“I’m not going to do that,” I said. “Even though that was basically what Leo wanted me to do, too.”
“I don’t blame him! If that paper hadn’t happened to fall out of his backpack like that, you’d still have no idea who it was! Who’s to say the blackmailing wouldn’t go on until he graduated?”
“I don’t think it would. Once this semester is over, it doesn’t really have to be a secret anymore that Leo and I are seeing each other. We’re not going to flaunt it or anything, but he won’t be my professor anymore.”
“How’s that going, anyway?” she asked. “Living with him? Can you believe it—that you’re actually living with him? I mean, who would have thought at the beginning of the semester?”
“I know,” I said. And it did seem kind of crazy, sometimes, but also not. It sort of seemed like it was exactly what was supposed to happen, because I couldn’t imagine my life without Leo.
Lindsey shook her head. “Seth,” she said. “Shit. I really can’t believe it. So . . . you’re still going to write the article? Even though you know it’s him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I actually wrote it already. Well, most of it. It’s not very long, but it’s good. It basically took me an hour to do, once I got the idea.”
“It did? You’re amazing!”
“Sometimes it works out like that.”
She grinned. “Can I read it? Actually, no, I’ll wait until it’s published. That way I can read it with the whole rest of the school, too.”
“I don’t even know if it’s going to be published,” I said. “I have no clue how many other students are submitting articles.”
“I’m not,” Lindsey said. “So you’ll have one less article to be competing with. Not that it would be any competition between the two of us anyway; your worst article would be way better than my best.”
“Stop it,” I said. “You’ve written plenty of good stuff. Remember that paper you got an A- on? You got a way better grade on that than I did.” And that was what had started the whole thing with Leo. I smiled thinking back on it now; it seemed like such a long time ago. I remembered the dread I had felt when I saw the grade, how truly awful it seemed like things were going to be, but they had turned out so differently than I ever could have imagined.
22.
Leo
I had a hundred different scenarios for how I would confront Carla about what she was doing, but I ended up waiting for our meeting about the first issue of the Benton Daily Journal.
I met with Carla in her office. She was sitting at her desk, which was immaculate, compared to my own desk. I couldn’t tell from her expression whether or not Seth had showed her the article that Tessa had written.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” Carla said. “I know that we’re both busy, but I think it’d be good if we got on the same page. No pun intended.”
“Ha ha,” I said.
“Honestly, this whole thing seems a little rushed to me. We’ve got, what—three and a half weeks until the semester ends? I think it would’ve been better if we had some more time to really dedicate to this, but Shannon wanted to get the ball rolling on this now.”
“It’s a little bit rushed,” I said. “But Shannon’s the boss.”
“So, before we really get started, is there anything you wanted to address first? I know you’ve got a lot of magazine experience, so I imagine you’ve got some input into all of this. I’ve received maybe half a dozen or so submissions so far, so maybe there won’t be that many for us to go through. Which would be good, I must admit.”
I laced my fingers together and rested them against the back of my head. Carla, Carla, Carla.
“We’re probably only going to get a handful of articles that are even ready to be published,” I said. “So we’ve got that going for us. And speaking of articles, there’s nothing else you wanted to discuss first?” I asked.
“In regards to the paper?”
“In regards to . . . anything.”
She frowned. “I think it’s best if we just try to stay on topic here. I’ve only got about 45 minutes, and then I have another meeting I need to get to. I’m sure your schedule is equally as busy.”
“Actually it’s not; I guess I don’t have the jam-packed social calendar that you must have. But I thought there might be something in particular you wanted to talk about first before we started figuring out just how this newspaper was going to be run.”
She gave me the sort of look I could imagine her giving her most petulant, pain in the ass students. “Would you care to be a little more specific?”
She wasn’t going to admit to anything unless I called her out on it, point blank. Fair enough.