The Last Reporter

by Michael Winerip

  “And Uncle Louie hoses us off afterward,” said Alan. “The water hazard’s really mucky on the bottom. You get a lot of weeds in your hair.”

  Adam and Jennifer looked at each other. The Ameche brothers pulled golf balls out of the water hazard at the twelfth hole at White Lake Golf Club? In the middle of the night? That’s what all those dirty balls in buckets were. That’s how their golf-ball business worked. That’s how they could sell three-dollar golf balls for seventy-five cents — they got them free.

  “Is that legal?” asked Jennifer.

  “Nobody cares,” said Don.

  “It’s just old, lost balls golfers hit in the water,” said Alan.

  “But the golf course is private property,” said Jennifer.

  “Next time can I come?” asked Adam.

  Jennifer said she had to go, but Adam dragged her outside the May Way West studios and begged her to give the Ameches one more chance. “I think they’re going to be OK,” he said. “We just have to train them on how a newspaper works; I mean, they’re business guys; they’re a little rough about some stuff, but —”

  “A little rough?” said Jennifer. “We could spend the rest of our lives investigating the Ameches. We could assign the entire Slash Spotlight Team to do a special issue on the Ameches’ five hundred schemiest businesses.”

  “Jennifer, look, I’m asking you to trust me. I have a good feeling about the Ameches. We just have to teach them. They seem like fast learners —”

  “More like fast earners,” said Jennifer.

  “That’s my point,” said Adam. “We need fast earners if we’re going to get this issue out, and they’ve already sold a bunch of ads. They told me.”

  Finally, Jennifer looked at him.

  “So let’s go back inside,” said Adam, “and see how much money —”

  “I don’t know,” said Jennifer. “It feels hopeless to me.”

  “You know what?” he said. “You really look cute when you’re hopeless.”

  “Oh, shut up, Adam. I think you’re part Ameche yourself.”

  Adam shrugged, but Jennifer did go back inside.

  The Ameches were tapping away madly at their computers. “Just working on downloading some video for our next weather report,” said Don. “Looks like we’re getting a tsunami —”

  “Right, right,” said Adam. He asked how many ads they’d sold.

  “Almost five hundred dollars’ worth,” said Don, rattling off the businesses that had bought ads: a cell-phone store, a unisex hair salon, a one-hour photo shop, a copy store, Zap cola (“the high-octane beverage”), a pharmacy, a math tutor.

  “That’s great,” said Adam, and Jennifer actually nodded, too. Adam asked when they could get the money. “The print shop wants about half ahead of time, so they can schedule us in.”

  “Don’t have it yet,” said Don.

  “You giving them thirty days or something?” asked Adam.

  Alan shook his head, and Don handed Adam a list. The coeditors studied it. “Is this a story list?” asked Jennifer.

  “It is,” said Don.

  “It’s the stories the advertisers want the Slash to write about them,” said Don.

  “We included phone numbers and e-mails,” said Alan. “And we wrote down what they want their stories to say.”

  “And how big an ad they bought,” said Don, “so you’d know how big to make the story.”

  “Guy spends a hundred bucks for an ad,” said Alan, “he expects a nice big story.”

  Adam’s eyes raced down the list. Basically every advertiser wanted the Slash to write an article about what a great business they had. The Zap Cola Company had even provided a story it wanted printed in the Slash — on the benefits of caffeine as a one-hundred-percent-natural energy booster. An explanatory note on the article said that it had originally appeared in Sugar Cola Quarterly, the research journal of the Soft Drink Institute.

  Adam was so stunned, he didn’t know what to say.

  But Jennifer did.

  “Good-bye,” she said. “I’m out of here. That’s it. You are idiots. You think it’s OK for people to buy stories in the Slash that will make them look great? All the hard work we’ve done to be independent and tell the truth will be destroyed in ten seconds. . . . You . . . you . . . you’re such Total Ameches. You didn’t get one single thing I said about the wall. My God, you’re going to turn this into the Boland Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?” said Alan.

  “As good as a grown-up paper,” said Don.

  “You mean as bad as.” Jennifer bolted out the door but immediately banged into something so rock solid that she let out a screech and staggered backward.

