Chapter 19. Rosie, the Journalist
Rosie, the Journalist
PRESENT DAY
Rosie spent one whole year of her life researching and writing a groundbreaking piece on Scout Sage.
And now, days after publication, she curled into a ball on her couch and, in an act of self-flagellation, clicked through the comments on her article for the thousandth time.
What was supposed to have been the greatest accomplishment of her journalistic career had careened into a crash-and-burn disaster.
She’d done everything right. Put in a year’s worth of work, successfully pitched her story to an editor at The New York Times—The New York motherfucking Times!
Because screw the Los Angeles Times, those ungrateful bastards, she was following in Ronan Farrow’s footsteps.
She’d endured mind-numbing rounds of fact-checking, a process that reminded her of Dante’s nine circles of hell.
And in the end, she’d published a story a TV reporter had referred to only yesterday as the “breakout story of the year.” She, Rosie Wright, a no-name municipal affairs reporter living in a five-hundred-square-foot studio apartment, delivered the breakout story!
And this was what she had to show for it.
@ElectraGupton Imagine thinking that young women finding clever ways to defend themselves against all the creeps, exploiters, and downright violent people in Hollywood is something to criticize. Shame on you, NYT. Scout Sage sounds like a hero.
@NikkiRamirez Did Scout kill the guy who got away with murdering her sister *and* a woman who helped a famous predator assault girls?
I don’t know, but I HOPE SO. All the other petty bullshit this article brings up, that’s called doing business, sorry you have such a problem with it once the people doing business are pretty young girls.
@KateHergott I’m guessing this article proves Scout did kill two people (maybe more?
?) and we’re about to see a bunch of newfangled Sage fanatics defend murder.
I gotta say, I don’t listen to the music—pop’s not my thing—but this is rock ’n’ roll behavior.
Not to join the mob, but there SHOULD be consequences for being an asshole. Sounds like Scout delivered them.
@KrissyBrooks I can’t get over the audacity of this reporter.
Who does Rosie Wright think she is? “All the evidence suggests Scout and her friends are the new Hollywood mafia, just chicer and nicer-smelling.” Equating women standing up for themselves with predatory gangs?
Please. Wright tried to make Scout the villain but she should look in the mirror.
@EmilyZelenz I don’t think the powers that be are ready for the conversation people in this country want to have.
On and on the comments rolled, unfurling in pages of furious digital scroll, new voices every time Rosie refreshed.
And that was just the New York Times page, where subscribers kept their opinions relatively tame.
She’d been tagged so many times on social media she was afraid to look.
The team that monitored social at the paper had warned her she’d already received three credible death threats.
She sank lower into her couch, refreshing the page again, addicted to ingesting the poison—when suddenly her phone screen showed Marlena Adams calling.
Her New York Times editor. That could only mean a verdict had come back on the follow-up story she’d pitched.
Either that, or there was a fourth, more dire death threat.
“Marlena, hi.” Rosie straightened on the cushion, hoping her upright posture, and not her tearstained cheeks, would translate across the line.
“Rosie, how are you?” Marlena spoke briskly. Without fail, newspaper editors always sounded like they were late to catch a train.
“Uh…” Rosie glanced around at her apartment—dying plants, dirty dishes, greasy pizza boxes—and said a thank-you to God that Marlena couldn’t see. “Doing great.”
“That’s the least convincing thing I’ve heard today.” Marlena was out of breath. “Your story has gotten more traffic in a few days than all the other stories on our site combined. You should be out doing whatever LA reporters do to celebrate. Poppers?”
“Have you seen the comments?” Rosie’s austere editor was the last person she should be vulnerable around, but it came tumbling out nonetheless.
“Readers are completely misunderstanding the story. They think Scout and her friends are heroes when they’re out there doing the same awful things men have done to us for centuries. They’re literal murderers—”
“Alleged murderers,” Marlena sliced in. “Tread carefully.”
“Readers are calling me a shrew. They hate me.” Rosie despised how close she was to tears.
It was just—she thought this was going to be her moment.
She thought people would write multi-post threads about her diligence and bravery in uncovering this story, and instead they were dragging her name through the mud, calling her a handmaiden of the patriarchy, ironically the same thing she’d started out trying to prove about the partners at Gerson PR. How had it gotten so twisted?
Marlena laughed. Laughed! When Rosie said nothing, horrified, she cleared her throat. “Rosie, if you expected this piece to be received any differently than it is, I think you misread the national mood.”
“What does that mean?”
Marlena huffed. “Put your ear to the ground. This is what it must’ve sounded like in France right before they dragged out the guillotines.
Or hell, in Boston before our ancestors dumped tea in the harbor.
The dissent is deep. People know things should be better, but they can’t figure out what to do about it.
They see Scout as a righteous rebel breaking the rules they wish they could break, like she was sent to test the waters.
Can I ask you something? Do you, by any chance, come from an upper-middle-class family?
Zero student loan debt, parents still married? ”
Rosie accidentally knocked a dirty plate off her coffee table. “What does my family have to do with anything?”
“Just testing a hunch,” said her editor.
“Is this why you published my article? Because you knew it would get this reaction?”
Had Rosie been set up?
“We published your article because it was newsworthy,” Marlena countered. “I was only sharing my opinion on the national mood.”
“Marlena, I’m a feminist. Readers should like me.”
