Famous Last Words (2 page)

The phone rings. Maybe it’s a funeral director with, like, seven or eight obits. That would be sweet. Then we can deep-six the pastry-chef feature.

“Obit desk,” I answer.

“You sound so friendly when you say that. It’s creepy, you know?”

Ugh.
Shelby. Not sweet.

“Do not call me on this line. I told you that.”

“But when I call your cell, I don’t get to hear you say ‘obit desk.’ Besides, you’ve been screening me all day.”

“I’m busy,” I say.

“You’re not still angry about the Rob McGinty thing, are you? Because I thought I was helping, really. You’re always so afraid to talk to him, and I think you’d have a chance with Rob if you’d just—”

“Look, we’ll talk later, okay?” I say through clenched teeth. Please, oh, please let her summer job at the mall come through.

“You’re not going to let this ruin our last real summer, are you?”

“Not the last-real-summer thing again. I’m hanging up now.”

“Don’t you—”

Click.

“Was that your spacey friend again?” AJ asks.

Shelby’s right about one thing, I’ve always been shy around most guys. Not AJ, though. On my first day, AJ and I did these mock interviews of each other as part of my training. The exercise lasted only an hour, but the Q&A between us never stopped.

“Yes, she calls the obit desk almost as much as your girlfriend, Jessica,” I say. “Call, text, do
something
. Communication is the key to any healthy relationship.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, she’s my … I don’t know,” he says.

“I’m sure Jessica appreciates you referring to her as your I-don’t-know.”

AJ just shrugs. “Things are unclear at the moment.”

“Right. I understand completely.”

I don’t, really. In fact, I’ve been trying to get a read on this situation since I started working here. AJ says this Jessica person is not his girlfriend, but he wears a black leather cord around his neck with a plain silver ring that looks, well, girlie. Is it Jessica’s? Would a guy wear a girl’s ring? Seems odd. When it comes to dating, though, what do I know? I’m more familiar with the surface of Mars (thanks to NASA’s excellent website).

We stare at each other for a few seconds before I continue. “Anyway, if Shelby calls on the obit line again, can you do me a favor and pretend you’re my boss and tell her you’ll fire me if she doesn’t stop calling?”

“No problemo,” he says. “If you didn’t sound twelve, you could probably do the same for me with Jessica.”

“Shut up,” I say. “Just be thankful no one can tell how short you are from the sound of your voice.”

“Short? I’m not short. Five-nine is average. Like you should talk.”

He’s right. People who are five-one should not throw stones.

“Sorry. It’s just that Shelby is making me insane. Her foreign-exchange-student boyfriend returned to his homeland, and she suddenly remembered she’s the yin to my yang,” I say.

“So, your friend turned into a total ho this year, and now you don’t like her?”

“Nooo. I told you. The party? She blabbed to that guy and made it sound like I was totally crushing on him. Plus, she abandoned me all year long while she strolled the halls holding hands and making out with
Olaf
,” I say.

“Bitter much?”

Maybe I am. A boyfriend—and perhaps some help in the boobage department—would make it so much easier to navigate the slim passageways between high school social circles. If Chestnutville High is as good as it gets, I’m going to pull a Sylvia Plath. Last real summer? I’m still waiting for my
first
real summer. My first real everything.

“Why don’t you get started on that feature obit while I make a coffee run?” AJ says.

“Why don’t
you
get started on the feature while
I
make the coffee run?”

“Because
I
can drive through Dunkin’ Donuts, which is faster than walking to the deli. Plus, you’re a way better writer,” AJ says.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Yes, but my car will get me to Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“Fine,” I say, silently cursing the state of New Jersey for making the legal age to drive without an adult seventeen, and my guidance counselor for hooking me up with this summer job after my parents expressed their concern that working the Snack Shack at the community pool wasn’t challenging enough. Honor Society and Advanced Placement classes just aren’t enough for those two. It’s not easy being the sole offspring of two lawyers. A little sibling diversion would have been nice. Still, I’m a people pleaser by nature.

So in April I went to Mr. Arbeeny for some advice about finding a summer job that would look good on my college applications. I told him I like to write—my straight-A grades in all my English classes prove I’ve got some skills in that area. So Mr. Arbeeny mentioned my “flair for writing”—how very guidance counselorish of him—to his old friend Harry, and here I am. At first I was excited to have a summer job doing real writing. I’ve harbored secret dreams of starting my own blog for a while now. But, somehow, I didn’t anticipate I’d be fetching coffee for editors and writing about dead people all day.

