The Last Reporter

by Michael Winerip

  The student council non-election was the off-lead of the paper, running on the top left of the front page.

  The statement Mrs. Quigley had e-mailed to Jennifer was very carefully worded and much longer than they’d expected. Even though their story named Stub, Mrs. Quigley did not. The acting principal said that for privacy reasons she couldn’t identify the student involved, but for short, she’d refer to “him/her” as student 916154. Mrs. Quigley said that when questioned, 916154 admitted having given many fellow students free iPod downloads, and Mrs. Quigley had concluded there were so many involved — at least 143 — they couldn’t possibly all be 916154’s friends. Mrs. Quigley noted that 916154 claimed that no one had to vote for him/her, it was a free country, and 916154 said he/she didn’t think he/she had done anything wrong.

  The acting principal wrote that since middle-school students were at an age when they were still learning to make ethical choices, still figuring out right from wrong, she was going to use this as a teaching opportunity rather than a disciplinary matter. And then she said in her twenty-five years as a principal, this wasn’t the first time she’d seen a case of kids trying to win votes by doing improper favors. Many, many years ago, she said, there had been a candidate for recording secretary who let younger girls sit in the back of the school bus with her in exchange for their votes. Mrs. Quigley said this girl had gone on to be a very successful pharmacist, filling many prescriptions that helped sick people get well, and so it was clear that middle-school students could learn from their mistakes.

  At the end of Mrs. Quigley’s note was a paragraph marked, “Off the record/Not for publication/Private correspondence.”

  Mrs. Quigley wrote: Coeditors: I told 916154 that I was cutting him/her a big break by not suspending him/her and that if I heard that he/she bothered you/you in any way because of your/your story, I myself would personally come out of retirement to deal with him/her in this matter. He/she assured me that he/she understood and would stay away from you/you.

  Jennifer felt better after reading Mrs. Quigley’s note, but not Adam. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said. “He’ll come at me again. A kid like Stub is not going to forget getting knocked down in front of the whole school.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jennifer. “I was talking to Billy — he said Stub was pretty shook up from his meeting with Mrs. Quigley.”

  “You seem awfully buddy-buddy with Billy Cutty,” said Adam.

  “We’re in math together,” said Jennifer.

  “No,” said Adam. “It’s more than that. He was your secret source, wasn’t he? He gave you that list of free iPod downloads.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Jennifer. “That’s ridiculous. Billy was Stub’s campaign manager. He’d be the last —”

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Adam said. “The way I figure it, Billy and Stub have been buddies forever, play the same sports. Stub decides to take over the school, Billy’s a good guy, he agrees to help, and then, when he’s in it up to his ears, he realizes what a jerk Stub is and feels guilty. It was Billy, wasn’t it? He gave you the list.”

  “Adam Canfield,” said Jennifer, “even if it were true, and it’s not, you know reporters can’t give up their secret sources. You’re the one who always says that before revealing a source, you’d walk through fire, wrestle with alligators, swallow a tub of poison.”

  “I never said that,” said Adam.

  “Well, you should have,” said Jennifer.

  The story on the state test getting easier was going to run across the middle of the front page, but they were having lots of problems with it.

  Jennifer had sent an e-mail to the state education department, describing the results of the Slash investigation and asking for a response.

  She got an e-mail back that was twelve long paragraphs, single-spaced.

  The last paragraph said, Bottom line: The same scale score always represents the same achievement level of the State Learning Standards per state education law, statute 324.67 section 2(d) revised 279.12 (t).

  Adam could not believe it. “That’s the bottom line?” he said to Jennifer. “That’s the worst bottom line I ever heard of. A bottom line is three words: ‘We screwed up.’ Or, ‘I killed him.’ This is way too many lines for a bottom line. Do we even know for a fact this is English?”

  “It is,” said Jennifer. “I checked every word online, and it’s definitely English.”

  “Just because every word is English doesn’t mean the sentence is,” said Adam.

  Jennifer nodded. “True bagels evergreen,” she said.

