by Beth Vrabel
of sight.
THE NEXT MORNING, I darted down the stairs and to the front porch to get our copy of the Bear Creek Gazette. All night I had lain in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Whoever had my bedroom last—maybe Gerald, Thom’s old best friend—had put glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling. They weren’t bright anymore, just dim blobs. For some reason, they made me feel lonely.
I missed Dad. I tried to imagine what he would say about the article I was going to write. I knew if I could see him, his eyes would get crinkly at the corners when he heard I had spent the whole day with friends.
He’d tell me what to do next. I knew he would. But I couldn’t talk to Dad in this house. I just couldn’t seem to reach him here. The park was the only place where I could.
By the time the sun came up, I had convinced myself that the Gazette’s news editor had taken my advice and had looked into the park situation now that Chief Rodgers had closed it to the public. When more people heard about what was going on there, they’d pay attention and the vandals would be caught, and I would be back on those swings staring up toward the sky instead of at glowy sticker blobs.
I grabbed the paper from the stoop and sat at the kitchen table. Pushing aside the piles of letters, I smoothed it out. Quickly, I scanned the headlines. The whole front page was national and political news, except for one article along the right side about how school was beginning a week earlier this year because there were so many snow days last year. (Only six more weeks of summer break.) Dad would’ve shaken his head at the lack of local coverage. What’s the point of a local newspaper if folks can’t get local news?
Then I spotted the headline along the bottom: Bear Creek Gazette closing doors. I wanted to be surprised, but after seeing the newsroom, I had guessed this was about to happen. After a 33-year stint as your community newspaper, the Gazette is closing its operations, effective in two weeks. That was just the kind of article Mom and Dad’s old newspaper had to run a few months before we moved. Mom had kept that issue on the counter so long that one of the movers had used it to wrap up our water glasses.
I swallowed another sour feeling before flipping through the rest of the paper. Nothing about the park on page two, three, four, or five. And that was it. The rest were grocery store ads. I groaned and crumpled the paper in my fist.
“Hey there,” Mom said from behind me. I had been so caught up in my search I hadn’t heard her coming down the creaky steps. She cupped my shoulder in her hand. “What has you so worked up this morning?”
I glanced at her. She wore jeans and one of Dad’s old T-shirts. Her hair was loose and hadn’t been combed, let alone curled. Her eyes somehow looked bigger than they used to. Maybe because she was sleeping more at night and maybe because she hadn’t been working on her book yet that day—they weren’t tired. I thought about talking to her, unloading everything about the park and the mysterious vandals and the friends I sort of had now and about how the newspaper here was all wrong—how everything in Bear Creek (except maybe the friends) was all wrong.
But, like I said, this was the first time she hadn’t looked tired or sad since we had gotten to Bear Creek. So, I just smoothed the paper back out again, folded it up, and handed it to her. “Nothing,” I said. “I’m going to get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Mom asked. She plodded over to the coffeepot and stared at it for a second. Coffee had always been this thing with Dad. Although we never had a lot of money, Mom said he acted like a millionaire about his coffee. We had this huge red and black coffee maker that also churned out espressos and lattes. It even had a section to grind the beans. Dad was always the one who took charge of it because Mom said a Mr. Coffee pot worked just as well for her.
“Dad showed me how to make Americanos,” I told her.
“I could show you.”
Mom smiled. “That sounds nice.”
Soon we were both sipping coffee at the table. My coffee, technically speaking, was mostly milk and sugar.
Mom smiled wide. “This makes me feel like myself again,” she said. “Your dad, he used to make me a pot of coffee every morning, no matter how late he had worked.”
“I can do that now,” I offered.
“Let’s have coffee together,” Mom said. “Just like this. Me and you, planning our days. The way you and Dad used to go to the park and talk. We can—”
“I still talk to Dad at the park,” I said. I got up and poured my coffee down the drain. It was too bitter. “Like I said, I need to get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Mom repeated.
