Chapter Text
When she folds her arms and surveys the room in front of her, Nancy isn’t exactly filled with optimism. Eight apprehensive faces stare back, while her own eyes linger on the empty desk in front of her, and she sighs.
“We’ll find somebody, don’t stress. You know I can do it in the meantime.” Eddie steps up to her side, folding his arms in a mirror image of her and looking around at everyone.
“You’re a super senior, you really need to be focusing on your classes,” Nancy huffs. “Plus, you’re an editor. You should be editing, not writing.”
“I can do both,” Eddie shrugs. “Whatever you need, Wheeler.”
“Hey, um, I don’t mind helping out, if you’re struggling to find somebody?” Nancy looks to her left, and tries to force herself to smile at the freshman shuffling in her seat.
“Thanks–” she glances down quickly at the plate on the girl’s desk, “–Suzie, but I really need somebody to head it up, and for you three, your job is really to help these guys do that with their own factions.” She nods quickly at the two people at their desks behind Suzie… Dan and Ronnie, another quick look at their name plates tells her.
The only desk left to fill is arts and culture. Jonathan is a senior, like Nancy, so he’s still the photographer for the Indiana Daily Student at IU Bloomington, and she still has Eddie, her right hand man, but otherwise, the whole newspaper staff had graduated last year. Enter: a group of freshmen that were the best she could find… Lucas on sports, Dustin on sci-tech, Max on features and city news, and Jonathan’s brother Will on entertainment… something of a nepotism hire because she couldn’t find anyone else.
“Okay everyone.” Nancy steps forward, hands on her hips. “As you know, we publish on Thursdays. My deadline for article submission is four in the afternoon, every Wednesday. Please don’t be late, because it’s Eddie and I who suffer for it.” She tries to say it nicely, but everyone except Jonathan looks a little scared. Eddie snorts under his breath next to her. “Alright, well… off you go.” She turns on her heel and marches into her office, Eddie trailing behind her.
“I can hear the cogs turning in your mind,” he laughs, settling into a chair next to the little table in the corner. “I know you’re editor-in-chief now and you’re feeling a lot of pressure, but you gotta try and relax a little, Wheeler. You’re gonna give yourself a fuckin’ heart attack or something.”
Nancy rolls her eyes at him. “How do you expect me to relax when we have a bunch of babies trying to construct something that resembles a college newspaper?” she asks, exasperated. “You realize we may end up having to do the entire thing ourselves, don’t you?”
Eddie shrugs. “If that’s what we need to do, then we’ll do it.”
“How are you so laid back?” Nancy slumps in her chair. “It’s infuriating.”
“You’d be laid back too if you got laid last night, like I did,” he snickers. “He did this thing–”
“Do not tell me anything, I heard enough through the wall.” Nancy holds her hand up, and he barks out a laugh.
“Sorry, Wheeler.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all. “Hey come on, let’s go out tonight.”
“But I’m already out tomorrow night for your gig, I don’t want–”
“Don’t care,” Eddie interrupts, getting up and walking over to her desk. He lifts one thigh and perches on the edge of it, folding his hands in his lap. “When was the last time you got some? That Vickie girl?”
“I didn’t even sleep with her,” Nancy pouts.
“Why not? I thought you guys went on a date. It isn’t like you not to put out on the–”
“Shut up,” she hisses at him, glaring at her open office door. “Your voice carries, you know.” She sighs, straightening her pen on her notepad in front of her. “She was too… talkative.” Eddie raises his eyebrow skeptically. “I don’t know what to tell you, she talked a mile a minute, it was like she had too many thoughts and was trying to get them all out at the exact same time. She was too full on, I didn’t click with her.”
“That doesn’t normally stop you from sleeping with them.”
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“Yes.” Eddie grins at her, and she grins back.
“Asshole.”
“Listen to me Wheeler. You and I are going to go back to our apartment, we’re going to drink a bunch of wine coolers, we’re going to doll ourselves up while you play one of those awful pop albums you’re so fond of, and then we’re going to go to North Pier and get fucked up on five dollar Long Islands and find me a pretty boy to make out with. And maybe a pretty girl for you.” He stands up, and punches her in the shoulder. “It’s our last first week of college, God damn it. Class of ‘99, we literally graduate next year. Live a little!” With that he sweeps out of her office, striding through the room and ruffling Dustin’s hair on his way to presumably pester Jonathan about coming to watch Corroded Coffin tomorrow night, so Nancy doesn’t have to stand in the crowd alone again. She’d rather that than linger awkwardly with her ex-boyfriend, even though it’s been three years and she’s a lesbian now, and he seems pretty fine with it all. Nancy rests her head in her hands, and tries to stop her teeth from clenching when she hears Will asking Max what kind of entertainment he should be writing about.
