The Last Reporter (7 page)

Adam told her they had a webmaster and business managers selling ads and raising money to pay to get the
Slash
printed. He didn’t mention who; he figured it would be better if she thought they were actual grown-ups with suits and shoes with laces, instead of the Ameche brothers working in a storage shed.

“Can I buy an ad?” asked Mrs. Quigley. “I’d be delighted. Would two hundred dollars help things along? I could give you a check right now.”

Oh, would it. If only. “I’m sorry,” said Adam. “We can’t. Not while you’re principal. No offense, but it would be kind of like an ethics violation. I mean, not you, Mrs. Quigley. You’re no ethics violation; you’re the nicest principal. But if we took —”

Mrs. Quigley nodded. “It would be like I was trying to bribe you to put good news in the
Slash.
You’re worried that for my two hundred dollars I’d want you to say, ‘Mrs. Quigley, the world’s greatest acting principal . . .’ You are something, young man. I don’t meet many adults as ethical as you.”

Adam was embarrassed. He didn’t feel too ethical. He knew that if it weren’t for Jennifer, his ethics would be way down in the sewer with everyone else’s.

“So how can I help?” she asked.

Adam told her they wanted to do a story on the state test scores going up but he wasn’t sure where to start. He said everybody was saying how well Harris did, and he was wondering if she could give him the results for each grade and some reasons she thought the school did so well. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mrs. Quigley. I hate before school/after school mandatory/voluntary prep for the test,” said Adam. “But I guess it worked, right?”

“Well, maybe,” said Mrs. Quigley. “If you’re taking sample tests and drilling kids day after day so everyone gets so familiar with the test, scores will go up. But there’s more to it, Adam.”

“I know,” said Adam. “We talked about it at the
Slash
meeting, like teachers got better, right?”

“Well, I’m very proud of our teachers,” said Mrs. Quigley. “But we didn’t get a single new teacher this year. It’s the same group as last year when the scores were lower. Adam, can we go off-the-record for a minute?”

Adam nodded. He wasn’t worried about Mrs. Quigley. If there was any chance to get it on the record later, she’d do anything to help.

“You need to go see Dr. Duke,” said Mrs. Quigley. “I believe her title’s Second Associate Deputy Superintendent for Assessment.”

Adam’s heart sank. The last thing he wanted was to talk to another deputy super-duper. It had been bad enough talking to Dr. Bleepin for the last
Slash.
People who lied for a living were exhausting to interview.

“Cheer up,” Mrs. Quigley said. “Dr. Duke is not like Dr. Bleepin. Dr. Duke’s a good woman. I’ve known her forever. She spent twenty years teaching before going into administration. She really understands testing. That’s her job. She can give you a full picture of what’s going on, not just here at Harris. She’s got all the numbers for the county and the state. I promise, you won’t be sorry. It’s an important story, Adam. It’s every bit as important as the one you did on the Bolands. I’ll call her and let her know you’re coming by.”

Adam asked if her office was near Dr. Bleepin’s. “I don’t think she’d want to be seen with me if Dr. Bleepin’s around,” he said. “He’d probably report her to the deputy super police.”

“Well, Dr. Duke outranks Dr. Bleepin, but it’s a good point,” said Mrs. Quigley. “I’ll e-mail and see what she says. Maybe you could use my office.”

Adam was grateful, but he felt discouraged. Wasn’t there ever a story where you could get all the information in one place? Another story that wasn’t going to turn out to be as easy as he’d hoped.

“Why so glum?” said Mrs. Quigley. “I know it’s complicated, but life is complicated. It’s a blessing to see the complications. You and Jennfier have done remarkable things with the
Slash.
That mention in the
New York Times
— amazing. Most people go to their grave never making the front page unless they murder someone.

“It hasn’t helped yet,” she continued, “but it may — you may get the
Slash
back in this school yet. Not right away, probably not while I’m here, but maybe sooner than you think. I know it’s hard. The better you do, the more people expect. I could give you the Harris test scores and a quote about how great we did and stop there. That’s what I’d do with most middle-school reporters. That’s what I’d do with the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
or Boland News 12. They live on the surface. Not you — I’d feel like I was cheating you.”

