The Goy Next Door (Girl Meets Goy #2)

Chapter 27 Gone too soon

Something was happening that next morning and it was like all of New York City knew except Leah. The air in the subway was spiked with electricity even though none of the passengers ever said a word to each other.

If Leah hadn’t been in such a daze over the previous evening, she might have noticed something was strange and she might have glanced at one of the bodegas selling magazines and seen the headlines that shocked the world. But she didn’t notice the headlines and she didn’t even open her social media where surely at least half of feed would be about the big news.

Instead, she stared at her open book the entire subway ride downtown on her way to work. She was too distracted to read, so she just held the book open without even turning one page.

She first noticed something was abuzz when she entered the Teen Club office. Instead of everyone sitting at their desks staring blankly at their screens, people were leaning into each other and whispering. Someone was sniffling. Was it crying?

Leah looked around the office and noticed that some people glanced up at her, silencing their whispers while she walked by them to her desk. Was she just imagining it? Or was there something in her teeth? On her blouse?

She took a sharp turn away from her cubicle toward Brittany’s desk by the far window. Brittany too was whispering something to her neighbor and looked up when Leah arrived.

“Why is everyone so early today? What’s going on?” Leah asked.

“You’re not serious,” Brittany responded with a chuckle. “Haven’t you read the news? Opened your phone? Looked outside?”

Leah shrugged.

“You didn’t hear about Swagmatic?” Brittany asked.

“What’s that?”

“Who’s that,” Brittany emphasized. “He was a rapper. Our readers love him. Don’t you read the celeb gossip pages?”

Leah did read the celeb gossip pages of Teen Club, but she felt like the celebrities were constantly changing and no one was ever featured more than once. She barely remembered any of the names from the columns.

“What happened?”

“He died last night,” Brittany told her. “And apparently he was in the Death Pool.”

“So everyone is excited to get donuts?” Leah asked remembering the Death Pool from January. It was an annual tradition at Diamond Media. Each new year every Diamond Media publication created a list of celebrities they thought might die in the next year. Leah had participated with Club Business and she remembered sitting in Tony’s office with her colleagues while they threw out names for their publication’s picks. She didn’t remember who they had chosen and she certainly hadn’t thought about the death pool at all since.

“No, that’s the thing,” Brittany responded. “Apparently, Marnie takes the death pool very seriously. And we didn’t choose Swagmatic even though we should have guessed him since we’ve been covering him in our celebrity gossip column. It’s rumored he does some drug dealing with his old gang.”

Just then the office doors swung open and Marnie swept through the floor. “Leah!” She screamed, still mispronouncing her name. “Leah! Get to my office!”

Leah gave an expression to Brittany, wondering what the urgency was about. Brittany mirrored the shrug and Leah put her head down to trek through the office to Marnie.

“Leah! Who was it? Please tell me it was you!” Marnie interrogated as soon as Leah stepped inside her office.

Leah’s mouth dropped open, her brain telling her to ask for clarification, but also fearing that any questions would be unwelcomed. Before Leah could get any sound out, Marnie rolled her eyes.

“Swagmatic! Someone at Club Business predicted him in the death pool!” Marnie explained as though telling a child something for the thousandth time. “Now, please tell me it was you so that way I can tell your pathetic old boss Tony that your predictions came over to Teen Club with you! I will not have lost this one to an old man! There is no way that guy has even heard of Swagmatic! Now, please tell me that you predicted Swagmatic’s death and that it wasn’t a complete mistake stealing you from him!”

Leah wished she could take credit, but the truth was she didn’t even know who Swagmatic was until five minutes ago. And she couldn’t even remember his name coming up when they discussed the death pool in Tony’s office. Leah slightly shook her head.

“Great! Just wonderful! So I stole the wrong reporter from Club Business!” Marnie exclaimed. “Someone at Club Business was smart enough to predict this and who ever that was is still sitting around writing about money instead of working for me! Leah, you are in charge of getting the donuts for Club Business. You need to go there and find out who it was who added Swagmatic to the death pool! Don’t let me down!”

