Ms. Sullivan was right. There was no way Ash could be a supportive team player when she was aching to be captain. It’d be torture.
Ash swallowed, then squared her shoulders. “All right,” she told Ms. Sullivan. “I quit.”
CHAPTER 2
DEVELOPING STORY:
The Renegade Reporters
“You quit?” Brielle said at lunch.
“Yep,” Ash said as she dipped a piece of spiral rotini into tomato sauce. “It was too hard to watch from the booth, especially with the show being such a disaster.”
“Hey!” said Brielle.
“Oh my gosh, Brielle, no offense to you,” Ash said. “You’re an awesome director, and you did such a good job today, especially considering what you had to work with.”
Brielle still gave her the side-eye, but Maya nodded vigorously as she finished a big sip of milk.
“You were like the captain on the Titanic,” Ash said.
Brielle crossed her arms. “Steering the ship into an iceberg?”
“No,” Maya said with a giggle. “Doing your best to avoid the iceberg, but it’s just too big.”
“The ship was sinking,” Ash tried, “and you directed everyone into lifeboats.”
“You saved the women and children,” Maya added.
Brielle rolled her eyes behind her red glasses. “Okay, okay,” she said. “No need to be extra.”
Ash and Maya suppressed smiles. If anything was extra, it was Brielle’s use of that word, which she’d picked up over the summer and had taken to saying constantly.
“Are you going to quit The News too, Maya?” Brielle asked.
“I don’t know,” Maya said. “I don’t know what else I’d do after school.”
Ash chewed on that along with her spiral rotini. The News at Nine crew met after school every Monday through Thursday to do their research and plan the next show. Maya’s mom worked late, and Ash knew she wouldn’t let her stay home alone all afternoon. Ash wasn’t sure her own parents would let her do that either. She hadn’t thought about that before quitting. She hoped her dads wouldn’t make her join the after-school program, or worse, stay with her siblings and their babysitter, Olive.
“I don’t really like writing reports, though,” Maya said with a frown. “I’d rather operate the camera.”
“I’d rather have you operate the camera too,” Brielle said through bites of her turkey sandwich, “instead of Khalil. I need the show to be good if I’m going to get into the filmmaking program at Baltimore School for the Arts next year. And with Harry and Damion as anchor and co-anchor . . .” She trailed off, her head turning to the table where all three of those boys were sitting. “I mean, look at them.”
Ash looked. They’d piled all of their sandwiches together to make an enormous bread-turkey-bread-turkey-bread tower, and now they were trying to see whose mouth was big enough to bite it.
“This should be one of our Games with Guests!” Damion said.
Ash felt like Damion had stabbed her with his plastic fork when he mentioned Games with Guests. It was a special News at Nine segment that aired every Friday in which teachers and other school staff competed in funny games.
“Damion, that’s genius,” said Harry. “Which teacher can eat a bigger sandwich?”
“We can keep adding layers and having them take bites,” Damion said.
“Yeah!” said Khalil. He tried to take a bite of the monstrosity they’d made, but his mouth wasn’t wide enough to fit the whole thing. The tower got squeezed into a triangle. Turkey, mayonnaise, and mustard came oozing out the side, dripping through Khalil’s fingers and plopping onto the table.
As immature as the boys were, Ash thought their idea would make a funny Game with Guests. Hilarious even. And she knew her face betrayed it by the expression on Harry’s when he happened to glance over at that exact moment. He gave a little smirk at Ash, then looked back at the boys. “The show is going to be so-o-o good this year,” he said loudly. “Especially without a certain roving reporter.”
