“In that case, we will need hats,” I said.
“And cigars,” added Nancy.
“Cigars!” I cried. “We cannot carry cigars around. They are very, very bad for you.”
“We would not light them,” replied Nancy.
“Well, we do not know anyone who smokes cigars,” I told her. “So we cannot borrow any. Thank goodness. Believe me, we do not need them. But we will wear hats. We can borrow them from Watson and your dad, Hannie. And we will stick pieces of paper under the bands. The papers will say PRESS on them. All the best reporters do that.”
As soon as we had eaten lunch we were ready to go. Elizabeth said we could only ring the doorbells of people we know very well. We could not go to strangers’ houses, even in the neighborhood. If we wanted to do that, a grown-up would have to come with us. We promised we would not visit any strangers.
Hannie and Nancy and I put on our PRESS hats. We found three pencils and three small pads of paper so we could take notes. We were ready to go.
“Whose house first?” asked Nancy.
“Melody’s,” replied Hannie.
So we walked across the street to our friend Melody Korman’s house.
I rang the bell. Bill Korman answered it. He is Melody’s big brother.
“Hi,” I said. “We are — ”
“What’s with the hats?” interrupted Bill.
“We are reporters,” I told him. “For a brand new kids’ paper. Our paper. It is called The 3M Gazette. Do you have any news for us? We could write an article about you or your family.”
“Well,” said Bill slowly. He thought for a moment. “Yesterday we got a new blender. I guess that is all.”
“Are you sure that is all?” asked Hannie.
Bill nodded.
“Could we see the blender?” I wanted to know. (We would have to be able to describe it, and maybe say something special about it.)
Bill showed us the blender, and we took some notes. Then we left.
We rang the bell at the Kilbournes’ next door, but no one answered. So we rang Hannie’s bell.
“Ah, the reporters,” said her father. “Am I famous yet?”
“Not yet,” said Hannie. (She giggled.) “Do you have any news?”
“Let me think. Sari just flushed a stuffed animal down the toilet.” (Sari is Hannie’s little sister.) “The plumbers are on their way over.”
That was good. We went to the scene of the crime. We described what the bathroom looked like. We even waited for the plumbers, so we could write about the repair job and how much it cost.
Then we went to Timmy Hsu’s house. Timmy is Chinese-American, and guess what. His grandparents were visiting all the way from the country of China. They were wearing very interesting clothes, and they were speaking Chinese. Even Timmy was speaking Chinese. (We did not know he could do that.) We took lots of notes at the Hsus’ house.
When we left the Hsus’, we went back to the Kilbournes’ and then to my house. We thought about visiting Mrs. Porter who lives next door to me, but we know she is actually a witch, so we decided not to. Anyway, we already had enough news for the first issue of The 3M Gazette.
Andrew’s School
Everybody at the big house was home for Saturday night dinner. But after dinner, people started to leave. Sam and Charlie had dates. Kristy went to Stacey’s house for a sleepover. And Nannie went bowling. (She is very good. She plays on a team.)
I went upstairs. I wanted to read some more of Henry and Ribsy. As I was walking along the hall, I heard a sound.
Sniff, sniff. Sniffle, sniff.
“Andrew?” I said. I backed up. I peeked into his room.
Andrew was on his bed. He was crying, just sitting there crying.
I sat down next to him. “What is the matter?” I asked.
Andrew gulped. Tears were running down his cheeks. “Nothing,” he said.
“But you are crying. Why are you crying?”
“Because … ” Andrew paused. “Because I do not want to go to my new school.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Well, Ryan will not be there. I will not know any of the kids there. They will be new. Everything will be new. My teacher, the toys. Plus, I will not know where the bathroom is.”
“But somebody will show you,” I said. “You do not have to worry about that. Your new teacher will show you the bathroom and everything else on the first day.”
“Maybe my new teacher will be mean.”
“Maybe she won’t.”
“But she might be,” wailed Andrew. “I want my old teacher. I miss her.”
“Your new teacher might be your best teacher ever. And you will get to make new friends. I just love new friends. And who knows what could be on your new playground. Or what great toys you could find in your new classroom. Andrew, a new school is so exciting!”
“Not to me.”
“Mommy and Daddy would not send you to this new school if they thought you would not like it.”
Andrew shrugged his shoulders. He did not say anything. But at least he had stopped crying.
“I know what will make you feel better,” I said to my brother. “I will be right back.” I ran to my room. I found Henry and Ribsy. I brought it back to Andrew and began to read to him. I started over at the beginning so he would not miss a word.
Writers
On Saturday, Nancy and Hannie and I had been reporters. On Sunday, we became writers. We had a newspaper to put out.
My friends came over to my house again. We gathered around the computer. We looked at the news stories we had collected, our little pages of notes. We had twelve little pages all together.
“That is a lot of stories,” said Nancy.
“Enough for a newspaper?” asked Hannie.
“I think so.”
There were the stories we had collected door to door. Then there were those three stories we already knew about, the ones we had overheard.
“Let’s write up our own stories first,” I said. “The ones we do not have any notes on. Hannie, what is your story?”
