The Renegade Reporters

by Elissa Brent Weissman

  “Is it about The Underground News?” Sadie asked.

  “None of your business.”

  “It is if it’s about The Underground News. I’m your Story Scout.”

  “It’s still none of your own business.”

  “Is it about school?”

  “Sadie,” said Abba in a warning voice. But he was paying more attention to the puzzle. “I finished one eye!” he announced, sliding a bunch of pieces into place.

  “Nice,” said Dad, giving him a high five.

  Maya texted again. And how will we know if there are ads anyway? Jacob Brown doesn’t have a phone.

  “Who’s Jacob Brown?” Sadie asked.

  “Dad!” Ash cried, covering the screen with her hand. “Sadie’s reading my private messages.”

  “She’s sitting right next to me,” Sadie said.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to look,” Ash said.

  “I can’t do a puzzle with my eyes closed!” Sadie closed her eyes and tried to put puzzle pieces together, making a big show of how impossible it was.

  Ash closed her own eyes in frustration. “I’m not talking about looking at the puzzle. I’m talking about looking at my phone.”

  “Your phone is right by the puzzle.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to look at it!”

  “Girls,” said Abba with a sigh. “Does either of you have any fin?”

  “Fin!” shouted Beckett from his jumper.

  Ash’s phone vibrated again. Sadie smiled expectantly. Ash glared at her. Without looking away, she slid her phone, screen down, along the table and pressed it against her leg. Then she got up and walked briskly down the length of their row house to the kitchen. Only once she was at the table with her back to the faraway living room did she turn her phone over to see Maya’s next message.

  The ads usually come up in a Google search, but we can’t do any searches as Jacob Brown. We have to make sure advertisers ONLY know about him from what he puts in Van Ness Media.

  Ash took a deep breath and considered this. Maya was right; it was important that Jacob Brown and his interests only appear in Van Ness Media. They’d been careful about this earlier, looking up their Saturn and pizza facts from Brielle’s phone instead of “Jacob’s” laptop. But Maya had a point now—she was clearly putting a lot of thought into this investigation. If they couldn’t search the internet or get phone notifications, how would they know if their test was working?

  Sadie’s head popped up from around the refrigerator. “Is Jacob Brown your boyfriend?”

  “Sadie!” Ash screeched. “Privacy!”

  Sadie cracked up and ran back to the living room. But Ash wasn’t taking any chances. She took her phone, stomped up the stairs to her room, and closed the door. But it was no use. She was too worked up to concentrate on Maya’s questions now.

  Bring the laptop tomorrow, she texted. We can brainstorm at my house after school.

  The bedroom door opened, and Beckett toddled in in his footed fleece pj’s. “Jay Brow,” he said.

  Ash could hear Sadie giggling in the hallway. It wasn’t enough for her sister to be annoying, she had to take their baby brother out of his jumper and bring him upstairs, just so he could be annoying too. Ash opened her mouth to scream for her dads, then stopped herself. She had a better idea. One that would test how quickly fake information could travel.

  “Come here, Baby Beck,” Ash said, pulling him onto the bed and into a snuggle. He still smelled soapy fresh from his bath. “Sadie’s in love with a boy named Jacob Brown,” Ash whispered in his ear.

  “Jay Brow,” Beckett said.

  “Yes,” Ash said. “Sadie loves him. She wants to kiss him!”

  “Kiss Jay Brow,” Beckett said.

  “Right,” Ash said. But how reliable was a messenger who couldn’t yet speak in full sentences? “Hang on.” She sat Beckett on the floor and got a notebook and pen from her backpack. Dear Sadie, she wrote. Thanks for your note. I love you too! Meet me by the big slide at recess tomorrow. Love, your boyfriend, Jacob Brown.

  Just to drive the point home, she wrote SSH + JB FOREVER inside a big heart. She folded the paper and scribbled TOP SECRET, FOR SADIE’S EYES ONLY!! on the front. Then she handed it to Beckett and whispered, “For Sadie.”