Leah nodded quietly while Marnie handed her some cash and told her not to come back until she knew who it was. Leah then went back to the elevators and down to the street to buy donuts to take to her old boss. What would she say to him? She couldn’t very well interrogate him about the Swagmatic pick as Marnie had asked.

The truth was that there was only one thing she wanted to say to her old boss, but she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage: take me back. She was sick of Teen Club and the puns about body parts and makeup. And she hated never taking lunch breaks and the way no one was really friends in the office even if they, like her and Brittany, hung out outside of work.

This time outside, she glanced at the bodega by the office and saw the newspaper with the rapper’s face on the front and the headline: Swagmatic: GONE TOO SOON. She really had no idea who he was and how she was supposed to buy donuts related to the dead celebrity. Would she look racist if she bought chocolate donuts for everyone? She decided she didn’t care and she bought an assortment that she carried back into the building and in the elevator up to the twelfth floor.

Her heart pounded as she walked into the office she hadn’t seen in months. It looked exactly the same. Malcolm’s desk was closest to the door and behind him was the little box of cubicles where she used to sit with Mark and Alex. The three desks were empty.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Malcolm said in his whisper-liked voice. She held the donuts up to show him and glanced at Tony’s office where she could see Mark and Alex leaning against the wall during their morning meeting.

“Should I just leave these in the kitchenette?” she asked Malcolm. “I wouldn’t want to bother…” She was afraid of what she might do if she had to talk to Tony. She might cry.

Malcolm shrugged. “First, give me one.” He opened the box in her hands and pulled out a big donut with sprinkles on top. “Now you can put them in the kitchenette.”

She nodded and walked through the office, her heart racing so fast she was sure everyone could hear it. She caught Alex’s eye through the window in Tony’s office and she stopped. No. It was time to take charge.

She pivoted and barged right into Tony’s office. She didn’t catch what he was saying when she did, but he stopped immediately. “Rosenberg! Are those the donuts from Marnie!? I was starting to think she was backing out!”

Leah slammed the donuts down on his desk in a movement that was much more dramatic than she had envisioned. “Tony, I can’t stay there anymore! Please! Can I come back to Club Business? I’ll do anything! I’ll do the data entry work! I’ll start from the bottom. Please just don’t make me go back down to the eleventh floor!”

She looked around at her old colleagues and wished she had a notebook with her so she could take notes on her daily assignment.

“I thought Teen Club was the dream!” Tony finally said after opening the box of donuts and carefully pulling a simple glazed one out. “I thought that was the epitome of your reporting aspirations!”

“I changed my mind,” Leah said. “I’ll even reapply to Club Business. You can interview me. Whatever! I just want to come back.”

Tony nodded as he took a bite of his donut. “Well, I think Mark and Alex have been getting along just fine without you, haven’t you boys?”

“Definitely not,” Alex immediately responded.

“No way,” Mark confirmed.

Tony chuckled. “Who am I kidding? You wrote circles around these boys. We’ve been trying to hire someone for months and no one has been able to last more than a couple days.”

“You should have seen the reporter who started last week. He was gone by lunch,” Alex said.

“You can have your job back,” Tony said. “But Marnie should have sent better donuts,” he continued. “Glazed is always the best. Your generation can’t appreciate simplicity. You need bells and whistles to tell you something is good, but really all those things just ruin the true delicacy in simplicity.”

The boys chuckled and Leah smiled. She’d done it. She’d taken control of the first thing in her life and gotten her job back! While Swagmatic might have been gone too soon, she was gone soon enough from Teen Club.

They ate donuts in Tony’s office and he assigned stories for the day, giving Leah a simple article about a refinancing in the works.

“You have a lot of catching up to do,” Tony said when he dismissed the meeting.

She nodded, but before turning back to her desk, she asked, “Who added Swagmatic to the death pool picks?”

“Who? I did!” Tony responded. “My daughter did a reel on TikTok about him! Did you know films used to come on reels? Anyway, I Googled him and saw his song lyrics. Anyone should have been able to guess he wouldn’t last the year!”

Leah chuckled. It appeared Tony did know a few things about good reporting.