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“I feel that everyone who can drive has already gone to see the sights in Kansas,” I replied. “I’m looking for things that haven’t been seen or were not well-known before we covered them in our column. That is the point of this column, yes? To entice people behind the paywall?”
Mr. White opened his mouth to argue, but he shut it upon realizing that I was right. As much as I thought that this column should have been the free taste that then offered everyone a tantalizing view of what was behind the paywall, Mr. White insisted that the best journalism needed to be behind that paywall. To a degree, I agreed.
But there were some columns that didn’t need such great writing. A tourism column was among those things, but the spectacular pictures could be a draw. Especially because we could put the color photos on the website without having to worry about extra printing costs since it always costs more to print in color than it did to print in black and white.
“Is that all you needed, Grace?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see myself out.”
With that, I left Mr. White’s office. The door shut behind me, but I swore I heard him grumbling about me taking the budget and running with it. In reality, I was doing my best to find ways to stay within budget. This was the best option, in my opinion. If he didn’t want to have to deal with the fact that I was going to incur some extra fees when he wanted me to have those photos by the end of the month, then he shouldn’t have given me such a tight deadline.
I continued with the rest of my duties for the day – mainly making sure that the review of the concert was well-written and that all the photos looked good. As much as I wished this would be a website-only article, I knew that the photos would look decent in black and white. Portraits usually did when the orchestras wore all black and some silver jewelry, tastefully small.
Once it was all done, I submitted it to Mr. White for review and left the office. Music events happened all the time in Tulsa, but now that I was working on the tourism column, I was excused from the events for the rest of the month. Tanner, my friend and co-worker, was not happy because he struggled to take good photos in the concert hall, but I knew that he could handle it for a few weeks.
If I was given the tourism column for good, we’d have to split the musical events. Since they had more than one evening that ran each event, I didn’t think it’d be too hard to find a good way to split it so that I could cover each event with him when I had the chance.
Upon arriving home, I excitedly started to plan out the trip. Mr. Delaney had said we’d be leaving in a week. That didn’t leave me with much time to arrange everything, but since it wouldn’t be a long trip, that shouldn’t be too hard.
I quickly dialed up a good friend. Serenity had a home office that allowed her to write all day long, and the paper often freelanced smaller articles to her because it was cheaper than hiring another full-time reporter.
“Hey, Grace. I don’t have long,” Serenity said as she picked up. “I’ve got like ten minutes before I’m supposed to video-chat with a client.”
“I’ll be quick. Long story short, I’m heading out of town super last minute next week, and I need someone to watch the house,” I replied. “Just make sure that you take care of the dust; the food that’s here is yours to eat, the usual. Can you handle that on such short notice?”
“I just had a couple of clients cancel in-person meetings that would have had me out of town all next week, so I think I can manage that. You just want the usual no-burglar house-sitting, right? I don’t necessarily have to stay the night?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“I owe you big, Serenity.”
“The food in your fridge is enough for me,” she chuckled. “Do you know how long you’ll be gone?”
I suddenly realized that the only information I had for a return date was Gabe’s assessment of a few days. “I’ll text you what I know of my itinerary.” I smiled a little. “I don’t think I’ll be gone more than a few days, but I’m honestly not exactly sure how long.”
“All right. I’ve got to go now.”
With that, Serenity got off the phone with me. I knew she prided herself on her professionalism with her clients and would rather I hash out the details over text than make her late for a meeting. So I texted her when I was leaving town and where I was going so that she would know where to look in case there was trouble. It felt like an antiquated formality. She had my phone number, so it wouldn’t be hard for her to reach me if she needed to get ahold of me in a hurry.
I decided to call Mr. Delaney and see if he had a date he had to return by. However, I got his voicemail. Given what he did for a living, it wasn’t entirely surprising.
“If you’re hearing this message, I’m flying in the clouds above the ground,” his voicemail started, “Please leave your message after the tone. Thank you and have a great day from your captain.”
I couldn’t hold back a laugh. He sounded like a different person from the man I’d met the other night at the concert. The man who’d made this voicemail sounded almost friendly.
“Hello, Mr. Delaney. It’s Grace Overstreet. Do you have an itinerary of how long we’ll be in Corinth, or are you planning to leave me until I need to be picked up and get me when your schedule allows it? I’d like to know so that I can make more solid housesitting plans, but I understand if you’re not sure yet. Let me know when you know. Thank you.”
With that, I hung up the phone and put it in my pocket.
I then went to dig my suitcases out of my closet. I traveled quite a bit, but it had been a while since my last trip. If I remember correctly, my last large trip like this was to Europe in college for a study abroad course. It had been incredibly fun. All the other trips I’ve taken have been to visit family.
Staying for an unspecified amount of time in Corinth and knowing that it was supposed to be hit with a freak snowstorm, I wanted to have enough room to pack both for a winter wonderland and for a summertime breeze in case the forecast was wrong. Freak storms could be unpredictable, and there was a decent chance that the snow would melt before it even had a chance to gather for a good wonderland picture.
I finally found my suitcases hiding in a corner that I didn’t use much for anything but storage and decided the first thing I would do was measure them. Since Mr. Delaney had given me the measurements for how much room I’d have for my suitcases, I imagined he had done this before.
I was delighted to learn that my two smaller suitcases would work. My largest one was far too big – which made sense, as it was meant for commercial flights – but the two carry-on suitcases I had would be just fine together, side by side. I could even slide a small duffel on top, I believed. It just depended on how full I stuffed the bags.