Ready for what?
A minute ago, I was getting ready to write an article for the Bear Creek Gazette. But now? That didn’t seem big enough. Maybe I was ready for something else. Something bigger.
“Mom,” I asked, “what would Dad do if his newspaper wouldn’t—maybe couldn’t—cover an important story?”
Mom paused, her hand stalling where it had been tracing the top of her mug. She cleared her throat. “You know your dad, Nellie. He’d find a way, even if he had to find a different newspaper that could cover the news.”
I smiled. “That’s what I thought. Can I borrow the printer for a couple hours?”
“Sure,” Mom said. “I’m going to tackle some boxes this morning.”
I darted over and gave her a quick hug.
“What’s that for?” she laughed.
“Just ’cause.” I looked around the cramped farmhouse and tried to imagine it without the boxes. Still pretty small. “I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs, threw on some fresh clothes, and, without even pausing to make sure Min wasn’t watching, ran across the street.
“Thom?” I called out, first toward the house, then toward the top of the tree, and finally toward the barn door.
“Nellie?” I heard him answer, but not from any of those three places. Instead, his voice drifted down from the top of the barn. There he was sprawled out on his back, staring straight up at the sky.
“What are you doing up there, Thom Hunter?” I yelled.
“Well, right now I’m just looking at the sky. But a minute ago, I was searching,” he said.
“Searching for what?” What could he possibly be searching for up on top of a roof? Was this one of those bag-of-smells meaning-of-life moments? Are friends supposed to know how to respond to this kind of thing?
“Stuff,” he said as he scooted to the edge. His legs dangled over the side of the roof. I heard some shuffling and then a
little goat peeked over the edge, too. Thom put his hand on the goat’s head. “This is Stuff.”
“Oh!” I said, relieved we wouldn’t be sharing our feelings after all.
Thom motioned for me to follow him to the back side of the barn where the roof sloped lower to the ground. The goat’s enclosure was right against it. Thom stood with one foot on the fencepost and his bent knee on the side of the barn before wrapping his arms around Stuff and lowering the little brown-and-white goat toward me. I wasn’t all that into hugging a goat first thing in the morning, but I guessed Stuff happens. It brayed in my ear as I put it on the ground. It smelled like that time Mom wanted to give composting a shot.
Thom hopped down after the goat.
“What’s up?” he asked. Stuff rubbed its head into
his side.
“How’s the wi-fi in your barn?”
Thom didn’t seem surprised by the question. Maybe friends are supposed to just roll with rando questions. “My parents work from home. Wi-fi could probably stretch to your house.”
I bounced like Min. “Perfect!” I said and filled him in on my idea.
I put the pile of flyers in my backpack and called up the stairs that I was leaving. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, Mom!”
“M’okay,” she called back right away. I trotted up a few steps and saw her humming as she unpacked a box of books.
When I got to the porch, Thom was waiting for me. So
was Min.
“We’re making a club?�
�� Min said. “I thought we were just writing an article? Now we’re making a whole club! And the club’s going to write a whole newspaper! All of us, together?”
I pulled a flyer out of my backpack and handed it to her.
Read all about it!
Newspaper Club
Bear Creek newspaper seeking local, focused reporters, editors, photographers, and designers. Will train!
Must be willing to work with a young news editor with a lifetime (11 years) of experience and collaborate with others, including Stuff. All ideas welcome, but Nellie Murrow is in charge.
Informational meeting 3 p.m. Saturday at the newsroom (Thom Hunter’s barn).
“Why do you get to be in charge?” Min shook the flyer.
“Because it’s my paper.” I zipped up the bag and headed toward town.
“But we were writing the article together.” Min pulled on my sleeve. “Besides, I thought we were writing it for the Gazette. To be printed in a real newspaper.”
At this, I stopped. I turned toward Min and made my voice deep like Dad’s when he was telling a reporter to do better. “My newspaper will be a real newspaper. Realer than that Gazette, okay?” I straightened my spine. “Besides,” I said, “why would I give them our article when it could be in our
own paper?”
