Devon approached the building with unsteady feet. He adjusted his tie for what must have been the tenth time and swallowed gulps of the hot summer air. Florida weather was perpetually sticky and wet, he thought, feeling his shirt melding to his skin. He had almost turned down the internship when he heard he had been rerouted from the cool Chicago air to Florida, but he needed a summer program, any program, to kick start his journalism career.

The Devil’s Advocate was a small paper that was sweeping the nation. The title was emblazoned on the building’s front in crooked red. The D had horns and a tail. The gray building had tall glass windows. It was about four floors, all to one publication. It seemed to leer down at him, the glass double doors of the entrance reflecting his nervousness back at him. His tie was still crooked.

He fixed it with one hand and opened the door with the other.

Cool air blasted him the moment he walked inside, as if he had walked into a freezer. A receptionist smiled at him from behind her desk. A pair of elevators were to her left, and cushioned chairs lined the wall to her right. A fake potted plant sat on her desk.

“I was wondering when you were finally going to come in,” she said. “You must be Devon, the high school intern?”

“Uh, yeah,” Devon said. “How’d you know?”

“You’re too young to read the paper and too old to be lost,” she said. She was at most five years older than he was. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a bun and her lips were stained red.

“Oh,” was all he managed.

“And, you put your photo in your application. I have your ID right here,” she laughed.

She held up a red lanyard with thick black lettering. The ID read “DEVON TEAGUE Intern Summer of 2015.” There was no denying the messy-haired, acne-marked teen was him. He looped it over his head and thanked the receptionist, who finally introduced herself as Dakota.

“Your partner in crime already went up. You’re a little late, Devon,” Dakota pointed to the elevators. “Second floor. Welcome to the Advocate.”

“Thanks.”

Within seconds Devon walked into the office of an actual newspaper. There were four rows of about five desks in the room, all with computers and their own memorabilia – family photos, desk toys, soda bottles, colorful pens and calendars. About half of the desks were occupied. The air rang with the click-clack of typing hands and the churn of printers at work. Glass doors at the end of the room led to, as far as he could see, a copy room.

Directly in front of him was a girl and a man in a suit. The girl looked roughly his age. She wore a blue sweater vest and a skirt, her dark hair falling in waves over her shoulders. She narrowed green eyes at Devon behind thick black glasses. The ID against her chest revealed her to be “GUADALUPE HERNANDEZ Intern Summer of 2015.”

The man looked like he was in his late twenties. He looked like a surfer who had been plucked off the beach and thrown into an office building – his skin was tanned, his dirty blonde hair brown at the roots. His lips were tilted up at the ends as though he always was on the verge of a smile, as though he always knew something nobody else did. He grinned as Devon approached, then began to walk away.

“There’s your partner in crime now, Lupe. I’ll go get your assignments ready,” he called over his shoulder. “Go ahead and introduce yourselves. You two will be spending a lot of time together the next month.”

The surfer disappeared amongst the rows of desks to the copy room of the far back, leaving Devon and Lupe behind. He stuck out his hand. She took it and gave him a brief, firm shake.

“Guadalupe,” she said. “Like the saint.”

“Devon,” he said. “As in Devon-lishly handsome.”

She didn’t laugh. He swallowed. “You should fix your tie,” she noted. Her expression was cool and stoic. Devon fiddled with his tie for the umpteenth time, muttering to himself under his breath. Finally, he ripped it off and tucked it into his pocket.

“Problem solved,” he said. The ghost of a grin tugged at her lips. It was gone by the time the surfer returned with a stack of papers in his arms.

“Refresher course, kids, have either of you heard of the Devil before?” The man asked.

They answered at the same time.

“Of course,” Devon said.

“Yes,” Guadalupe said.

“Tell me the names of some of the writers here,” he said. He shifted his weight from foot to foot. His fingers drummed against the papers in his hands. He was observing the two, Devon knew, weighing them against each other. Fortunately for Guadalupe, Devon wasn’t much competition.

“Strike Out is the sports editor. Artemis and Apollo are column writers for the arts section. Dumb-Bella is the wellness editor,” Guadalupe ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “The Book Buff is the entertainment columnist and – “

The man held up his hand. “Whoa, whoa, I said a few, not the whole staff list,” he laughed. “Good to see you’ve done your research.” The girl beamed.

Devon raised his hand. “Wait, those aren’t actually their names, are they?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow. “There’s no way someone named their kid Dumb-Bella.”