  Beckett took off down the hall, and Ash went calmly back downstairs to work on the puzzle while she waited.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  “Ashley!” Sadie screamed from the top of the steps. “Jacob Brown is not my boyfriend!”

  Their dads looked up from the shark puzzle with raised eyebrows. Ash just smiled and fit together two more pointy teeth. If Van Ness Media was anything like her siblings, they wouldn’t be able to keep personal information private for long.

  CHAPTER 20

  THIS JUST IN:

  Proof

  The next day after school, Ash and Maya turned on “Jacob’s” laptop in their basement television studio. They connected to Wi-Fi and logged in to their fake account. The Planet Pizza Monthly was there, just as they’d left it.

  “No ads here,” Maya said with a frown.

  “We knew there wouldn’t be, though,” Ash pointed out. “There are no ads in Van Ness Media.”

  “I know they’re keeping profiles on all of us. I just know it.”

  “But how can we prove it if we never leave Van Ness Media?”

  Maya placed the laptop on the washing machine and leaned against the dryer. Ash sat down on a step. They both stared at the dusty floor.

  “What other information did we give them about Jacob,” Maya asked, “when we opened the account?”

  Ash thought back to yesterday afternoon, smiling at the memory of naming too many presidents. “Name, username and password, birthday, email . . .”

  Maya stood up straight, her head barely missing the low ceiling. “Maybe there’s something in his email?”

  Ash shrugged. “It’s worth checking. Here, take my phone.”

  Maya positioned herself for optimum light. Ash brought the laptop to the step. They both waited until a truck passed on the street outside, making a racket and rattling the walls.

  “One day has passed,” Ash said to the camera, “and it’s time to check Jacob Brown’s email account.” She typed in his username and password, holding a hopeful breath. Then she let it out. “No new emails,” she reported, spinning the laptop to face the camera.

  Maya cut recording and plopped down next to Ash again, newly disappointed.

  “It’s only been one day,” Ash reasoned. “It might take a lot longer for the information to travel.”

  “It might even be years,” Maya said sadly, like she’d been hoping to avoid sharing this bad news. “Because we’re kids. Dev said there are probably companies compiling information about kids, making the profiles more and more detailed, so they can sell them for a real lot of money when we turn eighteen.”

  Eighteen! Ash thought. Jacob Brown was twelve. “You mean we might not be able to report on this story for six years? Would we have to keep making Planet Pizza newsletters every month?”

  The videographer rested her head in her hand. “How could we? There are only eight planets.”

  “And only so many pizza toppings. Or good ones, at least.”

  Maya giggled. “We’d have to do a whole edition about mushrooms.”

  Ash put on her news anchor voice. “Jacob Brown here, with everything you ever wanted to know about red peppers.”

  “Next month,” Maya added jokingly, “green.”

  Ash snorted. “And what will The Underground News report on in the meantime? Dog poo?”

  Maya wrinkled her nose. “Six years of dog poo on the sidewalk? There’d be nowhere safe to step.”

  Ash pushed that disgusting thought from her mind and turned the laptop back to face herself.
“It’s been two minutes. Maybe Jacob got an email now.”

  “An email about anchovies,” Maya joked.

  Ash refreshed the page, and they both looked at it expectantly. But apart from the “Welcome to your Van Ness Media free trial” message from yesterday, the in-box remained empty.

  “Wait,” Ash said. “Look.”

  It had taken a few seconds to load, but an ad had appeared on the side of the in-box. An ad for . . . Domino’s Pizza.

  The girls pulled their eyes away from the ad in order to stare at each other.

  “Holy moly,” Maya whispered. She fumbled for Ash’s phone and started recording the screen.

  “It could be a coincidence,” Ash said, too tingly with nerves and excitement and fear to remember to sound like a newscaster.

  She refreshed the page. A new ad loaded. This time, Maya captured her shocked expression first, then slowly panned to reveal the ad: Pizza Hut.

  “One more time,” Maya mouthed.

  Ash hit refresh. The ad reloaded. The Baltimore Planetarium.

