bright_and_cheerful [Scoop!]

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====== Stacy Peters ======


====Bright and Cheerful as Always====
After she returns to Features, Stacy Peters is as bright and cheerful as always.

Acting the same after everything changes proves harder than expected.  But Stacy is a good actress.  She rises to stardom in the Features Department.  Within six months, she’s produced the Gazette’s most-read article and earned the Editor’s commendation.  Aya congratulates Stacy with a smile that doesn’t match the coldness in her eyes.

Things like that force the mask to crack.  Aya changing her name.  Bronwyn asking for budgeting advice.  The two discussing their roommate struggles at lunch.  Each time Stacy meets Aya or Bronwyn’s gaze, they stare back with something heavy, something indescribable.

//All of this happened because of you.//

In those moments, Stacy feels light.  Not out of smugness or vindication, but out of an ineffable hollowness.


----

The security guards witness Stacy’s kindness, wondering why she arrives an hour before work to stock the office fridge with homemade food.  When a guard asks, Stacy denies everything.  The guards know better, but the message is clear: //they can't know it's me.// 


----


A few months down the road, Stacy announces that she’s moving on from the //Gazette//.  Her colleagues are disappointed, but not surprised.  With her string of stellar articles, finding a job at another paper was easy.

After she departs, Stacy Peters is as bright and cheerful as she always was, deep down.

Which, frankly, wasn’t all that bright and cheerful to begin with.

But she walks out of the Gazette’s doors with a new goal — ditch “bright and cheerful” and work towards “happy.”