Ash turned away, forcing back tears for the second time that day. Harry E. Levin thought he was so cool, with his shark-tooth necklace and his ability to speak Chinese and his name that told his age. (So what? Ash’s name was cooler, since A.S.H. were also her initials, and that would be true her whole life, not just the year she was eleven.) But Harry was a good student and a good drummer and the best maze-drawer in all of sixth grade. What if he was right, and he ended up being the best news anchor too? Maybe Harry and Khalil would do a better job than she and Maya ever could have done, and Ms. Sullivan would create a special award for them, and the sponsors at Van Ness Media would be so impressed, they’d decide to sponsor a new TV show called, like, Live at Eleven with Harry E. Levin. What if Live at Eleven with Harry E. Levin got picked up nationally, by a real television network? And Ash would be stuck at home with her little sister and her baby brother and their babysitter, watching her classmates deliver breaking news while her own newscasting dreams shriveled up and died. What then?
“Don’t listen to them, Ash,” Maya said.
“Yeah,” said Brielle. “The three of us could make a better news show in my basement.”
Ash chuckled. That was a funny thought. She picked up her fork and held it like a microphone. “I’m Ashley Simon-Hockheimer, broadcasting live from Brielle Diamond’s basement, where you can see that her school uniforms are being washed as we speak.”
“Laundry report in three . . .” said Brielle, “two . . . one.”
Maya picked up her lunchbox and held it like a camera.
“We’re currently in the spin cycle,” Ash reported, “with the final rinse ahead. But if you’ll follow me over to these storage shelves, you can see that the Diamond family is running dangerously low on toilet paper.”
Brielle snorted and said, “Cut to commercial.”
Ash grinned. “After the break, I’ll interview Brielle Diamond herself about the shockingly low toilet paper supply. Stay with us.”
Maya pressed an imaginary button on her lunchbox camera, then put it down on the table. “See? If I had a camera, we could totally record our own show.”
“Except no one wants to watch a report about a washing machine,” Ash said.
“Obviously,” said Brielle, opening a bag of baby carrots. “We’d have to do real stories. Real news. Want one?”
Ash took a carrot and chewed it thoughtfully. She and her friends had four years’ experience working on a news show. Between the three of them, they knew how to do in-depth research and make professional-quality recordings. They didn’t have fancy Van Ness Media cameras and microphones, but did that really matter? Kids got famous online with far less. Come to think of it, Ash was already famous online—the dancing gym teacher video had millions of views—so they’d have that going for them too.
“What if we did do our own show at home?” she said slowly.
“Is that allowed?” Maya asked.
Ash gave a slow shrug. “Why not? Ms. Sullivan and Van Ness Media can’t control what we do on our own.”
“There’s no chance they’d air it here at school, though,” Brielle pointed out.
“They wouldn’t have to,” Ash said. “We could just put it online ourselves.”
“But who cares about school news outside of John Dos Passos?” Maya asked.
“No one,” Ash granted. “That’s why we’d do other stories, like Brielle said.” The idea was coming together as she spoke, spiraling outward and taking shape like a ball of cotton candy. It was just as sweet too. “Think about it. If it’s not an official Dos Passos activity, we wouldn’t have to stick to reports about school. We could report on anything, anywhere.”
“Anywhere?” Maya asked nervously.
“Well, anywhere we’re allowed to go alone.”
“My granddad might come with us other pl
aces,” Brielle said coolly. “He’s around after school.”
“Or my babysitter,” Ash added.
“What about a camera?” Maya asked.
“You can use the camera on my phone.”
“The quality won’t be nearly as good,” Maya said, but her tone suggested that she was coming around to the idea. “Especially the sound.”
“Yeah,” Brielle agreed. “The footage will be rough.”
“But it’ll be real,” Ash said. “Raw. That can be our image. Forget about roving reporters, we’d be rebel reporters—renegades!” She was getting excited now. She didn’t need The News at Nine or even a sponsor like Van Ness Media to keep reporting the news. She had the best camerawoman and director in Baltimore City and an unlimited number of afternoons with nothing to do (except homework). “Picture it,” she said. She put on her newscaster voice. “Remember the renegade reporters who recorded the Dancing Gym Teacher? They got kicked off their elementary school news crew, but that didn’t stop them. Now they’re back, hitting the streets of Baltimore, and they’re reporting on much more than birthdays and lunch menus.”
