Off the Record (Record #1)(91)
Author: K.A. Linde

Still, she found that what she had missed most of all was walking over to a newspaper bin, picking up a fresh paper, and seeing all of the hard work her friends had put into the first issue. Liz had written her article for that first week a long time ago…the same paper she had received an A+ on from Professor Mires…the same article Brady had given her the idea for. Hayden had said that he was going to run it the first day, since that had the most traffic, and Liz was eager to see her name in print once more.

“You are much too happy that school has started again,” Victoria said as they walked through the crowd in the Pit.

Liz shrugged. It was probably true. She’d had too much time to herself recently to think, and she was glad to have something to do to get her mind off Brady.

“Aren’t you glad to be in the lab?” Liz asked. “Plus, there are so many more TAs now.”

“That’s a fair point, but not good enough. I’d rather be out at the pool than in a classroom.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “Says the woman who is taking eighteen hours, and four of those classes are sciences.”

“I like science. Nothing wrong with that, Miss Journalism,” Victoria said in a high snooty voice.

“Vic, you’re brilliant,” Liz said, throwing her arm over Victoria’s shoulders.

“Of course I am,” she responded, raising her eyebrows.

Liz shook her head, laughing lightly. It felt good to be carefree…to feel as if she was in college again.

Victoria snagged them an empty table while Liz fetched the first paper of the semester. She stuffed it under her arm and zigzagged back to her friend. Sinking into a chair, Liz pushed her blond hair off of her neck and laid the paper flat in front of her.

She froze when she saw the front page. Her vision blurred and she felt her body sway.

There on the front page was a picture of her and Hayden in D.C. It was the one that they had gotten a stranger to take for them so they could both be in the shot. She remembered vaguely an email going out asking about what people had done over the summer. Liz had brushed it off, since she couldn’t tell anyone about her summer. She hadn’t thought twice about it.

She couldn’t believe this was happening. Brady had told her to be anonymous. He had told her not to get her picture in the paper. And now here she was with a job lined up to work with reporters all over the country, and her picture with another guy front and center. Liz knew she was probably overreacting, but she hadn’t told Brady whom she had visited in D.C., and she certainly hadn’t expected for that picture to surface.

“Earth to Liz,” Victoria said, waving her hand in front of her face.

“What?” she asked, coming out of her trance.

“Is something wrong? You’re white as a ghost.”

“I, uh…made the front page,” Liz said, turning to face the paper to Victoria.

“That’s f**king awesome. So cool.” She bent over the picture and read the little caption. “You and Hayden look great together.”

Victoria glanced back up at Liz with a big smile still on her face. She dropped her smile and narrowed her eyes.

“Is this bad?” Victoria asked.

Liz nodded. “Not good.”

“Can you tell me why, at least?”

“I’ve been trying to stay anonymous…”

Liz knew as soon as it was out of her mouth how weird that would sound to someone like Victoria, who always craved the spotlight.

“Are you f**king serious? This guy doesn’t want you to be known? Does he even know you’re a reporter? Does he know that reporters are in the paper? I would come over there and shake some sense into you, if there weren’t so many people around!” Victoria cried heatedly.

“Victoria, back off!” Liz snapped, unable to hold her anger in. “He knows who I am. He knows what I do. He knows practically everything about me! There are reasons for the things he’s asked me to do, and I would do them a hundred times over.”

Silence stretched between them. Liz always had a cool temperament. Victoria was the firecracker who would explode at the drop of a hat.

“Fine,” Victoria said after a couple minutes. She didn’t look too happy about it. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Liz answered truthfully. She should call him and talk to him about it before he found out some other way. She probably should have told him she had visited Hayden a long time ago. After everything, she couldn’t seem to find the courage.

Liz fingered the long chain locket at her neck and sighed. She had taken to wearing the necklace Brady had given her every day. She always argued with herself that it went with every outfit…that it didn’t have anything to do with him…that it was just pretty. But she couldn’t lie to herself, and she couldn’t keep from remembering that she had told Brady that she loved him. Now that the haze of that weekend had gone by, she realized more and more that he had never actually told her…

“I don’t know either. What do you want me to tell you, since you won’t listen to the truth?” Victoria grumbled.

Liz tried to ignore her friend’s frustration. The underlying tone said that Victoria wanted to help. She had to hold on to that. “I want you to tell me that it’s all going to be all right. That I haven’t made a huge mistake. That things will all work out in the end.”

She could see what Victoria was poised to say. She could read it on her face clear as day. You want me to lie.

But then she didn’t. “Everything is going to be all right, Liz…somehow.”

Hearing Victoria say that only made it worse.

“I’m, uh…going to go to class,” Liz said, collecting all of her belongings, folding the paper, and shoving it back under her arm. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Please be careful,” Victoria said anxiously. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’ll be fine.” Fine. Ugh!

Liz hurried out of the Pit and away from the ever-watchful eyes. She needed to find somewhere quiet…somewhere she could be alone before her class. She knew she would be hard-pressed to find that right now. Students were crawling all over campus like ants after someone stepped on an anthill.

She wanted to go to the newspaper office, but she dreaded seeing and confronting Hayden about the picture. He had no idea what he had done by putting it there. And she couldn’t face him without demanding to know why he had put the picture on the front cover without her permission.