Tabloidology (17 page)

“WHAT? A RAZOR? THAT'S AN AWFULLY LOUD RAZOR!”

“RAZOR'S MY BROTHER! IT'S HIS NEW SOUND SYSTEM! HE LIKES HIS MUSIC LOUD!”

“I CAN TELL!”

When Martin bumped the bedroom door open with his shoulder, the music got even louder. Martin shouted, and a deeper gruffer voice yelled something back. Seconds later, the music was turned down.

Martin poked his head out the door and said, “Come on in.”

“What about Razor?”

“He's gone.”

“Gone?” Trixi said, peering through the door. “Where'd he go? Out the window?”

“Yeah. He figures it's safer to jump off the garage roof than to use the stairs.”

Over the next two hours, Martin and Trixi sat in front of Martin's computer, working on their extra special edition of the Upland Green school newspaper. During that time, the power went off twice, two of Sissy's dogs peed on the floor and the fire department roared off to answer three calls. Two freight trains rumbled by and the smoke detector screeched when Sissy baked her next batch of dog treats.

As Trixi left, stepping carefully down the back stairs, she said, “Maybe tomorrow night we should work on the newspaper at my place.” As Martin stepped onto the walkway leading up to Trixi's house, the intruder alarm howled. High-powered spotlights shone from all directions. He froze, waiting for the attack dogs or maybe even machine-gun fire. But when he didn't hear any growling dogs or gunfire, he began to walk very cautiously toward the house. After five steps, he heard a strange hissing sound. The lawn sprinklers switched on and sprayed from every direction.

Martin sprinted to the front door and hammered at the solid oak with his fist. The door swung open, and he tumbled across the shiny monkeywood floor. When Martin looked up, he saw a tall woman in a black uniform glaring down at him.

“What is the meaning of this, young man?”

“It's okay, Mrs. Primrose!” Trixi called from down the hall. “It's Martin, and he's come to work on a project with me.”

“Work on a project, Beatrix? With this boy?” she snorted.

Trixi waved for Martin to come into the family room.

Then she closed the door and pulled up an extra chair to the computer desk. But Martin was still standing across the room by the door.

“Who was that?” Martin said.

“Ah, don't worry about her. She's our housekeeper. She takes care of the house and me so my parents can concentrate on their careers.”

“Oh,” Martin said. “Do you like her?”

“It doesn't really matter if I like her. My parents like her because they say she has
high standards
.”

“Oh,” Martin replied.

“Come on. We'd better get down to work,” Trixi said. “We've got a newspaper to write.”

Wednesday night at 7:00 pm, Martin stood outside the school's staffroom window. Inside, he could see the night janitor, Mr. Meeker, sitting at a table eating his dinner of pickled herring on rye bread. Martin knocked on the window and began to wave his arms crazily. Mr. Meeker put down his sandwich and headed for the front door. Pulling it open a crack, Mr. Meeker grunted, “What ya want, boy?”

“It's an emergency!” Martin said. “I was swinging on the swings, and now I have to go to the bathroom! All of a sudden! Right this minute! Now!”

Before Mr. Meeker could say a word, Martin pushed the door open and ran in.

“You be quick, now!” Mr. Meeker said.

Halfway down the hall, Martin glanced back to make sure the custodian had returned to his pickled-herring sandwich. He ran right past the washroom and straight to the back door. Martin popped the door open and let Trixi into the school. Together, they sneaked down the hall and straight to the photocopy room. As they stood outside the door, Martin tugged at the string hanging around his neck, and out came the glittering photocopy-room key.

Nine minutes later, the door to the photocopy room flew open. Trixi and Martin ran out, followed by billowing clouds of black smoke and the stench of melting plastic. They were out the back door and into the dark night by the time Mr. Meeker had swallowed his last bite of pickled herring.

The next day at school, Trixi and Martin arrived with the
Extra Special Edition of the Upland Green Gossiper.

“We've got to do things exactly the same as we did with the first two editions of the
Gossiper
,” Martin said. “We don't want to take a chance by changing anything and messing it all up.”

“I still think it's great you let me call it the
Gossiper
,” Trixi said.

Martin shook his head and said, “Remember. Exactly the same.”

“Right,” Trixi said. “What about selling them in the front hall? How's that going to work? Baumgartner would be on to us in no time.”

“You're right. We'll have to take our chances and hand them out,” Martin said. “In secret.”

“Why in secret?” Trixi said.

“It's just a feeling I have. I don't think we should be advertising our great plan to save the library. Let's just see what happens.”

“Good thinking,” Trixi said.

That morning, they slipped one copy into Tanis Carswell's open locker, stuffed a copy into Karla Noseworthy's desk, put one copy into Jason Drury's lunch box and slid a copy between the pages of Rob Waxman's math book.

Four copies of the
Extra Special Edition of the Upland Green
Gossiper
were out there for anyone and everyone to read—if they could find them.

But Tanis stayed home that day with a bad case of chickenpox. Karla stuffed her science textbook into her desk and jammed the newspaper into the back corner. Jason's juice box sprang a leak and soaked everything in his lunch box, turning it into a pulpy, mushy, gooey mess that ended up in the dumpster. Rob hated math, so the last book he would ever open was his math textbook.