She said that she was glad to hear about the business manager and webmaster. “You’re going to need a few grown-ups to help out,” she said. “My door’s always open, you know that. I told you my dad was a newspaperman back east in Boston. He used to say that great reporters comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. You sit with Dr. Duke, you’ll learn stuff that will open your eyes. Before you’re done, you’ll be afflicting people all the way from Harris to the state capital.”

Adam thanked her. It was nice to be praised, but an easy story would be better.

“So what do you think?” said Don Ameche.

“Pretty amazing, huh?” said Alan Ameche.

“Right,” said Jennifer. “Pretty amazing.”

“Definitely pretty . . . um . . . amazing,” said Adam. He could feel it — Jennifer was going to explode. Adam liked the Ameche brothers a lot, and God knows, he liked Jennifer, but somehow, he couldn’t make them like one another. Whenever Jennifer was around, the exact wrong words came out of the Ameche brothers’ mouths.

He and Jennifer had biked to the May Way West studios to find out how ad sales were doing.

But that’s not what the Ameche brothers wanted to talk about.

“Look at that action,” said Don.

“See — the moment of impact,” said Alan.
“Crash.”

“Did you miss it?” said Don. “I get worked up every time I see it. Let me play it back.”

“Stop,” said Alan. “That’s it. . . . I love this.”

Adam must have been seeing wrong. He couldn’t spot the crash.

“Look,” said Don. “See the bumpers touch? . . . There!”

“And look at the guy jamming on his brakes,” said Alan.

“See the car rock?” said Don.

“It’s a little hard to tell . . . .” said Adam. As he stared at the computer screen, he could feel his butt getting sore from the plastic crate, but that was not what was making him uncomfortable.

Jennifer was way sorer than Adam’s butt.

“Look!” said Don. “The guy’s jumping out of the car. He’s pissed.”

“See how he walks around and checks the point of impact?” said Alan. “And the other guy gets out and looks at his bumper.”

“Look at them look,” said Don. “Look how they’re looking. Did you see that look he gave him? And now they’re looking at each other look. I thought it was going to be a huge fight.”

“What’s all the shaking?” asked Adam. The video seemed to have been shot during an earthquake.

“Alan was so excited to find real news,” said Don. “He started jumping up and down. He kept yelling, ‘Anybody here see what happened?’”

“It made the picture jiggly,” said Alan. “I’ll do better next time.” He stopped the video.

Adam asked what happened next.

“Nothing,” said Don.

“Nothing?” said Adam.

“They both got in their cars and drove off,” said Alan.

“Didn’t they exchange papers or something?” asked Adam. “Or wait for the police? That’s what they do on TV. That’s usually when the guy and girl fall in love.” He took a sideways glance at Jennifer.

No sign of love there.

“I guess it wasn’t a big enough accident,” said Alan.

“No real damage,” said Don. “Plus it was two guys.”

Adam kept looking at the screen. He did not want to make eye contact with Jennifer.

“This will be great on the new
Slash
website,” said Alan.

“We’re going to put it on as soon as we get the site up,” said Don.

“Maybe do a link — great car crashes,” said Alan.

“And fires,” said Don.

“Police chases,” said Alan.

“Ambulances,” said Don.

Why didn’t Jennifer say something?

The three boys were now staring at Jennifer.

“The wall,” she whispered.

“The wall?” asked Don.

“The wall?” asked Alan. “They didn’t hit a wall. It was bumpers.”

“Oh — you want a car crashing into a wall?” said Don. “No problem. . . . I just Google . . . hit
Images
. . . type in
car, crashes, wall
. . . . Look!” There were 291 photos of cars crashing into walls. He clicked the first. The car was halfway into someone’s living room. Three firefighters were studying it. “How’s that? A wall crash in under ten seconds,” said Don. “You want a video? I go to YouTube. . . .”

Adam was getting frantic. Jennifer seemed to be in a trance. She was staring at the storage-shed wall. Adam followed her gaze. There was a big daddy longlegs climbing up. “The spider on the wall?” asked Adam. Was Jennifer afraid of spiders? He couldn’t remember.

“The wall,” Jennifer repeated.

Maybe she was frozen in terror. Like that time in the climbing tree. Adam looked at the wall again. On a shelf there was an old stuffed duck, covered by cobwebs, with a small pile of peat moss on its head. Jennifer was kind of environmental. Maybe she was mad about that?

