25. Hildy
Hildy
SEVEN YEARS AGO
SAN DIEGO, Calif.—There should really be a licensing process before people were allowed to give advice. Go to the Associated Collegiate Press conference, Hildy’s professor had insisted at their last meeting. It’s a good time. And you might learn something.
Ha!
Halfway through the first day of panels and workshops, Hildy’s main takeaway was that the journalism world was suffocatingly small. Or maybe the real lesson was that the past always came back to bite you in the ass at the worst possible moment.
Exhibit A: The session Hildy was most excited about—Making Tracks: Finding Your Footing in the New Media Landscape—turned out to be a total bust. So much for attaining desperately needed clarity about her future in the industry.
It was hard to apply strategies you hadn’t heard because you were forced to flee thirty seconds into the introductory remarks when your sworn enemy walked into the room.
In hindsight, Hildy realized she should have brazened it out.
If anyone was going to turn tail and run, it ought to have been Walter.
But Hildy’s brain had gone AWOL, leaving her central nervous system to hit the panic button.
Her body reacted as if his presence was a lethal poison: churning gut, skin blazing hot and then clammy, a suspicious heaviness in her bladder.
Hildy had just enough presence of mind to fake a phone call.
It didn’t matter how much she wanted to look at Walter to see if he’d changed in the last two years.
Aside from the bombshell of a first glimpse, Hildy couldn’t risk acknowledging his presence.
They weren’t supposed to meet again until she had a plan—and a comprehensive makeover.
Ideally there would also be a ridiculously hot love interest to follow her around making adoring remarks.
See, Walter? Some people aren’t desperate to get away from me.
Instead she was having a bad hair day, her complexion was a wreck, and everyone she knew from school had chosen other morning sessions, leaving Hildy looking like a rejected loser.
Maybe he didn’t see me. It was a big space, and there had been rows and rows of full seats between them, not to mention Hildy’s cat burglar–style half crouch on the way out.
She hightailed it to the nearest restroom.
Her stomach was still complaining, a dull throbbing ache that seemed to be spreading through her lower body.
And now a sharper twinge that reminded her of …
oh no. Hildy latched the stall door, staring in dismay at her formerly pristine underwear.
Just to make the day a little more awesome, her period was early.
“Shit fucking fuckers,” she muttered, checking her purse and coming up empty. A vague memory of using her last emergency pad surfaced, followed by the mental note she’d made (and promptly forgotten) to replenish her supply. Time to swaddle herself in cheap toilet paper.
A hand reached under the wall from the adjacent stall with a wrapped pad between two fingers, the way a cocky guy might flash a twenty-dollar bill at the valet stand in a restaurant.
“Thanks,” Hildy said. “You just saved my favorite pair of pants.”
The door next to hers opened. Hildy finished her business quickly so she could thank her savior face-to-face.
She was standing at the sinks, so Hildy saw the back of her head first: stick-straight blond hair in one of those cool ultrashort bobs that would have looked ridiculous on someone with curls.
When Hildy got closer, their eyes met in the mirror. I know you, Hildy thought, even though the face wasn’t quite right. Maybe Hildy had met this girl’s sister, or she looked a little like someone on TV, or … they’d been roommates two summers ago at a journalism program for high school students.
Only back then, this girl—Corinne—had been in her goth phase, making her hard to recognize without the black hair dye and intense eye makeup. High school Corinne’s most notable personality trait was meanness, so Hildy wouldn’t have known her by the heroic restroom assist either.
So much for the day taking an upswing. This had to be a cosmic joke.
“Wow,” Hildy said, skipping past the do I know you? song and dance. There were only so many people she could pretend not to recognize in one morning. Besides, it was evident from Corinne’s expression that the jig was up.
It would have been weird if she didn’t remember Hildy, considering they’d slept a few feet apart for a week.
Not to mention the bit where Corinne stabbed Hildy through the heart.
