no, I think I was pretty clear.”
“Ouch,” Reagan said, not quite comforting enough. “Okay, nip this in the bud, get out in front of this—text him and just tell him you’d been drugged. It’s actually true. Which is a bonus.”
“Good thinking,” Cady said.
She hung up and proceeded to do absolutely nothing but hope it hadn’t actually happened.