“My father has gone on a diet,” Hannie announced. “It was his idea. He says he needs to trim down. He wants to lose fifteen pounds. Then he will not have a spare tire around his middle.”
“A spare tire?” I repeated.
“That is what he calls his fat.”
“Oh. Okay.”
My friends and I wrote two paragraphs about Hannie’s father and his fat. We called the article “Spare Tire.” We typed it on the keyboard. (Sam had helped us turn on the computer. He had shown us how to save our stories on a disk.)
“Great,” I said when we finished “Spare Tire.” “Now for my article. It is about Charlie. He bought a bracelet from a jewelry store last week. The bracelet is going to be a present for a girl. Charlie wants her to be his girlfriend. He hopes the bracelet will impress her. I heard him say so to Sam.”
“Can we see the bracelet?” asked Hannie. “We should tell what it looks like. Maybe the tag will still be attached. Then we can tell the price, too.”
The Three Musketeers sneaked into Charlie’s room. We found the bracelet and the price tag. The bracelet did not seem expensive to me, but what do I know about good jewelry? We called the article “Charlie’s Five-Dollar Bracelet.”
“Now for my story,” said Nancy. “My story about Mr. Billing. Okay. I know for a fact he was fired from his job. I just happened to be listening on the phone when Mrs. Billing was talking to Mommy.”
“Hey! That is big news! Thanks, Nancy,” I said. The title of this article was “Mr. Billing Loses Job!!”
After that we wrote about the Kormans’ blender and Timmy’s grandparents. Then we wrote that Boo-Boo had been to the vet for his shots. Then we wrote a short article to remind people that Kristy and her friends run a baby-sitting business.
“See?” I said when we had finished writing the articles. “This is a paper kids will want to read. Look at our headlines. No long words. No bor
ing words either, like ‘dynamics’ or ‘sewage treatment.’ And plenty of exclamation points. They always make things look more interesting. I think our best one is ‘Mr. Billing Loses Job!!’ ”
Nancy and Hannie agreed with me.
“Okay,” said Nancy. “Now let’s print out one copy of our paper to see how it looks. I wonder how long it is.”
It turned out to be four pages long. And it looked very nice, except that it had no pictures. We would have to work on that.
We printed out fifteen more copies of our paper. We stapled the pages together. The first issue of The 3M Gazette was finished.
Paperboys
“We need our paperboys,” I said. Hannie and Nancy and I were standing on the front steps of the big house. We were holding The 3M Gazette. It was ready to be delivered.
“Oh, paperboys!” I shouted.
“Oh, paperboys!” shouted Hannie and Nancy.
A few minutes later, David Michael and Linny ran around the side of the house. They had been playing football again. They were sweaty.
“You called?” said Linny.
“The 3M Gazette is ready to be delivered,” I announced.
David Michael dropped the football. “It is?” he said. “Cool!”
“Can we look at it before we deliver it?” asked Linny.
“Of course,” I replied. “Delivery boys get a sneak peek.”
David Michael and Linny each took a copy of the paper. They sat on the grass and read it. They smiled a lot.
“Can Timmy really speak Chinese?” asked Linny.
“Did Charlie really buy a bracelet to impress a girl?” wondered David Michael. He snickered. “What a waste.”
“Hannie, you told about Dad’s spare tire?” said Linny. He looked at his sister. “Hmm. I am not sure — hey, cool! You wrote about Sari, too. Our family is famous.”
“So are you guys ready to deliver the papers?” I asked. I was feeling impatient. I wanted to see what other kids thought about The 3M Gazette. It was time for the paperboys to get to work.
David Michael stood up. “We’re ready,” he said. “What is the pay?”
“Excuse me?”
“How much are you going to pay us?” asked David Michael.
I looked at Nancy and Hannie. Then I looked at the boys. “We were not going to pay you anything,” I replied.
“Well, why did you think we wanted to work for you?” asked Linny.
“Because you like our paper?” suggested Nancy.
“Because you like us?” suggested Hannie. “And because you are so wonderful and helpful and good and kind?”
Linny made a face at his sister.
“Why did you offer to work for us?” I asked.
“Because we are broke,” replied David Michael. “We need bucks.”
“But The 3M Gazette is a free paper. We are not charging money for it,” I explained. “We are just having fun.”
“And we are doing something good for the children of this neighborhood,” added Hannie. “Don’t you want to be part of that?”
David Michael and Linny looked at each other. They shrugged.
Linny said, “What a scam.”
And David Michael said, “No fair.”
“All right. We will deliver the papers ourselves,” I told them.
David Michael held up his hand. “Nah,” he said. “Don’t bother. Linny and I will deliver them. We do not have anything better to do.”
So the boys took the stack of papers. They ran to the sidewalk. Then they walked up and down the street calling, “Free paper for sale!” They handed out papers to all the kids they saw.
My friends and I went back to the computer.
“This was a lot of work,” said Hannie.
“But it was fun,” added Nancy.
“You know what?” I said. “If we collect news and write some more articles this week, we can put out another issue of the paper next Saturday or Sunday. The 3M Gazette can be a weekly paper.”
