But Inside I'm Screaming. Elizabeth Flock

      One

      Isabel picked at the ragged threads that once hugged a shiny button on the front of her blazer. Hunched over her keyboard and sallow-skinned from too much fluorescent lighting, she had won computer solitaire three times before she bored of it entirely and listlessly reached for the mouse to click over to the wires to see what was not happening on this slow Labor Day weekend.

      Staring at her flickering screen, either at words floating in front of her or at playing cards triumphantly dancing off a full deck, was a relief from the noise in her brain: angry shouts shifting into one another like a Rubick’s Cube. “You disgust me,” her husband called out as her father’s voice interrupted with “You have no family” and “Why do you even bother?” Alex again: “You’re nothing, you don’t even register.”

      She shook her head to put the invisible squares back into place.

      “Hey, Jack, check out AP wires. Princess Diana’s been in a car accident,” she called out across the newsroom to the assignment editor, her ring finger finding its way to her front teeth.

      “Yeah, her Mercedes probably got a scratch and they’re calling it a wreck,” the overnight editor answered.

      Isabel was filling in for the weekend anchor who wanted the holiday weekend off to spend with his family in the Hamptons.

      “You think you can actually get away from this?” an unidentified voice snarled in Isabel’s head.

      She bit the skin around her fingernail.

      “I don’t know, Jack. Look how many ‘urgents’ they’ve entered. Why don’t we call the London bureau and see what they know.”

      “Okay, let’s,” Jack replied bitterly, knowing that “why don’t we call…” was a direct order for whoever was on the desk to carry out the task.

      You disgust me. Did you hear me? You disgust me.

      Isabel shook her head again. To an observer it might have appeared she was dodging persistent mosquitoes.

      As Jack hit the direct-dial button to London, the phones started ringing. Isabel picked up the first line.

      “Isabel, it’s John. I’m on my way in. Who’ve you talked to?”

      “Huh?”

      “London just beeped me. You talked to Ted yet? I think