Bradley Cash

Devon looks on hopefully as he agrees to join Guadalupe’s investigation. Illustrated by Bradley Cash.

Guadalupe’s words hung in the air between them. Fabricated, she had said. Made up. Lies. Devon knew without thinking his expression had shifted into somethingof a blank stare. A smile crept onto Guadalupe’s face; that must have been the reaction she was hoping for.

When his voice finally returned to him, Devon asked, “What do you mean, they’re fabricated?”

“I mean they’re not true,” she said, as casually as if she were telling him the color of her hair. He gathered his wits enough to realize she was teasing him. He hadn’t thought her capable of that.

“Well, yeah, but, I mean,” he stammered, searching for the words. “How do you know?”

Her smile wavered. “That depends, Devon. Are you positive you want to get mixed in on all this?”

Devon was not one to crave adventure. He was more likely to be found craving Hot Cheetos and another round on his Playstation. He hadn’t come to this internship looking to make a name for himself. He was looking for minimal recognition, a letter of recommendation, and a foot in the door to the college of his choice. Proofreading was
one thing, but this was something else altogether. Guadalupe had sensed his hesitation. She bowed her head and resumed working. The smile was falling off her face.

The temptation to know more dangled in front of him.

Devon surprised both of them when he spoke. “Yeah,” he heard himself say. “I’m positive.”

She didn’t look up, but the excitement was plain in her voice. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said. “Not here.”

He nodded, and resumed editing the articles. Whoever Dumb-Bella was, he thought, she was a fantastic writer who needed to learn to spell “accommodate” with a double “M”.

About half an hour later, Felix approached them. The stack of graded papers besides Devon was about twice as thick as the one beside Guadalupe. The ones Guadalupe had graded were more red ink than black. Devon’s looked like a child had crisscrossed around them.

“Having any, uh, trouble?” the editor asked, glancing between the two.

“If The Devil had a spelling bee, I would win it,” Devon said, looking up from his page. Felix chuckled.

“Yeah, you’d think spellcheck would catch some of these but,” he shook his head, “between you and me, I’m pretty sure some of them have ‘added to the dictionary’ their misspellings.” He picked up Devon’s pile. He shifted his attention to Guadalupe, who was mouthing words to herself.

“Lupe, I think that one’s had enough,” Felix said, scooping up her pile. He held out his hand for the one she was looking at. She covered it with her hands.

“I’m not finished,” she insisted.

“It looks finished,” he answered. He grabbed at the corner of the page and, after some gentle tugging, Guadalupe let go.

She frowned. Felix told them they had another half hour of work

“You don’t have to be so thorough, you know,” he said. She didn’t answer.

The two spent the next hour editing papers and saying very little. Devon’s few attempts at conversation were shut down by Guadalupe’s one word responses. Eventually they settled into what could have qualified as a comfortable silence for friends who had known each other for years, but for him, it was just awkward. He relished the few times Felix checked in on them, even if the surfer was bringing in more work.

When at last all the papers were done, Guadalupe gathered them into a pile and brought them to Felix.

“Good, good,” he said, giving the papers a cursory glance before placing them on his desk. “Next task is a fun one.” Devon swore he saw a glint in his eyes when he spoke. Chills ran down his spine.

Felix handed each of the interns five packages of staples. Then, the grin never

leaving his face, explained they were to check every stapler in the building to be sure it

had staples.

“All of them?” Devon repeated.

“All of them,” Felix nodded.

“What’s the point?” Devon asked. His mind had said more than just that, but he had to remind himself Felix was still in charge of him.

“It teaches you to, uh, pay attention to detail,” Felix shrugged. “Besides, we really need working staplers.”

Guadalupe accepted the task with little more than a roll of her eyes. Devon found comfort that even she was bored with the idea. He nudged her as they walked away to the far side of the room to begin the stapler check.

“Isn’t this the hard-hitting job experience you were hoping for?” he murmured.

