Adam mentioned how he’d turned down money from Mrs. Quigley. “Jennifer gave us this huge talk about the wall separating the business side from the news side,” he said.
“The wall!” said Don.
“Not the wall!” moaned Alan, and the two looked at each other, put their hands to their chests, spun around like corkscrews, then fell to the mall floor like deceased Ameches.
Mrs. Ameche ignored them. She told Jennifer and Adam she didn’t see anything wrong with asking people like the wooden-cow lady for money if there were no plans to write about them again. Mrs. Ameche said that she could see how the principal was different, since there would probably be something about her in every issue. And she said if it turned out that they did need to write about someone who gave them money in some future issue, they would just have to mention that in the story. “You just say, ‘Full Disclosure,’ and you tell the truth. I got to tell you — the Slash is fighting for its life here. I don’t think you can worry too far ahead. You’ve got to get this issue out.”
“Full disclosure,” Jennifer repeated softly. “Sounds all right.”
“Full disclosure!” said Adam, grinning; he felt like kissing Mrs. Ameche for making their ethics problem go away.
“Full disclosure, Ma,” said Don.
“We’re not really dead, Ma,” said Alan.
The coeditors had to go. Adam had baseball; Jennifer, a cello lesson.
They said bye to the Ameche brothers, giving them double knucks, and thanked Mrs. Ameche. She walked them along the hallway to the down escalator. She promised she’d have the Ameche brothers send out a fundraising message for the Slash on their Talk Till You Drop, All-Live Except the Recorded Parts webcast. “You know the viewership of that webcast,” Mrs. Ameche said. “They might raise ten bucks if you’re lucky. For once,” she continued, “this is not a job for the Ameche brothers. You two have it in your power to do this. Just click those ruby slippers . . .”
She gave Adam a friendly rub on the head and squeezed Jennifer in a big Ameche hug.
Adam hopped on the down escalator, but when he turned to say something to Jennifer, she wasn’t there; she was still at the top. Mrs. Ameche was holding her arm, and Don had joined them — Don?! — and Adam heard Mrs. Ameche say, “You’re all right about this?” Then Jennifer was saying something back, and Mrs. Ameche was saying something else back, and then Mrs. Ameche was kissing Jennifer on the cheek! What was that? Though he tried with all his might, Adam couldn’t hear what they were saying — a girl in front of him was on her cell phone describing her new ceramic cat — and the escalator just kept rolling along, carrying Adam down and out.
“Can everyone please sit down and listen up?” Jennifer called. “Come on, guys. . . . We’ve got a lot to do. Please . . . It’s a week to get the paper to the printer. . . . Come on. . . .”
It was tough; everyone was thinking about the end of school. Summer vacation. Kids just wanted to be free. Adam was watching two boys on a nearby couch, both sports reporters. They were talking right through Jennifer, totally oblivious. One of the boys was holding his arm out, and the two were studying the black ink spots on his hand. The boy with the spots was saying how you could make a fortune if you could just invent a kind of permanent marker that could wash off. And the other boy was saying how stupid this was, since if it could wash off, it wasn’t a permanent marker.
As coeditor of the Slash, Adam knew he should have told them to shut up and listen to Jennifer. There was so much to do. But he didn’t have it in him. These two boys were exactly like Adam, last year, when he was just a star reporter for the Slash, before Jennifer had tricked him into becoming her coeditor. These two completely oblivious idiots were having so much fun, debating how permanent permanent marker had to be, to be washable and still be permanent marker. That’s what Adam wanted to be talking about.
Not tracking down Stub Keenan.
Not investigating the state test.
Not raising money for the Slash.
The permanence of permanent marker. That was a mull-able topic with infinite possibilities for a middle-school boy.
But before he could mull, he was distracted by the quiet. Jennifer had on her supersonic coeditor meltdown glare.
She’d silenced them.
“OK, Adam,” she said. “Tell everyone about Stub.”
