Page 77 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“He’s not wrong,” was all I said.

Grace’s reflection held my gaze. She looked thoughtful, almost sad.

“Maybe,” she said after a moment. “But it seems like an awfully lonely way to live.”

Nineteen

Charlie Calloway

2017

I woke to a blindingly bright light. I glanced over at the door and saw that Drew had flipped on the light switch. Panicking for a second, thinking that I had slept through my alarm, I looked at the clock on my nightstand. It read six thirty a.m. I threw up a hand to shield my eyes.

“Jeez, Drew, kill the light, will you?” I asked, my voice scratchy.

I heard two bounding leaps and then felt Drew jump onto my bed.

“I’m so proud of you!” Drew chirped. “My very own Edward R. Murrow.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, sitting up.

“You,” she said. “Your article.”

Drew was dressed in her workout shorts and a T-shirt, her hair thrown up in a messy bun from her morning run. Her cheeks were still flushed. She handed me the newspaper she was holding.

“I saw it this morning when I was getting my coffee,” she said. “It’s soooo good, Charlie. Really. I read it twice.”

I took the paper from her and read.

In the Eye of the Beholder

By Finn McIntire and Charlie Calloway

Finn had included me in the byline. But why?

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” she said. “And then let’s grab breakfast, ’kay?”

“Sure,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

Drew grabbed her towel from the hook on the back of our door and picked up her shower caddy. She hummed as she left the room. I waited until she left and then I started to read.

“Charlie, why don’t you go next?” Harper said, pen poised over her notebook.

The Features team was sitting around the coffee table in the Chronicle’s room. I sat on the patched-up couch again. Finn was on the other side of the table, sitting in a swivel chair he had pulled over from one of the desks. He hadn’t looked at me all meeting. I knew because I had been staring at him practically the entire time, trying to catch his eye.

“Sure,” I said. “I want to do a piece on Knollwood’s urban legends. You know, unpacking the mythologies around campus. Where did they come from? What might they reveal about us? Why do these particular stories persist?”

“Interesting,” Harper said. “Do you have an example?”

“Everyone knows about the Knollwood ghost,” I said. “But no one really knows if a student actually died on campus, or when these stories started.”

Ever since I’d seen the “In Memoriam” page in my dad’s old yearbook, I couldn’t stop thinking about the kid who had passed away, Jake Griffin. What had happened to him exactly? Could the Knollwood ghost—the specter that haunted campus—be him?

“I like it,” Harper said. “Well, I think you just got your first solo byline, Charlie.”

“Actually,” I said, “since this piece involves a bit of research, I was wondering if I could work with Finn again.”

I glanced at Finn. His eyes flickered toward me and then away again immediately when we made eye contact. His ears turned red.