Mayday started sophomore year.
Sasha Ridley was twenty-one, and I was nineteen, and we were both having the kind of week that makes you question whether higher education was a scam designed to extract tuition money from people too young to know better. Sasha had just bombed a presentation in her media ethics seminar. She stood up in front of forty people and blanked, completely blanked, thirty seconds of silence that she later described as "a full-body betrayal by my own central nervous system." I'd failed a midterm in investigative reporting that I'd studied three weeks for, which shouldn't have been possible, and yet.
We ended up at O'Malley's, which was the cheapest bar within walking distance of campus and had the charm of a waiting room in purgatory. Rail vodka. Dirty floor. A jukebox that only played Bruce Springsteen and one Celine Dion song that nobody had figured out how to remove. Sasha ordered two shots before she'd even sat down. I ordered two more before I took off my coat.
"We need a word," she said, three drinks in, her mascara slightly smudged underneath her eyes. "Like a code. For when everything is shit, and you need someone to show up and not ask questions."
"Like a safe word?"
"Like a—yeah. But not like in a BDSM way."
"Mayday," I said, because we were on a sinking ship.
"Mayday," she repeated. She raised her glass. I raised mine. We clinked. She drank. I drank. And that was it. That was the treaty. For the next eight years, whenever one of us texted the other Mayday, the other showed up. No questions. Just a location and a tab and the unspoken understanding that tonight we were going to be a mess and tomorrow we'd pretend we weren't.
Sasha and I should not have been friends. On paper, we made no sense. She was three years ahead of me, came from the kind of generational wealth that had an important last name attached to it, and had gotten into the program through connections she didn't bother pretending didn't exist. Her father ran Ridley Media Group, which was a mid-size communications firm that did PR and brand consulting for companies I'd never heard of but that apparently paid well enough to fund Sasha's apartment, Sasha's car, Sasha's wardrobe, and Sasha's ability to pick up every check without flinching. She wasn't ashamed of any of it. That was the thing about Sasha, she didn't pretend to be self-made. She didn't perform struggle. She just was who she was, which was a rich girl who wanted to be a journalist, and if you had a problem with that, she'd buy you a drink and tell you to get over it.
We met in the campus newsroom. She was the features editor; I was a freshman who'd submitted a piece on funding cuts to the university's ESL program that Sasha had read, edited, and published in the same afternoon. She'd found me after it went up and said, "You write like someone angry about the right things. Don't lose it." And then she'd taken me to lunch at a place I couldn't afford and paid for everything and asked me about my life with the focused intensity of someone conducting an interview, and by the end of the meal I'd told her more about myself than I'd told my roommate in three months.
That was Sasha's gift. People. She could read a room in seconds. She knew what you needed before you knew you needed it, and she'd give it to you: advice, a connection, a meal, a couch to sleep on, and in a way that felt generous and natural and never, ever like she was keeping a tab.
In the years since college, Sasha had done more for me than I was comfortable thinking about. She'd gotten me the interview at The Daily Byte. One phone call to Gayle, whom Sasha knew from a networking event, and suddenly I had an offer for a job I hadn't applied for. She'd lent me first and last month's rent when I moved into the apartment with Kristen. She'd covered bar tabs and grocery runs and one emergency car repair when the Civic's transmission did something that cost eight hundred dollars I didn't have. When I was between the Byte and my previous job: three weeks of unemployment that felt like three years, she'd let me crash at her place, in her guest room, with her good sheets and her great water pressure and her fridge that contained real food.
Every time, I'd say: "I'll pay you back."
Every time, she'd say: "Don't be stupid."
And every time, the debt got a little heavier.
Mahoney's was a bar downtown that Sasha liked because it had good martinis, and I liked it because it was dark enough that nobody could see my face if I cried. She was already there when I arrived, perched on a barstool with a half-finished martini and a second one waiting for me.
"You look like shit," she said.
"Thank you."
"Drink."
I drank.
Tell me," she said.
I told her. All of it. The interview. Diana Colworth. The newsroom with the marble floors and the bodega sandwiches and the guy arguing about headlines. The moment she asked what I'd been writing since then The strong candidate pool. The haircut I'd insulted from the safety of my car. The amethyst I'd thrown at a Honda Accord.
"You threw Kristen's crystal at a car?"
"I threw it near a car. At the parking lot. The car was collateral damage."
"Did it dent the car?"
"I don't know. I didn't check. I rolled up the window and screamed some more."
Sasha signaled for another round. She did not tell me it would be okay. She did not tell me I was talented or that Diana Colworth was wrong or that something better was coming. This was the Mayday protocol: you don't fix it, you don't minimize it, you sit in it together and drink.
"Okay," she said after the second round arrived. "My turn."
"Margot?"
