by Joan Bauer
Perhaps you have noticed that Banesville High School’s newspaper, The Core, is no longer available. We suggest you ask Pen Piedmont and the Board of Education why.
—The Editors
Six high school kids sworn to secrecy distributed it early Monday morning.
Then we waited.
Chapter 22
That morning Darrell came to school wearing a fake beard.
“Aren’t you taking this a little too far?” I asked him.
“I sense they’re on our trail, Hildy. I just want to throw them a little.” He pulled the beard down and scratched his lip.
By noon the word was out.
Banesville was half abuzz about The Peel.
Between Minska’s and Lull’s Cheap Gas, we had two places in town where lots of people went and could get the paper. But we needed more.
Thankfully, one thing we needed showed up.
“Well, well,” Baker Polton said as he walked into the back room at Minska’s. He was carrying a plate of strudel, a mug of coffee, and a copy of The Peel.
I was sitting at a window table. The rest of the kids hadn’t shown up yet.
Baker sat down. “How have you been, Biddle?”
“Okay.”
He looked at The Peel. I was dying to know what he thought of it. “How’s your writing coming?” he asked.
I didn’t make eye contact. “I get to it when I can.”
He took off his Yankees cap. “You must have a lot of time on your hands now that The Core is kaput.”
“Are you serious?” I asked him.
He shook The Peel at me. “You want to know the problem with it?”
“What?”
“Your writing sounds tired.”
“That’s probably because I’m tired!”
He took out his pen, slashed through my copy, groaning. “Flying off the shelves—you actually wrote that? Have you forgotten everything I’ve told you?”
He wrote selling briskly in the margin.
Whatever.
Baker leaned back. “All that’s required to make this a success is for you to write better than you’ve ever written in your life.”
“It’s not easy.”
“If it were easy, everybody would be lining up to do it!”
“I’m only sixteen, Baker!”
“Just don’t act like it.”
“Are you just going to criticize, or are you volunteering to help?”
He ate his strudel. “I’m just waiting to be asked.” Back to my copy. “Explain this piece to me about the mayor.”
“He said there was a big meeting at Town Hall in two weeks and he was going to talk about the progress of his plans for the town.”
“That’s all he said?”
“Yes.”
“Next time, stick it in a sidebar. It’s an announcement. News would be what the plan is about. Snoop around. See what you can find.”
I went to A to Z Convenience to see if Crescent felt like talking.
“I hear you got them running good and scared,” she said, stocking the shelf with inhalers, medical masks, and sleeping pills.
I tried to appear normal. “Who’s them?” I took off my sunglasses so she could see the whites of my eyes.
“All them bees,” she said, and turned to nod at the tall, fit man wearing jeans and a nice suede jacket who had just walked into the store.
He touched his earring, looked around. “We can work with this,” he said to a woman in a short, tight dress. She nodded and wrote something down on a pad.
Sunglasses off, the man said to Crescent, “Are there other haunted houses around?”
“We just got the one.”
“Guess that’s all you need.” An insincere smile. “We’ll be back.”
Crescent said she wasn’t going anywhere.
The man and the woman headed out the door, climbed into a silver Hummer, and took off.
Crescent put extra-strength headache gel caps front and center. “You catch that?”
“Kind of.”
“Keep your eyes open, girl. You know who that was?”
“Who?”
She shook her head. “Now, if I were doing most of the writing, I’d make my way to Farnsworth Road and see what’s what.” She pushed a business card toward me.
“He’s been sniffing around for a while now,” she said. “Where you been?”
Doing most of the writing.
I looked at the card. “Do you think this has anything to do with the mayor’s plan?” I picked up three Almond Joys, put money on the counter.
“I expect it does,” she said, making change.
Now, the problem with being a reporter for an underground paper who is trying not to reveal my identity, even though it seems like half the town knows it, is that if I directly try to interview this guy, I’ve blown my cover, such as it is, and if I don’t reveal myself, I get no story.
I watched Chad Pritt watch the house.
He looked at me, I looked at him, and we both went back to looking at the house.
“We’ll need to get the light coming through the trees,” Chad Pritt said to the woman in the short dress. “We’ll bring Savannah through the gate,” he directed. “She can stand on the porch and feel the fear. When they finally move the house, we’ll be able to sail in and out of here.”
Move the house?
“Who’s going to move the house?” I asked him.
“That’s not my department,” he said dismissively.
Whose department is it?
He studied the house some more. “It will make a great entrance to the park. It’s got the gloom and doom we need.”
“Sweet,” the woman said, writing that down.
“How do you move a house?” I asked Uncle Felix, who was in the kitchen eating low-fat yogurt in abject misery.
Elizabeth was rolling out pie dough. She stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“How do you move one?” I asked Felix again.
Felix thought about that. “You take it apart and rebuild it, or there’s a way to lift it up from the foundation and put it on a flatbed.”
“Why would someone want to do that?” I asked.