“Are we playing ‘I’m thinking of’?” said Don. “I know! The saw hanging on the wall?”

“I love guessing games,” said Alan. “The 1987 calendar? No?”

“Adam,” Jennifer said, her voice a whisper. “Did you tell them about the wall between the news side and the business side? The wall?”

That wall.
Thank heavens. It was so much easier if you knew what you were talking about.

The truth was, he may have overlooked mentioning
that
wall to the Ameches.

“Look,” said Jennifer. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the
Slash,
but we’re not big on car crashes. I mean, if a car crashed into the school, that would be a big story for us. Or if some kids from our school were hurt in a car crash, that would be a story. But if you want general car crashes, all you have to do is turn on News 12. The TV news, that’s all they have — car crashes, and fires, and people shooting each other, and people being arrested for selling drugs, and other mayhem. That may be how the world seems to you, but I walk out my door and I don’t see a lot of that. To me, things generally seem to be in order. We try to go for stuff that really affects a lot of our readers, things they might not know if it wasn’t for the
Slash.
Stuff kind of lying under the surface that can cause big problems if you don’t shine light on it. Like when the county had a secret plan to take down all the basketball hoops. Or the principal tried to steal seventy-five thousand dollars of the school’s money. Or the science fair being unfair. Or the three-hundred-year-old climbing tree almost getting cut down. Or kids from the Willows being forced to move away because the Bolands were buying up their neighborhood.”

Adam stared at Jennifer. How did she speak so well? He wondered if the Ameche brothers understood a word of it.

“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” said Jennifer, “but we can’t have you putting whatever video you like on the
Slash
website. Adam and I, we’re the news editors. And you — you’re the business managers. We do news. You do money. And there needs to be a wall between the two parts of the paper. News on one side of the wall. Business on the other. If you’ve got something you think should go on the
Slash
website, you need to tell us, and we’ll see if we agree. But just because you know how to put something on the site, doesn’t mean it’s OK.”

The Ameche brothers looked at each other. “Um, we didn’t mean to break any rules,” said Don.

“We didn’t know about the wall,” said Alan.

“We thought we were giving you like, free, extra news,” said Alan. “We had no idea it was a violation. This is the first newspaper business we had.”

“In our other businesses, we don’t have walls,” said Don. “Everyone just works together to make money.”

“Yeah, like our golf business. Mom wakes us up in the middle of the night,” said Alan. “And helps us get on the wet suits.”

“And Uncle Louie corks up our faces,” said Don.

“Corks up your faces?” said Jennifer.

“Yeah, so we don’t show up in the headlights,” said Alan.

“And Grandpa Mike drops us off at the twelfth hole . . .” said Don.

“At White Lake Golf Club . . .” said Alan.

“And stands guard and puts the balls in the buckets,” said Don, “while we search the water hazard.”

“And Uncle Louie hoses us off afterward,” said Alan. “The water hazard’s really mucky on the bottom. You get a lot of weeds in your hair.”

Adam and Jennifer looked at each other. The Ameche brothers pulled golf balls out of the water hazard at the twelfth hole at White Lake Golf Club? In the middle of the night?
That’s
what all those dirty balls in buckets were. That’s how their golf-ball business worked. That’s how they could sell three-dollar golf balls for seventy-five cents — they got them free.

“Is that legal?” asked Jennifer.

“Nobody cares,” said Don.

“It’s just old, lost balls golfers hit in the water,” said Alan.

“But the golf course is private property,” said Jennifer.

“Next time can I come?” asked Adam.

Jennifer said she had to go, but Adam dragged her outside the May Way West studios and begged her to give the Ameches one more chance. “I think they’re going to be OK,” he said. “We just have to train them on how a newspaper works; I mean, they’re business guys; they’re a little rough about some stuff, but —”

“A little rough?” said Jennifer. “We could spend the rest of our lives investigating the Ameches. We could assign the entire
Slash
Spotlight Team to do a special issue on the Ameches’ five hundred schemiest businesses.”

“Jennifer, look, I’m asking you to trust me. I have a good feeling about the Ameches. We just have to teach them. They seem like fast learners —”

“More like fast earners,” said Jennifer.