“Oh, definitely,” she replied.

“If we play our cards right, maybe we can check all the pens, too,” he smirked.

It took them about half an hour to clear the second floor. There was a stapler on every other desk, two in the backroom, and four that had lain, fallen and forgotten, in the aisles. By the time they finished, they were released for a brief lunch break. Felix advised them to try a small café next door.

On their way out, Guadalupe paused at the front desk. Dakota passed her a messenger bag she looped over her shoulder.

“Thank you for watching it, miss,” she said.

“No problem,” Dakota smiled. “If you ask me, you guys should get little work cubbies anyway.”

Devon waved at Dakota She wiggled her fingers at him in a halfhearted shooing motion. He smiled. Perhaps his gaze lingered too long because Guadalupe gently grabbed him by the wrist and led him to the door. Once they were outside, she took a deep breath. Devon caught sight of his reflection in the door – disheveled and tieless, there was no improvement from this morning. He ran his fingers through his hair. Guadalupe walked on to the café, a cozy little place called Callie’s Coffee.

“So, are you finally going to tell me what’s up, Nancy Drew?” he asked, falling in step beside her.

“Are you still interested?”

“Still here, aren’t I?”

“I half expected you to stay with Dakota, that’s all.” Guadalupe said it with the same detachedness he had come to expect from her. He stiffened, prepared to defend himself, when he saw the stern look on Guadalupe’s face. She took a seat at a booth in the corner. He slid in in front of her while she pulled a laptop from her bag.

“Whatever.” He could feel his cheeks flushing. “Just tell me about how some high
school intern figured something out a building full of journalists hasn’t.”

Guadalupe clicked on her laptop. “It started as a school assignment,” she explained. “I was researching extinct animals, and about 8 Google pages in,” she paused when she saw Devon’s raised eyebrows.

“Eight pages?” he repeated.

“I’m thorough,” she said. “About eight pages in, I found something that waspublished on The Devil’s website. Of course, I was curious.” She turned the computer around so it faced the wall; Devon scooted further in to see. It was a page of The Devil’ website, complete with the logo in the corner. The story was by Fawn, an environmental
article about a rare lemur driven extinct by deforestation in the Amazon.

“Why was something for this site so far back in the search pages?” Guadalupe asked. Devon shrugged. “Then I noticed some weird things about this article. Look.”

She pointed to the part of the page that normally displayed what section to find the story under – instead of reading Environment or maybe Science, it was empty. She scrolled down. Where there were normally related articles or links to sources, there was nothing. The comments section was closed. The website address at the top of the
screen had a little lock beside it to signify it was a secured page.

“Tags are put on stories so they’re easy to find by viewers. If you tag every story with, say, a cat, and search for ‘cat’ on the site, all the tagged stories will come up,” she said. “But look at the tags section on this story. It isn’t tagged by anything you would look for.”

The story wasn’t tagged for its section, for animals, extinction, or even as a story Fawn had written. It was instead tagged with a single word – “panacea.”

“What? What’s a panacea?” Devon asked.

“It means a ‘solution to all problems’,” Guadalupe explained. “Again, it’s not something you would look for on this site. This story was posted like this because it wasn’t meant to be found.”

“What if you searched for it on the main site?” Devon asked.

“I’ll show you.”

In a new tab, she opened the website to the homepage. Devon noted there was no lock on the website address when she did. In the upper right corner she searched “lemurs extinct.” The page came back with no results.

“What I’m thinking is this story is tagged and on a private setting – you can’t get to it from the site,” she said. “Google found it, but no person would, that’s for sure.”

Devon had to close his jaw. His curiosity had been well aimed. Moreover, he had a newfound admiration for Guadalupe; her mannerisms were odd but effective. “What if you searched ‘panacea’ on the main site?”

Guadalupe shook her head. “It’s the same thing. It doesn’t come up,” she said. “I think this is how stories work when they aren’t released to the public yet. The data is there, you just can’t access it unless you’re an admin on the site, or you get a link directly to the story.”

