A girl like Annie would be completely out of my league. I’ve known that from the very beginning, from the second she showed up at my door. Daniel must be a blind man. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.
I clear my throat. “Journalism?”
Annie blinks at me like I’ve just woken her from a daydream. “What?”
“You said you wanted to be a journalist.”
“Oh. Right.” She swipes her bangs out of her face, slightly flustered. “That’s what I studied. At Stanford.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Stanford?”
It’s one of the best universities in the country. One of the most expensive, too. So Annie comes from serious money, which doesn’t totally surprise me. With my students, I can usually tell within the first week who comes from money and who’s scraping by on loans and scholarships. It’s not always the obvious things—the designer backpacks, the new laptops they don’t treat like precious cargo, the expensive coffee they buy between classes without thinking twice. Sometimes it’s subtler than that. It’s the ones who talk about summer break like everyone spends it in the Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard. It’s the students who take unpaid internships without worrying about rent. It’s the way they handle stress differently, like they know there’s a safety net waiting for them even if they fail spectacularly. The ones working their way through school have this hunger to them, this edge. They show up to office hours more. They care more. Not always, but usually.
Annie nods. “I took a lot of broadcast journalism courses. Documentary production. A whole class on ethics in international reporting. Foreign policy.”
“What kind of journalism would you want to go into?”
She hesitates, worrying that thread between her fingers again. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Leo.”
“What? You’re asking me to make a promise without knowing what I’m promising. That seems like a terrible idea.”
She gives me a look that’s half exasperation, half amusement. “Fine. Then I’m not telling you.”
“Come on.”
“Nope.”
“Annie.”
“You have to promise.”
“What if it’s genuinely funny?”
“It’s not funny.”
“Then why would I laugh?”
“Because most people do. They think it’s not serious or that I’m not capable of it or something.”
I hold up my hands. “Okay. Fine. I promise I won’t laugh.”
She studies me for a moment like she’s deciding whether to trust me. Finally she says, “I want to be a news anchor.”
I don’t laugh. I can’t help but smile a little, though. “Like Barbara Walters? Peter Jennings?”
“I love Barbara Walters,” she says, and there’s this sudden shift in her voice, this brightness that wasn’t there thirty seconds ago. “But the person I’m really obsessed with right now is Christiane Amanpour. Have you seen her reporting from Bosnia? Or Rwanda?” She leans forward slightly, and her whole demeanor changes. “She’s not sitting behind some desk in a climate-controlled studio reading off a teleprompter. She’s on the ground. She’s in war zones, in refugee camps, in places where history is actually being made. And she’s telling the stories of people who never get their stories told. People who need someone to speak for them, to show the world what’s happening to them. She asks the questions everyone else is too scared to ask. She holds people accountable—governments, militaries, corporations, whoever needs to be held accountable.” Her eyes are brighter now, more focused. “That’s what I want to do. I want to do work that actually matters. I want to report on things that could make a difference, that could change howpeople act or think or vote. Not celebrity gossip or human interest fluff pieces.Realnews. Important news.”
While she’s talking, something shifts in her entire physicality. Her hands stop fidgeting with that thread and instead she’s gesturing as she speaks, using her whole body to communicate. Her shoulders have relaxed. There’s color in her cheeks. She’s leaning forward like she can’t help but move closer when she talks about this. I thought she was pretty before, but watching her talk about journalism, about Amanpour, she’s even prettier. Her eyes are lit up from the inside. Her face is more animated, more alive. There’s an energy coming off of her that makes her seem bigger somehow, like she takes up more space in the room than she did five minutes ago when she was talking about Daniel and looking small and defeated.
Thisis what Annie looks like when she’s not trying to shrink herself down to fit into someone else’s idea of who she should be.Thisis what she looks like when she’s passionate about something, when she’s allowed to want something for herself.
This is what Daniel was missing. This exact version of her.
What a fucking idiot.