"She's insufferable. Genuinely, Nell, I cannot overstate how insufferable this woman is. She's been at the paper for two years. Two. I've been there for six. Six years of showing up and doing the work and playing the game, and now Margot waltzes in with her Columbia degree and her little award,s and suddenly she's the frontrunner for senior features? Over me?"
"That's insane."
"It's beyond insane. It's criminal. You know what she wrote last month? That piece about the waterfront development? Everyone was falling all over themselves about it, and I read it, Nell, I read every word, and you know what it was? It was a rehash. She basically rewrote a ProPublica story from two years ago and added some quotes. That's a book report with a byline."
"Did anyone notice?"
"No. Of course. You know, Margot has been in Brennan's office three times this week. Three. She brings him coffee. She laughs at his jokes. She acts like he's the most fascinating man alive, and he IS NOT fascinating, Nell, he once spent an entire staff meeting talking about his kayak."
"His kayak."
"His kayak. Forty-five minutes about his kayak. And Margot sat there nodding like he was delivering the Gettysburg Address."
"Maybe she likes kayaks."
"Nobody likes kayaks that much. She's playing him. And it's working, which is the part that makes me want to commit arson."
Sasha's grievances were a regular feature of our friendship: a standing agenda item. The truth was that Sasha's complaints usually had a kernel of legitimacy wrapped in several layers of paranoia and entitlement, and my job was to extract the kernel and ignore the rest, which I'd gotten good at over the years.
I owed her that much. I owed her more than that, actually.
"Anyway." She drained the martini and signaled for another. "Enough about Margot. How's the salt mine?"
This was the rhythm: her grievance, my grievance, back and forth, a volley of professional misery that somehow felt less miserable when shared.
I told her about the Brynn Kessler fertility drama. Sasha told me Margot had started CC'ing the editor-in-chief on emails that didn't require CC'ing. I told her about Tyler and the daily tuna and how I was becoming increasingly certain that it was a personal attack.
"You know," Sasha said, stirring her drink, "my dad's been asking about you again."
"Sasha."
"He has an opening. Junior communications associate. It's not glamorous, but it's a real salary with real benefits, and you wouldn't have to write about anyone's fertility struggles."
"I'm not working at your dad's company."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a journalist."
"You're a content mill worker."
That landed harder than she probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended... with Sasha, it was sometimes difficult to tell.
"I'm a journalist who is currently working at a content mill. Temporarily. And I'm going to get out of it by writing my way out. Not by taking a job answering phones at Ridley Media because your dad feels sorry for me."
"He doesn't feel sorry for you. He thinks you're smart."
"He's met me twice."
"You made an impression. He said you had— "
"Sasha, I am not working for your father. I love you. Thank you. No."
She held up her hands. "Fine. Stubborn. Self-destructive. But fine."
"I'm not self-destructive. I'm principled."
"Those are the same thing in your tax bracket."
I wanted to be offended, but she was funny, and she was right.
"The thing is," I said, and I was drunker than I meant to be, drunker than I should have been on a Tuesday, but it was a Mayday, and regular societal rules didn't apply, "Diana said I was good. She said I had instincts she couldn't teach. And then she said she couldn't hire me. So what's the point of being good if you've got nothing to show for it?"
My phone buzzed. I glanced at it. Gigi. Again. The fourth time in an hour.
The first text had been a Pinterest board link with the caption CONCERT OUTFIT INSPO!!!!! which one r u vibes?? The second had been a screenshot of a TikTok of someone doing their makeup for a Dane concert with the message we should do a get ready with me before omg. The third was a photo of a pair of boots Gigi was considering buying "specifically for this" with three question marks and a prayer hands emoji. The fourth, just now, was: also do u think Logan would think it's weird if I made her a friendship bracelet? not weird right? it's nostalgic???
I put the phone face down on the bar.
"Your sister?" Sasha asked.
"She won't stop texting me about this concert."
"What concert?"
"That Dane chick. She's playing here in two weeks, and Gigi got tickets and guilted me into going."
"You're going to a Dane concert," Sasha said in the way you'd say you're getting a root canal. "Voluntarily."
"Not voluntarily. Under duress. Gigi did the whole we only have each other thing, and I caved."
"You're too easy."
"I know," I groaned.
"How did she even get tickets?"
"Her best friend from growing up is the guitarist. Logan something. She got us VIP, backstage, the whole—"
I stopped. Because Sasha's face had changed. Her glass, which had been on its way to her mouth, paused.
"Logan Perry," she said.
"Yeah. She and Gigi were attached at the hip in middle school. She was this little chubby kid who was always at our house. I used to call her Puff because she always—anyway. Apparently, she's some big shot now."
Sasha set her glass down. "Nell. You know Logan Perry."
