Chapter 3
MASON
After a weekend of hyping himself up to go do it, and his mom’s incessant pestering about how the paper is going, Mason finally drags his feet into Montgomery’s journalism building.
He had jumped the gun and taken a journalism elective in his first semester, knowing that he was aiming for a spot on the team for The Goldberg, Montgomery’s school paper.
“You’re not seriously thinking of going for the paper, right?”
Jenna takes a sip of her latte as she walks alongside him down the linoleum hallways.
Mason sighs. “I have to; I don’t have any other choice.”
“You can just pretend that you got in, no? If you can say you’re going to major in journalism, then you can lie about that too.”
He shakes his head. “My parents are getting each issue of The Goldberg mailed to their doorstep, and if my name isn’t in those pages, they’ll know.”
“But—”
Mason groans. “Jenna, there’s no way around this. I lied to them about my major being journalism, and the only way to get around it is actually pretending like I’m in it.”
Jenna shakes her head. “But we already discussed this. They’ll find out eventually, even if you somehow manage to hide it until graduation in four years.”
Mason scratches his arm. “I—I know, that’s just a… future-Mason problem.”
Jenna takes an unconvinced sip of her latte. They stop in front of the door to The Goldberg’s office.
He blows out a breath and shakes his hands like he’s about to run a race.
“I got this. I can do this,” he tells himself.
Jenna smirks. “You were the chief editor of the Northwood High paper. I think you’re fine, Mase.”
He closes his eyes and nods. He knows that, but college is a whole other beast, and he’s competing against other journalism students. What if he doesn’t get in? His parents will surely find out about everything he’s lying about.
“Plus, your mom’s an editor for The Meridian Tribune, and your dad’s a prolific writer; just by your last name alone they’ll have to take you on.”
Mason winces as Jenna tries to make him feel better. He wants to get in on his own merits, even if it’s something he doesn’t want to do in the first place. Getting into the paper based on his parents’ legacies will just make things worse.
“I refuse to be a nepotism baby,” he mumbles.
Jenna puts her hands on his shoulders and spins him around. “Then get in there and show them what Mason is made of.”
She gives him a shove, and he fumbles into the room. He whips his head around to glare at Jenna, but she just smiles and waves at him.
It’s too late to leave now. He whirls around and inhales sharply. Everyone’s busy, their eyes on their computers or their noses in newspapers. They all look much older and more experienced than he does. He’s a phony to even think he belongs here.
He thinks back to what Callum said the other day with his stupid smirk and stupid raven-black hair about how Mason hasn’t changed.
He could see that Mason hadn’t grown in the year since they last saw each other. Going after a college newspaper is a large step, and he might not have what it takes to cover new ground.
But he can change. He has to prove Callum wrong.
He searches the desks, looking for some kind of emblem to let him know who the chief editor is.
He walks up to a desk of a dark-haired girl with glasses that take up her whole face and perch on the bridge of her nose.
He clears his throat, hoping it might get her attention. She acts like she doesn’t notice. Or maybe she doesn’t actually notice it.
“Excuse me?” Mason asks, pulling on the hem of his shirt. His eyes dart around the room, hoping that someone else looks friendlier than this woman who probably doesn’t care if he lives or dies.
“Yeah?” she asks, not looking up from her laptop, still clacking away, her typing seeming to get even louder after he tried talking to her.
“I’m looking for the chief editor of The Goldberg?”
“You’re interrupting her right now,” she says with her voice clipped and her fingers still furiously typing at her computer.
Mason gulps. He’s been in the office barely a minute and he’s already royally messing up his chances of getting on the paper.
“I—I was just wondering if you had any spots open for the paper. I was the chief editor of my paper in high school, and I—”
“And?” the girl interrupts him as he continues to scramble.
Still clacking. Still typing. Still avoiding eye contact.
He sighs. He has nothing to lose at this point. “Look—I really want to work for this paper. I’ve read your issues from the last year, and they really stirred something in me. I’m—”
Mason laughs bitterly. “I’m not even a journalism major. This is only out of passion.”
