The Last Reporter

by Michael Winerip

  When Jennifer finally lifted her head, having caught up with all the names and pledges people had given her, she said, “If everyone comes through, looks to me like we’ll have more than we need — as long as everyone means what they said.” She paused; it seemed like she was trying to decide whether or not to say something.

  “You know what’s funny,” she said. “I’m looking over this list — no one mentioned parents.”

  They were quiet. It was true: they — Adam included — hadn’t even thought about their parents, but it made sense to him. Room 306 was their place. The Slash was theirs. Of all the activities in their overprogrammed lives, it was the one thing they did where they were the ones who decided where to go and whom to talk to and whom to listen to and whom to trust and whom not to trust — certainly they weren’t about to trust Mrs. Boland, or Dr. Bleepin, or their old principal, Mrs. Marris, or Stub Keenan. They still needed help from grown-ups. Lots of grown-ups. But they chose which ones — like Mr. Brooks and Mrs. Rose and Erik Forrest and Mrs. Willard and Reverend Shorty and their acting principal, Mrs. Quigley, and Mrs. Ameche. Mrs. Ameche was a perfect example. Adam and Jennifer had found Mrs. Ameche all by themselves, which made her seem better. She was theirs.

  For everything else, their parents made all the decisions. Their parents took them to baritone and cello and choir and ballet and Irish-step lessons. Their parents signed them up for baseball and tennis and lacrosse and soccer teams. And when their parents dropped them off at the field, other grown-ups, who were picked out by their parents, told them where to stand and when to run and when to stop running and when to swing their bats and when to take a pitch — even if it was right down the middle and Adam was dying to clobber it.

  In Room 306, if Adam felt like swinging, he swung away.

  “I might ask my parents,” Adam said softly. “If we’re really desperate.”

  Jennifer nodded. “Me, too,” she said. “If we’re really desperate.”

  It was time to go. Adam and Jennifer were hoping to catch Mrs. Gross after the meeting to interview her about the state test. Every last one of them had people to visit, phone calls to make, e-mails to send, money to raise. Not since last winter, since they’d all used Adam’s 100 percent foolproof middle-of-the-night wake-up method and e-mailed out the story on Mrs. Marris stealing money, had the entire Slash staff been so unified in a single cause. The atmosphere in 306 was positively tingly.

  “Before we go,” said Jennifer, “listen up. Before we head out on this mission, I just want to say how proud I am. We’re going to do this. We’re going to put out this paper. We’re going to show the school board and the Bolands and everyone else that they can’t stop the Slash from being published. They shut us down, but they did not shut us up. So . . . wait, wait . . . Hold on, everyone — Adam, you want to make a little speech? Any final words to motivate the troops?”

  A speech? Adam thought. A speech? Adam could talk well enough when he needed to, but he wasn’t sure it would turn into an actual speech. He felt a little too disorganized to make a speech. A speech was more like a bunch of words you thought up ahead of time and repeated back in the proper order.

  Then something occurred to him.

  “Yes,” he said. “I know a speech. An actual speech . . . Give me a second. . . . OK, I’m ready. It’s pretty historic.” He raised both arms, as if he was an orchestra conductor.

  “June 18, 1940,” he began. “The Bolands and the school board know that they will have to break us here in 306, or lose the war. If we can stand up to them, all Harris Elementary/Middle may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.”

  Adam climbed up on the picnic table in the middle of the room. “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the Slash and Harris Elementary/Middle School last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

  The staff of the Slash had witnessed a lot of good talking in 306, but what Adam said was the most speechy that any had ever heard from a fellow kid. They didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it sounded great. They stood and cheered, and then they grabbed their backpacks and went marching out the door. Even the oldest among them, the eighth graders, were excited about having a finest hour.

  They were rushing down one of the hallways at the elementary school toward Mrs. Gross’s room. Harris Elementary dismissed a half hour after the middle school, but the Slash meeting had gone longer than expected. Hopefully, Mrs. Gross would still be around.