"I mean, I knew her. When she was like thirteen. I haven't talked to her in—"
"Logan Perry. Dane's guitarist. The one with— " She pulled out her phone and typed frantically, fingers flying across the phone. She turned the screen toward me. A photo. Logan onstage, guitar in hand, the stage lights catching the tattoos on her arms.
"This Logan Perry," Sasha said. "The one who has eight million followers. The one who goes viral every other week for literally just being hot. Your sister is best friends with this person."
"Was. And I guess. Yeah. Why are you being weird about this?"
Sasha looked at me. Then she looked at the ceiling. Then she looked back at me.
"Are you stupid?"
"Excuse me?"
"I'm seriously asking. Are you stupid? Because I've known you for eight years and I've never thought you were stupid, but right now I'm reconsidering. Nell. You have a personal connection. A real one, not a cold email, not a LinkedIn message, an actual childhood friendship, to someone inside Dane's operation. And you're using it to go to a concert."
"I'm not using it. Gigi got tickets. I'm going because she guilted me. I don't see why—"
"Do you know what's been going on with Dane?"
"I don't follow the pop scene, Sasha. I barely know who she—"
"It's not about the music. Jesus." She was fully turned toward me now, drink forgotten, phone still in her hand. "There have been rumors. For months. People on her team are talking. Former staff. There was a thread. Someone who worked inside the operation. Management contracts that don't add up, NDAs, people getting pushed out without severance. Revenues are disappearing between the label and the artist. It got scrubbed in like four hours, which tells you everything you need to know about how much someone didn't want it out there."
"Okay, and? Every celebrity has disgruntled employees. That's not a story, that's— "
"If someone got inside, actually inside, with real access, not just scraping Reddit, and reported it? That's not gossip, Nell. That's a story. A real one."
"About a pop star."
"About exploitation. About financial corruption. About an entire system designed to protect one person at the top while grinding everyone beneath them into dust." She leaned forward. "You know what this is? It's labor reporting. It's institutional accountability. It's the exact kind of piece that Diana Colworth would hire you with."
"Ugh, don't use Diana against me right now. You know I'm fragile."
"I'm pointing out that four hours ago, a woman you respect told you she needed to see something current. Something real. Something that proves the writer who did the tenants' coalition piece is still in there. And now you're telling me you have a direct line to someone inside one of the most talked-about operations in the music industry, and your plan is to what? Watch the show and go home?"
My phone buzzed again. Gigi.
nelly the bracelet thing is it weird or not i need to know before i buy the beads
I stared at the text.
"Even if I wanted to," I said, and my voice was slower now, "what would I even... I haven't seen this girl in ten years. I can't just show up and start asking questions about Dane's finances."
"You don't start with the finances. You start with the relationship. You show up at the concert. You reconnect. You have an opportunity to. Use it. Get to know her. Be around. Let her bring you in. And once you're inside, you keep your eyes open, and you ask the right questions at the right times."
"That's — "
"That's journalism. That's exactly journalism. You find the story, you get access, you report it."
"It sounds like you're asking me to lie to people."
"I'm asking you to do your job." She picked up her martini. Took a sip. Looked at me over the rim with the steady, unblinking calm of someone who had never once doubted her own logic. "This is the kind of story that changes a career, Nell. One piece. The right piece. That's all it takes."
I sat with it. The bar noise filled the space between us: glasses clinking, someone laughing too loudly at the table behind us, the bartender shaking some drink. I was drunk. I was drunk, and I was angry, and I was tired, and somewhere in the mixture of those three things, the idea was taking root in soil it shouldn't have been planted in.
"What about Gigi?"
"What about her?"
"If she found out."
"Your sister gets to take you to a concert. She's thrilled. Your childhood friend gets to reconnect with you. She's thrilled. And you get the story of your career. Everyone's happy."
"Until the story comes out."
"Then they'll be proud of you."
They would not be proud of me. I knew this with a certainty that sat in my stomach. Gigi would not be proud. Logan would not be proud. Nobody who found out they'd been a means to an end was ever proud of the person who'd used them.
"I'm supposed to just... use them?"
"You're not writing about Gigi. You're not writing about Logan. You're investigating the system around them."
"Is there a difference?"
"There is if you write it right. And you will write it right, because you're the best writer I know."
She said that a lot. You're the best writer I know.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"That's my girl." Sasha flagged the bartender and ordered another round and changed the subject to Margot's latest act of warfare, and we talked about other things and drank and laughed and by the end of the night the Dane conversation had been folded into the rest of the evening like it was just another topic, just another thing we'd discussed, no more or less important than Margot's kayak strategy or Tyler's tuna.
But it wasn't. And we both knew it wasn't.
Sasha picked up the tab. She always picked up the tab. She hugged me outside the bar. Tight.
"You're going to be fine, Nell," she said into my hair. "You're going to be better than fine."
I walked home because I was too drunk to drive and too stubborn to let her call me a car. The night air was warm, and the streets were quiet.