Page 88 of Bad Words

“What?”

“There’s nothing here to reply to. It’s not like you asked him a question. You just, like, made fun of him and didn’t say anything else.”

My cheeks warmed. “That’s kind of the way we interact.”

“Problematic,” said Jacob.

I glowered at him. “You are extravagantly unhelpful.”

Jacob chortled and tossed a few raspberries into his mouth.

“If you want to keep talking, just text him and ask him something,” said Cassie, handing my phone back.

Coming out of her mouth, the suggestion sounded casual and ordinary, which disturbed me, because in my head, the idea of contacting Parker without any pretext felt distinctly uncasual and completely out of the ordinary. It made me feel panicky and defenseless, the way I felt in the doctor’s office rolling up my shirt sleeve for a jab.

“Mm,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “What do you think, Lyra?”

Jacob bounced her on his knee again. Lyra looked up at me with solemn eyes and said, “Da.”

“Means ‘yes’ in Russian,” said Cassie.

“Traitor,” I said to the one-year-old.

I arrived at our pitch meeting the following Monday to discover that Hayden had returned. She was sitting in her corner for the first time in a month, her laptop perched on a lapdesk, and when Scott strode into the library, he didn’t address her reappearance.

Something about Scott’s demeanor made me uneasy. He was cordial, asking us all how our weekends had been, but his effortful smiles shrank as soon as they’d formed, like elastic dough that couldn’t hold shape. Eventually he lifted one palm toward Hayden and said, “We have some new plans from upstairs.”

“Hi, everyone,” said Hayden, still typing. “I hope you all had good holidays. Mine was great … I went to Italy. Such amazing food!” She finally lifted her eyes from her laptop. “So, exciting news. I’m here to unveil a new content strategy I designed over the New Year.”

The library stilled, except for Joyce, picking at the fibers of her cardigan. Beside me, even Kellie had gone stiff, like a hunting dog on the scent.

“Everyone at Nextward agrees that we have some important lessons to learn from fall. Mainly that this magazine benefits from being more up to the moment.” Hayden chopped the side of her hand into her opposite palm. “People want to see City as contemporary and accessible. No elitism, no navel-gazing. So, our new strategy is going to revolve around grabbing more headlines. Getting in on the ground level on anything buzzy or controversial in media. We want your hottest takes. Your edgiest ideas. I’ve already talked to Scott about opening up space in most of your schedules so we can get more coverage on this side of the culture beat.” She turned her laptop outward to show us a spreadsheet.

I gazed into the scattering of multicolored cells, then lifted my eyes to Hayden’s relentless smile, feeling farther and farther away from her, as though my chair were being tugged slowly backward through space. No, Hayden and I didn’t like or respect each other, but I’d thought we’d at least understood each other. I’d thought we’d reached an accord: I would play by her rules, and she would not take City Magazine and saw open its surface and gouge out everything inside.

Why had I ever believed this? My sudden feeling of naivete startled me.

“Sandro”—Hayden turned to Sandro Nuñez, our film and television writer—“I’ve been thinking, like, why aren’t we talking more about big moments in TV and movie news? In December, Marvel announced their first trans superhero. The engagement was out of this world. Huge opportunity to add our voice. Why didn’t we?”

Sandro blinked rapidly, at an apparent loss for words. He spent most of his time editing Life Offscreen, our bimonthly interview series with everyone from Hollywood directors to camera crew, an industry mainstay that had been running since the sixties. We used to have more day-to-day film coverage, but Nextward had fired both of our junior film writers last August, leaving Sandro to manage a stable of freelancers who were paid $150 an article.

“And Kellie!” said Hayden. “I have a list of bestsellers on the doc for you to tackle. There’s one called Devil’s Diary that had the whole internet on fire last week. Something about incest? I don’t know. Could be a really juicy article, anyway. The author was just blundering her way through responding to everything, which, I mean—that’s exactly where we want to be.”

“Hayden,” I said.

“Yes, Selina?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand how this … this content strategy squares with what I’ve been promising our readership for the past three months.”

“What don’t you understand?” she asked, still smiling.

“I’ve been telling people that City represents something that’s disappearing.” My eyes prickled. Alarmed, I straightened in my seat. “I’ve been saying that in a world inundated by articles that are superficial, or reactionary, or essentially regurgitated, we’re different. This—”

“But City isn’t different,” said Hayden.

Silence rang throughout the library.

“What?” I said.