The man shook his head and sighed. “As you know, this paper is called The Devil’s Advocate because we write the unfiltered, crudest, most honest news out there. We don’t care about ratings here, we want to inform the public.

“But because of the strength of some of our stories, for the safety of our reporters, we write under code names. Now all our hate mail gets rerouted to the office instead of our homes, you know? People know we work here, but they don’t know what we wrote. It’s just easier that way.”

Devon nodded slowly. It was like Peter Parker masquerading as Spider-Man – his true identity was secret for his own safety, and the safety of his loved ones. Perhaps the program would be more interesting than he thought, he mused.

“I’m Felix G. I’ll be your supervisor for this week,” the man said, glancing between the two interns. “Here is your first assignment. Edit these papers for spelling and grammar, then we’ll send ‘em to Gladys, our regular copy editor, to see how well you did.”

He passed half the stack of papers to Guadalupe, who hugged them to her chest, and half to Devon, who pretended to fall over their weight. His fellow intern scoffed, but his new boss chuckled.

“I’m at the desk in the upper right corner over there,” Felix pointed. “Come to me if you’ve got any questions. Until then, there’s a table waiting for you in the copy room.”

“Thank you, sir,” Guadalupe said.

“Drop the sir, Lupe,” Felix said. “I’m like, what, six years older than you? Relax. This is a fun place.”

“Of course.” Her smile seemed more forced than it had been before. She walked briskly towards the copy room. Devon nodded at Felix and followed his new partner from a few steps behind – what he gauged to be a safe distance.

The copy room was exactly what Devon thought it would be. Four copiers lined the left wall. The right wall had shelves littered with copy paper, staplers and pens. The back wall was a window overlooking the street; sunlight flooded in. In the center was a long table with seats for about ten people with cups of pens at each end. Guadalupe sat at the farthest end of it. Devon sat across from her. He picked a red pen from a cup. She pulled one from a pocket in her skirt.

“Looks like we have some work ahead of us, huh, Lupe?” he asked.

“Clearly.”

Her head was bowed over the first sheet of paper. She tucked stray strands of hair behind her ear and held the pen to her lips. Her eyes moved steadily across the page.

“You’re taking this really seriously for someone the boss just told to relax,” Devon noted, tapping his pen against the table.

“He’s not the boss,” she said. “He’s the sports editor. You’d know that if you had gotten here on time.”

He tapped his pen louder, his eyes widening. “No need to be mean,” he whistled, raising his voice in mock hurt.

The girl’s gaze drifted up from the page to Devon’s face. He was surprised to see her eyebrows knit together in distress. She grabbed the pen in his hand and held it still. “I’m not trying to be mean,” she said. “Sorry if I’m coming across that way. I’m just,” She paused, searching for the words, “excited to be here. I’m taking it seriously because this is serious. To me.”

“Why so serious?” Devon grinned.

Guadalupe blinked. “I just told you.”

“It was a, uh, joke,” he explained. “The Joker? ‘Why so serious?’ Batman?”

“A joke,” she repeated, loosening her grip on the pen. “I get the feeling you’re not very good at those.”

Devon felt his face flush. To his surprise, his new partner smiled. “We have a whole summer to work on it, ‘Devonlishly handsome,’” she said.

They lapsed into silence as they sorted through the first few papers. Devon spotted the word “piece” as “peice” several times in a single story.

There were letters missed here and there. He circled any and all Oxford Commas; he was a fan, but his journalism teacher never was. Eventually, Guadalupe broke the quiet.

“Why’d you apply to this program?” she asked. “You don’t seem too invested.”

“I could have been born in this building and not be as invested as you are,” he said. “I just wanted to do something for this summer for my college apps. I was hoping to be interning at the Chicago Tribune, honestly.”

“Oh.”

The scratch of pens filled the air. After a few minutes, Devon asked, “What about you?”

He could see her eyes light up. She set her pen down and lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “I’m looking to prove some rumors about the Devil wrong,” she said.

“What kind of rumors?”

Her expression became the cool one she had when they first met. Devon felt he was being scrutinized from the way her eyes scanned him. He fidgeted in his chair and resumed tapping his pen.

“I think you could help me, Devon, but this is going to be some extra work,” she whispered. “Do you think you can handle that?”

Devon nodded slowly. He bent closer over the table to hear her voice.

“Someone at the Devil is fabricating their stories.”