echo, district four | finished

Quiet eyes, loud mouth —
she's a journalist, not a gossip.

Pastel walls and a whiteboard of evidence, strings of pink yarn connect clues to theories and she scrubs her hands raw each night. There's always a smudge of black ink left behind. Her fingertips are slick with equations, notes written along her wrists and a pen caught between her teeth. She smells of cherries and hard candy; sweetened nicotine. Not the richest, not the strongest — but she wants be the best, so it all circles back to that one talent.

( Knowing. )

A close friend and your worst enemy, she'll wire your house while asking how your grandmother's been doing. Rule #1: it's not betrayal if you polish the blade. The story's all that matters in the end, a playground princess gathering rumours and secrets and wrapping them in a pretty package. "What Won't Stay In The Janitor's Closet." She unlocked the door. They say she's ruined lives, but whatever. Everyone's got a tragedy of their own.

Being liked didn't get her the scholarship to a private academy, training under actual investigators and honing her trade. Rule #2: you gotta fuck a lot of people over to catch the culprit. She's willing. Apology cards and fake flowers, it's not personal. Nothing is. Timed laughter and a stretched grin, she just wants the details. A one-sided conversation. "What was it you heard in the locker-room yesterday?" They ask her if she's okay, she shakes her head.

"Oh, I'm fine! Let's get back to you."

Who cares about that? No one reads her reports to see how she's doing. They only care about the latest revelation, a confirmed assumption and a new lead to follow. It's all a performance. Everyone's out for themselves and she's the ringleader. They wanna know who she is? Read the author's biography, cited and formatted and with all her accomplishments on display. She's the top student in her class for a reason. You have to be ruthless. You can't hesitate.

She'll never come back from this, but it doesn't matter. When you talk to her, you hold your hands behind your back because you're waiting for the knife. You don't meet her eyes, there's no light there. You give her what she wants and you take what she offers, and that's that. No one loves the girl who spills the tea and doesn't bother to wash the stain. She takes a drag of her cigarette and fixes her lipstick — she's tired of the schoolyard circus.

Assignment on her desk and ambition that can't be matched, she gets her first official job in the form of a broken boy and a mystery to solve. Who wants him dead? Who left him bleeding in the streets? Leave it to her to close the case — and a pair of aspiring peacekeepers, sure, but they're just bodyguards. This isn't a partnership. They'll dig up the treasure and she'll take the gold. The finished article will start with her name and end with it, too. Echo P. Guillory.

They call her the Guillotine, blade to their throats and heads rolling. She's earned that title. Rule #3: you have to ruin yourself to go far in this business. She eats her dinner alone in her room — and her parents don't bother to ask how her day went because she never answers them. They're just shadows in a silent house. She has no friends, just sources. Voted 'Most Likely to Succeed,' but she wasn't even on the ballot for 'Most Likable.' That's fine.

Journalists aren't meant to be liked. Who the fuck actually likes the truth? Only the people not involved in the drama. Selfish fuckers who stick their fingers in pies that don't belong to them. And she owns the bakery, yeah, but it's a necessary evil. It has to be done. She's the one holding the gun to her head, finger on the trigger — but all the bullets have been removed. Used. Dead innocence at her feet and ruination in her hands. She's the only criminal here.

Can't be famous, so she'll be infamous
— doesn't matter if they stop asking if she's okay.

( That story won't sell. )

[dars]