Marlena sighed. “Sometimes I forget how young you are. Be glad so many eyes are on your work. You know, if you can repress your urge to be liked, there’s a very solid living in being a villain.
” Before Rosie could react, Marlena added, “Which brings me to the point of the call. We’re green-lighting your follow-up story, and we’ll pay our top rate.
What do you say? We think the next one’s going to be explosive. ”
Thank god. Rosie didn’t need to think twice.
“I’m already halfway done.” It was the only thing keeping her sane, working on this next piece.
She never could’ve predicted that investigating Scout would unearth so many tangled plots, secrets consequential people had endeavored to keep buried for years.
Scout had turned out to be at the center of a web, all right, except the threads extended so far, the woman herself probably had no idea.
The next part of the story would hit even bigger than the first. But more importantly—at least for her—it would put Rosie back on the right side with readers.
“Good. Get me your first draft next week,” Marlena ordered, and hung up.
Rosie wasted no time dropping her phone on the coffee table and pulling her laptop onto her knees.
The outpouring of attention around her article, for all its negative consequences, had at least brought one good thing to her doorstep.
Rosie opened it now, scouring the email from Dr. Janet Roitfeld, assistant anthropology professor at USC, for the hundredth time.
I’ve always wondered if I should turn this over to the police, but I worried it wasn’t relevant.
And then I considered sending it to her family, but I thought that was overstepping.
Maybe you can do something with it. Maybe it can even help you understand what happened to Georgia, since it seems, from your article, that you don’t believe she was killed by that boy.
I only taught her for a semester, but Georgia was bright. She deserves justice.
She clicked on the all-important link below Dr. Roitfeld’s words, which led to an archived educational site called Blackboard, a site Rosie was familiar with from her own college days.
Roitfeld’s Intro to Anthropology students—including one Georgia Sage—had used it to submit weekly video journal entries.
The professor had given Rosie access to all eight of Georgia’s videos, and while they were mostly reflections on that week’s readings, the eighth—the last one Georgia had recorded before the end of the semester—was different.
She played the video. Georgia’s face filled the screen, beautiful like her older sister’s, but most of all, so young.
Rosie had almost forgotten how young eighteen was; baby fat still rounded Georgia’s cheeks.
There was an impish brightness to her eyes and an air of naivete that was at odds with the way she held herself, making it clear to Rosie’s reporter eyes that the girl had thought she was much more grown-up than she actually was.
Rosie got a thrill every time she thought about the fact that no one else in the world had seen this footage—not Scout, not the LAPD. Only the professors and her.
But soon, with the publication of her second story, everyone would watch.
“I can’t stop thinking about this week’s reading on the role of taboos in culture,” Georgia said, her eyes drifting away from the camera.
“I never thought about how important taboos are as a means of social control. I mean, making something illicit can regulate a person’s behavior even without the need for laws.
That soft power is so interesting to me.
Some taboos obviously serve an evolutionary purpose—the taboo against incest, like the reading said, helps maintain a healthy gene pool. ”
Georgia looked back at the camera, and Rosie was riveted by the dead girl’s face, no matter how many times she’d watched the recording.
“But some taboos are just about control. Like stigmas in certain societies against women showing off their shoulders or knees, or initiating marriage proposals, or…” She paused for a moment, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
“Taboos against relationships between people of different ages.”
Georgia laughed self-consciously. The next words rolled out like she was talking to a friend.
“My older sister is the queen of breaking rules. So my whole life, I’ve done the opposite.
I know it’s classic sibling stuff, trying to play the role not filled—and I know that’s not an established science, so please don’t ding me, Professor—but I always felt like I had to balance her out.
She skipped class and made our parents angry, so I was on the honor roll.
She ran off to Hollywood, so I got a scholarship to college.
She wanted the spotlight, so I stayed in the background.
I love my sister, but it’s like I became a person in reaction to her. ”
Georgia sighed. “Lately, though, I’ve been trying things her way.
Doing what I want and not caring so much about what other people think.
I’ll be honest, it feels good. Grown up.
And I’m pretty sure I’ve done something that beats Scout on the taboos front.
It might be something most people wouldn’t approve of, but it’s what I want.
And isn’t that empowerment, women doing what they want no matter what society says?
” She laughed, burying her face in her hands.
“This has gone completely off the rails. Professor Roitfeld, if you’re seeing this, it’s only because my art history final kicked my ass so hard I ran out of time to record another entry. And I’m sorry! I promise—”
A sudden knock sounded at Rosie’s front door, making her jump. She paused Georgia’s video, wondering what food she’d ordered and forgotten about. When she swung open her door, she expected to find the same pizza delivery man who’d been keeping her alive the past week.
But the person waiting in the dimly lit hallway of her apartment complex made her go numb with surprise.
“Rosie Wright. Do you know who I am?”
“Of course,” Rosie stuttered. “I’m surprised you know me. And my address.”
“I’ve been following your work for quite a while, actually. So imagine my surprise when I got your request for an interview about a new story. Which means you’ve found me.”
Rosie tried to smile as she clutched her door. “You could’ve just called back. Much easier than battling LA traffic.”
“I prefer to talk in person.”
Rosie cast a gaze at her apartment and suppressed a wince. “Well.” She opened the door wider. “As long as you don’t mind a mess, come on in.”