President of the Whole Sixth Grade_Girl Code

by Sherri Winston

  We learned too late that having a bunch of middle school kids rushing around grabbing up packs of cookies is apparently quite startling to a cow.

  That wasn’t even the craziest part. A couple of cows wound up in the drop-off line in front of the school. An angry mom in an SUV honked at one of the cows—a big one, with patches of white on her chocolate-brown sides. It seemed the cow did not like being honked at. So she kindly head-butted the woman’s ride.

  AP Snidely practically had a heart attack on the spot.

  By the first bell, every kid in school had their own version of what had happened, even kids who were nowhere near the accident. Mrs. G. listened intently as several of us crowded around her desk to tell her about the morning excitement.

  “It certainly sounds like you kids came face-to-face with breaking news this morning,” she said. I thought she was joking, so I laughed. Mrs. G. was only a teeny bit taller than me, with curly brown hair so thick it could terrify even the toughest brush. She wore round glasses over warm brown eyes and thick cardigans with patterns of tiny roses or plaid.

  She asked us to take our places. The journalism room was the most unique space in the whole school, and the best, as far as I was concerned. We didn’t have desks. Instead, fat colorful beanbag chairs were sprinkled around the area like giant gumdrops. Circular rugs in primary colors made it feel futuristic.

  “Reporters, I have a different kind of assignment for you today,” Mrs. G. said. We each lowered onto our beanbags—mine was cinnamon red. She sank into one that was bright yellow and smiled at us.

  “So much about journalism has been changed because of technology. Technology has changed many career fields like journalism, and created many, many others. So today we’re looking at one of the careers that didn’t exist when I was your age,” she said.

  “Did they have dinosaurs back then?” asked one boy. My head snapped up, ready to tear into him for being dumb, but then I caught the smile on Mrs. G.’s face and realized she thought it was funny.

  Maybe it was, a little.

  She shook her head. “Nope, no dinosaurs. Maybe a DeLorean or two.” She laughed. We just looked at her. What was a DeLorean, anyway?

  For the next thirty minutes or so, we listened as Mrs. G. talked about new career fields opening up. Since we often talked about how technology was changing journalism, she wanted us to see how tech affected other fields, too.

  She asked, “Who here knows what a wind turbine technician is?”

  We all looked around at one another because what in the world was a wind turbine? Let alone a wind turbine technician?

  A few of us made the mistake of being curious about it and Mrs. G. went on for almost the rest of the class period: telling us how energy generated from wind power, or wind-powered machinery called turbines, was the future, and with the need for wind turbines rising, there was also a growing need for people who could take care of them.

  She compared it to air conditioners, saying that after World War II, more than a million American homes got new A/C units. “And somebody had to take care of those things when they broke down,” she said with a grin. “It was a new frontier. Today it’s wind turbines!”

  Her smile was wide and her eyes sparkled like she had just dropped some serious knowledge on us. We love Mrs. G.

  But much as I hated to admit it, for the rest of the day, I couldn’t help thinking about how the people back then probably thought air conditioners sounded as weird and funny as wind turbines.

  That made me wonder. What was next?

  On Wednesday, Red and I were in our usual seats on the school bus. She nudged me and said thanks. I nudged her back. We’d been working out together, running and stretching and stuff like that.

  “I’m gonna get you to change your mind,” she whispered.

  I giggled. “I don’t think so, but I like hanging out at the gym and working out with you. That’s as far as I go, okay?”

  She shook her head like a little kid. “Nope. Not okay. I’m-gonna-change-your-mi-ind,” she sang in a whisper. Oh, brother!

  Red was on this kick lately to join a competitive cheer team at her ballet studio. She’d been born with a heart defect and struggled with its effects for years. Now she wanted to prove to herself that she could be as normal as anybody. To her, being a cheerleader meant being normal. We’d gotten to know each other over the past several months and I really admired her. She’d overcome a lot with her heart condition. So I was cool with helping her reach her rah-rah goal.

  But she wanted me to join the team with her. Um, Brianna Justice is nobody’s cheerleader, okay?

  We were still nudging each other and acting silly when a few other kids from our J-class started talking about Mrs. G. and the whole “new technology” thing. This girl from class whose name I didn’t know was asking, “Did you guys see the Blueberry this morning? Did you see that kid from class on the news last night?”

  Ebony leaned across the aisle to share a “Go Ask Darnell” video with me. “What kid?” she asked.

  I was trying not to laugh at Darnell. Usually I tried to convince kids I was too mature for such foolishness—and I was. Mostly.

  Then the girl whose name I couldn’t remember said, “That Julian kid. The quiet one. Did you see him on the news?”

  Apparently, while we were all laughing and yukking it up yesterday after the milk-and-cookies collision, one of my journalism classmates was taking names and keeping notes.

  I went to the Blueberry page, and there it was:

  COOKIES, COWS, AND A SWEET MORNING SURPRISE

  By JULIAN BERGER

  Students won’t soon forget the frosty January morning when an eighteen-wheeler filled with Oreos began to skid down the hill behind Blueberry Hills Middle School, slamming into a 25-year-old Chevy pickup full of cows.