  Back in news anchor mode, Ash gulped and faced the camera. The Renegade Reporters had hit on a major, major story. “This is Ashley Simon-Hockheimer,” she said, “with proof that nothing kids do in Van Ness Media software is private.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Anchors Reflect on Alphabet of Woe

  It was tempting to go to air immediately, using only the evidence and footage they had so far. But Brielle said great editing couldn’t be rushed, and Maya said they should interview an expert on data brokers, and Ash knew a responsible journalist had to at least ask Van Ness Media for a comment. So, using what they’d learned from Ms. Sullivan, they made a list of everything they’d need to complete their report. It was going to take at least a week to check everything off, which meant Harry had some time to catch up, but Ash tried not to panic. If she went to air now with only half the story, she’d open the door to Harry breaking the rest, like he had with Lucy’s bike.

  The delay still tested Ash’s patience, though, especially because she had to take a one-day break from the investigation to observe a holiday called Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur was the holiest day of the year for Jews, and in Ash’s family, that meant refraining from doing any type of work. Ash didn’t think Yom Kippur could be called a holiday at all, because it wasn’t a happy celebration filled with parties and food; it was a serious day of prayer and reflection. In addition to staying home from work, grown-ups were supposed to fast, which meant Dad and Abba both went twenty-four hours without eating or drinking anything at all, even water. Since Ash wasn’t yet thirteen, she didn’t need to fast, but she decided that she’d try it this year, as a challenge.

  She was challenged from the moment she opened her bedroom door in the morning. The sweet smell of pancakes was drifting up from the kitchen. “Sadie!” Ash said when she saw Abba standing by the stove. “Can’t you just have cereal or something?”

  “Beckett wants pancakes too,” Sadie said, getting the syrup from the refrigerator.

  Beckett squealed in his high chair. “An-cake!”

  “But Abba’s fasting. How do you think he feels making you fluffy, delicious pancakes when he’s not allowed to eat them?”

  “He didn’t really mind,” Abba said about himself, pouring batter onto the griddle, “until you talked about how fluffy and delicious they’re going to be.”

  “Sorry, Abba,” Ash said.

  “I forgive you,” Abba said.

  Dad came into the kitchen, straightening his tie. “Apologies, forgiveness. You two are really embracing the Yom Kippur spirit.”

  Yom Kippur was meant to be a day of reflecting on things you did wrong over the past year and thinking about how you could be a better person moving forward. But it was only nine o’clock in the morning, and Ash already wondered how grown-ups thought about anything other than food. She’d planned on fasting at least until lunchtime, when they got back from synagogue. But that was before she’d known there’d be pancakes for breakfast. Sadie was rolling one up and dipping it in syrup.

  “You don’t have to fast this year,” Dad reminded Ash, seeing her staring.

  “I know,” Ash said with sigh. “But I want to try.”

  “Yum,” said Sadie. A line of syrup dripped slowly down her chin.

  Dad rolled his eyes. “And you don’t have to taunt your sister.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie chirped.

  “I forgive you,” Ash muttered. Then she went back upstairs to get ready for synagogue, hoping she wouldn’t be able to smell the pancakes from the shower.

  Ash had planned on staying with her parents and grandparents in the adult service this year—she wasn’t working or eating, so why not go grown-up all the way?—but Sadie didn’t want to go to the kids’ service by herself. She spent most of the car ride begging Ash to stay with her, just one more year, and Ash, lacking the willpower to argue without any breakfast in her belly, eventually caved. She regretted it the minute she walked into the kids’ service and saw—of course—Harry E. Levin.

  “Hi, Ash,” he said. “Are you fasting?”

  “Trying to. What about you?”

  “Yep. I did it last year too. It’s easy. I could have gone two whole days if I had to.”

  It took all of Ash’s good Yom Kippur intentions to resist rolling her eyes. She didn’t believe him for a second. Leave it to Harry E. Levin to lie and brag on the holiest day of the year.

  Sadie wanted to sit in the very front, and Ash didn’t argue, figuring Harry wouldn’t want to follow. But he did, and he sat down right next to them, even though there were rows of open seats farther back.

