The Renegade Reporters

by Elissa Brent Weissman

  “A conflict of interest,” the woman repeated, clearly trying to stifle a laugh.

  Now Ash was getting really annoyed. This receptionist was treating her like a baby. It didn’t help that the lobby was suddenly filled with the cries of an actual baby; Beckett was trying to escape from his stroller.

  The other receptionist, a redhead with straight-cut bangs, stood up. “Sorry. The CEO isn’t in the office today.”

  “CEO stands for chief executive officer,” the rude receptionist explained with a patronizing smile.

  “I’m sorry,” the redhead said again. “She’s actually in New York this week, doing a number of TV interviews.” The friendly receptionist motioned to the large TV screen, where Maria Van Ness was still on (live, apparently). “You can try emailing,” she continued, handing over a business card. “Or if you want to leave your own card or a note, I’ll make sure it gets to the right person.”

  “Um,” Ash said. She fumbled in the pockets of her khakis, as though they might magically contain her own business card. But of course they didn’t, and Ash wasn’t sure what to do. To make matters worse, Beckett’s screams were now echoing off the concrete walls. Olive had taken him out of the stroller and was bouncing him up and down, but he was inconsolable.

  “Why don’t you just write your contact info on here,” the redhead said, sliding a piece of paper and a pen across the sleek counter.

  Before Ash could write anything, Olive came up behind her with a howling Beckett in her arms.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Olive said, “but this boy desperately needs a diaper change. Is there a restroom I can use?”

  “To the left,” answered the rude receptionist, wrinkling her nose.

  “There’s no changing table in that restroom, though,” the security guard piped up. “There’s not one on this floor at all.”

  The rude receptionist sighed. But the nice one walked over to the row of security turnstiles. “Here.” She held a badge to one of the sensors, and the glass panels opened. “Go up to the fourteenth floor and make a right. There’s a really nice bathroom there, with a changing table.”

  “Thank you so much,” Olive sang, hurrying through the gate. “Let’s go, Baby Beck.”

  But Beckett turned in her arms and reached for Ash. “Ashee!” he cried.

  The nice receptionist opened the gate again. “Go ahead.” She motioned Ash and Maya through. “Fourteenth floor.”

  They all thanked her as they hurried through the gates and into the elevator, away from the rude receptionist’s look of disgust. Ash took Beckett from Olive and held his hand to the panel of buttons in the elevator. “Fourteen,” she said, pointing Beckett’s finger to the number. But he was too worked up to want to press it. Ash couldn’t blame him. Now that she was holding him herself—in an enclosed space, no less—it was very clear that his diaper was full. When the doors opened, Ash handed him back to Olive, who ran to the right, leaving the reporters to gape at the fourteenth floor.

  “Holy moly,” Maya whispered. “This is the place that sponsors The News at Nine?”

  Ash couldn’t believe it either. It seemed like someplace you’d have to pay to go to, not someplace that would pay you.

  It was an enormous space with high ceilings, exposed brick, and shiny floors. In the center of the room, there was a U-shaped coffee bar with people making and sipping fancy drinks. To the left were different types of chairs and couches, all artfully arranged around tables of various shapes and sizes. To the right of the café were more tables, only these were for playing: Ping-Pong, billiards, and shuffleboard. Beyond that was a glass-enclosed studio where a handful of people were doing yoga. On a big screen above the coffee shop, Maria Van Ness was telling the CNN anchor that her employees’ happiness was crucial to her company’s success.

  “Let’s work here when we grow up,” Maya whispered.

  “Work here?” Ash said. “Let’s live here. And not just when we grow up. I’m ready to move in now.”

  Maya giggled. “Imagine we just come back tomorrow with our sleeping bags?”

  “Pulling suitcases.”

  “Carrying artwork to hang in our new rooms.”

  “And buckets of paint for our walls,” Ash said with a laugh.

  “With paintbrushes and rollers!” Maya said, covering her mouth.

  “Imagine the look on the receptionist’s face!” Ash said.

  That was the final straw. They both burst out laughing so loudly, everyone turned to see what was going on. The girls looked frantically for a place they could duck out of view, but just like at Ash’s house, the space was so open, there was nowhere to hide.

  “Follow me,” Ash said through her laughs. She walked briskly back toward the elevators. But right when she got there, the elevator doors opened and out stepped two men in coveralls carrying paint buckets, rollers, and trays. The girls started laughing so hard, they could barely breathe. Feeling the glare of every Van Ness Media employee on the fourteenth floor, Ash ran away from the café area and around the first corner she saw, Maya right at her heels. Her plan was to find the bathroom, but all she saw were offices and small meeting rooms, all with glass doors. Finally, at the end of the hall, there was a dark wooden door with no sign. It was probably a closet filled with copy paper or cleaning products, but at least they could take a minute to calm down without anyone seeing them and calling security. Ash turned the metal handle and slipped inside, Maya right behind her.

  They didn’t find themselves in a storage closet at all. It was a meeting room, like the ones they’d seen through the glass doors. A few people were seated around an oval table. A woman in a suit was standing at the far end of the room, underneath two large screens. One of them was full of letters and numbers, and the other was showing a map with little dots flashing at various places on the streets.

