“Right,” I say, but it comes out as a croak.
The Times building is this gigantic silver structure with the paper’s logo across it in big, sparkling letters. Well, they look sparkling from across the street, but I can see bird poop as I get closer.
I’m shaking as I enter, as I show my ID and get a visitor’s pass, as I wait for Penny in the lobby. I hold my bag close to my chest. She arrives only a few minutes after me, but it feels like hours. Maybe I’m just going crazy. Maybe I’m taking this too seriously. Then again, I don’t think it’s possible to take something like this too seriously.
“Do you have your notebook?” Penny asks as we walk up the steps to the office. “All your recordings?”
“Yeah,” I say, gesturing to my bag. “I have everything.”
“God,” Penny says. “I can’t believe this is happening. This is insane.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But it’s okay. It’s just going to be a quick meeting, right? I’ll give her my notes and we’ll be good.”
We reach the newsroom. There’s a bunch of cubicles all spread out, people typing away, drinking from coffee mugs, chattering….I thought most journalists worked in silence, but surprisingly, this reminds me of a cafeteria. Other people run back and forth between desks, speaking intently while staring at computer screens. There’s so much energy in this room. More than I would’ve guessed.
Penny walks confidently behind the security guard assigned to us. I follow them.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, exactly,” she says. “I’ve never done this before.”
I bite my lip. I was counting on her knowing more than me. I’ve read about this sort of stuff, but not about teenagers doing it. Not about nervous, awkward teenagers like me doing this. I’ve read All the President’s Men and In Cold Blood. This is definitely not one of those stories.
But being inside the corner office definitely makes me feel like I’m in a movie. There are two walls of big windows that let you see the entire city. It almost reminds me of Working Girl. I’m stuck in the doorway, staring, instead of going over and introducing myself, like Penny.
There are a few people in the room—a brown man sitting at a desk, a white man sitting in a chair close to it, and a white woman sitting in another chair. They all turn to face me. I force myself to shut my eyes, transporting myself back to my bathroom at home, right in front of the mirror. I’m a journalist. I wrote this story. I belong in this room.
I open my eyes.
“Josie and Penny,” the woman says, standing up. She has big, curly hair pulled away from her face and a gap between her front teeth. She shakes hands with both of us, and I hope my hands aren’t too sweaty. “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Kim.”
I smile in response.
“This is our editor in chief, Tom,” Kim says, gesturing to the brown man sitting at the desk. “And this is our lawyer, Stan.”
I shake hands with them and try to smile, but I’m not sure if it works. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be smiling during a moment like this. Stan has a face that makes him look like he’s always smiling. Tom isn’t smiling, but he doesn’t look upset, either.
“All right,” Kim says, clapping her hands together. “First things first—we need to go through every single line of this story and corroborate what you’ve written.”
I gulp. This definitely isn’t the quick in-and-out I thought it would be.
We sit at a circular table in the center of the room. I transcribed and printed out my interviews in the hotel business center, so Kim, Tom, and Stan go through each one, passing them around the circle.
“Where was this interview held?” Stan asks, putting on his glasses. “Were there other people there?”
“Who is on the record?” Tom asks. “Is the interview with Tallulah Port on the record?”
“How is this corroborated?” Kim asks. “Did you speak to family members? Coworkers? Managers?”
That’s how I end up spending the rest of the afternoon making calls. While Penny sits next to me, trying to convince Charlotte Hart to give her the contact information of a manager or family member, I have to call everyone else. Julia is easy—she hasn’t been shy about this at all. But Savannah is harder.
“What do you mean?” she asks when I first explain what I need from her.
“Like, I need to confirm that other people know about it,” I say, looking around the room. It’s a flurry of activity—a fact-checker has come in and started to go through the story with the others. “In order for the newspaper to publish it, they need this as proof.”
“Proof?”
I wince.
“Not like that,” I say. “It’s just in case he tries to come back and say that you’re lying. Then we have proof, a leg to stand on. It protects you.”
“You mean it protects the paper,” she says. “Not me.”
I try my best to think of something useful to say.
“Remember how we talked about how this will help other people?” I say. “We don’t have to—you don’t have to do this. No one is going to make you. But remember why you wanted to do it before?”
The other end of the line is silent. Penny starts nodding at me, even though I can’t hear what’s being said on her call, and reaches for my pad to write something down.
“I don’t know,” Savannah says. Her voice is smaller than before. “I didn’t tell my friends. I told my boss at the office and she shut me down. I told my mom. I told Alice. And I told you. That’s literally it.”
“You don’t
