#FINDTENESHE was already trending when I got to work two days later — Monday morning, gray and slow. All reporters were expected to meet with the boss in the cinema room in five minutes.
Of course, I was late.
Still drowning in what happened two days ago, I tried to pull myself together — lipstick, fake confidence, maybe a little hope that no one would notice the mess behind my eyes.
The moment I walked into the meeting room, I spotted my nemesis sitting pretty in the front row, legs crossed, phone in hand, like she'd been waiting just to ruin my day.
"Hi, Sophie," I said, forcing a smile that probably looked as broken as I felt.
She turned to me, her glossy lips curling into a smirk.
"Ew… is that your face or your ass?"
Laughter rippled through the room. I bit down on my tongue, pretending not to care.
"She's right — you look like shit. What's up with you?" Claire said as she slid into the seat beside me.
Claire's older, the kind of woman who knows when you're falling apart but still makes jokes about it anyway. She's blunt — painfully so — but she's also the only one who actually checks on me. Sometimes I think she pities me. Other times, I think she just actually likes me
Mrs. McWell swept into the room just as everyone was settling down. The chatter died immediately — that woman carried silence like a weapon. She stood at the front, clicking through slides before finally speaking.
"We're officially working with the police on this case," she began, her voice sharp and deliberate. "But we all know how they are — they hide things. And it's our job to give the public what they want."
She paused, scanning the room until her eyes landed on me. I straightened in my seat.
"For this one, I'm putting Zelder and Sophie together. You two will cover #FindTeneshe. Bring me something worth printing."
My stomach dropped. Sophie. Of all people.
I could already feel her smug grin burning a hole in the side of my face.
I wanted to protest — to say anything — but one look from Mrs. McWell shut me up. The meeting wrapped soon after, and as I gathered my notes, she stopped beside me.
She leaned in close, her perfume sharp, her tone even sharper.
"Remember what I told you, Zelder — this is your last chance. Don't mess it up."
Then she walked away, her heels clicking like gunshots on the marble floor.
I stood there frozen, a chill crawling down my spine.
After the meeting we say in our respectful sit then Claire said "You look tired,"
claire had been sitting next to me since I started the job. At the time, I assumed she was close to retirement and had since learned she was a mere forty five years old and would be working for the corporation for what felt like another hundred years. claire liked to hold her age over me because it was the only thing she had. Like me, she had no power, no money. The only privileges she was given were snide little comments like "You'll change your mind about that in ten years" and derisive snorts whenever I tried to pitch new ideas in meetings.
"I'm fine," I told her.
I wasn't fine. Since the punk show, I'd looked at every picture Max had ever posted on social media. I tried to stalk Rebecca/Rachel, whose actual name turned out to be Reese, but all her accounts were on private, which felt like a personal attack. I cycled through pep talks, telling myself that I was too good for him, that I didn't even really like him to begin with, that this was an opportunity to find someone better, before reassuring myself that surely he and Reese were just friends and he would text at any moment.Any moment!
I spent the morning falling into a hole of tenashe . I studied her Instagram, her dormant Twitter, her LinkedIn account. I MacGyvered my way around paywalls in order to read articles about her disappearance. By lunchtime, I was intimately familiar with her life in a way that I didn't even know my own friends.
tenashe was last spotted at the company of a popular ceo she was there to influence their product . I assumed.
People described tenashe as disarming. Men often made the mistake of thinking that she was cute and harmless, and she knew how to take advantage of that impulse. tenashe , despite her family's wishes for her, was determined to become a judge. These large aspirations were made acceptable by her disappearance.
"tenashe has a bright future," her parents said on the news. "We need to bring her home."
They spoke in a Georgia drawl that was foreign to my Midwestern cadence. tenashe 's mother wore chunky jewelry and too much makeup, which was ineffectual at covering the large bags under her eyes that had formed from crying. Her father looked like a man who processed his emotions through shooting deer in a forest and didn't know what to do with himself now that he was the deer begging for the return of his child."We know she's still alive," he said. "We just know it."
The first suspect that was mentioned ln the group was Tenashe's ex —Tim who was clearly sfill in love with her he as visited her a day before and they got into a huge fight according to her neigbours. The police found Tenashe's car at the law office where she had arrived the previous day and seemingly never left. According to another intern, she had behaved normally during the day and headed to the elevators at six thirty, saying that she "couldn't wait to sit on the couch and keep watching Friends." Somewhere between getting on the elevator and going to her car, Tenashe had been deterred from her plan.
"It's always the men it must be her ex that's still obsessed with her he probably followed her to the company and kidnapped her there" someone said on the forum .
"Men," someone replied, "are never to be trusted."
"I just hope she's not dead because then it's all fucked up" another one types on the forum
I was drinking my coffee and searching on the ex when Sophie walks up to me
"Hey partner" put her fingers in the air doing the quotation to show her sarcasm "I'm going to the police and the company to see what I can get you stay and on searching on whatever you can"
I nodded as I sipped my coffee without looking at her face as she walks off
"You two are meant to go togther" Claire said as she faces me
"The lady clearly said i should stay I didn't want to go anywhere with her bully ass anyway".