  “We can track location data too,” the woman in the suit was saying, “if children log in at home, or on our mobile apps. It’s all connected to each user’s unique profile ID—” Then she stopped, because everyone had turned to look at Maya and Ash.

  Ash froze, her silliness instantly switched off.

  “Can I help you?” said the man closest to the door. He had a shaved head, white glasses, and a trim beard.

  “I’m sorry,” Ash said. “We were, um, looking for the bathroom.” But her eyes kept glancing at the big screen. The map. She knew those streets.

  The man with the beard followed her gaze. “Turn it off,” he said sharply to no one in particular. The woman to his left started fumbling with her laptop.

  Ash’s eyes moved to the other screen. It was full of text, way too much for her to read right now, let alone understand. But on the top left, in large type, were the words PROFILE ID followed by a string of letters and numbers. That must have been what the presenter had been talking about when she and Maya had barged in. Something about tracking location data and every child having a unique—

  “Off!” the bearded man ordered. “Now.”

  Someone pressed a button on the projector, and the screens turned blue. The bearded man looked at Ash and Maya without smiling. “Go out, make a left,” he said coldly. “At the end of the hall, make a right. The bathroom will be on your right.”

  “Thank you,” Ash said. “Sorry again.”

  “We’re so sorry,” Maya whispered.

  The girls turned and slipped back through the door as quickly as they’d entered. They walked briskly back through the hall. Neither of them said anything, but Ash could tell that Maya’s head was spinning, just like her own, as she tried to process what they’d seen.

  “There you are!” said Olive, who was waiting by the elevators. Beckett was quiet in her arms, happily munching on a rice cake. “Are you ready to go?”

  Both reporters nodded silently.

  “What a cool place to work, huh?” Olive said as they ro
de the elevator down. “It’s so big, though. I’d need a map to find my desk.”

  Ash and Maya glanced at each other, and Ash knew that the only map on both their minds was the one they’d seen on that screen. The map that was tracking children’s locations. It was a map of Federal Hill.

  CHAPTER 13

  ANALYSIS: Something Fishy

  That night after dinner, while her parents did dishes and her sister did homework, Ash gave Beckett his bath. She enjoyed this nightly ritual most of the time, but she especially looked forward to it on nights like this when she had a lot on her mind. Speaking her thoughts out loud helped her reason through a problem; even better was hearing her own thoughts repeated back to her. And when it comes to listening to words and repeating them back, no one’s better than a baby.

  “Did you like riding the boat today?” Ash asked as she lowered Beckett into the water.

  He found his toy boat and held it out to her. “Boat.”

  “You keep it,” Ash said. “It’s your boat.”

  “Beck boat.”

  “Yes, Beckett’s boat. Get ready for a rinse.”

  Ash used one hand to cover her brother’s eyes and the other to pour water over his head. Beckett twisted and splashed. He never liked that part.

  “Good job, Beck. Fish?” she offered.

  He blinked a few times. Then he took the toy fish and tried to force it into his mouth.

  “It’s not a real fish, silly.”

  Beckett giggled and chomped on the toy fish with more gusto.

  “Okay, suit yourself.” Ash pumped some baby shampoo onto her hands and rubbed it gently into his wispy hair. “So, listen to this. While you were getting a new diaper, Maya and I accidentally walked into a meeting at Van Ness Media. It was a mistake, I swear. But we saw all these adults talking about profile IDs and tracking.”

  “Tacking,” Beckett said.

  “Yeah, tracking. Whatever that means. But here’s the thing. They were looking at a map of Federal Hill. Our neighborhood. And it had these little dots on it, like the one showing where we are when we use GPS. Do you think that’s weird?”

  “Eared.”

  “Yeah. I think it’s weird too. I mean, they make the software, so I guess they’re allowed to know where people are using it?”

  “Ow’d,” Beckett said.

  “Maybe they’re allowed,” Ash granted. Still, something didn’t feel right.

  “Face,” Beckett said.

  “You got it. Close your eyes.” As she ran a soapy washcloth over Beckett’s face, Ash thought about the panic that had come over the room when she and Maya had walked in. It was like the way Sadie quickly closed the pantry door when Dad caught her sneaking cookies.

  “Why were they in a room with no sign, at the end of a long hall,” Ash wondered aloud, “when there were a million empty meeting rooms with glass doors?”

  “Eyes?” Beckett asked.

  “Yes, close your eyes.” Ash rinsed his face with clean water. “Okay. You can open now.”

  He did. Then he stuffed his toy fish back in his mouth.

  Someone tapped on the bathroom door.

  “Come in,” Ash said.

  Beckett clapped and said, “Da!”

  “What are you two up to in here?” Dad asked. “It sounds like quite the conversation.”

  “Eyes close,” Beckett said seriously.

  “Ah, yes,” Dad said. “Eyes closed. Is that what your stimulating discussion is about?”

  Ash debated telling Dad about Van Ness Media. He might have a good, structural-engineery explanation for what she’d heard.