Privacy
That evening, Andrew and I returned to the little house. I was very tired. Hannie was right. Publishing a paper was a lot of work. When supper was over, the only thing I wanted to do was read. But I did not have a chance. That was because of the phone calls.
Charlie was the first to call.
“Karen?” he said when I had picked up the phone. “I just want to say thanks. Thanks a whole lot.” Charlie did not sound thankful at all. He sounded angry.
“Um, what for?” I asked.
“I just read The 3M Gazette. Who said you could write an article about that bracelet and my girlfriend? And how did you find out how much the bracelet cost? I did not tell you any of those things.”
“Well,” I began.
“You had no right,” Charlie went on. “That is my private business. I do not want people to know I am trying to impress Ellen. Sam has been laughing at me all evening. I hope Ellen does not see your paper.”
Oops. I had not thought about that.
“Charlie, I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, really, really, gigundoly sorry.”
As soon as Charlie and I were finished talking, the phone rang again. This time Hannie was calling. “Karen,” she said, “Daddy did not like my article. The one about his spare tire.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. He is very embarrassed. He said his diet and his fat are his own personal business. He said family things are not supposed to be published in papers for all the world to see.”
“But he let us write about Sari and the toilet,” I said.
“I know. He told us we could do that. But he did not know we were going to write about his fat. I think we should have asked first.”
The third person to call that night was Nancy. She sounded as if she might be crying. She kept sniffling.
“Is something wrong?” I asked her.
“Mommy and Daddy are mad,” she said. “They read our paper.”
“Uh-oh. And they did not like the story about Mr. Papadakis, right?”
“Wrong. They did not like the story about Mr. Billing,” replied Nancy.
“Wasn’t it true?” I asked. “Didn’t he get fired?”
“Yes, but that was supposed to be a secret for a few more days. They had not told most of their friends yet. Just Mommy and Daddy. Plus, I was not supposed to be eavesdropping on the phone. Now I have to call the Billings and say I’m sorry. And my mom wants to talk to your mom.”
I had a feeling I might be in trouble.
Mommy talked to Mrs. Dawes for a long time. After a while, Seth got on another phone, and he talked to them, too. When everyone finally hung up, Mommy said, “Karen, may we see The 3M Gazette, please?”
I had brought one copy to the little house with me. I handed it to Mommy. She and Seth read it together. Then Mommy said, “Karen, I think we need to talk. How did you get these stories?”
“Well, Hannie and Nancy and I walked around the neighborhood. We interviewed people. For most of the stories,” I added. “Some of the stories we just wrote down by ourselves.”
“Like the story about Mr. Billing?” asked Mommy. I nodded. “Honey,” she went on, “your paper is wonderful, but you must respect people’s privacy. Do you understand what that means?”
“I do now,” I replied. “Mommy, I did not mean to hurt anybody’s feelings. Honest. I know we have to change our paper. The next issue will be different. That is a promise.” I crossed my heart.
After-shave
Nancy and Hannie and I decided not to work on our paper on Monday. We had planned to get some more news stories that day, but we changed our minds. We thought that might not be a very good idea, since several people were mad at us. The 3M Gazette needed a rest.
My friends and I did something different on Monday. We wrote three letters. One was to Charlie, one was to Hannie’s father, and one was to Mr. and Mrs. Billing. They were “I’m sorry” letters. We wrote the letters together. (Mommy helped us with the spelling.) We used Nancy’s best flow
ered notepaper.
This is what Charlie’s letter said:
The letters to Mr. Papadakis and the Billings were pretty much like the letter to Charlie. Except on the Billings’ letter we wrote “very” six times before we wrote “sorry.” Then we mailed the letters.
“You know something?” said Hannie when we were walking to the mailbox. “I asked my mom and dad what freedom of speech means. They said it means in this country people are free to say or write whatever they think. There is no law against it.”
“But if you do not want to hurt people, you have to be careful about what you say,” I replied.
“Right,” agreed Nancy. “It was not really important for everyone to know about Hannie’s father’s spare tire, so we did not need to write that article. It is more important to respect his privacy.”
“We will know better next time,” I said.
On Tuesday we decided it was safe to interview people for the next issue of The 3M Gazette. So my friends and I put on our PRESS hats. We found our pencils and our pads of paper.
“Remember,” I said, “we will only write about what people tell us we can write about.”
We went to Timmy Hsu’s house first.
“We are going to get a puppy,” said Timmy. “A golden retriever.”
Then we went to the Kilbournes’ house.
“I won a swimming trophy,” said Maria proudly. “I will show it to you.”
After that we went to Mr. Giordano’s house, but he was not home, so we went back to the big house. David Michael was in the yard with Emily Michelle.
“Do you have any news for The 3M Gazette?” I asked him.
David Michael grinned. “I ordered some after-shave through the mail,” he replied. “I saw an ad for it in the back of a magazine.”
“Why do you want after-shave?” I wanted to know. “You do not shave yet.”
“I want to smell good.”
Hmm. We had not found very interesting news this time.
“Nobody told us anything too interesting,” said Hannie.