-
“What about him?”
“Definitely straight.” They watch as a tall boy with short blond hair turns away from the bar with two drinks in hand, and approaches… a table with three girls, trying to talk to one of them while the other two stare at him judgementally. Eddie winces in sympathy.
“God, girls are a tough crowd.”
“You’re telling me.” Nancy sips delicately at her Long Island, sticking the tip of her tongue in the end of the straw.
“You don’t seem to have any trouble with them.” Eddie waggles his eyebrows suggestively.
“You see me with a girlfriend?”
He scoffs. “That’s because you’re too hard to please. Your standards are too high. There was nothing wrong with Sarah–”
“Oh come on, she made that weird noise whenever she ate, I told you about that. No thanks.”
“–or Abigail–”
“Massive head.”
“–or Lauren–”
“Too sweaty.”
“Wheeler,” Eddie laughs. “Face it, no girl in Bloomington is good enough for you. Or Hawkins, for that matter.” He swirls the ice around the bottom of his glass, and Nancy sees his eyes light up. “What about him?”
She looks over to the bar, and sees a guy in a brown leather jacket and blue jeans, standing waiting to order with his hip cocked. He leans down a little to his left to talk to a girl with short, shaggy brown hair, wearing a ratty black T-shirt with a list of Nirvana tour dates running down the spine. “Nice ass,” she smirks. “Hard to tell from the back though.”
“You want another drink? I’m gonna go check the front.” She laughs, and waves her glass at him as he scampers over to the bar, dragging his fingers through his long hair on the way.
It turns out the guy is… if not gay, then definitely not straight, judging by the way he spends the next hour draped all over Nancy’s best friend. She busies herself watching the crowd while Eddie does his thing… the girl that his beau for the evening was talking to at the bar is dancing to Better The Devil You Know by Kylie Minogue with a pretty blonde Nancy had been eyeing up earlier, while a brunette whose number Nancy had politely accepted two weeks ago is glaring at her from a table in the corner, probably because she never called. Her eyes float back over to the girl in the Nirvana shirt, and she wrinkles her nose at her distinctly uncoordinated dancing. Nancy can’t help but swallow, though, when the girl slides her hands from the blonde’s hips up to her ribcage.
“Hey there.” Nancy turns at the tap on her shoulder, and grimaces at the guy she sees leering at her. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing sitting all alone?”
“Waiting for your mom,” Nancy snipes back at him, turning back to her drink and smirking when she hears him mutter ‘bitch’ as he walks away.
“Wheeler,” Eddie drawls, leaning on the opposite side of the table, “making friends as usual.” He smirks when she scowls at him. “I’m going home with pretty boy over there. Steve.” He points, to where the guy with the nice ass is now talking to his friend. As Nancy watches, the girl glances over at the table where she’s talking to Eddie. She looks Nancy slowly up and down, smiles, and shakes her head, whispering something to her friend. Then she waves him off, and goes back to dancing. Something that feels suspiciously like rejection burns at the back of Nancy’s neck. She feels her teeth clench. “You jumping in our cab and we can drop you on the way? Or did you find someone to turn that frown upside down?”
“You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” Nancy grumbles, grabbing her purse and pulling her jacket from where it’s been draped over her stool all night. “I’m coming with.”
-
The week passes by in a blur for Nancy, from the Corroded Coffin gig at The Bluebird, to her classes, to helping out at the LGBT Culture Center’s first movie night of the year, to a date with a girl called Megan who was so boring that Nancy honestly can’t remember anything about her. Nancy had slept with her anyway, if only to try and take the edge off. It’s Wednesday before she really realizes it, and she’s been in her office at the Daily Student for three hours, reading over everyone’s submissions.
They’re not as bad as she’d thought they were going to be, if she’s honest. They’ve already been through some rigorous Eddie edits, or ‘Eddie-ting’ as he likes to call it, especially when she tells him not to. She particularly likes Max’s surprisingly touching report on Olympic medalist Missy Schwen donating her kidney to her older brother. She’s making notes on Eddie’s submissions for the arts and culture section, when he traipses into the room holding a bunch of papers.