On the upside, here’s what I’ve discovered: High school, if you live long enough, doesn’t mean all that much when you’re dead. Obit writers don’t get to say a lot about a life in four paragraphs. There just isn’t space to mention GPAs or SAT scores, honor rolls or varsity letters, Chess Club or in-school suspension. But were my life to end right now, at best my own obit would be short, like me. At this point, all I’ve got is a decent headline.

I search for the funeral home’s number so I can get the scoop on the pastry chef. I sigh and pick up the phone.

Oddly enough, even though I’m surrounded by death all day, this gig is tons easier than high school. I enjoy being the youngest person in the room. It’s like I’m the foreign-exchange student around here.

“Moronica! Where’s my feature?” Bernadette yells.

Except I’m not Olaf. I’m Moronica.

chapter two

Breaking News

It’s finally Friday. A disturbing number of people have taken their last breath in the past twenty-four hours. For the past hour, AJ and I have been sitting at our face-to-face desks typing nonstop, with phone receivers wedged between our ears and shoulders. Name. Born. Died. Survivors. Services. Obits have a poetic structure all their own. My neck is stuck in this position. Headsets would be a nice addition to the obit desk.

“We are
so
not doing a feature obit,” I hear AJ say as he slams down his phone. “I just took three in a row. That makes twenty-seven.”

I’m about to hang up my own phone and fist-bump AJ when the back door slams open and in steps Michael Fishman, the cool, married thirtysomething who sits beside me. He angrily swats down the Nerf basketball as it arcs for the net, much to the dismay of the moaning copy-desk editor who launched it. Michael tosses his reporter’s notebook onto his desk and puts his hands on his hips. He surveys the newsroom for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and sitting down.

“I just got called an a-hole by that a-hole,” he says.

“Mayor troubles?” I ask.

“Mayor troubles.”

The
Herald Tribune
has been trying to prove that the mayor of East Passaic, the town Michael covers, misused federal funding and gave his friends no-show city jobs. (They can’t teach this stuff in social studies.) Harry refers to the mayor and his cronies as Robin Hoods. He amuses himself with his play on words.

“What happened?” I ask Michael.

“I questioned him about Sy Goldberg being on the payroll without there being much evidence to support that he actually
works
in exchange for the fat salary he’s collecting. I’ve talked to a lot of folks and no one has ever seen this guy. So the mayor says, ‘You’re an a-hole. Sy Goldberg is dying. You’re an a-hole to even ask that.’” Michael pauses and raises one eyebrow, a look that cracks me up before he even utters a word.

“And I said, ‘Yes, but is he still on the payroll?’ Am I right? I mean, it begs the question, how much work can a dying man do?”

Michael does not shy away from the tough questions. I love listening in on his phone interviews and anxiously await his caustic comments when he hangs up. I wish I were doing real reporting like Michael, but sadly, me and AJ are newsroom bottom-feeders. In addition to obits, we write web copy, compile blurbs for the Community Calendar and Arts Happenings sections, type up movie timetables, sort mail, answer phones, go on food and coffee runs, organize stacks of extra newspapers, and do whatever else Harry commands. AJ writes music and concert reviews too, but I haven’t proven myself worthy of bigger stories yet.

“Well,
we
don’t think you’re an a-hole,” I say.

“And more important, it’s Friday,” AJ says.

Michael sits down at his desk and begins to type. “I’ve just got to bang out this feature on the grand opening of the mayor’s new coffee shop slash bookstore, and then I’m outta here.”

“Screw the feature,” AJ says. “I wouldn’t do him any favors.”

“Yeah, especially after what he called you,” I add.

“It’s part of the game. You try to make your sources happy. Even if he’s a total bastard, I’ve got to keep him talking to me. Anyway, the favor is more for his daughter. He’s opening the place for her.” Michael turns to me. “In fact, it’s in your town, Sam.”

“A new coffee-shop and bookstore in Chestnutville?” I say. Hmm. It actually sounds like the kind of place I’d go.