A few more weeks and they’d be done. Swimming in the Tremble. Jumping on the trampoline at his grandma’s cottage. Learning to surf at the beach. Wakeboarding 180s. Lying on the dock at Lake Ameche, looking up at the sky and watching Mrs. Ameche’s two clouds float by.
He could do this.
They loved the Stub story.
Several asked where to get a free download.
Someone suggested doing a music review of Stub’s Top 250 Hits.
“If his music’s kind of shaky,” said a girl. “It could backfire. He might lose.”
A lot of them had heard little things, but none had put the whole story together. A few said there’d been a rumor about getting free downloads, but they’d assumed maybe a skateboard or cell-phone company was doing it. A boy had gone online trying to track it down, but didn’t get any hits for Harris or even Tremble. One girl had been asked if she wanted a free download but didn’t realize what they were talking about and didn’t have her iPod with her, anyway.
Adam asked if she remembered who it was.
She said it was a boy, but she didn’t know his name.
“Was it Stub?” asked Adam. “Do you remember what he looked like?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Kind of cute.”
Adam didn’t say anything, but he was thinking he might be the last true reporter left on the continent.
“What did Stub say when you told him you knew?” asked Sammy.
Adam said they hadn’t talked to Stub yet.
“Ouch,” said Sammy. “That could be messy, Ad-man. You want some of us to go with you? We’d do it. You might need a posse.”
A third-grade hand in the back was waving wildly. “I volunteer, I’ll do it! Pick me!” squeaked who else — Phoebe! Just what he needed. It wasn’t bad enough that they had a third grader writing the paper’s advice column. Now she was going to be his bodyguard. He’d kill her.
“We’ll be all right,” said Jennifer.
Adam looked at her. “We will?” he said. He was quite sure that if Stub and his goons punched someone in the face, it wouldn’t be Jennifer.
“Trust me,” said Jennifer. “The coeditors can handle it.”
The sports reporters had finished their stories, but Jennifer wanted them to include the final season win-loss records for each team. “That’s important,” she said. “I hate reading about how the girls’ lacrosse team had this great season blah, blah, and there’s no record.”
“When we finished our stories,” said the boy with permanent marker, “the season wasn’t over. You’re the one who wanted us to get them in early.”
“OK, so now you have to go back to the coaches and find out,” said Jennifer. “And we’ll insert the final records.”
The boys moaned.
“Right, Adam?” said Jennifer.
Adam was quiet. It was easy for Jennifer to say; the girls’ tennis team was undefeated. The boys baseball team was 3–9. He wondered if the baseball coach had told the Slash reporters about Adam Canfield’s double that had won the game against Broad Meadows Middle. That was the kind of nice little fact that could really spice up a sports story.
The reporters who’d done the bike-theft story were up next. Adam might not have gotten his back, but the story was turning out to be really interesting. The reporters found fourteen kids who’d had their bikes stolen, and none had gotten them back. They talked to a community relations spokesman for the Tremble Police Department, who said it appeared there were two bike rings operating in town. One, he said, seemed to be some kid walking home from school who just grabbed bikes he saw lying around. That, of course, was what had happened to Ada
m’s bike. The other seemed to strike at night. The thief would find a bike left on the side of a house or on a patio or in an unlocked garage, grab it, and leave a crappier bike in its place. “So they cruise the neighborhoods on a bad old bike, see a better one, and then just ride off with nobody noticing,” explained one of the reporters. “How you know you’ve been hit — there’s a crappy bike lying on your lawn when you wake up in the morning. You see that crappy bike, it’s like the kiss of death.”
Sammy had found the perfect chocolate milk at a new restaurant in town. He gave it a top mark of 4.5 yummy-yummies, plus an extra half-yummy for perfection. The milk was cold. It was served in a tall glass-glass, not a plastic-glass. The glass was seven inches high — Sammy had measured it. He liked to be precise. There was no chocolate syrup visible at the bottom of the glass — meaning all the chocolate had been stirred in. The drink was served with a straw and was not filled to the top — there were one and a half inches of space, so if you blew bubbles, they wouldn’t spill over and mess up the table — not to mention wasting perfectly good chocolate milk.
