Chapter 16 #2
You brought Mr. Carter.
The hairs rose along my arms beneath my jacket. The ripple of gooseflesh threatened to make me shiver, but I managed to suppress that reaction.
“He remained outside.”
As instructed.
I shrugged. “It’s better for him to be here with me knowing than have him attempt to follow without my knowledge.”
Accepted.
The ease of that answer surprised me.
“You would have been disappointed if I just blindly followed your instructions.” It wasn’t a guess so much as an estimation of all of our interactions.
The word disappeared and the screen remained blank for what felt like a longer pause.
Perhaps. You only follow an instruction after you’ve evaluated it.
Without meaning to, I smiled. “Apparently, you’ve been paying attention to me.” Again, it wasn’t a guess. I was just confirming what he’d already proven.
He had been paying attention to me.
I have been paying attention since before you even knew that you were asking the right questions.
“Asking the right questions? Or coming to the correct conclusions?”
They are not mutually exclusive.
No. They weren’t.
Blowing out a breath, I moved over to the desk and pulled out a chair to finally sit. The notepad and pen were right in front of me and the monitor seemed to take the place of his personal appearance.
Too clever by half.
“I came because I have questions.”
The cursor blinked on the screen.
So do I.
I rested my forearms on the desk. “Then ask.”
The cursor blinked once. Twice. Three times.
Why did you become a journalist?
“That’s your opening?” I frowned.
Yes.
No hesitations this time. A swift, three letter answer and it sat there on the screen.
“Hmm,” I said, leaning back in the chair. “I won’t lie, I expected you to ask something about murder in general or specific.”
Once again, he didn’t make me wait for an answer.
Everyone expects murder. Few understand real curiosity.
“So, you’re curious about me? I have a biography up on the network’s website.” I was pretty sure there was even a wiki page somewhere about me too.
That’s what has been published. I want to know your answer.
“You don’t think those are my answers?”
No.
I couldn’t really argue with that. “Not everything is a deep dark secret of psychological value.”
Why did you become a journalist?
Apparently, this was our first line in the sand or maybe it was our tenth.
“I don’t like to be lied to.”
Incomplete.
I rolled my eyes. “Judgy much? I disagree. It’s an answer.”
It’s motivation, yes. But I want the origin.
Before I could scoff or challenge him again, he added:
You understand the distinction. You just don’t want to talk about it.
Called out, I supposed.
I took longer to answer than I wanted to admit. My nails tapped a slow rhythm against the desktop while I arranged thoughts I had no interest in sharing.
I hated being the one answering questions.
That was the whole point of becoming a journalist. My place had always been behind the notebook, asking, observing, deciding what mattered. Not sitting across from someone who insisted I peel back my own reasons.
I considered standing up and walking out. There was every chance in the world he would let me. There was every chance he wouldn't.
The uncertainty settled heavily in my gut. Safe had never been particularly satisfying. Stories rarely lived there. I drew a slow breath. So, if I wanted answers, I was going to have to surrender a few of my own.
“I was eleven.”
The cursor remained still, waiting.
“My fifth-grade teacher accused one of my classmates of cheating on a spelling test.” I smiled faintly at the memory. “Everyone believed her.”
I let that just sit there for a moment, because I was less proud of the next part.
“Including me.”
Only the soft hum of them monitor interrupted the silence.
“Then, that afternoon, I found the teacher’s answer sheet in the photocopier.” My mouth twisted. “She’d left it there before the test.”
I shook my head.
“The thing is—the kid hadn’t cheated. Half the class had memorized that list because one of them had seen it. The kid who didn’t miss any, hadn’t seen the answers. They just got the words right.”
The cursor blinked at me for a long moment.
What happened?
“She apologized.” Maybe it was my tone that gave it away, but he didn’t just let the answer sit there.
Did she, really?
I laughed. “No, of course not. She told everyone she’d ‘handled it privately.’ She never admitted she’d been wrong and when I asked the student in question, she said, ‘you didn’t care when it happened, why do you care now?’”
All of my humor dried up.
“That bothered me. Because the student was right. Everyone accepted it, me too. Up until I found that answer sheet. Up until I realized that everyone else could have seen this list of wrong answers. Answers that student didn’t rely on.”
I sighed.
“No one cared that the facts had changed. That what we thought was true wasn’t and the teacher never admitted what she’d done wrong. Even two years later in seventh grade, there were still kids who thought she’d cheated. It stuck to her, like a stain she couldn’t wash off.”
The cursor vanished for several seconds, the the words typed out crisply.
The facts didn’t change. Only the narrative. The facts were the same when the teacher made the charge. Your understanding of the teacher’s narrative and interpretation were influenced by your discovery of the facts.
He wasn’t wrong, damn him. For too long a moment, I just stared at the screen and I swore, it felt like the screen stared back at me.
The surreal nature of the conversation struck me. Was I really talking to this—since it was via a monitor, I supposed it could have been anyone, it didn’t have to be The Auditor?
That was the narrative, right now, wasn’t it? I was here to talk to the Auditor and I was presuming that was who this was without any other facts in evidence to prove or disprove it?
Continue.
I didn’t, not immediately. Instead, I drummed my fingers again. Once. Twice. Fuck it—
“After that,” I said, continuing as requested. “I started checking everything out. Teachers. Report cards. Announcements. Ads that they post on cork boards in the apartment laundry rooms.”
I made a face. It really did sound stupid when I listed it all out.
“Pretty much anything. I’d read my dad’s newspaper or the magazines. I found mistakes.”
Were they truly mistakes?
I turned that question over in my head. “Yes—and no.”
Thank you for clearing that up.
Another smile escaped me. “What I mean is that some of the mistakes were actual mistakes—typos or the wrong date entered, which arguably could be a typo. Others were flat out misinterpretations, stretching that to the point that it became a lie.”
So you addressed issues of authority versus accuracy.
“No, I learned that some people are just really good at bullshit.” I pursed my lips. “I also learned that others were really bad about questioning authority.”
That is the issue of authority versus accuracy.
I shrugged. “You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to. The point was I always had more questions. Sometimes, the stories didn’t change, but more often, they did.
If I dug deep enough, I’d find the facts.
” Then because he’d used it earlier, I turned his own phrase back on him. “That changed the narrative.”
I let that sit there for a beat.