  “I was just listening to my Katy Perry,” said the farmer, Mr. Hamm. “I never even saw that truck coming. Too darned cold to be up. Too early!”

  The driver of the eighteen-wheeler filled with Oreos says he noticed the smaller truck too late. “At least the kids helped pick up all the cookies that wound up in the snow from the accident,” he said with a laugh.

  The story continued with quotes from different kids; even Snidely said, “Students at Blueberry Hills Middle should never accept free cookies, especially ones that have fallen in the snow!” That’s Snidely for you. He knows how to take lemonade and turn it into lemons.

  “It’s good, huh?” asked Red.

  I nodded, getting a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. It had never, not once, occurred to me to run, grab my notepad, and report on the incident. I figured between the rumor mill and actual eyewitnesses, the whole story would get told to death.

  “Did you ever think about reporting on it? For the paper, I mean,” I asked Red. She shook her head, soles of her boots pressed together while she did a familiar stretch.

  I went on, “Do you think we should have?”

  Red gave me a palms-up shrug. “Lord, I hope not. Because it never crossed my mind.”

  “Mine either.”

  I chewed on my lip. Red’s biggest wish was to be normal—just like everybody else. But I wanted to be better than that. Reading Julian’s story again, I couldn’t help thinking about him reporting on a story when no one asked him to. While my friends and I were rolling around in the snow laughing, homeboy was out doing his thing.

  Was that what you were supposed to do? Did good reporters just know when to jump in and write a story?

  And if so, what did that make me?

  Reporter’s Notebook

  Wednesday, January 3

  Mrs. G.’s walls are covered with quotes and inspiration about writing, about news, about life. Even though I don’t fully understand it, this one feels important:

  “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in th
e air.”

  —Henry Anatole Grunwald

  4

  When we walked into class, my friend Click was standing near the whiteboard beside Mrs. G, whose face had that happy-teacher glow. I knew right away something was up.

  Click waved me over. He asked, “Did you hear about Julian?” Sigh.

  Next thing you know, Mrs. G. is in the middle of a Big-Time Journalism Nerd Fest. Going on and on about what a wonderful thing Julian did and how he was sooooo perceptive.

  Then she asked us all to join her in giving Julian a round of applause. I glanced over at Red, who gave me a little shrug. My stomach felt bubbly, and not in a good way. See, I didn’t mind giving anybody props for doing something good. And I had nothing against Julian. I barely knew him.

  But what had me spooked was the fact that he was getting all this praise for writing a story when I had never even thought about it.

  All of that was bad enough, but after hearing Mrs. G. explain why Julian deserved all that praise, I didn’t know whether to turn in my reporter’s notebook for good or just plain run and hide.

  “Out of all my students in this class, he was the only one yesterday who thought to grab his notebook, ask questions, and write a story,” she said. “Julian, I am so proud of you!”

  I had to ask: “So you mean it’s all right to interview people and write stories even when they haven’t been assigned?”

  She clapped her hands together and let out a bark of laughter.

  “Absolutely!” she said. “That’s the thing about breaking news. No one assigns it. It’s all about journalistic instincts, Brianna. Who could have known in advance that a little old man’s cow truck would wander into the path of a gigantic Oreo truck?”

  I felt my cheeks burn with the hot, hot shame of poor journalistic instincts. Could I get into a most excellent wind turbine technician school? I’d probably have about as good a chance of that as getting into a number one journalism school. I had such big plans for my future. Now, all I can think is…

  What if I don’t have what it takes?

  Later that night I couldn’t wait until seven thirty, my favorite time every Wednesday. It was when Neptune and I made time to talk.

  Frederick Douglass London, aka Neptune, was the lap-swimming tween heartthrob nephew of POTUS—that’s president of the (whole) United States! He was also a good friend I’d met several weeks earlier when our class visited the nation’s capital.

  We didn’t have any kind of love connection or whatever. But I liked him. Really liked him. And I looked forward to our weekly FaceTime chats.

  A lot of girls in my position might want to get all goofy in the head about knowing a guy like him. To me, though, he was just a real chill person I could talk about stuff with. Even though we hadn’t been friends all that long, I found it easy to ask his opinion and discuss important matters. And I was totally better at Mario Kart than he was when we played online together.

  I pushed the FaceTime icon on the screen and heard the familiar bloop, bloop. The call connected and a face filled the screen. Lean face, close-cropped sandy brown hair, and gold-flecked hazel eyes. Cheekbones that rose when he smiled.

  “Hey, Wook! Why’d you change your hair again?” he said.

  I said, “Maybe I changed it because I didn’t want you calling me a Wookiee!”

  “All right then.” He laughed. “Well, with it up on top of your head, you look so, I don’t know, official.”

  Ha! I am official.

  I did an eye roll and he slouched down. He was on the floor in his room. I was laughing when I reached up, took the bobby pins out of my bun, and shook my hair out until it covered my face.

  “WOOKIEE!” he yelled. “You’re back!”

  “Shut up or I’ll pull out that photo of you in your Speedo that went viral!”

  “Okay, okay. Low blow, Wook!”

  So I said:

  “Just call me Boss Lady. And that’s MISS Boss Lady to you!”

