She picked up the cookie. “Then again, what if we do something and realize we do click, like, really click, and we spend all this time together, which naturally means the paper’s going to suffer, and then I’ll never have a shot at Northwestern, which I probably don’t anymore anyway without the Fit to Print award, so I stay here and live here and go to community college, which frankly I probably want to do anyway because I don’t want to leave him and he doesn’t want to leave me and then here we are in this same town probably living in this same apartment complex twenty years from now.” Cat shoved the cookie in her mouth and said between chewing, “Um, so, yeah, there’s that.”
Gramps jiggled his head. “That we share the same blood is perhaps the only reason I followed that. But humor me. This boy ask you to marry him?”
“Geez, of course not, Gramps.”
“What did he ask exactly?”
“Bowling.”
“Bowling. He asked you bowling, and you got all of that?”
Cat curled her feet underneath her on the dining room chair. “If I’m a bit of an overthinker, I have you to blame.”
“Blame accepted. Because without the ability to think and analyze, you couldn’t be the journalist you need to be.”
“What kind is that? Unemployed? They don’t need us, Gramps. And more than that, they don’t want us. No one cares about the truth. Social media’s the new evolution. Weeding out anyone with a conscious or independent thought.”
“When did you become so cynical?”
“When The Shrieking Violet got more readers in a day than I got in three years. Fake news does such a good job of pretending to be real, the only way we can compete is to write everything in listicle form.”
Gramps pressed his hands to his belly. “I can’t pretend I’m not worried. As a society, we are running the risk of losing touch with what truth is, but that doesn’t mean it no longer matters. When figuring out what’s true gets this hard, it’s almost understandable that people just go on and believe the lies. It’s easier to find sources that reinforce existing ideas rather than challenge ourselves by seeking an objective truth.”
“Ms. Lute talked about that. The responsibility consumers of information have.”
The wrinkles around his green eyes deepened. “True, but we can’t let journalists off the hook. The news isn’t static, and neither is the industry. We’ve gone from newspapers being political megaphones to prizing objectivity because, at least at first, bias meant half your readership bought another paper. Not so good with advertisers looking to reach as many wallets as possible.” He spread his hands wide. “So, change. I saw it with television. Its immediacy with breaking news meant we had to offer something else. So we implemented the series and deep investigative reports that would take us weeks and months. Now it’s social media’s turn.”
“Making journalists entertainers with fruit juice and sustainable underwear sponsors.”
“Grams’s sass.” He smiled approvingly. “Still, I don’t believe the ethics and standards of journalism need to change, but the methods might have to. Let’s use our platforms. Let’s boast about our fact-checking, legal reviews, source confirmation. Show how we’re different. Show how we do what the others don’t. Help consumers choose us.”
Cat considered what he’d said. “But we probably also need to adapt.” She thought of the changes both Leo and Angeline were proposing to a school stuck in the past. “We can’t push an old system onto a culture that expects something different.”
“See? This is why it’s not so bad to be an overthinker.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“Probably not.” He split a cookie, giving her half. “Ah, Cathleen, we can never replace what we’ve lost, but we can create something new, maybe something even better. In life, in family, in love. We just have to pivot.”
* * *
Cat waited in front of the hardware store. She tucked her hands in the pockets of her khaki skirt to wipe away their clamminess. She should have changed. She’d worn the same long-sleeved black tee that she’d had on in school. He’d seen her in it, and not just today, all the time. Plain, no frills, so not Angeline.
And he liked her anyway.
Ravi came from the direction of the parking lot behind the store. He hadn’t changed either. Same green cargo shorts, same Boston tee, just with a gray hoodie over it. His hair fell in his eyes, and he swooped it back—knowing, Cat suspected, exactly how cute he looked doing it.
“The draw is that strong, huh?” he said. “Just couldn’t wait even one more day.”
Cat tucked her elbows tight against her somersaulting stomach.
“It’s the shoes, isn’t it?” Ravi said.
Cat’s brow furrowed at his plain tennis sneakers. “Uh, well, they’re okay. Nice, and I guess they do make your feet look slim.” Her eyes widened. “Not that you need to look slimmer. You look fine. Good. You’re—”
“The bowling shoes,” Ravi said. “A joke? Maybe slow down and take a breath?”
From the diaphragm.
So she did. Super deep inhale. As she exhaled, she skimmed her sneaker along the sidewalk, running it over a mussel shell encased in the concrete. She could stay right where she was and feel okay, good even, with Ravi as her friend, sharing the newspaper for the rest of the school year, same as she’d done with Stavros and Jen for the past three. They might not become as close as Angeline and her friends, but their mutual interest would sustain them. It’d be a good senior year.
She thought of her sister, of the senior year her sister had expected with Leo. The one of homecoming and prom and parties and nights of pizza and corn hole at the outdoor restaurant that stayed open until the first snow, of Saturdays walking the jetty, searching the ocean for seals, of being in this town where they’d lived as a family their whole lives.
The town where their father had left them.
The town Cat was so sure she wanted to leave.
Was that why?
Was he why?
Why she poured herself into the newspaper and surrounded herself with Gramps and Jen and Stavros, who were interested in what she was interested in so she didn’t have to open herself up to anything else, anyone else? Why she didn’t take chances like she’d done when she’d stepped onto that stage in fourth grade despite her heart booming in her ears and her mind screaming at her that she couldn’t do it, that she shouldn’t even try?
But she’d tried, and she’d failed, and life went on—narrower in scope. But it didn’t have to be. She controlled her dreams as much as her reality. And she didn’t just want good. She wanted great.