“Yeah, his daughter lives there,” Michael says. “Anyway, this won’t take long, and then happy hour is starting early for me today.”

I glance at the clock. It’s only five. Cool. I should be out of here by six o’clock, myself. I’m gonna go for a run (I’m working up the nerve to run my first 10k at the end of September), take a bubble bath, and watch
Sixteen Candles
on DVD with my mom. We’re in the middle of a 1980s film marathon.

My homebody fantasy is interrupted by the sudden blaring of the police scanner. I’m used to its omnipresent crackling in the newsroom and have come to regard it as a strange heartbeat. But at the moment, Rocco, the police reporter, is cranking up the volume. I fear the off-the-charts decibel count is causing me permanent hearing loss.

“What the hell?” AJ asks. He swivels his chair in Rocco’s direction.

Sirens and horns from a fire truck, or two, or three, drown out the scanner’s urgent cacophony.

“Four-alarm fire in Clifton,” Rocco says. He’s already in motion, grabbing notebooks and pens from his desk. “There’s been an explosion.”

“Call in as soon as you can so we can get something up on the website,” Harry says as Rocco bolts for the door, nearly slamming into a chair and doing a complete three-sixty before recovering.

“Fishman! Are you on deadline?” Harry says.

“No.” There goes Michael’s happy hour.

“Follow Rocco to the fire. Intern scum!” Harry yells in our general direction. Coming from anyone else, it would sound offensive, but I caught on quickly to his brand of humor. “Plan on staying late and answering phones.”

And there goes my five-mile run. I’m bummed. I need my weekly long runs to clear my head. It’s also when I get my best ideas. I’ve been mulling over concepts for my blog, when and if I ever start one. I’ve thought about calling it Something to Blog About, but that’s taken, or Notes from the High School Trenches, but that’s too long.

Harry’s booming voice interrupts my blog musings. He barks out more orders to others around the room. To the copy desk: “Bernie, what’s our page one look like right now? Start making room.” To reporters: “Meg, I may pull you to do local react if anyone dies.” To the city desk editors: “Grace, as soon as Rocco calls in, tell him to start feeding you copy.”

Everyone seems caught up in the heightened energy brought on by the fire. Except yours truly. I’ve been rendered temporarily immobile as people whirl around me like leaves on a windy day. I snap out of it when the air-raid siren sounds, calling volunteer fire departments from surrounding towns.

“That can’t be good,” I say. My stomach is in scary-movie mode.

AJ doesn’t look up from his texting. Bandmate or Jessica the pseudogirlfriend, no doubt. I get an unexpected pang thinking it may be the latter but quickly shake it away. I need to calm my nervous energy, so I spend the next half hour putting a huge pile of press releases in date order.

When the city-desk phone finally rings, Grace Yadlowski, the assistant city-desk editor, snatches it up. Usually the editors wait for me or AJ to answer. Answering phones comes with our intern status. At least we get paid, which technically makes us editorial assistants, but Harry says “intern scum” sounds punchier. He also doesn’t believe anyone should work for free—even high school interns. Despite his gruffness, Harry’s fair. Underneath that polar-bear exterior, Winnie the Pooh is alive and well.

“Rocco! What’s going on?” Grace says.

Everyone in the newsroom is eavesdropping and holding their collective breath, waiting for Grace’s reaction.

“A five-story apartment building collapsed,” she yells. “Three people confirmed dead. Unknown number trapped inside.” Grace turns toward her monitor and starts typing.

“Meg!” Harry yells. “Get down there and help Rocco and Fishman.” Harry turns toward the obit desk. “Sam, AJ! If we get victims’ names, I may need you two to start calling around for reactions.”

Harry uses the remote to flip through channels on the overhead TV until he lands on a local news station with fire footage. I’m at once horrified and excited. Adrenaline pumps through my veins, raises my body temperature, and makes my chest all splotchy—my usual nervous reaction. It’s very attractive.

“I’ll be in the back,” Harry tells Grace. I watch him walk through the swinging doors on the far side of the rectangular room. He’s probably going to talk to the press guys. We’re one of the few newspapers left that
have
press guys, but that may all be ending soon. The paper has been losing money, and there’s been talk about shutting the presses down and sending the paper out for printing. It would stink to end a century-long run, but it’s better than having to close our doors completely.