After she'd handed out four copies of the latest edition of the school newspaper, Trixi went by the office to give Ms. Baumgartner a note from the bus-yard supervisor that confirmed her attendance last Saturday morning. As she reached the doorway, she heard the principal say, “Step aside, everyone! Please move out of the way.” Coming down the hallway from the photocopy room, Ms. Baumgartner and Mr. Barnes, the custodian, were pulling a trolley. Loaded on top of the trolley, Trixi saw what was left of the photocopier—its plastic sides melted and covered in black soot.

“A problem with the photocopier, Ms. Baumgartner?” Trixi said.

“I've never been able to figure this machine out. It was working just fine when I left last night, but when I came in this morning, it was a burnt-out stinky hunk of melted plastic. It looks like the remains of some ritual sacrifice!”

“That is really strange,” Trixi said.

“And of course it would have to happen on the day of the Fall Fair Fundraiser! I've got a million things to organize before tonight. It seems to be one thing after another these days!”

Ms. Baumgartner, with the help of Mrs. Sledge and Mr. Barnes, continued out of the office and through the front door to where a flatbed truck was waiting to cart the old photocopier away.

The office was empty. Trixi just couldn't resist. She tiptoed into Ms. Baumgartner's office and left the note from the bus-yard supervisor on her chair. Then, underneath a stack of file folders on top of Ms. Baumgartner's desk, she slipped the last copy of the
Extra Special Edition of the Upland Green Gossiper.

SIXTEEN

W
hen the doors opened for the Fall Fair Fundraiser, a crowd rushed through the halls to every corner of the school. Among the crowd were Trixi Wilder and Martin Wettmore.

“Let's hit the gym first,” Trixi said. “I figure something big'll probably happen there first.”

“Good idea,” Martin said.

When they entered the gym, everything looked completely normal. Just like every other year, games were set up around the outside edge of the gym. For twenty-five cents, you could try to sink a basketball, toss a ring over a bottle, throw a dart to pop a balloon or, for the little kids, cast a line in the Fish Pond.

“It looks like the only thing they're catching at the Fish Pond are pink hair-clips and plastic dinosaurs,” Trixi said.

“Give it some time,” Martin said. “There's still two and a half hours to go.”

They headed across the gym to one of the most popular activities—the Dunk Tank.

“Wally Lumkowski's not supposed to be sitting in the dunk tank!” Trixi said. “It's supposed to be—”

“I know, I know,” Martin said. “Be patient. I'm sure our special guest will be here soon.”

“I don't know,” Trixi said. “Things look way too normal for my liking.”

“Give it some time,” Martin said. “In the meantime, why don't we check out the Bingo room?”

When they looked in the Bingo room, it was only half-full.

Mrs. Donnelly was selling cards while Mr. Burns called out the numbers just as they did every year.

“Way, way too normal,” Trixi said, checking her watch.

“There's always the auction,” Martin said. “For some reason, I have a good feeling about the auction.”

When they arrived in the music room where the auction was being held, someone had just bid twelve dollars for a deluxe pizza from Peter Pepper's Pizzarama.

“Twelve bucks for a pizza! That's horribly, horribly normal!” Trixi said.

“Let's wait around for the next item. I think we're on the verge of something big here!” Martin said.

Next up for auction was a truckload of firewood. When the auctioneer's gavel hit the podium, he shouted, “Sold! For ninety dollars to the man in the blue sweater. What a bargain!”

Now, even Martin was looking worried. “I wonder if we did something wrong?”

“Of course we did something wrong! Everything's way too normal! Nothing we wrote in that stupid paper is happening!” Trixi said.

“Maybe we should have—,” Martin began, but Trixi was already gone, down the hall to check out the only room left— the Cake Walk.

“This is our last hope,” she said, as they peered in through the door of the Cake Walk room. All they saw was a bunch of kids, marching around in a circle while music played, hoping to win one of the prize cakes.

Trixi shook her head and tapped her watch. “It's already seven o'clock. It's been half an hour and I've seen zippo. Not one single thing we wrote in that stupid little newspaper has happened.”

“There's still a couple of hours to go before it's over,” Martin said.

Trixi jabbed Martin in the chest with her finger. “I knew I never should have listened to your dumb idea. I'm the ideas person around here—not you! And I wasted all that time doing extra writing for nothing. It wasn't even a school assignment. I could have been doing something fun instead.”

“Like what?” Martin said.

“What do you mean, like what?”

“What would be more fun than working on the newspaper?”

“Well…” Trixi looked up at the ceiling. “Well, certainly not washing school buses. I hate that. And definitely not shopping with my mom. That's no fun because she always makes me buy stuff I don't like.”

“But I asked you what would be
more
fun than working on the school newspaper,” Martin said. “I'm no expert, but I sort of thought you were having some fun making up all those wacky stories.”

“While you corrected my spelling,” Trixi added.

“Well, yeah. That's my job,” Martin said. “You're the one who's supposed to come up with all the crazy stuff. And you did.”

“Yeah. I guess I did,” Trixi said. “I guess even if nothing happens, the stories in that paper are pretty great. So, maybe I guess it was kind of fun in a weird sort of way. I guess.”

“Too bad our plan didn't work out, but we didn't have much to lose,” Martin said. “Good thing Ms. Baumgartner'll never hear about our
Extra Special Edition of the Upland Green
Gossiper
. If she found out we printed up another edition of the school newspaper without her permission, she'd blow the roof off the school! She'd probably blast us into orbit and have us washing the international space station!”