Free The List by Karin Tanabe

in Middleburg at 1 A.M. , there was no need to try.
    Why was she out here in the middle of the night? I knew why I was out so late. I lived
     here, and I was restless. I had no idea where Olivia lived, but my guess was that
     it wasn’t Middleburg, Virginia. And if her parents lived in Middleburg, I would have
     known. It was that kind of town. Unless they had a different name? Was it possible
     that I was not the only Capitolist reporter crashing with her parents in the country? But no. No girl as hungry to get
     ahead as Olivia would dare live outside the city. In Washington, after people looked
     you up and down to determine if you were fat, smelly, or unimportant, they always
     asked you the following three questions: what do you do, where did you go to college,
     and where do you live. Based on your answers, they might ask your name.
    Isabelle had mentioned that all the senior Congress and White House reporters made
     twice our salaries, so Olivia probably lived in a town house in Georgetown or Capitol
     Hill, not out here in hunt country. Maybe she had a country house? It was possible.
     The real estate was sinfully expensive in Middleburg, but if she was married to someone
     with money, she could.
    I wanted to drive away and stop awkwardly staring at her, but I also didn’t want to
     draw her attention. She was still reclining on her car, her arms crossed to stay warm,
     looking out of place but strangely at home.
    After five idle minutes, she took her phone out of her coatpocket. If the Capitolist had taught me anything, it was how to drive and dial at the same time. But she didn’t
     actually make a call. She just looked at her phone. Maybe she was reading a text?
    Finally, Olivia got back into her expensive car. She looked at the phone again and
     put her seat belt on. She then let out a groan, hit her steering wheel, and drove
     off in the direction she had come.
    I didn’t know what to think, except that it was weird for someone in their twenties
     to be alone in Middleburg on a weekday. Someone besides me.
    When I finally did collapse into bed, the soothing frog noises I turned on failed
     to soothe me. I tossed around, wondering what to do the next day. Should I mention
     to Olivia that I had seen her? I had never uttered a word to her, so it might be odd
     to open with “Oh hey, I saw you casually kicking around horse country last night.
     Were you lost? Or just in need of some fresh air fifty miles away from home?”
    But the next day was Friday, and the president was traveling. She was probably escaping
     the city, and I told myself it was unlikely she would even be in the office. And I
     was right. Friday came without one Olivia sighting and I never mentioned seeing her
     to Libby or Isabelle or anyone else.
    Days at the paper went by at a gallop. Some days you worked every waking moment; others
     allowed you an hour or two of downtime to frantically research future story ideas
     for the paper. But all had you spinning at a pace that sitting world leaders would
     look at and mutter, “You can’t be serious. No one can keep that schedule.” And some
     people couldn’t. Like Rachel.

CHAPTER 4
    I n most offices, there were employees who sprinted from task to task, happy to bring
     their blood pressure up to heart attack levels, while others kicked back at their
     desks like their cubicle was a tropical island. At the List, there was only one kind of employee, the kind that never stopped working. When a
     person decided that they didn’t want to devote every brain cell to the Capitolist or they started overdosing on Washington, they left and left quickly.
    One sunny Tuesday morning, after our section meeting, Rachel announced to us that
     she had given her two weeks’ notice to Upton and was ready to say goodbye to 5 A.M. wake-up calls and wall-to-wall C-SPAN. She had only been my editor for forty-five
     days.
    I wanted to hug her ankles the way I did Mrs. Van Hollen’s on my last day of