Mason rubs the back of his neck, feeling like he doesn’t actually have a good reason to be here anymore. He’d rather just be told “no” and to be off on his merry way than spend another minute talking to this girl.
Maybe he isn’t capable of greatness in the written word like everyone thinks.
But he has to admit, there’s something about trying out for the paper and not making it that relaxes him more than actually making it.
Maybe he’s not as good of a writer as his parents think or want him to be, and he can’t say he didn’t try if they didn’t want him.
He could go on doing his physics degree and maybe his parents would be okay with it since they couldn’t do anything about getting onto The Goldberg.
Unlikely.
The girl slows her typing, like she’s finishing a final stance. “Our only open spot is in Sports. We’re looking for the best article to publish. Write an article on the first football game. Write a good one, and we’ll give you the spot and publish what you wrote.”
Sports. Of course it had to be sports. And they wanted him to write about football no less.
Callum’s face looking down at him on the football field crosses his mind as he thinks about what it would mean to only be in the Sports section of The Goldberg.
Another way Callum is going to get slotted into his life like he’s in a sardine tin with no way out.
Mason takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes.
“You don’t have anything else? I’m really not good with…” He stops mid-sentence as she stops typing and finally looks at him.
He puts his glasses back on.
She’s not looking… she’s glaring at him.
She closes her fingers together and rests them on the desk primly. “You applied late, so everything is already taken. We only have one spot. It’s in Sports. You write the article well, or you don’t get in,” she reiterates, her voice unwavering.
Mason gulps and nods. He hates himself for procrastinating so long.
Was this all worth it? The lying and the hiding? Just to prove something?
He’ll probably have to watch an entire football game to get this article done, and a game played by Callum Brown no doubt.
Everyone’s going to be cheering for Callum, and he’ll have to sulk in the corner and look like a weirdo.
The team will probably win and then he’ll have to go back to his dorm and write a sickeningly sweet missive that boosts Callum’s already gargantuan ego, only to possibly get a chance to get a spot on The Goldberg.
And even if he does get in, he hates sports. He knows nothing about them. Sure, the guys are hot and were fun to look at, but to write about the gameplay itself? A whole other beast.
But Mason somehow managed to make a commemorative statue at Northwood High sound interesting in the paper, so if he could make something as boring as a statue into something exciting, then he’s sure he can find a way to make football into something he loves to write about and that people love to read.
Maybe Callum would lose his first game, and he’d be able to write a teardown piece just to knock him down a peg. He deserved it after what he did to Mason back in his freshman year at Northwood High.
“Alright, I’ll uh—have the piece for you by M—Monday,” Mason stutters, immediately hightailing it out of the office, not wanting to ever have to look that girl in the eyes again until he’s proven himself worthy of being on the paper.
“How’d it go?” Jenna asks excitedly.
“I have to write a piece on the next football game. Their only opening is in Sports.”
Jenna claps her hands. “That’s so exciting. Oh my God, we have to go to the game together! It’ll be so fun!”
Mason fakes a smile and walks back out to the quad as Jenna goes off endlessly about the hot players and getting to see a real college football game for the first time, but he drowns her out.
The home opening game was on Saturday, that much he knew. He heard people talking about it as he went to and from class.
The last thing he wants to do is go out where a bunch of people are, and cheer on the one person who hurt him immeasurably. To be reminded just how successful he is now, and how much of a wimp Mason is hiding from everyone.
But it’s just one game. It’s just one article.
That’s all, and he can move on to another sport like basketball or lacrosse probably if he gets into the paper.
He’d get a pretzel, a bag of popcorn, and a diet soda, and he’d sit down and have a grand old time watching some good old-fashioned football with Jenna.
He’d pretend he was watching an NFL football game and pretend that Callum didn’t exist.
He has to make it work. And he’ll make sure he will be there strictly for business. Not for anyone or anything else.
He has to.