Read Online Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe by Shelley Coriell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Shelley Coriell
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angelic.”
Clementine made a gagging noise, and I envisioned a volume knob on her forehead and me turning it down. No, I wasn’t exactly an angel, but I was trying to help her station stay on the air.
“A successful Chloe, Queen of the Universe show means more listeners,” I said. “More listeners mean we have a better chance of luring underwriting funds, and those funds mean we could keep KDRS from crashing and burning. You realize we’re on the same team, don’t you?”
Clementine smacked her forehead. “Oops, I forgot my Go-Chloe-Go T-shirt and freakin’ pompoms.” She stormed into one of the little glass rooms at the back of the portable.
I rubbed my temples. Why did Clementine dislike me so much? Surely it couldn’t be Brie’s attempt to turn me into a pariah. Clementine, like the rest of the radio staff, was an outsider. She didn’t seem like the type to give a rat’s heinie about the Brie Sonderbys of this world.
“How do you envision interacting with your audience?” Tay-som asked.
My show. My JISP. It was a ball and chain around my ankle. I flattened my hands on the two-ton binder. No, it was an anchor, keeping me steady. After getting kicked out of my clan, I floated alone with nothing to hang on to. I needed KDRS.
“I don’t want to come across as arrogant,” I told Taysom. “I want to be more like the queen next door, everyone’s friend.”
Because on the night of the Mistletoe Ball, I hadn’t been a friend to Brie when she needed me . Ever since my talk with Merce on the day Grams cut her hand, the thought had been sneaking up on me and echoing through my head.
“That’s a start,” Taysom continued. “Now, what type of stuff are you going to talk about? Newsy current events? Softer human-interest topics? This type of stuff drives your format music.”
With zero social obligations I had plenty of time to brainstorm content, and when I was thinking about talk show topics, I turned to the Question Bag.
Grams made the Question Bag for my seventh-grade birthday party. She’d taken a small brown-paper lunch sack and drew question marks all over it. Fat ones. Skinny ones. Curly ones. Blockish ones. Inside she put more than one hundred slips of paper with questions. We used the Question Bag at my party, a huge blowout with every seventh-grade girl at school in attendance. Throughout the party, we’d draw questions and people would shout out answers. It was a good way to get to know one another. To connect.
Grams, being Grams, hadn’t included expected questions like, What’s your favorite TV show? or Who’s your favorite singer? Grams’s bag of questions forced us into deeper waters.
You won a million dollars, but you can’t spend it on yourself. What would you do with it?
You have a chance to have dinner with one famous person, living or dead. Who?
I proclaimed to my birthday guests I’d have dinner with Charlie Chaplin. Merce announced she’d dine with Copernicus. Briehad surprised me. She was new to the school and model gorgeous, so I expected her to say something completely superficial, like some Hollywood hunk or supermodel.
“I’d have dinner with God,” Brie said. When I gave her a curious look, she shrugged. “I have big questions.”
The next week we made tamales de dulce and officially became a trio. Since then Brie, Merce, and I would haul out the Question Bag during sleepovers, on lazy summer afternoons at the beach, even during finals when our brains were about to burst. Over the years we added our own questions, from the silly to the serious.
Would you go without bathing for one year if you got paid $50,000?
If your best friend planned on getting an abortion and needed money to pay for it, would you loan it to her?
I turned to the KDRS staff. Grams always said I poured my heart into everything I did, and my radio show would be no different. “I want to talk about stuff people care about, stuff that makes them think . . . and feel. We’ll talk about
Clementine made a gagging noise, and I envisioned a volume knob on her forehead and me turning it down. No, I wasn’t exactly an angel, but I was trying to help her station stay on the air.
“A successful Chloe, Queen of the Universe show means more listeners,” I said. “More listeners mean we have a better chance of luring underwriting funds, and those funds mean we could keep KDRS from crashing and burning. You realize we’re on the same team, don’t you?”
Clementine smacked her forehead. “Oops, I forgot my Go-Chloe-Go T-shirt and freakin’ pompoms.” She stormed into one of the little glass rooms at the back of the portable.
I rubbed my temples. Why did Clementine dislike me so much? Surely it couldn’t be Brie’s attempt to turn me into a pariah. Clementine, like the rest of the radio staff, was an outsider. She didn’t seem like the type to give a rat’s heinie about the Brie Sonderbys of this world.
“How do you envision interacting with your audience?” Tay-som asked.
My show. My JISP. It was a ball and chain around my ankle. I flattened my hands on the two-ton binder. No, it was an anchor, keeping me steady. After getting kicked out of my clan, I floated alone with nothing to hang on to. I needed KDRS.
“I don’t want to come across as arrogant,” I told Taysom. “I want to be more like the queen next door, everyone’s friend.”
Because on the night of the Mistletoe Ball, I hadn’t been a friend to Brie when she needed me . Ever since my talk with Merce on the day Grams cut her hand, the thought had been sneaking up on me and echoing through my head.
“That’s a start,” Taysom continued. “Now, what type of stuff are you going to talk about? Newsy current events? Softer human-interest topics? This type of stuff drives your format music.”
With zero social obligations I had plenty of time to brainstorm content, and when I was thinking about talk show topics, I turned to the Question Bag.
Grams made the Question Bag for my seventh-grade birthday party. She’d taken a small brown-paper lunch sack and drew question marks all over it. Fat ones. Skinny ones. Curly ones. Blockish ones. Inside she put more than one hundred slips of paper with questions. We used the Question Bag at my party, a huge blowout with every seventh-grade girl at school in attendance. Throughout the party, we’d draw questions and people would shout out answers. It was a good way to get to know one another. To connect.
Grams, being Grams, hadn’t included expected questions like, What’s your favorite TV show? or Who’s your favorite singer? Grams’s bag of questions forced us into deeper waters.
You won a million dollars, but you can’t spend it on yourself. What would you do with it?
You have a chance to have dinner with one famous person, living or dead. Who?
I proclaimed to my birthday guests I’d have dinner with Charlie Chaplin. Merce announced she’d dine with Copernicus. Briehad surprised me. She was new to the school and model gorgeous, so I expected her to say something completely superficial, like some Hollywood hunk or supermodel.
“I’d have dinner with God,” Brie said. When I gave her a curious look, she shrugged. “I have big questions.”
The next week we made tamales de dulce and officially became a trio. Since then Brie, Merce, and I would haul out the Question Bag during sleepovers, on lazy summer afternoons at the beach, even during finals when our brains were about to burst. Over the years we added our own questions, from the silly to the serious.
Would you go without bathing for one year if you got paid $50,000?
If your best friend planned on getting an abortion and needed money to pay for it, would you loan it to her?
I turned to the KDRS staff. Grams always said I poured my heart into everything I did, and my radio show would be no different. “I want to talk about stuff people care about, stuff that makes them think . . . and feel. We’ll talk about
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