I was on the student newspaper at the University of Kansas before any of this happened. I liked journalism, though I was bad at it. Careless. As a reporter, I wrote stories on athletes volunteering at soup kitchens and fashion trends like the Brazilian bikini wax and low-rise jeans. I quoted my roommates instead of talking to strangers like I was supposed to. I rarely took the extra step to look up a word in a dictionary or check a calendar. I was used to getting by on my looks. I was used to not having to care too much.
The paper came out at midnight, and every morning the journalism professor who oversaw the operation would pin a copy on a bulletin board in the newsroom. He would have marked every mistake with a red pen; the really bad ones in green. Ones that meant libel! were underlined in black. Sometimes “good” was written by someone’s byline. I loved that moment, when we crowded around the bulletin board to see what kind of job we had done. I liked getting chips at the vending machine and sharing cigarettes with everyone out back by the dumpster, laughing about something, usually something someone had done while drunk.
I went to lots of staff parties, and there was lots of drinking, and lots of regrettable sex. We did what people do when they work together day after day, barely out of their teenage years—stupid things. I stole another girl’s boyfriend at least once, and wore a fringed leather jacket everywhere. We made up group dances at bars after late-night copy-editing shifts. After concerts I’d crowd in tiny backstage rooms with shaggy band members, and as we all smoked pot, I’d scribble quotes on gum wrappers from my purse. I threw lots of parties, themed, usually. Expected ones, like disco and white trash. The best was prom, where everyone wore their old dress or tux. Mine was light blue stiff taffeta with a full bubble skirt. I was the kind of girl other girls only pretended to like.
I grew up in the Midwest, restless, thinking I was meant for something different. Something better. We all did.