On the coffee table in front her, her phone buzzed. Seeing Ravi’s name, she swiped and immediately began typing.
Cat: Everything okay with the print run?
Ravi: I double-checked.
Cat smiled, feeling a surge of the camaraderie she’d had last year. She wrote back: Thanks. See you Monday. Then she shut off all the notifications on her phone and got back to work.
* * *
The next day, Cat burst out of her apartment building, her mind still consumed with The Shrieking Violet. She tromped down Frontage Street, her heels striking the sidewalk with its inlay of seashells. Ravi had said he worked most Saturdays. Maybe together they could figure out a plan.
Though the day checked a near equal number of boxes between the end of August and the beginning of October, the weather clung to summer. She headed toward the frozen yogurt shop, opening her messages to see if Ravi could meet her on a break. That’s when she noticed the text he’d sent the previous day.
Ravi: Monday or . . . tomorrow? Few of us heading into Boston for an exhibit on editorial cartoons at the BPL. Interested?
Her feet cemented to the sidewalk. He’d invited her to hang out with him and his friends at the Boston Public Library. He’d tried again, just like he said he would after her no to flashlight tag. And she hadn’t even responded. She’d been so obsessed with The Shrieking Violet that she’d left her notifications off. Missing his text stung more than she’d have expected.
Maybe they hadn’t left yet. Maybe she could meet them at the train station. She started typing:
BPL sounds fun.
She hit backspace.
BPL sounds fu
BPL sounds f
BPL
BPL?
BPL? What time train?
BPL? What time
BPL? BPL? BPL? BPL?
Crap. She erased everything and instead logged in to The Red and Blue’s Instagram account. She clicked on Ravi’s profile—on Ravi, smiling, on the steps of the Boston Public Library. He wore his green cargo shorts and carried his same sketchbook. His caption read: “‘Editorial cartoons move the discussion forward.’ From stellar exhibit at BPL. Swipe for more.”
So she swiped. There were three photos of editorial cartoons on the wall inside the library. The last photo was back outside: Ravi surrounded by his friends, including Natalie, dressed like an urban street musician.
If Cat were there, would she be calling her Kate?
But Cat wasn’t there.
She clicked out to the overview of Ravi’s feed. A mosaic of tiny squares, each filled with images of art, of Ravi with his art, of Ravi with his friends, siblings, parents. The most important things in his life for the past few months, maybe years?
If Cat had an Instagram account, how many squares would she have? And what would be inside them? Would they represent the life she had or the one she wanted? Which Cat had never before felt might not be the same thing.
She was no longer hungry.
As she turned to head home, she glanced through the window of the frozen yogurt shop. Despite the warm weather, most of the tables were empty. A lone girl sat in the corner with her laptop, wearing a VOTE TORRES tee.
Emmie.
Cat pocketed her phone, wrapped her hand around the door handle, and pulled.
* * *
“The Spanish Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam,” Cat said, showing Emmie a photograph of Martha Gellhorn on her phone. “All that was probably a cakewalk compared to being married to Ernest Hemingway.”
Emmie scraped at the last bits of her banana yogurt. “She was Hemingway’s wife too?”
“One of them. The only one to sneak on board a hospital ship to watch the D-Day landings in Normandy.”
“Huh.” Emmie pointed her spoon at Cat. “So that’s what awe looks like.”
Cat’s cheeks grew hot.
“No, own it, Cat. It honors you both—her for all she did and you for having the ambition to want to do the same.”
“Like you and Mrs. Torres? Have you met her?”
“Once. She broke her heel right before a speech. I got her a new pair. I’m sure I looked worse than you just did—like a heart-eyes emoji. That’s probably the same way I’ll look when I leave for college.”
“And you’re applying to Harvard?”
“I’m going to Harvard.” She said it with such confidence, Cat was sure she would. “And you?”
“Northwestern?” Emmie raised her eyebrows, and Cat tried again. “North. Western.”
“That’s it.” Emmie flicked her spoon at Cat and accidentally dropped it. Cat offered up her own. Emmie almost accepted but instead grabbed a new one, which she first cleaned with a sanitizer wipe. “I know, I know.”
“No judgment . . . except—”
“Shaking hands and kissing babies?” Emmie cringed. “Universe has quite a sense of humor, doesn’t it?”
Their easy conversation carried them through a half-priced refill and then another before they finally exited onto the street where, instantly, Cat’s phone buzzed with a Twitter notification.
“Did The Shrieking Violet publish a new story?” she asked.
“Sorry, I’m not following it.”
“It must have. The Red and Blue’s been tagged in a tweet: ‘Investigate. Shrieking Violet says Angeline’s bogus. Shouldn’t even be at Acedia.’ Bogus? What does that mean?” Without waiting for Emmie to respond, Cat plugged in the website. She read the headline, and something twisted in the pit of her stomach.
“Read it,” Emmie said. “Or I can pull it up. What’s the address?”
“No, it’s okay.” Cat swallowed and began to read:
Angeline Quinn’s Darkest Secrets Coming to Light
With so much hallway flutter about our dear Ask an Angel and her Mary Poppins bag of bribes—–nay, “samples”—–it’s time for some transparency. Before casting a ballot in the StuCo election, voters deserve to know the truth about presidential candidate Angeline Quinn. But voters have homework. And band practice. And little brothers and sisters to torture babysit. With active accounts on Snap, Insta, Twitter, and, apparently even Facebook (cultivating the wrong seniors’ vote there!) on top of her YouTube channel, knowing all there is to know about Quinnie falls to The Shrieking Violet.