The Journalist

I’ve never been really good at anything else except for writing, I would try everything at school from Maths to Art (which I’m good not great at) to even sports but I was never happy unless I was writing. So it came as no surprise to anyone that my dream career was to become a journalist. I started at a regional magazine publishing house and from there moved up, up and up all the way to a national publication called Oval View. Yeah I know I’m only a junior columnist at the moment but I’m just waiting for a big story to take me from the Unknow to the big leagues. Now I’ve been following a story very closely brewing in Brazil about the De Silva family, and wondering if that’s where my breakthrough lies. “Look Robert, I know something is going to happen something big you just have to trust me”. I was telling the Senior director of the paper. “Alex, it’s not that I don’t trust or believe in you it’s just that it's a lot of money for something that is still just a maybe”. “But it’s not just a maybe just in the last week small revelations have come out I just need to be there when the big one drops please Roberts, I’m begging you”. Robert looked at me then turned away as thinking and wrestling within himself as what he could say to me next after what seemed like an eternity he looked back at me. “I’m sorry Alex, I want to, believe me when I say I do but I need you here instead of out there in Brazil chasing something that could turn out to be a hoaxes” I was lost for words. I just stared at him, how could he say that it's like I have ever asked him for anything never pleaded with him so hard for anything. I had been there a whole year and never had a story catch me with such conviction that I sometimes felt I couldn’t breath. “Ok Robert” I said so sad and rejected, I left his office and picked up my jacket “Where are you going Alex?” Asked my only friend in the world Anna Cross, She was a Senior writer who had joined exactly a year before me. “I need some air” I said feeling angry,sad and deflated. As I stood outside watch the world go past I wondered what was my place in it?, What was I brought into the world to do?. I had always felt it was writing, What else was I good at?” “Ring,ring” my phone rang stoping my flow of thought “Alex, you need to get back in the office right now!” Robert shouted down the phone and then cut the call. He had never called me like that. As soon as I got into the building Robert was waiting for me at his office door “Please come in and take a seat” he said as he closed the door behind me. “Robert if this has anything to do with me storming out of the office I’m sorry, I promise it will never happen again”. Robert sat down opposite me and looked right into my eyes “The reason I called you back in here was to tell you your right Alex, it is time for me to trust you more , so pack your bags your going to Brazil tomorrow morning”. I was stunned, I couldn’t believe it. My inner journalist was telling me to question his sudden change of mind but he was saying what I wanted to hear so I simply said “ Thank you Robert, I won’t let you down” he simply nodded. As I walked out of his office to go and prepare for my trip I had no idea just how vastly my life was about to change, nothing could have prepared me for what was transpire in Brazil.

CHAPTER 2 COMING SOON