How To Catch a Serial Killer -- Dialogue excerpt taken from Chap 2

The cold conference room has a wide wood desk with ten comfortable-looking office chairs surrounding it. Eight of the chairs are already occupied by kids roughly my age. Naturally, they all glance my way as I file into one of the two remaining chairs, trying to conceal the fact that I was just bounding up the stairs a minute ago feeling quite flustered about almost being late.

I don’t even have time to get a good look at everyone, or realize that they’re all dressed in much more casual attire than me, before the girl seated next to me says, “Are you here for the internship program or the GQ photoshoot?”

I hear a few snickers around the room as I take a millisecond to assess her appearance. She’s wearing a pink floral shirt tucked into maroon pants. She’s a bold-looking girl with dark, wavy hair, tan skin, and stunning blue eyes that almost take me by surprise. She may be attractive, but I can tell by her facetious smirk and willingness to poke fun at someone she hasn’t even met yet that she’s probably a walking headache.

But I won’t let myself be intimidated by her. “Yeah, it’s right after the Ann Taylor fashion show.”

She lets out a touché laugh. “This is actually from Target, but I’m glad you can’t tell the difference.” She extends her hand to me and I shake it. “I’m Vanessa.”

“Hayden,” I exchange.

“Is this your first internship?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I admit, feeling like I somehow just exposed myself to everyone. “Yours?”

Vanessa chuckles. “No. This is my second summer at Channel Nine. If all goes well I’ll be working full-time once I graduate next year,” she explains pridefully. “Where do you go to school?”

“UPenn,” I say as casually as I can, because I’m quite sure I’m the only Ivy Leaguer here.

“Ah, that explains the slick attire,” a boy to the left of Vanessa says. He pops his head around to make eye contact with me. “I’m Tim,” he introduces brightly. “News desk intern. What are you doing here this summer, Hayden?”

I quickly try and remember the title Manny said my position was because, again, I was kind of tuning him out last month. And speaking of Manny, I suddenly wonder where he is and if he’s going to come find me today.

“Um— I’m an operations intern,” I say rather tentatively, because that doesn’t sound as cool as Tim’s title.

Vanessa snorts. “Operations? I don’t think we had an Operations Intern last summer. What does that even mean?”

“Umm,” I stammer, because that’s a great question. I can feel the eyes of all eight interns stare through me as I struggle to answer such a simple question that I definitely should know. “I was just told I’d be helping out with everything this summer.”

Vanessa laughs again. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.” I suddenly can’t tell whether Vanessa is just an incredibly up-front-no-social-anxiety person or if she’s hard core judging me. “Is your dad the executive producer or something?”

“What? No,” I say hastily because the last thing I want is for people to think nepotism was involved in my hiring. Well, Manny is basically the only reason I’m here. But that’s not nepotism, technically.

“Just making sure,” Vanessa says with a fleeting chuckle.

I look around at the other six interns who’ve been silent this whole time, and I quietly wish Vanessa could be more reserved like them.

Tim’s head curls around Vanessa’s hair again to shoot me a friendly glance. “Well, I look forward to working with you this summer, Hayden. Not all of us are as off-putting as Vanessa.” He shoots an impish look at Vanessa who gets playfully defensive.

“I was just asking him questions!” she innocently says, as I get the instinctive impression that Tim and Vanessa go way back.