  “I’ve been watching your show,” he said to Ash.

  “Did you watch the episode with Maya’s brother?” Sadie asked. “Wasn’t it good?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said judiciously. “It was pretty good.”

  Ash eyed him suspiciously. “For real?”

  He looked right back at her, poker-faced. “For real.”

  The two of them kept staring at each other, silent. It was such an unexpected way for the conversation to go, neither one seemed to know what to say next.

  Sadie chatted on, oblivious to the weirdness. “The Underground News is working on a big, top secret story right now. Ash won’t tell me what it is, but I think it has to do with Van Ness Media.”

  “A big, top secret story about Van Ness Media,” Harry repeated, his eyes still on his rival anchor. “I’m working on one too.”

  “You are?” Sadie asked. “For what?”

  “The News at Nine,” Harry said.

  “Whoa!” said Sadie. “I wonder if it’s the same news.”

  Harry gave a mysterious smirk. Ash tried to think of a way to get him to say more without revealing anything herself, but before she could come up with anything, Rabbi Werner approached the podium and clapped her hands.

  “Welcome to junior congregation,” the rabbi said. “We’re going to start with an alphabet game.”

  Sadie got excited, but Ash sighed. She was too old for alphabet games. Why did she let Sadie talk her into coming to the kids’ service?

  “On Yom Kippur,” the rabbi continued, “we reflect on mistakes we made this past year. We even sing a prayer called the Ashamnu, in which we list our sins alphabetically. So this morning, I’d like us to come up with our own Ashamnu, with a transgression for each letter of the alphabet. I’ll begin.” The rabbi held up a paper with the letter A and said, “For A, we could say ‘arrogance,’ which means acting like you’re better than other people.” She wrote arrogance on the paper, and Ash tried hard not to look at Harry, even though his photo could be in the dictionary under that very word.

  “Does anyone else have an A?” the rabbi asked.

  A boy raised his hand. “Being annoying.”

  “That starts with a B,” said his youn
ger brother.

  “Now you’re just being annoying,” the older brother said, and everyone laughed.

  “Let’s do B,” said Rabbi Werner.

  “Bad behavior?” suggested a girl.

  The rabbi wrote it on the B paper.

  Harry raised his hand. “Bragging,” he said.

  Easy for you to think of that one, Ash thought.

  “Very good,” said the rabbi. “C?”

  “Comparing,” Sadie said, “and competing!”

  Harry’s guilty of those too, Ash thought. So far, he embodied transgressions for every letter of the alphabet.

  The game continued. Ash didn’t raise her hand at all, but she did come up with words in her head. It was easy since she was sitting next to Harry; all she had to do was think of his personality traits.

  “How about J?” asked the rabbi.

  “Jealousy,” Harry said.

  He didn’t look at Ash as he said it, but she could feel that it was meant for her, and her face got warm with embarrassment. Yes, she’d been jealous of him. So what? It didn’t mean she was a bad person. She raised her hand for the first time. The rabbi was quick to call on her. “Judging other people,” Ash said pointedly.

  “Good one,” Rabbi Werner said, writing it down. “K?”

  “Killing!” shouted a girl in the back.

  “Oh my,” said the rabbi. “What about L?”

  “Lying,” said Sadie.

  “Good one, Sade,” Ash whispered. She thought of Harry again, but then her mind drifted to Maria Van Ness. The software CEO claimed she didn’t want to expose kids to advertising, but Ash knew she was lying. Maybe it wasn’t technically a lie, since she didn’t have ads in her own software, but she was being very . . .

  “Misleading,” Ash said for M, deciding that maybe she wasn’t too old for alphabet games after all. She waited patiently for P, then shot her hand into the air to say “Privacy. Well, not respecting someone’s privacy.”

  “Prying?” Harry suggested.

  “Sort of,” Ash said, but she was drowned out by a girl shouting “Poisoning someone!” It was the same girl who’d said “killing” and “murdering,” which meant Rabbi Werner was now looking a bit worried. She hurried the game along until they came up with something for Z, “popping zits.”