“It’s hilarious how much the football team from our high school tortured me for being gay, when their sport literally has the terms ‘tight end’ and ‘quarterback sack’ and ‘wide receiver’ within its lexicon.” He dumps the notes into the tray at the end of her desk. “Sinclair’s report of what I imagine will be the first of many losses for the Hoosiers this year.”
“Not for the basketball team though, not with me on there!” Lucas pipes up from his desk, and Nancy smiles when she sees Max stick her tongue out at him and call him a bench-rider under her breath.
“How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t write up your own band?” Nancy sighs, handing Eddie’s Corroded Coffin piece back to him.
“I thought you might say that,” he grins, passing her another wad of papers. “So, I had young Byers do it as well for entertainment.”
Nancy had wondered why Jonathan had brought Will to the gig last Friday–the music definitely wasn’t to his taste–but that explains it. She rolls her eyes, and adds the submission to her tray.
“Henderson!” Eddie calls, leaning against the door jamb. “Thirty minutes til deadline! Do not piss Nancy off in your first week my man, she has a gun and she will shoot you.”
“Wait, do you really have a gun?” Max says, looking excitedly at Nancy through the glass wall in front of her desk.
“You don’t think we call her Walk ‘Em Down Wheeler for nothing, do you?” Jonathan smiles wryly as he emerges from the dark room, shutting the door behind him quickly.
Nancy tunes them all out as they carry on joshing back and forth, eyes skating over the last paragraph of Max’s report. Once she’s happy with it she calls for Suzie, who scuttles in and takes it away to finalize for print. Nancy moves up to stand in her doorway, watching as Dustin slams his piece onto Eddie’s desk triumphantly with ten minutes to go. “Okay, Max, Jonathan, you’re all done, you can go whenever you want. Suzie, Dan, Ronnie, I only need one of you, decide amongst yourselves who stays this week and it’ll get rotated. You three,” she looks at Will, Lucas and Dustin, who all shrink in their seats. “Stay in case of any rewrites. Eddie can’t do them for you because he’s filling in on culture.” She glances at the empty desk again, and rolls her shoulders in an attempt to relax them, heading back to her desk and flopping down into her chair. She finishes reviewing Lucas’s work, grimacing at the scoreline the Hoosiers had been subjected to.
“Speaking of culture,” Eddie says, sidling into her office as the clock ticks over to four, “I think I know of somebody who can take over.”
“Are you serious?” she asks, knocking on the glass for Suzie without taking her eyes off him. “Who is it?” She passes Lucas’s report off, and signals to him that he can leave.
“It’s Steve’s friend.”
“Which one is Steve again?”
Eddie huffs. “The one who stayed over the night before last.”
“Not the one who stayed over last night?”
“No, that was Jason.”
“Right,” Nancy says, arching her eyebrow at him. “So who is Steve’s friend?”
Eddie sits on the little table in the corner, crossing his legs and scrawling a note in red pen at the bottom of Dustin’s write up. “Henderson!” he barks, banging at the window. He thrusts the paper at Dustin when he hurries into Nancy’s office. “Change the wording in this part about the, um… Advanced Research and Technology Institute being established. Focus a little more on the job creation aspect of it.” Eddie looks back at Nancy once he’s sent Dustin on his way. “What did you say?”
She looks up from Will’s article on the Corroded Coffin gig. “Who’s Steve’s friend, for the arts and culture spot?”
“Oh, she’s cool as shit Wheeler, I think you’ll like her. Her name’s Robin, she’s Steve’s roommate. She’s super clever, her major is Slavic East European Language and Cultures, see, culture, right?”
“I think Daily Student readers are more likely looking for culture around Bloomington, instead of like, Ukraine or whatever,” Nancy sniffs. Eddie gives her a sly grin.
“Sure,” he says slowly, watching Nancy like a hawk. She shifts under his gaze. “Anyway, she’s minoring in Slavic cinema, and she’s a DJ on WIUX student radio, so there’s like, the arts section covered too. You’ve seen her, you know, she was out with Steve that night at North Pier, you remember?”
That’s exactly what Nancy was afraid of. She remembers the girl in the Nirvana T-shirt… the pale, sharp flash of her hip where her shirt rode up as she flailed her arms around to the music, flat stomach partly covered by the waistband of some men’s boxers peeking out above olive green cargos. She remembers the girl’s big hands gripping at someone else’s waist, the pearly white teeth of her easy smile, the unmistakeable shape of her hard nipples through her shirt. “Can she even write?” Nancy’s manages to force out, ignoring Eddie’s stupid smirk.