  They were dying to be done, but agreed they needed to go back to Dr. Duke for a translation. Once again, Mrs. Quigley helped set it up. They met during lunch Monday on the school tennis courts, which were empty at that hour and were surrounded by a fence with green mesh, so no one could look inside.

  Adam could not remember seeing very many adults as happy as Dr. Duke after they showed her the response from the state. It was like watching Mrs. Ameche’s Ha-Ha dance. Dr. Duke kept saying, “You did it, you did it.”

  “We did what?” asked Jennifer.

  “They admitted it!” yelled Dr. Duke.

  “They admitted it?” asked Jennifer.

  “Where?” asked Adam. “You mean the part about 324.67 section 2(d)?” Adam thought maybe that was some secret code of surrender under the Geneva Convention.

  “No, no, no,” said Dr. Duke. She showed them. There, buried ten paragraphs in, was this sentence: “‘Because of varying levels of difficulty of the questions on the two exams, students had to answer a few more questions correctly in this year’s test than last year’s test and get more raw points to get the same scaled score.’”

  Dr. Duke looked up triumphantly, but the coeditors still were lost. “Don’t you see?” she said. “Oh, my God, I have been doing this too long. I actually understand the state education department. But it’s good news for you, my dear Slashingtons, very good news. They have surrendered to the Slash. They are admitting that this year’s test is easier! And they’re claiming they scaled this year’s scores tougher to make this year’s scores and last year’s scores comparable. Bottom line: they obviously scaled them way too easy this year, since everyone did ten percentage points better than last year. Get it?”

  Adam sort of did, but he certainly didn’t feel good enough to do the Ha-Ha. This was way too complicated. “Dr. Duke,” he said, “no offense, but any chance you could give us a bottom line that’s little enough to actually fit on one single line? These fat bottom lines are really wearing us out.”

  Dr. Duke was quiet, then said, “State secret to better test scores: easier tests.”

  Adam ran that through his head a few times and liked it. So did Jennifer. Dr. Duke had given them their headline. It wasn’t three words, but it was a respectable bottom line. Still, he didn’t feel like doing the Ha-Ha. “How are we ever going to explain this in a story?” he asked her.

  “You’re going to quote Dr. Duke,” said Dr. Duke.

  “But I thought you couldn’t be quoted,” said Adam.

  “I couldn’t,” she said. “But that was before you did all this great reporting and got the state to admit it.”

  “But didn’t you say they shoot the messenger?” said Adam.

  “They do,” said Dr. Duke. “But I’m not the messenger now; I’m the translator. You’re going to tell your readers you asked Dr. Duke to explain the state’s response.”

  “They don’t shoot the translator?” asked Adam.

  “Not to the best of my knowledge,” said Dr. Duke.

  The other two articles on the front page were the bike-theft story and Ask Phoebe. The coeditors debated long and hard over whether they should put Ask Phoebe out front. They went through a whole bag of Cheez Doodles arguing it out. Whenever it came time to put the paper together, Front-Page Phoebe would reemerge, like some monster from the deep, noodging mercilessly, noodling, hinting, pleading, cajoling, doing everything in her annoying third-grade po
wer to once again get her story on page one. It actually made it hard for the coeditors to decide fairly, since they wanted to stick her articles on the last page, under the bowling-team results, just to spite her.

  That week she bombarded them with daily e-mails:

  People keep asking if my front-page streak is still alive — any idea what I should tell them?????

  Heard you’re working on page one — need anything from me?

  A nice feature — like Ask Phoebe, for example — could lighten up a serious front page, don’t you think?

  My grandma was asking if I’d be front page again — she’s kind of old, so I was wondering what to tell her. She has heart problems.

  In the end they decided to put it on page one because it would give readers a few laughs and a break from all the seriousness in the other stories.

  Despite Phoebe.

  However, they did continue the column on the back page, under the bowling-team results.

