Read Online Blackout by Caroline Crane - Free Book Online Page A

heard about it on his
police scanner and was delighted he could interview me
personally.
    The Chronicle office was all the way
down in the lower village, next to the Metro-North railroad tracks
that ran alongside the Hudson River. It wasn’t far from where Cree
lived, on Riverview Boulevard, just above the lower village. I
thought of asking her if she’d want to go with me. More likely,
she’d rather spend the day with Ben on his last few days at
home.
    Poor Kelsey. She should have been leaving for
college, too. I wondered if she would. Or maybe she wasn’t able to
yet.
    The Chronicle was on one side of the
station plaza. I entered a large room with several desks, several
food vending machines, and several office cubicles along one wall.
The presses were in another room. They weren’t running today.
Southbridge wasn’t a large town but the paper covered the whole
area and mostly survived on advertising revenue. It would make a
good beginning for our nameless campaign. You have to start
somewhere.
    Phil was at his desk, engrossed in his
computer. Just like Ben. I knocked on the doorframe. His cubicle
didn’t have an actual door.
    He spun his chair around. “Madelyn Canfield!
This is a pleasure.” He didn’t get up, but held out his hand. I
went over and shook it.
    “Nothing bad, I hope,” he said. “Usually what
counts as news is pretty bad.”
    “Unfortunately,” I said, “it was very bad,
but I hope something good can come of it.” I gave him a brief
rundown and handed him my article. “Do you think your paper can
find room for this? You’re welcome to make any changes or even
rewrite it if they want your byline.”
    That would hurt, but any way to get the
message out was good.
    He skimmed the article, then went back and
read parts of it again. “Why would they need my byline? What’s
wrong with yours?”
    “I’m not on the staff.”
    “It looks to me like an opinion piece. We
print opinion pieces every week.”
    I hadn’t thought of it that way. I thought it
was news, and hoped he wouldn’t be offended by the stand I took.
I’d tried hard to keep it from sounding like male-bashing. All I
bashed was certain male attitudes.
    “I hope it’s not just my opinion,” I said. “I
mean, how could anybody disagree that women should be treated as
equals? Would men do a thing like that to each other?”
    He gave me a twisted smile. “They’ve been
known to do worse, but you’re right. This particular kind of thing
is a lot more apt to happen to a woman.”
    “I get sick and tired,” I said, “of people
claiming it’s the girl’s fault for getting drunk. Don’t men have
any responsibility for controlling themselves? And then, putting
pictures of it on the Internet. Whose fault was that? My brother
took them off, but you can hardly blame her for thinking there’s no
way out except suicide. It’s the sort of thing that happens all too
often and I want to stop it from happening again.”
    He nodded and switched pages. It ran to two,
double-spaced. I said, “You can cut it if you want to.”
    He didn’t answer that, but said, “Yup, you’ve
made some pretty good points here. I’m sure the editors will
agree.”
    On the way home, I detoured past Cree’s house
and saw Ben’s truck there. Cree was the first real girlfriend Ben
ever had. Over the years, he’d been interested in others, but they
were all put off by his Asperger peculiarities. Some, like Kelsey,
even felt threatened. All he wanted was a friend. All she wanted was for him to leave her alone. He, being an Aspie, kept at
it, not realizing how terrified she was.
    She even started carrying a knife. Against Ben? He was stunned when he found that out.
    I never could understand why she felt so
terrified. He hadn’t done anything or even verbally threatened her.
All he did was persist in his Aspie way, trying to get her to talk
to him. And she countered that with a knife. I figured there had to
be something in her past that made her so