Min blinked at me. Then a slow smile stretched across her face. “So, it’s ours.”
“What? Wait. It’s—”
Thom stood shoulder to shoulder with Min. Both of them looked at me with the same smile.
“Yeah, fine,” I said. “If you’d like to think of it as ours, I guess it could be considered ours.” I took a deep breath. I was being really mature about all of this. I could almost picture Dad’s eyes getting crinkly and Mom squeezing my shoulder like she had this morning. It felt right in a way that nothing had felt right since we moved to Bear Creek.
“But we each have to pull our weight,” I added. “And that means putting up these flyers.” I pulled a handful from my backpack and handed them to Thom, but when I turned to give a stack to Min, she was already skipping down the sidewalk toward her home.
“Where are you going?” I shouted after her.
“Home! I need to design the thing at the top of my newspaper!”
“That thing at the top is called a masthead,” I snapped. “It’s the newspaper title. Ours is going to be News by Nellie. I already decided.”
Min laughed. “Nah, I’ll come up with something better.”
I didn’t realize I was huffing out of my nose until Thom nudged me with his elbow. “Stuff does that sometimes, right before he rams something. Are you going to ram
something?”
“No,” I grumped. I turned and pulled the backpack up my arm. The truth was, Min probably would come up with a great masthead. I shuddered remembering something and then whipped around. Cupping my hands on either side of my mouth, I shouted at her: “Not a single heart. You hear me, Min Kim-Franklin? There better not be a single heart on my masthead!”
“Our masthead,” she shouted back and stuck out her tongue at me.
This whole newspaper thing might be the biggest mistake I’ve ever made in my eleven years in the business, I thought to myself. But then Thom tilted his head toward town and said, “Let’s go,” and I had another thought.
Maybe it was the best decision ever.
WHEN I ASKED CHEF Wells if I could hang one of the flyers in the diner, he came out from behind the counter and down a short ramp to the dining section of the restaurant to help us find the perfect spot.
“How about here?” he suggested, pointing to a blank square of wall behind the utensils and condiments. “Everyone in town will see it if it’s here.”
I thanked him and he went back behind the counter again. I stretched up on my tiptoes to hang the flyer. Too bad Thom had gone to the hardware store to hang one; he could’ve given me a boost. My arms barely reached the back wall and my stomach knocked over the ketchup when I tried.
“Hey, let me help you with that.”
I turned to see a tall boy standing behind me. He had dark brown eyes that tilted upward when he smiled, light brown skin with freckles on his nose, and a camera hanging from a strap around his neck.
He put down a box of framed photographs and took the flyer from my hand. I moved to the side and he easily held it up against the wall. “This okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s great,” I said.
The boy picked up the box and started to turn toward the front of the diner.
“Wait!” I called out. “Did you read it? The flyer, I mean.”
He smiled again, and for some reason that made my face feel hot. I’d like to say that such a reaction is not a decision and therefore shouldn’t be a big deal. Luckily, this boy didn’t seem all that surprised by a girl blushing when he smiled. He scanned the flyer. “A newspaper club? That’s cool.”
“We need a photographer,” I said and pointed to the box of prints he held.
“Oh, yeah? My work isn’t really newspaper style,” the boy said. He slid the box onto a table, took out a photo, and held it up. It was a landscape shot of the town bridge at sunset. It
was beautiful.
I glanced around the diner, seeing all of the framed photos for sale. “Are all of these yours?”
The boy nodded. “Yeah, it’s a fun hobby.”
“Hobby?” I echoed. The photos could’ve hung in an art gallery. I held out my hand to shake his. “My name is Nellie Murrow. I’d like you to work at my newspaper.” I sighed. “Our newspaper.”
“Gordon Burke,” the boy replied and turned back to pick up the box. “No offense, but I think I’m busy.”