  At the end of the column, they printed the Ask Phoebe link to the new Slash website. As the world’s greatest third-grade reporter explained to her readers: “In case you have questions during summer vacation and need Ask Phoebe to solve your problems right away.”

  They had included the letter from Confused Middle Schooler. Adam wanted to apologize to Jennifer for being so stupid but didn’t know how. She had never admitted writing it, and he didn’t want to embarrass her; things were going too well.

  So he would have let it go, except when the two of them were making a final check for errors, Jennifer said, “I wonder if readers will think this letter is as hilarious as the Slash staff did.”

  “The boy in the letter sounds like a total idiot,” Adam said.

  “He’s not that bad,” said Jennifer. “The girl’s the bigger idiot.”

  “No, no, she’s not,” said Adam. “It took courage to write that. You know what I don’t get, though — why such a neat girl would write a nincompoop like Phoebe.”

  “Maybe this girl thought it was a safe way to get the boy’s attention,” said Jennifer. “They say middle-school boys aren’t really good at talking about feelings.”

  “Makes sense,” said Adam.

  “Just a theory,” said Jennifer.

  They were done.

  They were actually done.

  They couldn’t wait to get that golden CD to the printer. After school Tuesday, the two of them were going to ride their bikes to the print shop and drop it off. They were so excited about everyone finally seeing the paper. Jennifer had looked up Mrs. Boland’s mailing address at the Tremble County office building. They were going to use twenty dollars from the extra money they’d raised to express-mail her one of the first copies hot off the presses.

  Adam wanted to include a note: Dear Mrs. Boland, Thought you might be interested, heh-heh-heh. PSYCHE!

  Jennifer nixed the note part.

  The printer wouldn’t print the paper.

  At first he said the shop had a big summer rush. “June weddings coming out of our ears,” he said. “Holy Communions, brisses, the auto show, Tooky Berry’s Paint Ball Emporium annual summer shoot-out.”

  The coeditors could not believe what they were hearing. It was too shocking to understand at first. “You have stuff like that every June,” said Jennifer. “We always do a June Slash. We never had a problem before.”

  The printer said there were other factors, like he was having trouble with one of the presses, and they were running behind.

  “How far behind?” Jennifer asked.

  “When do you need it?” he asked.

  School was almost over. The eighth-grade moving-up ceremony was in three days.

  Jennifer told him by the start of the fourth week of June at the latest.

  “Oh, no,” said the printer. “It would be July at best.”

  July, thought Adam. Everyone would be gone by July. He’d be gone. Surfing at his grandma’s cottage. Wakeboarding. Picking wild blueberries. Lying in those open fields staring up at Mrs. Ameche’s two perfect clouds. This wasn’t fair. They’d killed themselves to get this done, and now this guy was telling them they couldn’t have it until July?

  “Mid-July at earliest,” the printer said.

  Jennifer was smoking mad, Adam could see it. She pulled out the receipt for the five-hundred-dollar deposit for getting the Slash printed and waved it in his face.

  “You’ll get your money back — don’t worry,” he said.

  “It says right here that we could get the Slash to you anytime this week,” Jennifer said. “We made our deadline.”

  “Well, you barely made it,” the printer said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Adam. “You guys have been printing the Slash forever.”

  “It’s different,” said the man. “My understanding is that you’re not the school paper anymore. That right?”

  “So what?” said Adam. “We’re still paying the same money.”

  “So it’s not the same relationship,” said the man. “Look, kid, I got things to do. Wait here. I’ll get your money.”

  Jennifer and Adam looked at each other. Something rotten was up. They could smell it. They were pissed. Adam started pacing the room. Everywhere were glossy publications, brochures, piles of freshly printed wedding invitations, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, recreation schedules with the summer hours for the county parks, flyers for Tremble’s July Fourth fireworks display and stacks and stacks of the latest Citizen - Gazette - Herald - Advertiser.

  The Citizen - Gazette - Herald - Advertiser? Adam froze. The Bolands’ Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser? Oh, my God, that was it. This guy printed the Bolands’ newspaper. Mrs. Boland must have ordered him not to print the Slash. “What a coward!” Adam blurted out.

