Current mood:

relieved

Chapter 2
This was a tough one...the exposition is starting to seem really boring. half_double suggested that I start in the middle of the story, and in a way I am--there are two completely different plots with different timelines, and I'm currently writing the one that chronologically falls second. Feel free to tell me if it's getting bogged down in detail, though.


"No fucking way."

I wanted to punch through the computer screen. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was absolutely unbelievable. What did they think they were doing? Who the hell could have possibly thought this would be a good idea?

Jordan and I were both assigned to Under Fire.

Jordan and I were working with Grant.

Putting all the gay people on Grant's show. That's a stroke of genius right there. Might as well just rename the show to "Hate Crime Waiting to Happen."

Even though I wanted to pick up the monitor, throw it against the wall and pretend this all never happened, I read the rest of the email.

Aha! Loophole! Under Fire tapings were scheduled for Tuesdays at 7:00. I was scheduled to tutor Dr. Sorensgaard's Intro to Media Production students at 7:00 on Tuesdays. I slammed my hand down on the mouse and hit "reply." In a matter of seconds I had dashed off an email explaining to the producer that I had a tutoring session and wouldn't be able to attend Under Fire tapings.

I jumped up and ran down the hall to the tape library, where I knew Jordan was cueing up the Freshman Lecture Series tape for the newscast. "I'm so getting out of Under Fire."

Jordan looked up, his face caught halfway between aghast and wounded. "What? No! You can't do that to me!"

I bit my lip and turned my gaze to the floor. He was right. What kind of friend would I be if I just ditched him? I really couldn't do that to him. We promised to support each other—that's what GLBTQA is all about. I couldn’t do it. I couldn't abandon him. I'd never been a really good friend to anyone before; now that I had the chance to do the right thing by Jordan, I knew I couldn't live with myself if I just threw him to the wolves.

"You're right, I can't. I emailed the producer—Alaina, right?—and told her I tutored on Tuesday nights, but I'll just tell her to ignore that." I sighed. "You know, you owe me big for this."

He smiled sweetly. "Oh, you love me. Admit it."

"Who wouldn't love you? Oh yeah—Grant."

"Trish…" He glared at me. The last thing I wanted was a full-on drama queen snit fit.

"All right, all right."

"You know, it might not be that bad."

I snorted. "You saw him at the panel last year. Tell me he wasn't the biggest right-wing conservative asshole you've ever seen. Hell, Grant makes Falwell look like Clinton."

Jordan glanced worriedly at the door. "You know, the producers and Rachel will be here any minute. Maybe you should keep it down a little."

"It's really not a big secret how I feel about Grant Patterson. Not at work, and not here."

"At work?"

I rolled my eyes. "I told you, he works security at the mall. How do you think I know him so well? It's not like I'm stalking him or anything."

"No, that's Zach," he retorted.

"Hey, be nice." Jordan's always whining about how he got "caught in the middle" of that whole thing, but he wasn't even an RA when it actually happened. Jordan shoved his way into the middle, and now he's all "pity me, I'm a martyr" about it. It drives me crazy when anyone acts like that, and Jordan's practically made it a profession. It's going to be a long semester.

Luckily, Molly the weathergirl/producer came in then. "Here's my forecast and current conditions," she said sweetly, handing me a large index card. "You can use the newsroom computer to download the weather maps from CNN. The Zip disk should be in there, but if it's not, check the Toaster drive."

For some strange reason, the program that controls the onscreen graphics is called the Video Toaster. Most people just call it "Satan." If you think Windows crashes a lot, it's the Rock of Gibraltar compared to this piece of crap. It's fantastic when it works, though—it looks totally professional on air. No one has ever volunteered to work graphics except me. Comm people tend not to like computers too much, I guess. Which sucks, considering how much time we spend using them for presentations and graphic design and editing. In a lot of ways I like computers better than people. Computers do what you want them to do a lot more consistently than people do, and they're a hell of a lot more timely and sensible about it.

I hesitated to go into the newsroom. I just didn't belong there. Nobody else seemed to have any qualms about it, but they all thought the board girls were really nice. To me they just seemed like all the girls I went to high school with—cliquey and shallow and image-obsessed. Maybe it was just the TV girls, though. From the little I'd seen of the radio directors, they seemed much more laid-back and casual. Something told me that it would be this way for the rest of my life. I thought briefly about becoming a Computer Science major, but that would involve high-level calculus. Ick.

Luckily, nobody was in the newsroom right then. I sat down at a purple iMac and pulled up the two weather maps. The only temperature map we can use is in Celsius—I don't know why they seem to think we're in Canada—so it's always less than 30 in Los Angeles. It looks utterly stupid, but there's nothing we can do. Copyright issues and all that. Whatever.

I went into the control room and sat down at the Toaster. It was freezing in there—gee, what a shock. I pulled a sweatshirt out of my backpack and shoved the Zip disk into the drive. It took me about half an hour to get all the titles and maps ready, so I was always there earlier than everyone else. However, I was also the first to leave at the end of the broadcast, which gave me about 45 minutes to grab dinner before jazz band. It wasn't the ideal situation, but at least it allowed me to go to the GLBTQA meetings.

GLBTQA, if you didn't know, stands for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and their Allies. It’s the campus gay-straight alliance. Jordan's the vice president and I'm the secretary. The group isn't that visible on campus yet—they're kind of torn between being a support group that hides in a corner or being an advocacy group that makes things better for all the queer students that will come after us. I came from a group that was very activism-oriented and never hesitated to speak out, even though our campus wasn't the most tolerant place. I mean, we had a frat house on the corner that we would have to walk past in order to get to my very butch friend Sam's house, and the guys would throw beer cans at us and call us "fucking dyke bitches." But we never even thought about letting that stop us.

I don't understand why it's so different here. I mean, people here tend to ignore what they don't want to hear, rather than lashing out and trying to silence the opposition. You'd think that would make people less afraid. I guess they're more afraid of what people think than what they do. Personally, I think they're just lazy and chicken-shit, and I've told them that more than once in officers' meetings. Jordan just likes to create drama, and everyone indulges him because it's the only way to get him to shut up. I love the boy to death, don't get me wrong, but drama gets old fast—especially self-created drama that's only tangentially related to reality.

Morgan, Wookie, and Tara came in then. Jordan was trailing behind, flirting with Morgan and pulling his knitting out of his rainbow knapsack. If there's any way he could possibly look gayer, I don't think I want to know what that would be.

Wookie came up behind me and started fiddling with switches. "Hey, can you throw a weather graphic up?" she asked, nodding to Morgan.

I put the forecast map up on the screen and watched as Morgan tried to prevent the weather map from showing through Molly's eyes. "God damn it, why does she have to have green eyes?" She switched on the headset mike pack. "Molly, can't you get color contacts or something?"

Jordan was standing beside me at the VTR machine, punching buttons on a remote and trying to get the DV tape to rewind. He's not a big technology fan. Give him a pair of knitting needles, though, and amazing things happen.

Rachel leaned across Morgan, her low-cut camisole top revealing some pretty decent cleavage. "Here's the PSA tape with the show promos," she told Jordan, handing it to him. "It should be at the beginning, but you'll want to check and make sure." Jordan snatched the tape out of her hand and shoved it into VCR 2. He was starting to get pissy, and I wanted to head it off before he went into full-out bitch mode; otherwise, I'd never hear the end of it at dinner.

"Hon, calm down," I whispered. "It's fine. Everything will work fine. You can do it."

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. "I know. I know. I can do it."

I shuddered inwardly when I realized what would happen when Grant Patterson was entered into the equation.