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Ruby remained for a second at the door, but immediately after gathered her courage and went toward that desk, where a big werewolf with a big cigar in hand was reading papers he had on the desk. The room had no windows and the only source of light was a Churchill model lamp on the desk that illuminated that small environment. And even if there had been no need on the desk there was the nameplate ‘Director’ that gave to that room, the only note of importance to that small newsroom.
Ruby sat on the only chair in front of the desk and waited for that creature to stare at her straight in the eyes, and without uttering a word, asked her what she had in her hands, staring at that file she had in hand. Ruby knew that look very well and extending the folder explained to him without frills what she had ‘discovered’. The director opened the little folder and read the first lines of what she had written and took the photocopy of that little piece of paper. He looked at it with dubious interest, and immediately after looked at Ruby.
A story born from a little piece of paper that had stuck under the heel of one of her shoes. “But are we joking? Ruby you are my diamond tip and you want to tarnish ‘your’ reputation… ‘our’ reputation like this?” The director looked at her for a couple of seconds after that question, in which he made her feel the weight of the whole newsroom, even if small, on her shoulders. He thought he would put her in difficulty, but the gaze of his employee, didn’t change one bit. Ruby was certain that under that strange sheet under the shoe, something more was hidden. The Great Awakening, somehow, had made her open her eyes. But she still didn’t know it yet.
In the notes she had taken, there was something that told her to investigate the thing and that would lead her to something bigger, and that perhaps would make happen ‘that leap’ that the director had always been waiting for. She didn’t speak, but had the director read the entire file, and remained silent, until the big face of the werewolf stared at her again. She was about to tell him something, but without knocking one of Ruby’s colleagues entered and invited them to go see the television on in the adjacent room.
They all remained speechless. The director with the cigar in his mouth took a couple of puffs and when he blew out the smoke, that cloud flooded the entire room, and finally stared at Ruby straight in the eyes and told her only “Begin”. On Ruby’s face was born that smile she was waiting to show off. She returned to the director’s room and took the file, and ran to her desk and began to draft a piece for a report.
What they had seen on television was Buster’s sabotage at the station, and when they saw all those televisions turned off, in everyone’s eyes terror was painted, but especially in the director’s eyes and in Ruby’s gaze a spark that this time too she had seen far. The director, returning to his office, passed near Ruby’s desk and took back the photocopy of that little piece of paper, looked at it one more time and reread that fragment. He put it back on the desk and looking at Ruby, said: “When you finish writing, I’m sending you to the street. You must see with your own eyes” and ordered another of his employees to take ‘that dusty radio’ at the back of the closet and ‘see if it still worked’.
At that order from the director, Ruby remained speechless and watched her colleague go toward that room full of junk, and when that door opened, she stretched her neck to see better what it contained, but unfortunately distinguished nothing, apart from a big tangle of technical equipment, which in her opinion were no longer useful for anything, and continued to work. But when, from that closet, a crackling voice was heard, everyone stopped, and the director flung open the door shouting: “Bring it here! We must hear!” Ruby’s colleague obeyed immediately and brought the turned-on device into the newsroom. He placed it on the first available desk and all the journalists of that small television station listened for the first time to Glenn’s voice talking about The Great Awakening. Ruby was the first who recognized certain verses she had memorized, and when she heard them for the first time through that radio, without even realizing it, she repeated them aloud, and all her colleagues, including the director, looked at her amazed, and immediately after the director ordered her to finish writing that piece and when finished ordered her to take all the equipment and go to the street.
Her instinct hadn’t let her down, not even this time.
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