“I just want everyone to know,” Sammy said, “that I went back three times on three different days to make sure it wasn’t some freak, one-shot perfect thing, and it wasn’t. I mean, I wanted to be fair. . . . I think that’s important . . .” He seemed to be waiting for someone to say something, but when nobody did, he said, “Thank you very much,” and sat down.
Everyone was still. They were amazed at how much thought Sammy had put into writing about a glass of chocolate milk. They felt like they were in the presence of greatness.
Jennifer called him back up.
“That’s only half,” Jennifer said. “Tell them the rest. Come on, Sammy.”
Sammy looked puzzled.
“The other story you did.”
Sammy shrugged. “The restaurant?” It turned out that the new restaurant with the perfect chocolate milk was called Only Kids Only, and just like the name said, it was really just for kids. Sammy had written a whole separate story, calling it “a revolutionary breakthrough in kids’ dining.” Parents could drop off kids or sit in a waiting room, but only kids were allowed to eat there. The menu featured kid food — peanut butter and jam, grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, tuna fish with nothing in it, quesadillas with chicken and cheese only — no onions or relishy nonsense. And they only served top-of-the-line desserts, like Mrs. Radin’s Famous Homemade Super-Chunk Buckets O’ Chocolate Moisty Deluxe chocolate-chip cookies.
“It’s pretty great,” Sammy said. “You can order like twenty different types of PB&Js. I got strawberry jam with double crunchy peanut butter on whole wheat, and they’ll take the fat berry parts out of the jam if you ask. . . .”
“Gross,” said a girl. “I hate those berry boogers.”
“And you can order all these good side dishes. I got it with Cheez Doodles and carrot sticks. The whole thing came to five dollars.”
Everyone was talking at once; they all wanted to go to Only Kids Only.
Adam shot to his feet. “Quiet!” he called. “Quiet. I think there’s an important lesson here. This is all about excellence. Sammy had a dream: to find the perfect chocolate milk. A lot of us, including me, thought it wasn’t important enough to make a story, but Sammy stuck to his principles. And he sacrificed — I guarantee you, he drank a lot of bad chocolate milk on the way to that 5.0. He did not give up. A lot of people might say, ‘Oh, fine, this chocolate milk is good enough for our readers.’ Not Sammy. No way. He searched until he found a glass of milk that met his standard.”
They were on their feet now, clapping and whistling and banging the tables.
Sammy turned a bright pink, but he was beaming. He raised his hand and kept saying, “Thank you, thank you. . . . I know every one of you would have done the same thing.”
It was time to talk money. Adam and Jennifer brought them up to date. The coeditors told the staff they needed to raise another $750; Jennifer wanted to make sure they had a little extra in case there were any unexpected, last-minute costs from the printer. Plus they were hoping to have some money left over to pay the Ameche brothers.
They repeated almost everything Mrs. Ameche had said, including the part about the Slash being a great newspaper that had more truth to tell. They talked about the importance of going to every single person who’d believed in them. About the only part of Mrs. Ameche’s speech they left out was the Wizard of Oz stuff — the last thing they needed was a room full of news hounds clicking their heels and chanting that they wanted to go home.
Jennifer explained that the money must come with no strings attached. Just because someone gave didn’t mean the Slash was going to write some nice, puff-job story about them. “And anyone who does ask for favors, just say never mind and don’t take their money,” said Jennifer.
“We’re making a list,” she continued, lifting her pen high and wiggling it at them. “And we need to know now — right now — how much each of you can raise. And I must have it by the end of the week. I’m not talking what you’d like to raise, or what you might possibly raise, what could be or what may be . . . I’m talking five days from now.”
“Cold, hard cash,” said Adam.
The coeditors didn’t know what kind of reaction they’d get, but in the few seconds it took Jennifer to look up from the legal pad where she was making notes, practically every hand in the room had shot up.