“Because they’re crazy, I suspect.” He shoved his glasses low on his nose and peered at me.
“Because they want to preserve the building,” Nan offered. She was sprinkling cinnamon sugar on apple slices in a big bowl. “Do you have a particular house in mind, or are you just making conversation?”
I told them what I’d heard.
Felix and Nan looked at each other.
“Where did they want to move the Ludlow house?” Elizabeth asked.
“He said it would make a great entrance to the park.”
“You say this was a TV fella?” Felix asked.
“A ghost-TV fella.”
“Don’t like the sound of that,” Nan said.
The cold air had swept in and we were selling hot cider at the farmers market faster than we could pour it. Root vegetables were the order of the day; baskets of baby pumpkins, pears, beans, brussels sprouts, and late fall apples were stacked on tables.
Juan-Carlos worked steadily at our farm stand. He was quieter than usual.
“Everything all right?” I asked him.
“We must talk, my friend. I’ve been listening for you.”
We walked behind the farm stand. Juan-Carlos took off his Biddle Family Orchards cap slowly and pushed back his hair. “I have learned that two workers were offered money to put signs up on the house.”
“You mean the Ludlow house?”
“Yes.”
“Who offered them money?”
“They said it was the man at the paper. Mr. Piedmont.”
This was unbelievable. I whispered, “Pen Piedmont is paying people to put up the scary signs at the Ludlow house?”
“Yes.” Juan-Carlos looked around to see if anyone was listening in.
“Did they put the signs up?” I asked.
“They refused.”
“Would they tell the sheriff about this, Juan-Carlos?”
He shook his head. “These men would never come forward. They need work here. And they have moved to their next job.”
Pickers move from place to place to harvest seasonal produce.
“Do you believe what they’ve said is true?” I asked him. “I do,” he assured me. “They are good men.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I whispered.
He smiled. “You are much like your father.”
I can never hear that too much. We went back to work, but my mind was someplace else.
I had to call Baker.
“I gave you ten dollars,” said the customer in front of me. I’d just handed her a twenty-dollar bill back as change, instead of a five.
“Sorry. Thank you!”
I dropped a bottle of apple syrup. I knocked over the change box, too. I dropped to my knees, picking up a sea of quarters.
“Hildy Biddle, you’re flapping around here like a wild bird in a cage,” Nan told me. “What’s going on?”
I gulped. “I need to make a phone call.”
“Do us all a favor and make it,” Felix grumbled.
I ran out of the stand to call Baker. I found a quiet place near the parking lot.
“I’m not kidding, Baker,” I told him on the phone. “I think I’ve really got Piedmont.”
“Write up what you’ve got on him and Midian.”
What’s Behind the Haunting?
Martin Midian, the real estate developer who has proposed turning the Red Road properties into a haunted theme park, is going forward with plans to move the Ludlow house to Red Road. What this might mean to the families who live there is unclear.
As the ghostly stories from the Ludlow house dominate the headlines, reliable sources have informed The Peel that the editor of The Bee could be behind some of the mysterious signs that appeared on the Ludlow property over the last few months. This paper is investigating those allegations.
That got people’s attention.
Zack set up an e-mail address for The Peel. We gave printed fliers to all local businesses: Send us an e-mail and we’ll get you the paper.
That got responses.
Good for you.
Count me in.
Nice reporting.
Keep it coming.
But there were others, too.
You kids are going to get caught.
Stop this now.
We know how to find you.
When Elizabeth read the warnings, she got scared. “Hildy, we need to stop!”
“We can’t!”
“But look at these. Someone knows we’re kids! Someone knows how to find us!”
Baker read them. “What’s the sheriff’s e-mail?”
Zack found that fast.
“Let’s play this safe.” Baker replied to the We know how to find you e-mail:
Your message and e-mail address have been forwarded to the sheriff’s office.
Sweet.
At Banesville High confusion reigned as the administration tried to get information to the student body without a newspaper. The school’s website wasn’t sophisticated enough for weekly postings, and a bulletin board can take you just so far.
The basketball team didn’t get coverage—the only team at Banesville High that ever won. The canned food drive wasn’t as successful as last year because information on the drop-off centers was confusing. There were no faces in the news, no way for feedback, no commentary, no meeting place to tell our stories.
With no Core, there were no interviews with the cast of Desperate People in the days before their big performance. There was no opening night coverage, either. Too bad, too, because in Joleene’s big scene when she stormed out on Lev, the doorknob came off in her hand and she had to improvise, saying, “Jason, I want you to know that you can’t keep me here. I will find a way out!” And with that, she climbed through a stage window to huge applause.
In case anyone wants to know what it’s like in a community when the newspaper goes away, the good news is that it’s missed. I’d never understood that without news, people aren’t connected.
I was thinking about that as Lev and Joleene stood onstage and brought the final act of Desperate People to an end.
“Can this really be all there is to the story of our family, Jason?” Joleene cried. “Can’t we learn to be with one another? Can’t we learn to be friends, to encourage each other when we’re weak and afraid? Oh, Jason, why can’t we just learn to make a better world?”