“The Renegade Reporters,” Brielle said, nodding. “It’s got a ring to it.”
Maya gave a little squeal. “It’d kind of be like we’re underground.”
“Literally,” said Brielle, “if our studio’s in a basement.”
Ash inhaled sharply, almost choking on her last bite of rotini. “Yes,” she said once she’d swallowed. “Yes, that’s it.” She cleared her throat, picked up her fork, and held it to her mouth. “We’re the Renegade Reporters, and you’re watching The Underground News.”
CHAPTER 3
Underground News Under Negotiation
Two days, three phone calls, and countless text messages later, The Underground News was still under negotiation. Maya’s mom didn’t want her unsupervised after school. Brielle didn’t want to quit The News at Nine, and her parents worried that doing two shows would affect her schoolwork. Ash’s parents didn’t want her posting videos of herself online for the whole world to see. But the Renegade Reporters weren’t the type to give up. They drafted a formal proposal, which Ash typed up in Van Ness Writer and handed to her dads during dinner on Friday night.
“Are you going to become a YouTube celebrity?” her sister, Sadie, asked.
“If by ‘YouTube celebrity’ you mean ‘modern, self-made broadcast journalist,’ ” Ash said, “then yes.”
Sadie giggled. “That sounds like ‘spin,’ right, Dad?”
“Expert spin,” Mr. Simon agreed. “The question is, is it all spin and no substance?”
Ash crossed her fingers while he read the proposal. Dad was a structural engineer, so it was his job to make sure new buildings were safely constructed, and he approached being a dad in much the same way. When it came to homework or chores or YouTube news show proposals, Ash knew Dad would ignore all the fancy distractions and make sure the foundation was solid.
“What do you think, Abba?” Sadie asked their other dad.
“I’m impressed,” Mr. Hockheimer replied, buttering a piece of challah. “They’ve really thought things through. Except for the lighting.” Abba was the lighting designer for a local theater, so it was no surprise that he’d zeroed in on their choice of studio. “Why on earth would you want to film in a basement?” he asked Ash.
“For the name,” Ash explained. “The Underground News.”
“It’s a really good name,” Sadie said.
“It is,” Dad agreed. “And filming it in the basement won’t give away our address or show too much of our home. I like that.”
“Privacy is important,” Abba agreed.
“More,” said Beckett, kicking his legs and pointing a chubby finger toward the challah. Ash ripped a piece off her slice of bread and placed it on the tray of his high chair. Beckett clapped and stuffed it into his mouth.
“If Maya and I can record from our basement,” Ash continued, “we’ll have adult supervision because Olive will be here watching Sadie and Beck. Brielle will do The News at Nine after school but work on our show on Fridays and weekends. She can log into Van Ness Movie Maker at home and edit the whole thing. Her parents said it’s okay as long as she keeps her grades up, and it’ll look really good on her BSA filmmaking application. And did you see item number seven? You guys get to watch and approve every episode before we post it.”
“Yes, did you see that?” Abba said to Dad. “Us parents and guardians have twenty-four hours to view and approve each episode before it airs.”
“Would you like more time?” Ash asked. “We can make it thirty-six hours, or even forty-eight. We can’t go too long, though, or the news might be out-of-date.”
“You know what you should report on?” Sadie said. “The big piles of dog poo all over the sidewalk.”
“I don’t think we need a report about that,” Ash said. “Everyone in Federal Hill has already seen it. Or stepped in it.”
“You should do a report on Baby Beck, then,” Sadie said in a baby voice. “People will totally click on the ads if they have a cute baby.”
Beckett squealed and kicked his pudgy legs, but Dad shook his head. “Baby Beckett is not going to be in any ads. Or on the show.”
Ash inhaled. “Does that mean there will be a show?”
Her dads looked at each other. Ash looked at them. Sadie looked at Beckett. Beckett looked at his thumb. Finally, Dad and Abba looked at Ash.
“If it’s okay with your friends’ parents, it’s okay with us,” said Abba.