“I would imagine so,” he says innocently. “She was reading An Emergence Of Green when I woke up the next morning, and if you can do one you can generally do the other, right?” He ducks, laughing, when Nancy throws her pen at him. “The Katherine V. Forrest of it all would suggest to me that she’s into bumping clams. That and the fact that she’s on the swim team.”
“Her being all over that blonde girl in the bar didn’t give it away to you?” Nancy snaps at him. “Her sexuality is irrelevant, anyway. And don’t say bumping clams.” He looks delighted.
“You were watching her?”
“No,” she grumbles, knocking on the glass and beckoning to Will. “There wasn’t much else to do while you were sucking that guy’s face. And what’s the swim team got to do with anything?” She hands Will’s write up back to him and taps where she’s made a note in red. “The lesbian stereotype is golf, is it not?”
“Listen, I don’t know what you vagitarians do in your spare time,” Eddie says, waving a hand dismissively. He smiles appreciately at Will’s chuckle, who then scurries out of the room under Nancy’s glare. “But if she’s on the swim team, that means she’s got a good body.” He winks at her, and she scoffs. “Come on dude, I think she’s perfect for it. You don’t exactly have people banging down your door.” Eddie contorts his eyebrows and gives her his best sad puppy look. “Let me ask her if she’d be into it. Maybe I could get one of her papers and you can just see if you like her writing style?”
“I think you might be more interested in her than your pretty boy. Why do you know so much about her?”
Eddie smiles. “I hung out there for the morning when Steve went to some track and field meet. You should have seen him when he came back, Nance, he had these tiny little shorts on and he was all sweaty–”
“Okay! Okay, fine, I will read something of hers if she’s interested,” Nancy cuts in, before he can go into too much detail about a boy’s body for the millionth time. “But I’m not making any promises.”
-
To Nancy’s surprise, the year’s first edition of the Daily Student comes out pretty well, and the circulation stats Ronnie hands her on Friday morning are steady compared to their final edition of last year. She wants to grow their readership, but for a first week with a bunch of newbies, she’ll take steady.
“Hey Nancy?” She jerks a little at the tap of her glass, and looks up to see Max leaning against the door jamb. “Okay if I take Jonathan with me to this open house for the new wing at the Monroe County Public Library?”
Nancy glances through the glass to see Jonathan sitting at his desk, talking to Lucas. “Sure,” she agrees, going back to reading Dustin’s article about NASA’s discovery of potential microbial life on Mars from a meteorite. A few seconds pass, and she senses Max hasn’t moved. “You good?”
When Nancy looks up, Max is eyeing the report at the top of the submission tray. “Who’s writing about ‘Polish Documentary Cinema In The 1960s’? Kind of a niche subject for the Indiana Daily Student, no?”
“It’s a paper by someone Eddie thinks can take over the open spot. I can’t bring myself to read it because it sounds so fucking boring.”
Max laughs. “You might surprise yourself,” she teases, “and be desperate to learn more about–” she picks up the report, and flicks it open to a random page, “–the existential themes of Kazimierz Karabasz’s work and the influence his methods have had on generations of Polish filmmakers.”
“Yeah, sure,” Nancy laughs. “I’ll get right on that.”
It isn’t until hours later, her apartment blissfully calm once Hurricane Eddie has left to meet Jason or Steve or Patrick or Chance or whomever else the Chosen One might be for this evening, that Nancy lays back in the bath with Robin’s paper carefully held above the bubbles, Fleetwood Mac floating from the CD player through her open bedroom door across the hall. Twenty minutes later she’s read all five thousand words without a break, swept up in another person’s obvious passion for the subject of their writing, Robin’s words having taken a subject Nancy had zero interest in and making her want to know absolutely everything about it. Her toes are pruning in the bath water, which has grown cold without her noticing as she’d read feverishly about 1960s Polish cinematic themes, and the work of directors she’d never heard of, Skolimowski and Zanussi and Wajda.
When she finally gets out of the bath, she pads a wet path along the hallway into the living room rather than going straight into her bedroom. She scrawls a note on a scrap of paper and leaves it on Eddie’s desk for him to find whenever he deigns to come home.
Tell your new friend arts and culture is hers if she wants it. N xo
She sets the pen down and heads into her room, taking Robin’s paper with her.