That had certainly left an impression on Hildy—and judging by the tension around Corinne’s eyes and mouth, her memories of that time weren’t terribly cheerful either.
Maybe her conscience was bothering her, assuming she had one.
“You’re still in journalism?” Corinne flinched. “That was a stupid question. Obviously, you are.”
“There are no stupid questions.” Hildy did a credible impression of one of their teachers from that summer, who had labored under the mistaken belief that he was deep.
Surprise flickered across Corinne’s face. Had she assumed Hildy was humor-impaired, or was she expecting pistols at dawn?
“You thought I would have given up by now?” Hildy guessed, claiming the next sink over.
Corinne reached for a paper towel, averting her gaze. “I owe you an apology.”
That was unexpected enough to make Hildy overlook the nonanswer to her question. Her attempt to act casual by washing her own hands was foiled when it took four tries to get the motion-activated faucet to work.
Corinne took a deep breath. “I—was not at my best that summer.”
“Join the club.” The irony was that before it all fell apart, Hildy had convinced herself the summer before her senior year would be the high point of her existence.
She was growing up! Doing great work! Meeting interesting people!
One of whom she connected with so deeply, she foolishly assumed he’d be in her life forever!
He’d never apologized, even though that betrayal was a lot worse. Corinne had been her randomly assigned roommate. Whereas Walter was (briefly) Hildy’s favorite person on the planet. A rejection hits differently when it falls on you from that height.
“Do you want to get a coffee?” Hildy was almost as surprised as Corinne to hear those words come out of her mouth.
“Do you?” Corinne replied, skepticism etched in the line of her brows.
Hildy shrugged; stranger things had happened. Maybe this one small piece of her past could still be salvaged.
Plot twist: Corinne was fun to talk to. Not in the bright, affirming style of Hildy’s sorority sisters, but with an understated wit that made you look forward to the next time she opened her mouth.
Presumably, she’d always been the kind of person who made clever observations about the world, but that side of her personality had been hidden behind the barbed wire of her bad attitude.
Or the brambles of Hildy’s insecurity.
“Are you and Walter still in touch?” Corinne asked.
Hildy tried to scoff, but it came out as more of a choke.
If only she had something other than a scalding cappuccino to clear her throat.
At her suggestion, they’d left the convention center in search of a real coffee shop.
For the fresh air, she’d told Corinne, though her main motivation was avoiding another run-in with Walter.
“In a word, no,” she finally managed to say. It was possibly the least smooth moment of her life.
“Strange,” Corinne said, without any particular inflection. “I figured you would have found your way back to each other by now.”
Hildy shook her head, since vocalizing wasn’t her friend.
“You were so into each other.” Corinne sounded like a doctor pronouncing a diagnosis. “Not quite Wuthering Heights–level, but borderline. It was like you were the only people in the room.”
“We weren’t that weird.”
“Hence the ‘not quite.’” Corinne sipped her matcha latte. (Hildy would have pegged her as more of a triple espresso type, but she was turning out to be full of surprises.) “Maybe I was jealous.”
Hildy felt a stab of something unpleasant. Retroactive possessiveness, maybe. “You were into Walter?”
“Nah, I’m fully gay.”
“You were into me?” Had Hildy misread the situation that badly?
“Don’t flatter yourself.” The next words emerged with visible reluctance. “It would have been nice to have a friend like that.” She paused, mouth pruning. “Could also have been super annoying.”
“Trust me, you don’t want a quote-unquote friend like Walter Burns.”
Corinne studied her in silence. “What about you?”
Hildy shook her head, not caring if it messed up her curls. “I don’t want a friend like that either.” Not anymore.
“I mean, what kind of friend were you to him?”
“Better than he deserved.” Maybe not perfect, and yes, she could have been more open, but Hildy’s strategic and necessary silence on certain points paled in comparison to Walter’s crimes.
“Okay.” Corinne didn’t sound fully convinced.