  It was Mrs. Ameche.

  “Oh, my God,” said Mrs. Ameche. “Sweetie, every time I see you, you’re running away from the Ameche brothers. Did they say something prejudiced? I’ll kill them if they did.”

  “Ma,” said Don.

  “Quit it, Ma,” said Alan.

  “Ma, you were on the roof, spying,” said Don.

  Mrs. Ameche rolled her eyes and swore that she’d been on the ground the entire time. She said that she’d just come out to work on her tomato plants and heard the commotion, and if they didn’t believe her, they could check her for shingle marks. She made a big deal of rolling up her sleeves and showing them that there were no little pebbly, dotty pockmarks people get when they lie flat on roofs spying. “I’m clean,” she said. She turned to Jennifer. “If they’re not racists, sweetie, there’s a fair chance they’re sexist pigs; is that it?”

  Jennifer shook her head.

  “It’s ethics,” said Adam. “No offense, but they don’t seem to have any. I mean, at first, I really didn’t get it either, Mrs. Ameche. I’m not saying I’m this big ethics pro. If it weren’t for Jennifer —”

  “Ahhh,” said Mrs. Ameche. “Ethics. Right from wrong. The Ameche brothers and the Uncle Louie gene.” They all looked at her. “Oh, you know,” she said, “every family has its bad seed, someone who isn’t wired right, always gets in trouble, but has a perfectly logical explanation for why it’s OK for him to break the rules. It’s like they can’t ever do the right thing. Their DNA prohibits it. Uncle Louie couldn’t stop being Uncle Louie. It runs in families.” She gave the Ameche brothers a hard stare.

  Someone who always gets in trouble but has a logical explanation? Adam wondered, Was he a bad seed? He glanced at the Ameches; it was the first time he could remember them not having some zippy comeback.

  “We’re not like Uncle Louie,” Don said softly.

  “We’re not,” said Alan, wiping his nose. “We’re not going away.”

  Adam felt embarrassed; he thought the Ameches might —

  “Of course not,” said Mrs. Ameche. “Because you have a good mother doing her best to keep you on target. Poor Louie. Never knew a mother’s love. But I will say this for Louie: He was a model inmate.” Mrs. Ameche gently put one hand on each side of Alan’s cheeks and pulled his face forward until their noses mooshed, then she kissed him on the forehead and did the same with Don. “I love you boys,” she said. “Big Ameche hug.” And she gathered them to her and squeezed them good.

  “Love you too, Ma,” said Don.

  “Ma, my circulation’s getting squished,” said Alan.

  Then she ordered all of them into the house for cider and warm churros she’d just taken out of the oven. “We’re going to fill your stomachs and have a good discussion on ethics.” She smiled at Jennifer. “It’s nice to have a girl around,” Mrs. Ameche said. “Don’t you worry, Jenny. We’ll straighten out all these ethics-less boys. I predict this will be a very good business for the Ameche brothers. Learning how to put out an ethical newspaper — that would be a good talent to take out into the world. You know, as I think about it, maybe we need to put together a sales packet for your Slash. Something to show advertisers. You’re going to see that the Ameche brothers — once they understand the rules — are
great salesmen.”

  They all marched up the back stairs, Adam last. As Mrs. Ameche disappeared into the house, he heard her say, “Jenny, honey, the boys tell me the Slash is doing a story on state test scores going up. It’s an outrage! I know why scores are up — they’re making that test easier! Do you believe Don got a four on the eighth-grade English? That’s the top score! Don? My Don?”

  Adam was pissed. He hated grown-ups who acted like everything was harder when they were kids. Mrs. Ameche was probably going to start telling them how she walked a hundred miles to school through the snow.

  He was about to say something when he stepped into the kitchen and smelled those warm churros, and then, nothing else really mattered.

  Adam was excited. For their English assignment on writing about someone really different, Mrs. Stanky was letting them skip her class. They were supposed to spend the period with the person they were writing about. Mrs. Stanky said if they were really going to do a profile on someone, they needed to observe that person close up. “You want to breathe the air they breathe,” she told them, “walk a mile in their shoes. Spend a day in their life. Climb inside their heads. Look deep into their hearts. Discover what makes them tick.” She said biographers and historians did this, documentary filmmakers did it, magazine writers and newspaper reporters did it, even MTV, Nick, and Disney did it on some of their shows.