“Your heart shows in everything you do, Monique,” Lev responded. “Maybe someday we’ll all learn to not be so desperate.”
I wasn’t taking bets on that.
9 P.M. Minska’s back room. The door was closed to the rest of the cafe so no one could see us. Darrell put a printed e-mail on the table.
“It’s from a family on Red Road,” he explained. “They said they’ve been threatened because they don’t want to sell their land.”
“Threatened how?” Tanisha asked.
“It doesn’t say. It doesn’t have their name either.”
We heard Minska shout, “Fire outside!”
We ran out the back door. A fire blazed in the trash receptacle. Zack was yelling for us to stay back. He sprayed the flame with a fire extinguisher, but it didn’t do much. The fire department came and got the job done. Thankfully, the fire didn’t spread. Tanisha took photos of everything.
Later that night a message appeared in our e-mail:
Keep it up, kids. Next time the fire gets closer.
We sent that to the sheriff, too. It shook everybody, particularly Elizabeth.
“We must be getting close to something if they did this,” Elizabeth said. “They know we’re kids. They know where we are!”
“No one should be working on this if they don’t feel it’s right,” Tanisha said gently.
“I don’t want to quit,” Elizabeth whispered, “I just…” Her voice trailed off.
“Look,” Darrell insisted, “the whole thing has gone too far! Let’s give it up, okay?”
Giving up is a grisly concept for Zack. “Aren’t we trying to help people not be afraid?” he demanded.
That’s when the back door opened. Minska and her husband, Jarek, walked in. “We’ve been talking,” Minska announced. “Here’s where we are. The liars and the bullies don’t get to do this. We’re going to talk to the people we trust to come help us. You do the same.”
“Mom!”
I crashed through the kitchen door. I’d been practicing what I’d say.
Look, I’ve been putting out this newspaper.
I don’t regret it.
Sometimes a kid has to do what a kid has to do, and you and Dad always taught me to fight for what I believe in.
Mom was in the living room reading a pamphlet, Getting the Word Out About Your Fruit.
I cleared my throat and put a copy of The Peel on her lap.
“I’ve been expecting this,” she said.
“You have?”
“Jerry Bass and the rest of the parents have been talking about it.”
“What?”
Mom pushed her reading glasses onto her head. “Sweetheart, you don’t really think that we didn’t know?”
“But we hid it.”
“From lots of people, I have no doubt.” Mom smiled. “I’ve known you all your life.”
I wondered about the other secret agents in the world. Did all their mothers know?
She looked at The Peel. “You should be proud of this paper.”
“Thanks.”
“But I doubt you can sustain it without it taking over.”
“We’ve been noticing that.”
I told her about the e-mails and the fire. She got somber then. “You understand, Hildy, that you have to tell the sheriff.”
I nodded. “Some of the kids don’t want to.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“My job,” Sher
iff Metcalf said, “is to protect the citizens of Banesville, and we’ve got quite a circus in town.”
He looked at the staff of The Peel and our mothers; only Darrell was missing—home with a severe headache brought on by consuming fear.
“We’ve got our local paper getting folks stirred up. I don’t like what they’re writing. I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest.” He opened a copy of The Bee and read, “Courageous reporters use their names. Cowards don’t. Truth seekers don’t hide. Liars do. I’ll spare you the rest.” He paced before us. “But what we’ve got now has moved into the criminal realm.”
A collective gulp. How seriously were we in trouble? Baker came into the room and took a seat.
“Because whoever set that fire,” Sheriff Metcalf continued, “broke the law and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And whoever wrote that threat about more fires will have more fires than he or she can handle, I can promise you that.” He looked at Baker. “You’re part of this group?”
“I advise them.”
The sheriff liked that. “You kids might wonder if you’ve got the right to continue publishing that paper.”
“Yes, they do,” Baker said.
“That’s right.” The sheriff walked to the window. “It’s my job to protect that right, unless you print inflammatory untruths. I’m not saying you’ve done that, but do we understand one another?”
Yes, sir, we sure do.
“You know,” he said quietly. “There are threats to our freedom everywhere. If you kids can figure out how to make things better for people, God bless you. But this is a dangerous road you’re on. A lot of people find you threatening. If you’re going to keep publishing, I’ll give you an official statement that you’re being protected by this office. Anyone who steps over that line will be arrested.” He tapped his nightstick. “Any questions?”
Elizabeth raised her hand. “I just wanted to say how awesome it’s been to hear you talk, and I think I can speak for all of us, Sheriff, when I say that we are very thankful to you for protecting us. Will we have bodyguards?”
“We’re not quite set up for that. But with all these mothers, you don’t need them.”
Chapter 23
The envelope was pink, the message written in calligraphy:
I have information you will find interesting about the situation in town. Leave a white towel on your front porch railing after 5:00 P.M. if you want to talk. Tell no one.
