Free The List by Karin Tanabe Page B

experience,”
     she replied at a perfectly audible level. “The only trip he’s been on for the paper
     was with POTUS to Toronto, which is basically like going to upstate New York. He’s
     not going to be able to cover.”
    “Does she know Mike is sitting right behind her?” asked Alison quietly from her desk.
    “Of course she knows! It’s all part of her warped power game,” hissed Julia, the resident
     expert on analyzing Machiavellianbehavior at the List . It was true. Mike Bowles sat at the bank of desks just in front of us. There was
     a wide hallway and a pillar between them, but from the expression on his face, he
     could definitely hear her.
    “Let’s talk about it at lunch,” said Upton in a low, quiet voice before rapping his
     fingers on the top of a water cooler and walking back to his office.
    Mike looked like he had just been told he had testicular cancer.
    Standing alone by our back area, I saw Olivia’s face light up, not with a smile exactly,
     but with a confident, satisfied expression. She must have finally realized that instead
     of a wall next to her, there were actual people with eardrums and the ability to write
     disparaging emails. She turned toward our group, looked directly at my terrified face,
     and said, “Don’t you have something to do?” Too frozen to respond, I looked down at
     my keyboard and Julia waved her away with an annoyed flick of the wrist.
    “She’s having lunch with Upton?” hissed Libby when Olivia had left our area. “No way.
     I could never eat lunch with him. I would be so nervous. I would spill everything
     and probably start crying and call my mother.” Alison nodded in nervous agreement
     and I tried to bring my pulse down, still shaken by my very first verbal interaction
     with Olivia. Well, verbal on her part.
    “You two would not cry,” said Isabelle, calmly fluffing her perky blond ponytail.
     “I had lunch with him and Apolo once. It wasn’t that big a deal.”
    Apolo Ohno! I loved when Isabelle talked about Apolo. It made me feel like his best
     friend once removed.
    “But you’re trained to handle stress,” Alison shot back. “You skied in front of like
     ten million people. You probably had a stress coach and a team of sports psychiatrists.”
    “I didn’t,” said Isabelle. “I had confidence in my craft and soshould you. We’re not idiots. Just because Olivia and people like Olivia treat us
     like we’re the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders who happened to have gotten hold of some
     laptops and press credentials does not mean we’re bad at our jobs. All our badges
     around our necks say Capitolist reporter, just like Olivia’s.” Isabelle was right, but I bet that if I talked back
     to Upton in the middle of the newsroom I would have been asked to give notice.
    Though I hated to admit it to myself, the way I hated to admit that I listened to
     Josh Groban’s Noël album in July, part of me was in awe of Olivia. What she said in earshot of Mike
     was terribly mean, but she was so confident in her work, so vocal in her demands,
     while I still felt guilty and unworthy when I took a Capitolist stamped envelope from the supply room. How, I wondered, did she learn to act like
     that?
    Seeing my puzzled face, Julia frowned and said, “Olivia Campo is actually the devil.
     If her red hair doesn’t tip you off, then her egomaniacal personality and her ability
     to shove her face up Upton’s ass will.” I nodded my understanding and got back to
     writing a piece on football players with political aspirations.
    After Rachel left, one of the older Congress editors stepped in for a few weeks. Our
     copy was rewritten to sound like breaking legislation news. We got morning emails
     written in all caps and were chided for not getting direct quotes from every lawmaker
     we referenced. It was like having a gymnastics squad led by the curling coach. But
     we knew it was temporary.
    Just before Christmas, I woke up to a company-wide email