  “Who?” said Jennifer.

  Before Adam could say another word, the man came back in and handed Jennifer an envelope with the deposit money.

  “Count it,” Adam said to Jennifer. “Make sure it’s all there.”

  She did, got to the end, made a funny face, and started counting again.

  “I knew it,” said Adam, looking at the printer, “You should be ashamed. We may not be the high and mighty Bolands, but we are kids.”

  “Adam,” said Jennifer softly. “Stop. It’s not what you think. There’s two hundred dollars extra.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the printer. “I really am.”

  The thing about the United States of America — even before there was a country, even before there was a Congress and a Supreme Court and a president and a White House and a First Lady and interstate highways, even when this great continent was still mostly bears, beavers, trees, and fruited plains, there were already lots of guys with printing presses. Adam and Jennifer had no problem finding another printer to do the Slash. The Bolands might have scared and bullied and threatened the citizenry of Tremble County. But as big a media conglomerate as Bolandvision Cable was — with monopolies in forty-eight television markets across the nation — the farther you went from Tremble, the more their bulliness shrunk. The coeditors asked several adults — Mrs. Ameche, Mrs. Quigley, Mr. Brooks, Adam’s grown-up friend Danny — for names of print shops and put together a list of more than a half dozen, mostly in the Tri-River Region’s three cities.

  The first one they called said yes.

  They decided to use the two hundred extra dollars to print a hundred additional copies of the Slash.

  And they now planned to express-mail ten copies to Mrs. Boland just for the pure joy of it.

  The days that followed were sweet for Adam. While the coeditors waited to get the Slash back from the new printer, they took final exams. This wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounded. School was a half day during exam week, and even if they went for extra help, they were done by noon. With sports and clubs over, they had the rest of the day free. Adam finally got to go swimming in the Tremble River. He put together a big basketball game at the Rec courts and organized his friends into a game of manhunt on the streets
of River Path.

  Wherever he went, he rode his new bike.

  It was like a dress rehearsal for summer vacation, and it felt great.

  After the English final, Mrs. Stanky handed back their profiles. Adam got an A+. She wrote that in all her years teaching, she’d never read a better profile. She liked Adam’s ending best.

  Adam had written:

  The thing that makes Shadow such an enjoyable friend is that you can tell him the exact truth even if it’s not that good, and he doesn’t get all worked up. I apologized to him for thinking that he was the baby in the trash, and he said he was happy he wasn’t, since that baby died. Shadow told me he wasn’t the way he was because of the trash; he was the way he was because a certain condition in his brain he was born with makes him different, but still just as good as everybody else. Shadow said some kids have the same thing as him, but they might have it worse because he’s fighting to work hard in school without needing an aide. Next year, he will not be in 107A; he will not be at Harris. He will be going to a school full of big kids, and you have to get up at 6 a.m. and take a bus to learn to be a carpenter. He told me, “To get in, I had to do a lot of stuff which I’m doing right now. Take a test. Complete homework on my own. Study real hard. Work without an aide and ask for help when I don’t understand, definitely the right thing to do.” When I told Shadow I’d miss him next year, he said he’d miss me too, since he likes to work for the Slash and find all the mistakes I make.

  Early Tuesday morning, the entire Slash staff gathered in the alley behind the West River Diner. Adam and Jennifer had six big bundles of the June issue, tied with wire. Everyone was tingly with excitement. The coeditors gave each staff member twenty-five copies to hand out. Jennifer had already put aside papers for Mrs. Quigley and for Mr. Brooks, who would get them to all the teachers. In case there were any problems, they had safely stashed away twenty-five copies at Jennifer’s house.

  The staff was so worked up, it was hard for the coeditors to get their attention. Finally, Adam lost patience and slammed half of his bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich on the sidewalk. It didn’t make much of a sound — just a little scraping of tinfoil against the concrete — but the sight of a middle-school boy wasting perfectly good food was a shock and silenced them.