“Let’s make a rule. The past is the past.” Hildy didn’t pause long enough for her to disagree. “It’s not worth dredging up and making a big thing out of it. We were na?ve teenagers, shit happened, moving on. Here’s to making new and different mistakes!”
“Fine by me. I already have one set of divorced parents, so it’s not like I’m out here looking for more drama.”
Hildy raised her mug in a toast, receiving a grudging clink from Corinne.
Despite doing her best to shut down that line of inquiry, part of Hildy wanted to beg for a few more scraps before the window of opportunity closed.
Who else could she ask about that time except Walter, who was obviously not to be trusted?
But she also wanted Corinne to think she was tough, so she changed the subject.
“What track are you on? Career-wise.”
It was Corinne’s turn to look skittish. “Don’t laugh.”
Hildy tried to think of the most unlikely journalistic path for Corinne’s personality. “You want to be an advice columnist?”
“Please. The world isn’t ready. Data visualization. That’s what I’m into these days.”
“Infographics?”
“To use the layperson’s term.”
Hildy rubbed her nose to hide a smile. “That may be the most pretentious thing you’ve ever said to me. And you brought up Nietzsche five minutes after we met.” She was unreasonably pleased when that sparked a laugh from Corinne.
“So what’s your deal? Doesn’t seem like you’re coasting on the nepo-baby train.”
Hildy shrugged, because she wasn’t entirely sure that was true, or how she felt about it.
She’d thought a lot more about family and money and privilege since that summer, but her views still felt wobbly and half formed.
It was hard to know what you really believed until you had to test those convictions in the real world. Until then, it was just posturing.
“I don’t know if I see myself at a newspaper,” she admitted, shaving off a piece of the truth.
“TV?” Corinne asked.
“Definitely not. I don’t want to be in charge of that many moving parts. I just want to worry about the things that interest me.” She made accordion folds in an empty packet of raw sugar. “I know what I like, but I’m not sure how to put it all together yet—or if that’s even possible.”
“Okay,” Corinne said slowly. “You realize that’s vague as hell?”
On impulse, Hildy decided to test the waters. If anyone was going to drop a truth bomb, it would be Corinne. “I’ve been thinking about magazines.”
“What, like Vanity Fair?”
“Not glitz and conspicuous consumption.” Hildy tried not to be offended that this was Corinne’s first guess.
It wasn’t like she really knew her—not yet anyway.
“More approachable than that. Like a smart friend … or a really cool older female relative you go to for advice. But still a little bit glam,” she added, to cover the echoing void where the word “mom” might have appeared.
“Huh.” Corinne sounded more intrigued than skeptical.
Encouraged, Hildy sketched a marquee with both hands. “Watch this space.” She left it at that, because it seemed wisest to quit while she was ahead. The danger of exposing a tender young dream to ridicule was that it could so easily get stomped out before it had a chance to take root.
“Do you think we would have been friends back then?” Hildy asked, both as a subject change and because she genuinely wanted to know. “If I hadn’t been so hung up on Walter.”
“I doubt it,” Corinne said without missing a beat.
“Wow. Don’t feel like you have to spare my feelings.”
“You annoyed me. I annoyed me. The world annoyed me.” She shrugged, the movement tight and jerky. “I’ve mellowed a lot since then.”
Hildy let her brows creep upward.
Corinne sighed. “I liked that story you did.”
“Really?” She would have been less surprised if Corinne suggested they get matching BFF necklaces.
“It sounded stupid as shit, but you pulled it off.”
Hildy put a hand to her heart to show how moved she was by this tribute. We, she thought. Walter and me. That’s who pulled it off. Not that he cared about the result.
“Maybe we’ll work at the same place someday.” She glanced at Corinne, afraid she might catch her in an eye roll of deep scorn, but her expression was pleased—in a cautious and extremely jaded way.
“Sure. You can hire me at your magazine.”
It almost sounded like she was imagining it too.