They were all talking at once. People mentioned several teachers and coaches and librarians who they knew would give. Adam wrote down the Tremble children’s librarian who’d helped him on his Shadow report — the one who had told Adam how much she’d liked the Slash.
“That’s good,” said Jennifer. “Librarians, I didn’t think of that — librarians seem quiet, but they’re kind of surprising people.”
Adam wrote down Mrs. Rose, and Danny, his grown-up friend from the animal shelter, and Erik Forrest, the world-famous journalist, and his favorite teacher, Mr. Brooks.
“I bet I know a thousand people, cinchy-easy, who’d give,” said Phoebe. “There’s Eddie the janitor and Mrs. Eddie, his nice wife, who made us the cookies and calls me Little Sweet Potato, and his grown-up children, who loved my stories best of any stories . . . and —”
Adam had to give Phoebe credit: even when she was doing good, even when she was helping her fellow man, she still somehow managed to find a way to be really annoying.
“We’re getting there,” said Jennifer. “But —”
“I’m not done!” squeaked Phoebe. “I pledge the twenty-eight dollars and seventy-eight cents that I made selling my bead necklaces and ankle bracelets at the Riverfront Crafts Fair last weekend —” She took a deep bow. “Thank you, thank you,” she said. “I bet I collect the most of everyone. Thank you, thank you.”
“I pledge one hundred dollars and zero cents,” said Shadow. “From my job at the Rec, working for Mr. Johnny Stack and doing what needs doing. And I’m going to get money from Mr. Johnny Stack, too. He likes the Slash. Mr. Johnny Stack says it’s good for a person like me to mix with kids like that. So, I think he will give a lot, which is not an exact amount, but it will be.”
Shadow never ceased to amaze Adam — he didn’t even have his own house to live in or parents to live with.
“Shadow,” said Jennifer, “that’s so nice, but it’s too much. I know how hard you work —”
“Work’s not hard for me,” said Shadow. “Mr. Johnny Stack says work is my middle name. It’s not my really middle name. It’s just a figure of speech. My really middle name —”
“Nobody cares what your really middle name is,” said Phoebe. “We’re trying to collect money to save the Slash. No offense or anything, but like Mr. Adams, my Language Arts teacher, says, you need to focus . . .”
“Focus-pocus!” said Shadow. “Mr. Johnny Stack says when it comes to work, no one can focus on a job like Theodore Robert Cox, which is my real name, including my real middle name and my first real name and my last rea
l name and not Shadow, my real nickname —”
“Excuse me,” said Phoebe. “Can I say one word here?”
“Excuse me. Can I say one word here? is eight words, not one word,” said Shadow. “Even one word is two words. You’re just saying everything because twenty-eight dollars and seventy-eight cents is not the most of everyone, thank you, thank you. One hundred dollars and no cents is. And I can prove it.”
“Stop,” said Jennifer. “Stop, stop, stop. You two, you have to learn to get along better. Come on. It’s great what both of you are doing. Everyone is doing the best they can, and that’s wonderful —”
“That’s right,” said Shadow. “I’m just doing better than her.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that,” said Phoebe. “There’s still five days to go. I’m going to ask special permission to set up a table at lunch in the cafeteria to sell my necklaces so I can rack up the bucks.”
Adam’s head was pounding. “Stop,” he said quietly. “Please stop. Please.” Phoebe started to open her mouth, but Adam screamed, “No!” and it seemed like she heard him this time, because she sat down, pulled out a purse full of beads, and started stringing an ankle bracelet.
Watching Phoebe, it occurred to Adam that maybe she was the perfect reporter. She was exuberantly and irrationally self-confident, it was impossible to wear her down, she never took anything bad you said about her personally if she even noticed at all, and whatever ridiculousness she was up to, she always seemed to be able to twist it into something useful. Her shameless pledge war with Shadow set off a whole new round of pledges from the staff. Kids pledged to donate their babysitting money, mother’s-helper money, snow-shoveling money, leaf-raking money, yardwork money, car-washing money, returned-bottle money.
The Last Reporter Page 16