“Yes!” said Ash. She jumped up, ran around the table, and threw her arms around both of them.
“Thirty-six hours’ approval time,” Dad said from inside the group hug. “Nothing airs without our permission.”
“Done!” said Ash.
“You girls need to stay with Olive.”
“I promise,” said Ash.
“Yes!” said Sadie.
“Yes!” said Beckett.
Yes! thought Ash. Take that, Harry E. Levin.
CHAPTER 4
Anchor and Videographer Test Underground Studio
When school ended Monday, the Renegade Reporters did a triple fist-bump. Then Brielle headed to The News at Nine and the other two walked to Ash’s house, carefully avoiding two piles of dog poo. “There was only one yesterday,” Ash pointed out. “The dog poo bandit has been at it again. Sadie thinks we should report on it, but I don’t think we want our first episode to be about dog poo.”
“Definitely not,” Maya said. “It’s so gross. Why can’t the owner just pick up after their dog?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have an owner,” Ash said.
“Like, it lives in a row house all alone?” Maya asked with a giggle.
Ash had meant that it was a stray, but now she pictured a dog standing on its hind legs and opening the door to its own house. She pretended to be a dog as she put the key in her lock and twisted it. They both barked and laughed as they entered, took off their shoes, and dropped their backpacks.
Like many row houses in Federal Hill, the Simon-Hockheimers’ was over a hundred years old. It was long and narrow and had once contained many small rooms, but Dad and Abba had taken out most of the interior walls years ago, making the first floor one long, open rectangle with each room flowing into the next. It made the space feel open and airy despite its narrowness, but it also made privacy nonexistent. Standing at the front door, Ash could see straight through to the door at the back of the house. That also meant that everyone else—Sadie in the kitchen, Olive and Beckett at the dining room table—could see and hear her.
“I hear you two are mine every afternoon,” said Olive, tapping her fingers together with faux wickedness. With Olive, though, it was a convincing faux wickedness. In addition to being a nanny, she was an actress. She usually did plays that were meant for grown-ups. (“It
’s avant-garde,” Olive had told Ash about her last show. “You’d be bored to tears.”) But she was currently rehearsing to be Puck in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and she’d promised Ash and Maya front row tickets to the first Sunday matinee.
“We’re your responsibility,” Ash confirmed as she walked toward the dining room. “But it’s not like you’ll need to watch us. More like you’ll need to keep Beckett and Sadie out of our way.”
“Hey!” said Sadie, who stopped searching the pantry for a snack in order to put her hands on her hips.
“Yeah,” said Olive. “That’s no way to talk about your Story Scout.”
“Is that what I am?” Sadie asked excitedly.
“Yep,” Olive said. “It sounds fancy, doesn’t it?”
“Fa-ee,” repeated Beckett.
“Yes, very fancy,” said Sadie.
“Too fancy,” said Ash. “You haven’t even given us a real story idea yet.”
“Yet,” said Olive with a wink.
“Ink!” said Beckett. He closed both his eyes tightly and then opened them again.
“Wink wink wink,” said Olive. Back in nanny mode, she started tickling Beckett while making exaggerated winks, and he broke into baby laughs.
Spying an opening, Ash hurried down into the basement. Maya followed and closed the door behind her.
“Welcome to our new TV studio,” Ash said.
Both girls fell silent, taking it in. Ash had never given much thought to her basement. It was just another part of her house. Until this moment, when she seemed to be seeing it for the first time, and through the eyes of Maya. But not her best friend Maya. That Maya had once spent a whole Saturday in this basement playing “holiday boutique,” which meant she and Ash had taken turns “buying,” “selling,” and gift-wrapping everything in sight. That Maya had squeezed Ash’s hand when Abba yelled at them for wasting three full rolls of wrapping paper, two dispensers’ worth of Scotch tape, and the twenty minutes he had to spend unwrapping “presents” in order to find a tube of caulk to seal the toilet. That Maya didn’t care one bit about the look of Ash’s basement.
The Renegade Reporters Page 2