  “Is this like reality TV?” asked a girl.

  “Not exactly,” said Mrs. Stanky. “We’re not making up crazy stuff for people to do and then seeing how stupid they look. It’s more we’re being flies on the wall. Quietly observing.”

  “Ah, excuse me, Mrs. Stanky, but historians?” said another girl. “I don’t think so. Like, how can you spend a day with Abraham Lincoln? No offense, but he’s dead.”

  “True,” said Mrs. Stanky. “You can’t. But you can read accounts of people who did spend days with him. And then you can walk where he walked. You could visit Gettysburg; visit his house in Springfield, Illinois; visit the White House. In fact, if any of you would rather do a historical figure —”

  Adam didn’t care about the White House; he wanted to see Room 107A.

  Adam leaned on the door to 107A and peeked through the window. The moment he did, the door flew open and he lost his balance and staggered halfway into the room, practically knocking over a boy wearing a helmet and sitting in a wheelchair, who did a nifty 180-degree spin to avoid a crash. By the time Adam came to a full stop, everyone was staring at him.

  “You’re late,” said Shadow, who had yanked open the door the moment one of Adam’s molecules brushed against it. “Third period starts at 10:18, and it is now 10:22. It will be 10:23 in seventeen seconds. You said you’d come at the start of third period. This is not the start of third period.”

  “Good to see you, too,” said Adam.

  “I know,” said Shadow.

  The kid in the wheelchair grunted something that Adam couldn’t understand. “Huh? I didn’t get —”

  “That boy is Derek,” Shadow explained. “He said, ‘Good thing I’m wearing my helmet.’”

  Adam stared at the boy, who suddenly let out a squealing laugh.

  “Ahhh,” said Adam. “Very funny. Shadow, you didn’t tell me there’s a comedian in your class.”

  Shadow looked around the room. “There is no comedian in this class. Comedians are on Comedy Central, channel fifty. In this class is just Mr. Willy, the teacher; Miss Patty, the aide; and twelve kids including me. Eleven kids not including me. Thirteen kids including you, but you’re just visiting.”

  Derek grunted something else. Adam looked at Shadow, who translated: “Derek says, ‘If there is a comedian, it is definitely not Shadow, though he is funny.’” Then Shadow turned and said, “Shut up, Derek Screw-Up.”

  Derek grunted something.

  “What’d he say?” asked Adam.

  “He said ‘Shut up yourself, Shadow Fiddle-Faddle.’”

  Shadow turned and said, “You shut up yourself first, Derek.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Mr. Willy, “come on. What’s our guest going to think?” Mr. Willy welcomed Adam and said they’d been expecting him and were excited about his visit. “We don’t get many visitors,” he said. He explained that they had a few more minutes of reading, and then they were moving to their work stations. “You’re free to walk around the room, Adam, take notes on anything. Mrs. Stanky explained the project to me, and in all the years she’s been doing it — you’re the first to pick someone from our class.”

  “He picked me,” said Shadow, and shooting a glance at Derek, he added, “He definitely didn’t pick anyone else, especially no one who’s name starts with D for Derek. I’m picked because Adam is coeditor at the Slash. With Jennifer, the other coeditor. I’m the Slash’s official fact-checker and proofreader. So far, since I started, I found thirteen mistakes that almost got into the paper. Jennifer says, ‘Not too shabby.’”

  Derek made a long bunch of grunts that went up and down in several places — Adam was pretty sure he recognized a few words, including Shadow and idiot — but before he could get a full translation, everyone was shooed back to their seats.

  Adam pulled out a reporter’s notebook and went over to Shadow’s group. They were reading Matilda by Roald Dahl, a book Adam loved. It was Shadow’s turn — he must have been waiting to go until Adam arrived. Shadow gave Adam a little wave, then started reading.

