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It is at this moment I realize I’ve been inexplicably tapping my foot against the leg of the chair. Loudly.
Be fucking normal, I tell myself, repeating it in my head like a mantra. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do here: no jokes, no outlandishness, just a Barrett Bloom who lives and dies by the pen.
“Sorry. A little nervous,” I admit. It’s not something I’d typically say, and it makes Annabel soften. Suddenly, it feels perfectly valid that my mind re-created this scenario so I could ace my interview. I’ll wake up, march back to the journalism building, and charm Annabel into giving me another chance. That has to be it.
“No need,” she says. “These are always more fun when they’re a little informal. Casual. I’m not going to sit here and ask you to tell me where you see yourself in five years. I have your résumé and the links to stories you did for”—she peeks at her screen—“the Navigator. You wrote… almost fifty articles in four years? For a monthly paper? Wow.” A low whistle.
Yesterday I told her it was because I didn’t have many friends. I’ll go for a different angle this time. No self-deprecation.
“Journalism is my life.” I pour as much earnestness into it as possible, and yet it comes out sounding robotic. “I’m always seeking the truth, you know? I love writing profiles and learning about people I might not otherwise… um, learn about. I like… hearing what people have to say. That’s the beauty of it.”
If you gave a pocket gopher a typewriter and asked how it feels about journalism, surely it would come up with something better than this.
“The beauty of…?”
“Journalism,” I say, and promptly want to fling myself into the sun.
The pressure between my eyes grows more brutal. About 30 percent of me is here in the newsroom with Annabel while the rest of me puzzles out an impossible equation. I have a great memory, but there’s no way I could re-create everything to this degree. I’m not giving my brain enough credit for that.
There’s something unsettling building in my stomach, a strange sense that none of this is made-up at all.
Annabel’s smile falters, and though the impetus is different, the reaction is the same. Recognizable. “Right. Well, we don’t want you to overwork yourself. Most of our new reporters start out with one story every couple weeks or so.”
She cycles through the same questions as yesterday: what drew me to journalism, my favorite topics to write about, what I’m hoping to get out of working on the Washingtonian. And every time, I can barely string a sentence together, like I’m speaking around shards of glass.
“I’m really curious about this article you did a couple years ago on the tennis team,” she says eventually, gesturing to her computer screen. “There’s a note here that says comments have been disabled, which doesn’t seem to be the case with other articles.”
“Cheating scandal.” I try to keep my voice as level as possible. “It was devastating, really—it was their best season in ages. But I had to follow the truth.” Surely if I keep mentioning “the truth,” one of these times I’ll attach some significant meaning to it.
I should tell her about my favorite piece for the Nav, the one I wrote about the custodian who moonlighted as an extra in just about every famously shot-in-Seattle film you could name. But now my head is pounding, and I have to gnash my teeth together against the pain. I whip off my glasses and press the heel of my hand into my forehead.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Annabel says, and no. No, I am not.
“I’m sorry—” I break off as another flash of pain rips through my skull. “Will you just—excuse me for a second?”
And once I get into the hall, I race all the way back to my dorm.
I am following my truth—read: lying facedown on my bed, head beginning to fuse with pillow—when Lucie enters the room, her phone pressed to her ear.
“… and I really think if you just—hello? Did I lose you?” With a sigh, she hangs up, cursing under her breath.
“It’s kind of a reception dead zone in here,” I say, mostly into my pillow. The headache has faded just a little, but it’s still there.
This startles her. “Barrett? Sorry, I didn’t see you.” She swipes at something on her phone and holds it back up to her ear. Groans. “One more reason to get out of Shithole Hall.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say, rolling over so I can gesture to a swirl of a water stain on the ceiling. “Do you see that? Not many people know this, but that’s not a water stain at all. It was actually part of the original design for this building. The architects thought it would give it a more lived-in feel.”
At that, she cracks a smile. A small one. Right: this is Sunshine Lucie, Lucie who’s rushing a sorority and leaving me to rot in Olmsted all by my lonesome. My little cave o’ chaos that’s broken my brain.
Because ever since I got back to the dorm and collapsed onto my bed, one thought has been running through my head and one thought only:
This is real.
Somehow, I know this in my bones.
I don’t know how or why, only a strong flare of certainty that’s becoming impossible to ignore. This world has too many details, too much color, too much feeling. Add in the simple fact that this has never felt like a dream, despite what I forced myself to believe a few hours ago when it was all too much.
Maybe I really am losing my grip on reality, or maybe the entire campus is playing a prank on me, but I’m altogether too drained to make sense of it right now.
