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Before dinner on Monday night, I cycle over to the Bugle’s office on the outskirts of Jonesville for a chat with Elena DePiero. The Bugle occupies a cramped storefront between a nail salon and a sex-toy shop in a strip mall on the Danvers border, journalism having seen better days and all. I could easily have this chat over the phone, but here’s the art on Elena: twenty-eight, dark-eyed, with wild black hair and a body I am woefully underqualified to lust after. Also, she’s very much my type: mean. Elena has a generalized contempt for humanity coupled with a very small soft spot for me. I have been pouring ridiculous amounts of hope into that soft spot. I figure I have another five years to go before the age difference stops mattering, and I’m willing to wait it out.

On my way to Elena’s desk in the back, I pass by the office of the editor-in-chief, Frank Schnell (balding, fighting it, losing). I tap on the glass to say hello, but he’s deep into a painful phone conversation and halfway through a bottle of Pepto Bismol. Schnell hasn’t smiled once in all the time I’ve known him. He’s a living, breathing advertisement for avoiding middle age at all costs. He’s been on me for months to write a weekly column for the online edition about “what teens are up to these days.” The request comes directly from “corporate” and has gone exactly nowhere because I am not a blogger.

When I get to Elena’s desk, she’s banging away on her laptop like it needs to be punished. When she sees me, she holds up a finger then goes back to her laptop to finish whatever she’s writing. Three minutes later, I’m still standing there. The office is otherwise empty. Most of the “reporters” work from home. Hacks, mostly. You get what you pay for, and this place doesn’t pay much. Eventually, Elena stops typing and leans back in her wobbly chair, which shrieks like a baby dinosaur. “What can I do for my favorite junior reporter?”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“How can I stop when I know how much it upsets you? You’re troubled. What is it? No, don’t tell me. You’re pissed that Schnell isn’t giving you the good assignments. You still believe there are good assignments in this one-horse town.”

“Actually—”

She stands up. “Walk and talk. I’ve got to be somewhere five minutes ago.” She rummages around her cluttered desk in search of her missing phone. When she can’t find it, I calmly take mine out and call hers. It chirps from beneath a sloping pile of manila folders. “Let’s go,” she says, sliding into her trench coat.

As I follow her through the newsroom, Schnell jumps off his call and stalks after us. “Marcus, we need to talk.”

“Is it about the blog.”

“It’s not a blog. It’s a weekly column focusing on teen issues.”

“Don’t do it, Marcus,” Elena says, leaning in confidentially.

“I want to do hard news,” I remind Schnell.

“Great,” he says. “Why don’t you go dig me up some hard news at Jonesville High?”

“So you can put it in your blog?”

“So we can keep corporate happy.”

Elena snorts. “Teen clickbait to sell vitamin water and e-cigs.”

“Which is why my answer remains no.”

“Good boy,” Elena says as she leads me out the door.

“Forgive me for trying to keep this goddamn newspaper afloat!” Schnell yells after us.

OUT IN THE strip mall parking lot, Elena digs around in her bag for an e-cig, an irony I am willing to overlook. At least she’s not smoking the real ones. Although I’d overlook that too.

“Is the paper really in trouble?” I ask.

“It’s always in trouble,” she says. “Nobody wants to pay for anything. People expect shit for free.” She takes a drag off of her e-cig. “But as long as there are kids around willing to work for experience—”

“I get paid. I’m not working for free.”

“Congratulations. Let’s form a union and demand higher wages.”

I laugh. Schnell would fire both of us and put out the paper with a bunch of hobbyists. No one in Jonesville would even notice.

Elena heads to her ugly brown Nissan, a many-dinged beater from the dark ages, crying out for a paint job that Elena can’t afford on her paltry salary. “So, what’s so important that you came all the way down here to talk to me?”

“Right,” I say, following her. “What do you know about the Shaws?”

“Darren Shaw works at Krieger, Shaw & Associates, Boston law firm, corporate stuff. He’s a big muckety-muck at the polo club. Friends in the police force. Tight with local pols. I think he was in a fraternity with Tim Cochrane.”

“Essex county DA?” I ask. See? I can keep up with the local VIPs.

Elena nods while pulling on her e-cig. “Mrs. Shaw is some kind of socialite, comes from an old Mayflower family. The Shaws are the reason Hagopian is going to win that school-board election, by the way. Well, them and their rich friends. Why? You got something on him? Oh, wait, is it about the son? You got another joke article you want to run by me? Because you know how much I appreciate having my time wasted.”

“Sorry about that. I was feeling petulant.”

“Yeah, well, if you want to go up against one of the Shaw boys, you better have your ducks in a row. There are two of them, right? Mason and Tarkin? Jesus, what kind of names are those? Who names their kid Tarkin? Actually, Marcus is no mouthful of sugar either.”

“Elena is pure poetry.”

“Knock my Sicilian heritage at your peril. So what’s the deal? You’re not still feeling burned over that Amber Laynes story, are you?”

When I don’t come back with a sarcastic riposte, she takes a breath and prepares to “set me straight.”

“You need to let that go. She recanted. We had a girl like that in my school too. Had the whole town searching for a predator in a Pontiac, some middle-aged guy who grabbed her off the street. Turned out he didn’t exist. It was just some dirtbag from the next town over she was banging on the sly. She got herself knocked up and invented the rape story to cover for herself.”

“That’s amazing that she got herself knocked up. She must have been truly gifted.”

“You know what I meant. Shit like that makes women look bad.”

“But how do you know which story was true? I mean, which one do you believe?”

“Believe no one,” she says. “Get proof. Everything else is bullshit. So is that what this is all about? Payback for Amber Laynes?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”

I’m actually thinking about the way Shaw spoke with Principal Everett today, the cocksure way he dismissed Everett’s threats, like Everett had no authority over him. I’m not saying I have much respect for Everett’s authority either, or for anyone’s authority at Jonesville High, but Shaw was flat-out condescending, like Everett worked for him. Only thing is, I don’t want to tell Elena my reasons for being in the principal’s office in the first place, because that is not a flattering tale. “He just seems like an overbearing jerk,” I tell her. “Like he owns the school.”

“Well he did make all-state as a junior.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a sports fan.”

“Yeah right,” she scoffs. “But I wrote the article on him.” She liberates her luscious hair from the collar of her trench coat, a maddeningly sexy habit that makes me want to melt into a puddle she can walk through. “And around here, high school sports is news.” She slides behind the wheel and revs the engine, which produces a dry, hacking cough. “You sure you don’t have something on one of the Shaw kids?”

“Nope. Just digging, seeing what’s out there. Why? You have something against them?”

“Not really. I just hate rich people.” She flashes me a wicked smile. “But we don’t use journalism for personal vendettas, now do we.”

“No, we do not. That would be a violation of the fourth estate.”

“That’s my boy.” She pulls the door closed with a mighty screech, then peels out of the strip mall parking lot with just enough attitude to draw scowls from the pretty ladies in the nail salon next door.