  But what if he got angry? Dad was always telling her to knock before entering. He’d even knocked now, to respect her privacy with Beckett. She and Maya hadn’t meant to stumble upon a top secret meeting. Then again, they hadn’t meant to stumble upon Coach Kelly dancing in her underwear either, and that had cost them The News at Nine. If Dad and Abba found out that Ash and Maya had seen something they weren’t supposed to see—again—they might take away The Underground News.

  No, she couldn’t take the risk. Not when her show was only getting started, and Harry was a “Young Creative to Watch.” Not when what she saw today might lead her to real news worth reporting.

  “Beck and I were just talking about Van Ness Media,” Ash said, which was technically true. “I think there might be a good story there.”

  “Ah, cool,” said Dad. “Well, send them an email and see if you can get an interview lined up. That’ll be better than showing up unexpected.”

  Too late for that, Ash thought.

  “If you ask the right questions, I’m sure it’ll make a great episode.”

  “I think so,” Ash agreed. She had lots of questions.

  Beckett held out his toy fish. “Fishy,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ash said. She thought, Something is very, very fishy.

  CHAPTER 14

  WANTED:

  Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guides

  “It doesn’t seem that weird to me,” Brielle said the next day at recess. “If I invented an app, I’d want to know where people are when they use it.”

  “Some of the dots were moving,” Maya said eerily, as though she were telling a ghost story. “Like, these Van Ness Media people could just watch you walk along South Charles Street.”

  Brielle shrugged and leaned against a tree. “So what? They watch me go into Midnight Cupcakes? It’s no different from, like, the traffic info on GPS.”

  “But Van Ness Media doesn’t give people directions,” Ash pointed out.

  Brielle shrugged again. “Maybe they’re making a new program. Van Ness Navigator.”

  Ash hadn’t considered that. Perhaps it was top secret until it was finished. That could be why the people were hiding in that room, and why they wanted to turn off the computer when Ash and Maya walked in. “If they are,” she said, “it’d be a pretty big news story. And no one else knows about it.” Especially not Harry E. Levin, Ash added to herself. “The Underground News could break it!”

  “Um,” said Brielle, “I think we need a little more information before we can report anything.”

  “I don’t think it’s a new app,” Maya said quietly, sitting down on the grass. “I think they’re collecting information about us. Companies do that sort of thing. You should see the data my brother has about the visitors to his website.”

  Maya’s brother, Dev, was a freshman in college and basically a genius. He made study guides for all different classes and sold them online.

  “What kind of data?” Ash asked, sitting down next to her.

  Maya picked three blades of grass and started braiding them together. “He keeps track of what people buy, obviously,” she replied. “But he has lots of other information too. He showed me once. He knows how many people visit each page, how they got there, what they click on. Stuff like that.”

  “For real?” Ash asked. “And he looks at it?”

  “He studies it,” Maya said. “He spends, like, hours looking at it.”

  “Why?” Brielle asked.

  “I don’t know,” Maya said.

  “Maybe he’s making a Dev’s Guide to studying website data,” Ash said with a smile.

  Maya giggled. “A Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guides.”

  “And then he’ll make a Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guides.”

  “And a Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guide—”

  “Okay!” Brielle announced, raising her arms. “I have an idea.”

  “Is it about Dev’s Guides?” Ash asked, grinning.

  “It is, actually,” Brielle said. “We need to do more research before we report anything about Van Ness Media. But we need to record a new episode of The Underground News soon, or people will forget about us.”

  “And it needs to be a
good episode,” Ash added. “Even better than Lucy’s bike.”

  “Right. So, I think we should do a story about Dev’s Guides. Do you think your brother would be up for it, Maya?”

  “I can ask,” Maya said. “He’ll probably do it if we flatter him, like, say it’s because he’s such a good entrepreneur.”

  “A good what?” Brielle asked.

  “Entrepreneur,” Maya repeated with a sigh. “It means someone who started their own business.”

  Ash knew Maya was proud of her brother, but she also knew that Maya’s family was especially proud of him, more than they were of Maya, which Ash found incredibly unfair.

  “I’ve got it,” Ash said, coming up with a way to interview Dev without making him seem even more special. “We can do a whole series on Baltimore entrepreneurs. We can interview Dev, and some other business owners nearby. And then, once we have a few, we can use it as a way to interview Maria Van Ness and find out what they’re doing with that map.”

  “Smart,” said Brielle. “I like it.”

  “I wish there was a Dev’s Guide to finding out what’s happening at Van Ness Media,” Maya said, a smile playing at her lips.

  Ash grinned. “Or a Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guide to finding out—”

  Brielle covered her ears. “I need a Dev’s Guide to dealing with people who won’t stop talking about Dev’s Guides.”

  “Or a Dev’s Guide to Dev’s Guide to—”

  Brielle just shook her head. “The things I put up with as a Renegade Reporter.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Reporters See Data, Smell Socks

  Compared to the official headquarters of Van Ness Media, the official headquarters for DevsGuides.com was tiny, messy, and gym-sock smelly—probably because it was also Maya’s brother’s dorm room.

  “Hey, Dev,” Maya said when they arrived the next afternoon.