  Adam was surprised. This was Special Education, but Shadow was reading a real middle-school book. It was the part in Matilda about Miss Trunchbull, the evil principal — a favorite part for Adam, since he knew a lot about evil principals. And though there were some tricky words — headmistress, exceedingly, apprehension — Shadow read them all. Adam wrote in his notebook, Shadow reads well! He also wrote down a few of those big words as best he could spell them, because he wanted to put them in his profile. Mrs. Stanky said the details make a subject come alive.

  Soon, though, Adam was yawning. What was it? He yawned again. Adam could tell that Mr. Willy was trying to cover a yawn, too. Was it Shadow? Actually, Shadow’s voice? Listening to it for so long made Adam sleepy. Everything Shadow read sounded the same. His voice didn’t go up and down, in and out, like most people’s. When Miss Trunchbull boomed and barked, Shadow read it exactly the same as when Matilda whispered and murmured.

  “OK, Shadow,” said Mr. Willy. “Good job. There were a lot of big words in there.”

  “Not big for me,” said Shadow. “I can read a word with twenty-six letters.” He glanced over at Adam and gave him another wave.

  Mr. Willy said he had one more thing to talk about before they moved to their work stations. He pointed to a drawing in the book. Adam looked over his shoulder. It was a cartoonish sketch of Miss Trunchbull, hands on her hips, looking really angry.

  “What’s Miss Trunchbull feeling in this picture?” asked Mr. Willy.

  Shadow stared at the picture and at Mr. Willy but didn’t say anything.

  “Remember how we talked about reading people’s feelings from the expressions on their faces? How does Miss Trunchbull feel in this picture? See her eyes? See her eyebrows slanted down. She’s . . .”

  Shadow studied it again. “The principal runs the school,” he said.

  “That’s right, but is that a feeling, Shadow?” asked Mr. Willy. He told Shadow to open his binder to the page with the list of feelings and find one for Miss Trunchbull in the picture. Shadow looked down the list, looked back at the picture again, and said, “Sad?”

  Adam was surprised; this was baby stuff. This should have been so easy for Shadow.

  “How do you feel about Adam being here today?” asked Mr. Willy.

  “Like Adam’s my friend,” said Shadow, glancing over and giving Adam a wave.

  “And how does having your friend here make you feel?”

  “Like I’m his friend, too,” said Shadow.

  They were sitting two to a table. Shadow was sharing a table with a boy name
d Ronald, who was round and had a very thick neck, thick arms, stubby little fingers, squinty eyes, and a sweet, sweet smile. In the center of each table was a huge pile of earphones like the kind they give out on airplanes. They were small, only a couple of inches long, and each was individually wrapped in plastic. On the floor beside each table were a bunch of boxes, neatly stacked. The smallest boxes were orange, the next size up were white, and the largest were plain cardboard cartons.

  Mr. Willy explained the rules to everyone while Miss Patty, the aide, walked around giving each of them a large sheet of paper with numbered squares from one to twelve. Mr. Willy said this was a game, but for some of them it was also one of the kinds of jobs they might get in the summer, or when they got out of school, so it was good practice for that, too.

  Shadow raised his hand. “I already have a job, working for Mr. Johnny Stack at the Rec, doing what needs doing. I make four dollars an hour, cash on the barrel.”

  “We know that,” said Mr. Willy. “That’s wonderful. But not everyone is as far along on their independence goals as you are —”

  “Mr. Johnny Stack says independence is my middle name,” said Shadow. “That’s why July fourth is my favorite holiday. Independence Day.”

  “Right,” said Mr. Willy. “So this will be more of a game for you, Shadow. No more hands —”

  Shadow raised his hand. “Except if it’s an emergency,” he said, and he gave Adam another little wave.

  “Right, right,” said Mr. Willy. He explained that they were supposed to take a plastic earphone packet, place it on the number one square, take another, place it on the number two square, and keep doing that until they’d filled all twelve squares on their sheets. Then they were supposed to reach down and pick up the smallest box, the orange one, and put the twelve earphones into the box and close up the box. They were supposed to repeat that until they had six orange boxes. When they had six orange boxes, they were supposed to put them into a bigger white box. And when they had ten white boxes, they were supposed to stack them in the large plain cardboard carton.