  Lots of kids were in the corridor by their lockers, gathered in little groups, talking and dillydallying. No one could dillydally like an elementary school kid, and Adam felt a pang of jealousy for their less-programmed lives. As he and Jennifer hurried by, kids looked up, stared, then cleared the way. Adam knew what they were thinking:

  Stand back — middle-school kids passing.

  It was fun to be big.

  Mrs. Gross’s door was closed, but when he peeked through the window, he could see that she was still in there, talking to a parent.

  He and Jennifer pulled off their knapsacks, flopped onto the floor, and sat with their backs against the lockers to wait. Jennifer took out a strawberry granola bar, breaking off half for Adam.

  “That was some speech,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Adam. “I pulled that one out of my butt.”

  “It’s funny,” she said. “When we practiced in the lunch room — I didn’t remember anything about Harris or the Slash or 306 being in there. Winston went to Harris?”

  “Don’t think so,” said Adam. “I had to twist around a few things to make it fit.”

  Jennifer nodded. “Poetic license,” she said. “I like poetic license. From what I can tell, if you’re a famous writer, you can make grammar mistakes and it’s OK, because you’ve got poetic license.”

  “Typical,” said Adam. “They give it to grown-ups, but they’d never give it to a kid. Kids are the ones who need poetic licenses.”

  Adam finished the last bite of granola bar. It tasted great, but that reminded him of how hungry he was. He thought about pulling out his jawbreaker and having a big suck, but it always attracted attention at school. He was afraid it might get taken away. He was hoping to suck it down until it disappeared, even if it took two or three years.

  “I need to talk to you about something,” said Jennifer.

  “Uh-oh,” said Adam. “What did I do now?”

  “No, nothing like that,” said Jennifer. “About me. Me and Don.”

  God, why did she keep wanting to talk about this? Did she like to torture him? All Jennifer had to do was mention the Ameche brother’s name, and Adam could feel his face get hot. It wasn’t fair. He was working so hard at not getting worked up about this. It was definitely all straightened out; they were done with this, finished, squared away, concluded, resolved, wrapped up. He knew this and his brain knew this, but for some stupid reason, the rest of his body wasn’t paying attention. At that moment, he would have given a million-dollar reward to any person alive who could invent a cure for blushing.

  “Adam,” said Jennifer, “I want you to —”

  “It’s OK,” said Adam, “You don’t —”

  “I do,” said Jennifer. “I want to explain. I want to.”

  They heard the click of a knob turning. Mrs. Gross’s door was opening. She was saying good-bye to the parent.

  “Darn,” said Jennifer. “Every time . . .” Before Adam could stand, she grabbed his sleeve, pulled him toward her, put her lips right against his ear, and whispered, “We will finish this afterward, Winston Canfield.”

  He hated this. Why did everything have to be so mixed up? Even her whisper felt nice.

  “Oh my, my, my, my, my, is that you, Adam Canfield? Look at you. You’re so grown-up. And handsome. My, my, my, my, my.�
�

  “Hi, Mrs. Gross,” said Adam. “Yeah, it is me.”

  “Let me look at you,” she said. “Oh, my, my, my. I mean it. My, my, my, my, my. Come with me for a second.” She put her arm around Adam’s shoulders and ushered him to the back of the room, where there was a door leading to the adjoining classroom. “Miss Iannoni!” Mrs. Gross cried. “Look who I have here! Adam Canfield!”

  “Oh, my gosh,” said Miss Iannoni. “The complete package. He’s arrived, and just in the nick of time, too.”

  “This is a wonderful surprise,” she said, and waved to Miss Iannoni, leading Adam back to her room. “Are you coming to say good-bye? You know, I’m retiring.”

  Adam nodded. “Sort of,” he said. “Ah, Mrs. Gross, this is Jennifer. We’re coeditors of the Slash. . . .”

  “That’s right. I knew that,” said Mrs. Gross. “I’m sorry I pulled him away like that, Jennifer. It’s just been a long time. Thirty years teaching, you don’t get that many complete packages. I’ve heard a lot about you, Jennifer, but I never was lucky enough to have you. I tried. I requested you — you wouldn’t know that. But they accused me of trying to steal all the superstars. I think you had Mrs. Deane for fourth?”