Just then Gloria came over to replenish the silverware in the bins. Gordon’s eyes stayed on her as she read the flyer. “Hey!” she said. “This reminds me. I called the Bear Creek Gazette about the recipe contest idea and they turned me down. Said it wasn’t ‘newsworthy’ enough for their last issues.”
“We’ll run it,” I chirped, “in our newspaper. You could write it yourself, if you want. We’re looking for an editorial board.”
“Like an editor?” Gloria asked, her eyebrows rising.
“No,” I quickly replied. “I’m the editor. An editorial board is the part of the paper in charge of writing opinion pieces on behalf of the newspaper. But you could also write personal opinion pieces, if you wanted.”
“Is this, like, a school thing?” Gordon asked. “I have enough school stuff.”
“No.” I straightened my spine. “No teachers. No adults. Just us figuring out what we care about and focusing on that kind of news.”
“Not school?” Gordon repeated. I nodded.
“Huh,” Gloria said. “That sounds pretty cool.”
“Yeah,” Gordon echoed. He glanced again at the flyer. “So, you could write about stuff going on at the school and have it not be monitored by the school?”
I paused, making sure that he was talking about stuff as in events, not Stuff as in the goat. I was pretty sure he meant the first. “Yeah,” I said. “We’re an independent press.”
Gloria crossed her arms and studied Gordon. “Would your mom let you do something like this?”
That’s when I remembered where I had heard the last name Burke before—that morning in the article in the Gazette about school starting. The superintendent of Bear Creek School District was Dr. Valerie Burke. Gordon smiled, but only half of his mouth stretched back. “It’d really get under her skin.”
Gloria laughed. “I guess you’re in?”
Gordon shrugged but kept his smile. I wasn’t so sure I liked him smiling like that at Gloria.
“The meeting is Saturday. At the newsroom,” I said.
Gloria leaned toward the flyer again. “Which is… Thom Hunter’s barn?”
“Yes,” I said. “It has great wi-fi and Stuff.”
The little bell at the counter rang out. “I’ll think about it,” Gloria said as she headed back to work.
>
“Yeah, me too,” Gordon said, snapping a shot of the flyer before following behind her to talk with Chef Wells.
“Yes!” I fist-pumped to no one at all. But as I turned toward the door, I saw the quiet red-headed girl watching me from one of the diner seats.
Her gaze shifted to the flyer and then back to her lap. I pulled another copy from my backpack and slid it onto the table in front of her.
“You should join the Newspaper Club,” I said.
The girl’s face flushed as deep red as her hair and she didn’t say anything as she picked up the paper. But when I started to walk away, she whispered, “I’m Charlotte.”
I turned back to her. “I’m Nellie.”
“I’m not…” Charlotte looked down at the flyer. “I’m not much of a writer. But I read a lot.” The book beside her was thick with sticky notes.
“You’re perfect for the club,” I said. “See you Saturday.”
I paused outside of Miss Juliet’s ice cream shop. It felt strange to go inside by myself. For some reason, not having Min and Thom with me made me feel shy, especially when I saw Miss Juliet wiping her eyes with the bottom of her apron as I pushed open the door.
“Just a moment,” she said.
I stood in front of the ice cream counter, looking at all of the merry flavors. “Happy Jalapeño,” I read out. “That sounds dangerous.”
Miss Juliet laughed, even though her eyes were still glassy. “I tried to spice things up. The jalapeños are candied. Not too spicy at all. Plus, the dairy neutralizes the heat.”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “My dad would love it, though.”
“Oh, yeah?” Miss Juliet said.
“Yeah, the hotter the better. Dad put hot sauce on everything, even mac and cheese.”
“Well, tell him to—” Miss Juliet’s eyes widened and then she looked at the floor.
“Puts,” I said at the same time. “He puts it on everything. I’m not sure what kind of hot sauce they have in Asia, but I’m sure he still puts hot sauce on everything.”