"Thank you for listening to Dawn FM, dead or alive every morning at 7am."
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Set in 1987, Maggie Holmes is hired as a temp placement at Dawn FM for the summer. She gets to know the radio personalities, some more than others. One of the hosts, H...
a/n: happy dawnrry day! are you guys seeing Harry at any residency shows?
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The morning felt weird. Harry woke me up to say goodbye, and while I had been grateful for his presence I had a clearer mind than the previous evening. Even if he had gotten me flowers, made a cassette tape, and came to see me in a time of need, I knew that he still wasn't fully out of the doghouse just yet. As I got seated in my office, I did my best to start my work. I was trying to continue working on the newsletter for next week while also understanding what was going on with the grant paperwork.
"Good morning, Dawn FM listeners. It is nine-ten on this average Thursday morning. If you're just tuning in there has been a body discovered near the water line of Lake Eloise. That of a twenty-one year old woman. Coroner Davis Drudi has announced that the death would have taken place around three in the morning on Sunday. Her body was found yesterday with a sealed VHS tape as well as a coded message once again."
Sunday morning? Sunday morning like three days ago? Sunday morning, at three no less, which was around the time when I wanted to run to my house? I sat there in my chair, perfectly silent. If I had run off like I wanted to, did that mean the killer would have gotten me? If Harry hadn't put his hands on me, would I have been dead? My mind was spiraling, and while I had hated how he had treated me, what if it was for the best? What if him doing all of that had actually saved my life? Not only could I have been dead on Sunday, but maybe even last night had things gone differently.
Getting up from my seat, I shut the radio off, too engrossed in my thoughts to even want to hear anymore about what had happened. My life felt incredibly fake. I was scared—terrified after everything that had happened to me or around times that could have been detrimental to my well-being. I didn't want to know that she probably looked like me. I didn't want to know what the woman who was murdered had wanted to do with the rest of her life. I didn't want to think about a girl that was my age who had no more life to live. It was terrifying—even more so because it could have been me.
It wasn't until around eleven that there was a knock on my door. I had no doubt about who it was. He probably wanted to check on me after the news he had just delivered to his audience as well as after everything that had taken place yesterday. It was odd to think that we were supposed to go on a trip together tomorrow, and yet I still felt like there was animosity in the air. Then again, he was partly the issue and so was I, but I figured a vacation with him away from here may have been our best bet to work things out with one another. I wondered what he would say to me. I wondered what was going on in his mind when he heard about the murder. I wondered if he had been scared because of when the time of death would have been for the girl and what had happened with me yesterday.
"Magdalina," he greeted.
"I have a lot of work to do, Harry," I said, scared for the conversation we might have so I wanted to act like I was busy.