  “More like Miss Bossy.”

  We laughed a little, then I felt my heart begin to thump faster. I couldn’t explain why. I’d been waiting all day to tell him about what happened in J-class. Instead, we both let the silence linger, this thing passing between us. This something that we didn’t understand. Not really an awkward silence, but… something.

  He looked at me and knit his bushy brows together. When his voice came out, it was softer but also curious. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Why do you ask that?” Even though something was bothering me.

  “I can tell when you’ve got something churning underneath all that hair,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  For a moment, that weird feeling in my chest swelled into something uncomfortable.

  Beside me on a large floor cushion was my tiny cat, Angel. She’d butted my face with her nose. I scooped Angel cat into my arms, sighed, and settled in. “Uh-oh,” Neptune said with a laugh. “Looks like somebody doesn’t want to share your attention.”

  Neptune pulled his long legs into a crisscross position and asked, “Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

  So we spent the next hour talking about journalism and writing and being the best. I told him about Julian Berger and how he had been able to recognize breaking news while I, Brianna Justice, president of the whole sixth grade, apparently wouldn’t know a breaking news story if it bit me on the butt!

  “I’m disgusted with myself!” I blurted. Until that moment, I hadn’t thought about it, but it was true. I was beyond angry with me.

  “But why?” he asked.

  “Why? WHY?” I was sputtering. I mean, what did he mean, why?

  WHY? Well…

  Pinpricks of doubt danced along my cheeks, my arms, and my lips.

  Yes, why? Why had this whole journalism thing freaked me out so much?

  “Well, I… I just feel like if there was a news story around, I should have known it! Instead, I didn’t even think about it. I just want to be the best, you know?”

  “But why?” he repeated more softly. His tone caught me off guard. The hairs along my arms tickled a little. I chewed my lip and felt the beating of my heart. Was this what doubt felt like?

  That sent me sputtering again. “Why? What do you mean, why…”

  His laugh brought a merciful end to my chicken squawk.

  “Cut yourself some slack, Miz Boss Lady. When you were here in December, you did your thing. When my aunt was on the Hill fighting for attention for education funding, you recognized that story potential. What you accomplished was crazy. You helped a United States senator achieve history! How many sixth-grade presidents or journalists can say that?”

  Okay, so he had a point. When Mrs. G. explained what it meant and how the senator was trying to do something called a filibuster, I got as many of our classmates as I could to help spread the word. One minute we were passing out cupcakes we’d baked in my uncle’s restaurant, next thing we were on TV and the senator had achieved an historic filibuster. The power of that event led me to want a more public platform. As much as I loved cupcakes, I realized that journalism could change lives.

  “Look,” I began, then laid out my whole plan. How I was less interested in baking for a living and more interested in becoming someone who could change the world, like a journalist.

  “You don’t have to be a journalist to change the world. Look at what happened a while back with that one girl in New Jersey,” he said.

  “What girl?”

  “She was just a regular kid, you know. I think her name was Mya, Mary… no! It was Marley. Marley Dias. She said she was tired of reading books about white boys and dogs or something like that.”

  “True, true.” I laughed in response.

  “Right. So anyway, Miss Marley Dias was a little boss. She started a campaign to collect books about black girls and she donated them to different schools and libraries,” he said.

  “I heard about her,” I admitted. “And what she did was great. Still, I thought gettin
g into one of the best journalism schools in the country was, you know, my destiny. Did you know that Northwestern University in Chicago, one of the top journalism programs, costs seventy thousand dollars a year?!”

  Neptune whistled. “Dude,” he said, “that’s a lot of cupcakes.”

  “Dude,” I said, repeating his tone, “that is a lot of cupcakes!”

  We laughed. Then I told him my plans of starting an online bakery to earn and save more money.

  “Your mom works for the FBI, right? And your dad is a nurse? Aunt Kaye says there are special kinds of scholarships based on your parents’ employer. Just wait, you’ll see,” Neptune said.

  “Easy for you to say. You’re the nephew of the president. POTUS is gonna make sure you’ll be all right. Meanwhile, I don’t want to be an FBI agent or a nurse, so special scholarships based on my folks won’t help me!”

  “Dang!” He sat back. I hadn’t meant to get so worked up. Now looking at him, I couldn’t tell if the hurt look on his face was real or if he was playing around. “You sure get vicious when your future feels threatened.”

  That made me laugh again.

  “All I’m saying, Swimmer Boy, is your aunt Kaye is right about the scholarships, it’s just getting the right kind. If I want journalism scholarships someday it means getting ready now. Getting Yavonka Steele to mentor me would be a great step in that direction!”

  We were both quiet for a few moments. Then he brightened and said, “Well, you’ve got a little time left, don’t you? Before you guys get paired up.”

  I blew out a long sigh. “No, not really.”

  “Well, even if all you have is a day, make the most of it. If finding a better story will give you an edge, find a better story.”

  He ran a hand across his close-shaved head. Then I stared closer.

  “Now what?” he said.

  “Are you getting… Is that fuzz on your chin?” I drew back sharply and blinked hard. I didn’t know why, but thinking about him having man-hair on his face felt weird.