The Department of Corrections

April 20th, 1999 12:49pm

Allie Capshaw was bored. She had spent most of her life imagining herself in a variety of ways. Sometimes she was a daring foreign correspondent, reporting from the front lines of some war-torn country. Other times she imagined herself rising from her assigned seat as the president entered the White House press room. Never had she dreamed of the small desk she now sat at, nor the half written article on woman's fashion that was in front of her. Allie cared nothing for fashion, women's or otherwise.

More and more frequently these past few weeks she would find herself wandering off to the bathroom, staring at herself in a mirror, and wondering what had happened to her life. Not that she saw a train wreck staring back at her. Allie was a beautiful looking girl; of that she was aware. Her shoulder length dirty blonde hair naturally fell in loose curls about her shoulders, and managed to stay unsnarled without any effort on her part. Her pale blue eyes had been stuff of legend back in high school, and got her an endless amount of dates even before her boobs came in. Once they did, during her senior year, any lack of self-confidence she might have had all but evaporated.

But in looking at her reflection, she was also aware that she was wearing a pair of battered jeans she had bought back in college, ones that hadn't fit then, let alone now. Her shirt was a men's dress shirt that her last boyfriend has left in her apartment when she had grown tired of his cheating. Here was a girl who obviously had no sense of fashion and a terrible wardrobe. Her outfit pretty much screamed out "I make terrible life choices." What about her conveyed that she should be telling women why capris were out and gauchos were in? Nothing, that's what. She had told Jim that when he had given her the assignment.

His entire response?

"I don't care."

Well, that plus a whole lot of profanity.

Jim was an old school newspaperman, salt of the earth and all that. He spent most of his time in his office, smoking a cigar that he wasn't allowed to smoke and bemoaning the encroachment of the internet on his time honored occupation. When she first met him during her internship last year, he had seemed gruff but fair, and she hadn't sensed any misogyny or good old boy issues about him. Nor had she sensed any when he had put her on the very fashion beat that she had now come to despise.

"I know you're going to hate it", he had said. "Just like Terri hated it when it was her assignment and Bob hates doing the obits. But you're on the bottom rung here. Hell, you don't even have a rung yet. You're just lying on the ground, looking up at the ladder."

And so here she sat, clueless as to why flared pants were something people actually wanted, and wondering if that was even something worth reporting about. She had been given an alternative to the pants, a fluff piece discussing the emergence of the thong, an article of clothing she both hated and was currently wearing. She supposed that duality was something worth writing about, and was roughly two pages in when the news came in over the wire. A phrase which in this day and age meant that someone else read it on the internet, and then just stood up and shouted it to the room.

"Shooting! Columbine High School. Details coming in now."

The newsroom came alive at the prospect of a breaking report, and one of the interns started scanning the TV broadcasts, looking to see if the story had already hit yet. Some of the veteran newsmen started walking towards the teletype room, before remembering that it no longer existed and that the computer on their desks were its only substitute.

Her riveting expose on underwear long forgotten, Allie began clicking through the latest articles on the AP feed, hoping to get some more info. She was the youngest member of the newsroom, and there was a chance that youth could get her on the story.

It took a while, but details soon emerged, and her hopes were dashed with their arrival. Two injuries, no deaths. Everyone expected to make a full recovery. Apparently the duo doing the shooting had brought a whole arsenal with them, but had been stopped within a few seconds of when the shooting began. Allie clicked through several images that had been shot of the suspects being led into the local police station, along with some photos of students being interviewed after the event had taken place. She felt an odd mix of relief that nothing terrible had happened and disappointment that there would be nothing here meaty enough to write about. It seemed the only reason the story even broke nationally was due to all the weapons and explosives the teens had brought with them.

Allie was about to close the story and get back to her article when she came to the last set of photos. They were pixelated, shot by a digital camera that the caption noted belonged to the yearbook photographer. In it you could see the shooters already on the ground, moments after being tackled by nearby good samaritans. There were at least three of them piling on top of the boys, two who were just a blur of clothing, and one was staring into the photographer's camera. His eyes were an intense blue, and even in the low quality shot, Allie could recognize him. This was the man that had saved her life nearly twenty years before.

The exact same man.

Same face, with its neat haircut and a bit of five 'o clock shadow. Same eyes, with their intense blue gaze that seemed to see into her soul. Same age, which given she had last seen him when she was nearly five, should be impossible.

In the years since Hinckley she always knew she would see him again. Immediately after the shooting she had looked for him constantly, as if her life was going to be imperiled on a daily basis, necessitating his return. As she grew older she realized that wasn't going to happen, turning to the library and its microfilm collection to find her mystery man. Although she never found a single clue, she soon learned that she was good at research, and it had led her to the career she now so desperately hated. And now, years later and at the height of her regrets, here he was.

He had never been interviewed back in nineteeneighty one. No one had caught his nameor remembered him well enough to draw up a competent police sketch. And she was sure that when she questioned thepeople at Columbine, which she planned to make her top priority at the paper,the same thing would happen again. Butshe wouldn't let this opportunity slip away. She would find the impossible man that had come to define her life. She would get her answers.