Devon snapped his fingers. A lightbulb had gone off. “Like when I upload videos to YouTube and set it to private,” he said. “Only people with links can see the video.”

“That sounds about right,” the girl answered slowly, ruminating over the comparison. Her chin was balanced on her raised hand.

“But wait,” he added. “How do you know this isn’t unreleased stuff, then?”

“The dates.” Guadalupe clicked back to the story by Fawn; it was written over three months ago. “I checked the link all the time. The story never changed. It was just there.”

Devon was nodding, piecing it together in his mind. A story without sources hidden in the archives of the website was suspicious. But hadn’t there been more to it than that?

“Wait, you said ‘dates’ and ‘stories’,” he said, pointing to the screen. “This is one. Are there more stories?”

Guadalupe smiled at him. “You’re starting to get it, Devon. Look at what comes up when I click the ‘panacea’ tag.”

She clicked the tag. The next page was a search results screen – the website address still had the little lock. And about four pages worth of stories appeared, all with different authors. Devon gasped.

“Wait, why did they show up now? We just searched panacea on the main site,” he pointed out. His companion sighed and shrugged.

“I’m not all that good with this technical stuff,” she admitted. “I think it has something to do with the lock that shows up. This page is kind of a back door into an admin’s look at the site.”

“A fault in the programming?” he asked.

“Maybe. I’ve done a little research but, like I said, I’m not sure.”

There was a pause in the conversation. Devon was turning over everything he had just been told. These hidden stories were enough to cause an uproar on their own. He checked out a few of them as his partner sat in thought. The stories went back as far as the beginning of the year. The authors were all over the place – names from every
section of the publication. Either everyone was in on it, or someone was planting them.

“With all these fake names, there’s no way to know who is really behind all this,” he muttered.

“I suspect only an editor would have this level of access,” Guadalupe mused.

“Like Felix?” He asked. “I can’t really see him doing something like this, though.”

She clicked her tongue. “In theory, yes, Felix could be it, but,” she rolled her eyes, “I doubt it.” He snickered.

She closed the laptop and pushed it aside to meet Devon’s gaze. She was studying him, he realized, to see how he was taking it all. He tried to smile, tried to look reassuring and confident. The way Guadalupe covered her mouth to choke back a laugh told him it hadn’t worked out for him.

“One last question,” he said.

“I may not have the answer,” she said.

“Why are you telling me all this?” He could feel the uncertainty in his voice. She quirked her eyebrows in surprise. There was a beat of her sizing him up again, examining him.

“I can’t do this alone, Devon. I knew I’d need help when I came here,” she said, slowly and carefully. Her eyes drilled holes into his face; he felt his cheeks growing hot under her scrutinizing gaze. “You’re the only person here without any ties to the company beforehand. The only one who isn’t a suspect.”

“I’m not exactly trustworthy yet,” he said. “What if I ratted you out?”

She shook her head. “You’re not the sort to do that. I thought about it all day,” she said. “You’d either join me, or ignore me. You don’t like to cause trouble. It’s too much effort for you.”

He couldn’t fault the logic. He had yet to do anything to prove his worth to Guadalupe or Felix and, as much as he’d love to say that it was by design, it would be a lie. Average was all he was capable of. The thought occurred to him that this, this story, would drive him to be above average.

“Guess I’ll have to get used to causing trouble,” he said. “If I’m going to be

playing detective with you all the time, I mean.”

Guadalupe seemed pleased. “You’re joining me, then?”

Devon clapped his hands together. “Well, gang, it looks like we’ve got a mystery on our hands!” he declared. He waited for the burst of uproarious laughter sure to come for his masterful allusion to the greatest detectives of all time.

Guadalupe blinked. “Gang?” she repeated. “It’s just us.”

Devon groaned.

“Do you even own a TV?” he asked.