The Bad Sister. Kevin O'Brien
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of the old classroom. It shone directly on the thirty-something man sitting at one end of the long table in the back row.
From her desk in front of the class, Ellie could now see that his chiseled, handsome face wasn’t quite as flawless as she’d first thought. A scar covered the left side of his forehead. It looked as if he might have been burned at one time.
All she could think about were the arsonists she’d helped put in prison. A couple of them—along with another suspect who had gotten off—had been burned in the fires they’d set. No surprise there, as those morons weren’t exactly adept. Ellie wondered if he’d been one of them.
It had been almost a week since she’d looked at the class list and noticed that Jensen, Nicholas was the only adult continuing education student taking her Introduction to Journalism course. Ellie had done a search for his name in the computer files of her arson series, and hadn’t come up with a match amid the couple of hundred names in her notes. A Google search hadn’t led to anything substantial either.
She’d told herself it would be easier to determine just who Nicholas Jensen was once he showed up in her class and she saw his face.
All week long, she’d been distracted by the hate-emails she’d managed to avoid during the summer. Some were pretty scary—enough so that she took the steak knife out of the kitchen drawer and hid it between her mattress and box spring again. She made hard copies of the most overtly threatening emails and filed them—in case she needed them as evidence for the police. Then she blocked the addresses of the senders and deleted the emails. Still, she couldn’t help feeling vulnerable.
A few of the haters had managed to track her down through LinkedIn, which made her extra wary of a stranger who had contacted her through the website on Monday. He’d claimed to be Alistair Thorne of Chicago Huff Post. He’d wanted to meet with her regarding writing a series of follow-up articles on the convicted arsonists and their connections to American Family Preservationists, which still had several active chapters throughout the country. After making a few inquiries, Ellie had discovered there was no one named Alistair Thorne working for Chicago Huff Post—not even as a freelancer.
Now that she’d seen Nicholas Jensen sitting in the back corner of the hot, stuffy classroom, she couldn’t help wondering if perhaps one of the haters had indeed found her. Still, except for the scar, he looked innocuous enough. His dark blond hair was cut short—with enough product in it that the sexy bed-head look must have been intentional. None of the American Family Preservationist creeps she’d encountered in the past seemed like the type to use hair products. They were more the type that beat up guys who used hair products. But perhaps this guy was going out of his way to look collegiate. He wore a white polo shirt, and she noticed another scar—a long, pinkish patch on his muscular arm. There was no wedding ring on his finger.
Nicholas Jensen didn’t look at her much. Instead, he seemed fixated on Hannah O’Rourke, sitting one table up and a row across from him. Of course, she was arguably the prettiest girl in the class. So there was really nothing too suspicious about him staring at her.
For this first class session, Ellie had been going around the room, picking students at random and asking them to explain why they’d decided to take a journalism course. Did they want to become reporters?
For the last few minutes, Robert Danagold, one of five men in the class (including Nicholas Jensen), had had the floor. At first, Ellie had been impressed with his answer to her question. He said he’d read about Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief who had been beheaded by terrorists in Pakistan. He’d pointed out that there weren’t many other professions “worth dying for.” He went on about the importance of the pursuit of truth, and he made some good points. But after a while, he started to sound like an op-ed piece he must have written for his college application. Ellie’s mind—and her eyes—had started to wander.
She was still sizing up Nicholas Jensen when she realized Robert Danagold had finally stopped talking. Everyone was staring at her now, waiting—including her mystery man in the back row.
“Thank you, Robert,” she said, recovering quickly. Then she nodded at Jensen. “Nicholas Jensen, how about you?”
With a slightly apprehensive look on his face, he straightened up in the chair.
“I’ll ask you the same question.” Ellie gave him a cool smile. “In this age, when newspapers are downsizing and journalists are being maligned and threatened, why are you interested in a journalism class?”
“I hope to sharpen my writing skills. I figured taking a journalism class might help.”
“Do you want to become a reporter?”
“Not particularly. I just hope to become a better writer.”
She nodded but couldn’t help probing a little deeper. “I noticed on the class chart, you’re a continuing education student. Do you want to improve your writing skills for your job? What kind of work do you do?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m self-employed. My interest in journalism doesn’t really have much to do with my job. As I said, I just want to become a better writer.”
Eden O’Rourke’s hand went up briefly. She didn’t wait for Ellie to acknowledge her before she spoke. “On the subject of jobs,” she said, lowering her hand and flicking back her platinum-colored hair. “You used to be a newspaper reporter, and now you’re a teacher. Why did you stop being a reporter?”
Ellie managed to smile at her. “My newspaper, the Tribune, had to do some downsizing. They offered me a severance package, and I snatched it up.” She took a deep breath. “So how about you, Eden? Why are you interested in—”
“Do you miss being a reporter?” Eden interrupted, staring intently at her.
Nodding, Ellie kept the smile plastered on her face. “Sometimes. But teaching is also very fulfilling. So I started to ask, what made you—”
“As a reporter, when you get ready to interview somebody for a story, you go in with an agenda, don’t you? I mean, you’ve already made up your mind about the person you’re interviewing and how you’re going to write your story. Isn’t that true?”
“Not necessarily,” Ellie answered. “Still, I’m glad you brought that up—”
“But you do research on your interview subjects ahead of time. You can’t help forming an opinion before you meet them. So that makes you prejudiced, doesn’t it? It means the story is slanted to your bias from the start. So you aren’t really going after the truth, but more like your version of the truth.”
Ellie finally let her cordial smile vanish. “Good journalists will research interview subjects, yes. But good journalists will also allow their interview subjects to answer the questions, and that’s how they get to the truth. They listen, Ms. O’Rourke. They don’t constantly interrupt.”
Eden O’Rourke shifted in her chair and then opened her mouth to talk again.
“But a good journalist is also curious and relentless,” Ellie added—loudly, to cut her off. “And you seem to have those qualities—in spades.” She glanced at the clock. “The class assignment for Friday is to bring in a newspaper or online article you think is exceptionally well written and be prepared to discuss it. Extra points if you pick an article on a subject that ordinarily wouldn’t interest you. So if you don’t like sports, bring in something noteworthy from the sports page; or if you’re not into politics, bring in a political story. You get the drift. All right? See you on Friday . . .”
People started to get out of their seats. Ellie thanked God Eden O’Rourke didn’t blurt out another irritating question. Eden grabbed her backpack and got to her feet. She didn’t look at all annoyed or peeved. It was as if she’d said what she’d wanted and now was moving on.
But her half-sister, Hannah, looked exasperated. Rolling her eyes at Eden, she stood up and picked up her tote bag.
Ellie caught a glimpse of Nicholas Jensen as he headed