  “I did,” said Jennifer.

  “And if I’m not mistaken, you have twin sisters coming up to fourth next year?”

  Jennifer nodded. “If they ever let them out of third.”

  “Well, if they’re anything like their big sister, that shouldn’t be a problem,” said Mrs. Gross. “So are you the ones responsible for sending the reporter to interview me? About retiring? He was so nervous. His name was Stevie, wasn’t it? A fifth grader, I think. He never looked up from his list of questions. I had to write down my answers for him. Shyest reporter I’ve ever seen.”

  “We didn’t know that,” said Jennifer. “But the story actually turned out fine. I liked the part when you said you were inspired to be a teacher by your second-grade teacher’s kind personality. And the reporter wrote, ‘Many say the same about Mrs. Gross.’”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Gross. “I’ll have to show that to my husband.”

  Adam was caught off-guard. He didn’t think of Mrs. Gross as having a husband, at least not one she’d mention out loud to a kid. It seemed a little personal. “Um, Mrs. Gross,” he said. “Do you mind if we close the door? We have something private to talk to you about.”

  They got right to it. They told her they’d heard the state test scores had gone way up this year because the test was so easy. They didn’t name Dr. Duke but explained that they had an actual grown-up secret source.

  Then Adam pulled out the manila envelope from Pittsburgh and showed Mrs. Gross the copies of the fourth-grade state tests from this year and last year.

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Gross. “My, my, my, my, my. You’re not supposed to have those. That’s against the law. Where did you —? Actually, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “We don’t know either,” said Adam.

  “They just showed up in the mail one day,” said Jennifer. “I got a set, too.”

  “My, my, my, my,” said Mrs. Gross. “My, my, my, my.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Adam. “That’s how I felt, too — incredibly my, my, my. Look, Mrs. Gross, I need to ask you something right away, before we go over all this stuff. We were hoping you might look at the two tests with us and tell us if you think this year’s was easier. But —”

  “Oh, Adam,” said Mrs. Gross. “I don’t have to look to tell you that. No question, it was easier. The teachers have talked about it for months, since we gave the test. We talked about it so much, we talked ourselves out. Last year I had kids crying during the first reading passage. They had stomachaches. One wet himself — tinkle, tinkle, little star. A girl threw up — all over the answer sheet. Some got so worked up, they could barely concentrate for the rest of the test. You know fourth graders; they’re still like Jell-O. Now, this year — oh, my. This year, they’re taking the test, they open the booklet, they look at the first reading passage — they’re humming ‘Ode to Joy.’ Bum-bum-bum-bum, we adore thee.”

  Adam noticed that Jennifer was taking notes like crazy. Normally, he’d do the same, but he’d made up his mind. He wasn’t going to have another situation like Dr. Duke, where someone told him her deepest secrets, then said, “Oh, by the way — off-the-record! Ha, ha, got you!” That Dr. Duke — he was still angry. “Didn’t Mrs. Quigley tell you? I can’t be quoted.” The brave, jokey Dr. Duke. Not again, he swore it. Mrs. Gross was supposedly going to let them use her name — emphasis on supposedly, as far as Adam was concerned. He would not break his arm taking notes, just to have her pull a Dr. Duke.

  “Mrs. Gross, I have to ask,” he said. “Do you mind if we quote you on this stuff? We really need someone who’s willing to use her name.”

  “No problem,” said Mrs. Gross.

  “I mean, a lot of times, people tell us stuff, they’re all outraged and everything and they want us to do a big investigation and then —”

  “It’s fine, Adam.”

  “They say, ‘Oh sorry, you can’t use my name with that,’” said Adam. “We had a situation —”

  “You can use it,” said Mrs. Gross.

  “This person,” said Adam, “acted so high and mighty and jokey —”

  “Adam Canfield!” yelled Jennifer. “She said yes. Listen up, you dodo! Hello!”

  Adam stopped talking. “Really?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Gross. “As long as you make clear that I wasn’t the one who gave you the tests. I’m planning to spend my retirement in Florida, not Sing Sing.”

