When the elevator doors open, Ainsley stepped out into a sterile hallway of offices and clip-clopped to one end. At the end of the hall, she opened a narrow doorway and stepped onto an old, tight, twisting staircase.
"We're technically not supposed to do this, for safety reasons, but every virgin reporter has to go up to the clock tower."
"Oh. I'm not a virgin," Harper had said and then realized, when Ainsley had laughed, what she'd meant.
"Sure you're not afraid of heights?" Ainsley repeated when they reached the top of the stairs, resting her hand on the handle of a latch above her head.
"Honestly, I have a harder time with tight spaces like this stairway than heights."
Ainsley's eyes flashed. She looked as if she'd done this orientation thing before. Opening the hatch and stepping out onto the landing, she beckoned Harper to follow her.
Harper followed with ease, though she wished she'd worn a warmer coat, like the long coat Ainsley wore.
The view from the clocktower was so beautiful, even on that cold, gray morning. "It really is a beautiful city, isn't it?" She turned around and faced the other direction. The other side of the river was her home, Dockside. From up there, she could see everything. All of her local haunts. The boardwalk and the Main Street access to the public beach. The docks, with all of the massive cargo ships being loaded and unloaded with goods and raw materials. Her school. Her house. Her family's business. Even that silly dive bar on Haven Street where the tallest, rudest jerk in the entire city worked. From up here, the whole neighborhood looked so quaint, she would never have guessed it was riddled with miscreants. She could even see the sinkhole along Tenth Street that the city had yet to barricade off for safety. Harper would be calling City Hall about that later. "Look," she said to Ainsley. "See that sinkhole? It collapsed like 600 feet away from my family's distillery, and it's had a major effect on business. It's because of the old underground tunnels. The paper should be writing about that. It's systemic neglect."
Ainsley looked thoughtful. "We definitely should. Well, cherry popped. Welcome to the Newcastle Dispatch. Time for the budget meeting."
Downstairs in the main newsroom, Harper finally felt like she had walked into the real deal. The old-school wooden desks, the smell of stale coffee, and the crackle of the police scanner mesmerized Harper immediately. The energy of the place was electric, just like a big city newspaper should be.
However, the way they did things wasn't exactly how she had imagined. That first daily budget meeting at the Newcastle Dispatch was a lot more boring than what Harper had thought it would be.
She had expected to hear about down and dirty crime stories. She'd looked forward to listening to grizzled reporters smarting off to their editor. She was low-key hoping to watch a verbal sparring match over revealing one source or another's identity.
But none of that happened. A crowd of young-ish looking reporters gave updates about loads of stuff that Harper could not care less about, most of it to do with the university. Someone else talked about their trial coverage of the Girardi crime family and the Miami mafia syndicate's extradition. Not a single murder or undercover investigation was going on. The most grizzled staffer was an older man with a long gray ponytail who wrote a column about gardening.
Suddenly, her boredom switched to discomfort as the spotlight was upon her. "Great run down, everyone. And before we head out, I'd like to introduce you to our newest staffer, Harper Ross. Fridays are usually pretty slow news days for us, so I thought today would be a good day to dive in and help her get to know how things work around here."
Greg had kind eyes; everyone else blatantly sized her up as they introduced themselves one by one. They each had the same reserved and abrupt manner as Ainsley, as if they were all keeping their guard up about something.
"I'll say this for her," Ainsley said, now having shed her coat and standing there looking ten times as stylish in her blazer as Harper. She tried not to worry too much about her jeans and sweater, as Greg had not mentioned a dress code. "Unlike some of you guys, she didn't faint like a little bitch at the tower initiation."
Some laughed; others gave themselves away by looking at their feet.
"Alright, alright," Greg said, taking back control of the meeting. "What do you have for us, Harper?"
Instantly, Harper could feel her pulse beating in her throat. The managing editor was asking her to come up with her own story? Perfect. Well, I may as well go big or go home on my first day, she thought.
"I would love to write a story about the missing girls of Dockside, and I have a pretty good place to start." She liked that all the reporters, editors, and staffers stood at their workspaces for these meetings. Harper knew better than to tell anyone these meetings reminded her of that show, TMZ.
She already felt as if she had too much to prove, being the only reporter on staff who had neither a journalism degree nor equivalent experience. Greg had taken an interest after the editorial board published her guest opinion piece last month.
Thinking that Greg had just sought her out for another quote, she had been taken aback at the offer of a job.
And on her first day, she dove in headfirst by asking for the biggest story there was in her mind.
The other reporters all stared at her: some like she had grown a second head, others like she was stepping on their toes, and still others gaped like they were scared for her.
Greg smiled sympathetically, with his concerned big brown eyes and crow's feet. He was both a
