A couple of friends at the station were jealous that I’d gotten the chance to make something so long and great. If only they knew how close we all were to being laid off.
Joel, the guy who had redone the voiceovers, was the only one who seemed sympathetic to what had happened. But he was in the same spot as I was—we had to survive, and though he may not have known how urgent the question of pink slips was, it was pretty apparent from his longer tenure at the station he knew every day was more survival than thriving.
I even got a call from my sister, Melissa. This one, I could not ignore.
“Hey,” I said, tired and exhausted.
“You OK? You sound like shit.”
I chortled. At one time, Melissa had been the sweet sister, the kind who wore dresses on a daily basis and didn’t swear much. Unfortunately, even though she’d managed to get plenty of literal and temporal distance from Spawn, she’d developed a bit of a hard edge. Rare did a sentence go by that she didn’t swear in some fashion.
“No, not really, been a long few days.”
“Fuck, I can imagine. I just wanted you to know I saw the piece. Great shit.”
“You? You live out in Texas?”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t keep track of whatever shit’s going on back home.”
Back home. Odd choice of words for a town you were so desperate to leave.
“Sounds like you and Joel really teamed up to take them down.”
“Yeah…”
“Those assholes—wait, why did your voice trail off?”
Did I dare tell the whole truth to Melissa? That I, too, had slept with one of them, not out of coercion or bullying but because what had started as a business deal had slowly morphed into something more personal and, dare I say it, intimate?
No, not right now. The truth would have pissed her off. I had enough anger in me.
“The station lied to me. I love Joel, but he came in without my knowledge at the station’s request. He was just doing his job, but…”
That was all true. It just wasn’t the truth that applied to why I’d had my voice trail off.
“Damn, sorry for that bullshit, Hailey.”
“It’s fine; it’s to be expected,” I said with a sigh. “It’s left me wondering if I even want to be at the station. Or even be a journalist.”
Or even try and be with Satan again.
“I thought I’d figured things out, but the real world seems to be real cruel.”
“Yeah, it’s a fucking bitch. Welcome to adulthood,” Melissa said with a bitter sigh.
More than anyone else, I hoped she could find love. Spawn had dealt her a scarring hand, and nothing would make me happier, not even my own romance, than for her to find someone that treated her well and brought back the old, sweet Melissa I’d grown up idolizing.
“You’ll figure it out soon enough, though. Once you can get past how hard shit is and how brutal life can be, it’s actually not too bad.”
I almost said, “Says the girl living with Mom and Dad,” but I was still cautious, perhaps to a fault, about poking at Melissa. I could never quite figure out what things would set her off and what things would just make her laugh.
Fortunately, the call didn’t last much longer. Melissa and I said our farewells after a minute or so, and I was left to be alone with my reality.
For whatever reason, though, finally, this was the thing that let me sleep. And by sleep, I mean I was on the couch talking to Melissa when I put my phone down, closed my eyes, and didn’t open them for nearly thirteen hours.
* * *
It was perhaps some good fortune that I woke up when I normally would have on a workday; I just so happened to have gone to bed so early that it gave me far more sleep than I normally would have needed. I liked to think, though, that I’d finally caught up on sleep, even though I’d once shot a segment about “Myths We’re Sorry to Bust.”