  “Really?” said Adam.

  “That’s great,” said Jennifer.

  “I’ve had plenty of time to think it over,” said Mrs. Gross. “Carolyn called me. She said you might visit.”

  “Carolyn?” repeated Adam.

  “Said we might visit?” asked Jennifer.

  “Who’s Carolyn?” asked Adam.

  “Why, Carolyn Duke,” said Mrs. Gross. “She and I taught together for years. Her classroom used to be right through that door.”

  “Dr. Duke?” said Adam.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Gross. “Dr. Duke. One of the bravest educators I know.”

  Mrs. Gross was great. She went through both tests with the coeditors and pointed out differences. She had them count words. The reading excerpt in the hard test from last year had 453 words. It was about a family traveling west on the Oregon Trail. There were six characters to keep track of, and most had old-fashioned names: Levi, Austin, Pa, Mr. Morrison, Miss Amelia, Mr. Ezra Zikes. The story was written in 1850s Western style with phrases like “Cut out the oxen from the herd and drive them to the wagon for yoking and hitching,” “Check over the running gear,” and “Set the stock to graze.”

  “Kids today don’t talk like that,” said Mrs. Gross. “The passage mentions a train and they mean wagon train. Our kids hear train, they think of their moms and dads taking the train into the city. Just compare the titles,” said Mrs. Gross.

  Last year’s story was “Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail.”

  This year’s reading passage was “The River Otter.”

  “The River Otter!” said Adam.

  “The River Otter!” said Jennifer.

  “So easy,” said Mrs. Gross. They counted this year’s passage — a measly 184 words. “And it’s just a basic description of an animal they’ve all heard of and may have seen swimming in the Tremble River. Or at the zoo. The sentences are much more simply structured. Pick any one.”

  “‘The river otter is a great swimmer,’” read Adam.

  “‘Her dinner might be fish or frogs,’” read Jennifer.

  “Oh, my God,” said Adam. “That’s baby stuff. Listen to this sentence.” It was from the hard passage: “‘In his last letter he told Miss Amelia that should any accident befall him we should seek out Mr. Ezra Zikes, for he had promised Pa to look after his affairs
and protect his claim for us.’”

  “‘Should any accident befall him,’” repeated Adam. “No one talks like that.”

  “Big difference,” said Mrs. Gross. “Big. We teach our kids to make a personal connection to what they read. The Oregon Trail — that’s foreign to them. It’s not that they can’t do it — they can. It’s just a lot harder than a story about an otter eating frogs.”

  They were nearly finished.

  “I kind of know the answer to this last question,” said Adam, “but I just need to hear you say it. Mrs. Gross, you’re the teacher. Do you think you had anything to do with scores going up?”

  “I got a cash bonus,” said Mrs. Gross. “Teachers, principals, deputy superintendents — we all get extra pay if the test scores go up.”

  “So, do you think they went up because of you?” Adam repeated. “You’re the one who sees the kids most. It must have something to do with you. I thought you were pretty great, Mrs. Gross.”

  “That’s nice, Adam, but I was the same teacher last year, when the scores went down. It can be so many things, and not just how hard the test is. It can be the group of kids I get in my class that year. Sometimes the kids I get are a little sharper; sometimes they have more challenges. That’s not me; it’s who they send me. You know how I said I tried to get Jennifer? Well, suppose one year they give me three extra Jennifers. My test scores go up. Is that me? Or is that three Jennifers?”

  Adam was quiet. His brain felt clogged. He felt as if someone had told him water might not be wet. “So when they print stories about scores going up in the paper — does it have anything to do with kids getting smarter and teachers teaching better?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gross.

  “But you’re the teacher,” said Adam.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Gross.

  The hallway was empty now as they headed out a back exit, walking toward the elementary-school playground. They had a half hour to kill before the late buses arrived.

  Two mothers and their little kids — none looked older than kindergarten — were racing around from the slides to the swings to the monkey bars. The air was warm, the sun still strong, so the coeditors headed for a big oak and sat on the grass in the shade.