Breaking news, p.1
Breaking News, page 1
Contents
Praise for Breaking News
Breaking News
Copyright © 2022 Frank Morelli. All rights reserved.
Dedication
Monday, April 1
Tuesday, April 2
Wednesday, April 3
Thursday, April 4
Friday, April 5
Monday, April 8
Tuesday, April 9
Wednesday, April 10
Thursday, April 11
Friday, April 12
Acknowledgements
Praise for Breaking News
“Breaking News takes off at a break-neck speed and doesn’t let up until its satisfying conclusion. Mix up one crime, a little insider knowledge, and two rival newspapers at the R.A.T. (Ridgewood Arts & Technology Middle School) and you’ve got a journalistic battle to uncover the truth. But what if that truth comes with personal consequences? A fast, fun read underpinned by ethical considerations.”
– Shutta Crum, author of Thomas and The Dragon Queen and Spitting Image
“This just in! Breaking News sweeps the nation with wit, charm, and humor. Morelli crafts a fun, fast-paced narrative that documents two spirited middle school reporters and their comical journey to journalistic integrity. An entertaining and important story!”
– Michael Hilton, author of Bobby Robot
“Reminds me of Avi’s Nothing But the Truth, only spunkier and with more teenage gossip. Readers will wrestle with the role of truth in journalism. They’ll also pick sides. And laugh. They’ll do a lot of laughing.”
– Patrick Hueller, author of Kirsten Howard’s Biggest Fan and Read at Your Own Peril
Breaking News
Frank Morelli
Fitzroy Books
Copyright © 2022 Frank Morelli. All rights reserved.
Published by Fitzroy Books
An imprint of
Regal House Publishing, LLC
Raleigh, NC 27587
All rights reserved
https://fitzroybooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646031856
ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646031863
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936004
All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.
Interior by Lafayette & Greene
Cover images and design © by C. B. Royal
Regal House Publishing, LLC
https://regalhousepublishing.com
The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
To every teacher who instilled in me the epic value of a question.
Monday, April 1
(faithfully submitted, A. Ravello)
I didn’t do anything wrong.
Ever since it happened those words keep running through my mind. Over and over and I can’t stop them. It’s like a mantra. I kind of feel like a parrot and I keep trying to convince myself I don’t want a cracker. If I had the guts to speak a word of what really happened, I’d probably sound like, I didn’t do anything…SQUAWK! But I helped! I helped! SQUAWK! I didn’t do anything…SQUAWK!
Man, I’m losing it. I’m letting the conspiracy theorist in me take over. Maybe that’s why I’m writing all of my thoughts on this stupid yellow legal pad like I did back in fourth grade when I thought being a journalist meant you wore a silly hat and cracked a flashbulb in people’s faces. I guess you learn a lot in four years—like how to spot the perfect kind of blabbermouths to serve as reliable sources; or how to keep your trap shut long enough for the person you’re interviewing to give you everything but a social security number.
I’ve mastered all of these techniques and many more since I took over as the news editor for the Ridgewood Roar after Sharon Jeffers graduated and moved on to high school. Now I’m stuck telling all of this to a blank page because I don’t know who I can trust anymore, and I definitely don’t want to know what will happen if anyone finds out I was involved. But not really involved. It’s hard to explain and I doubt even this legal pad is a safe enough place to share the information.
I mean, if people at school find out exactly what happened I’m sure the whole news editor thing would go bye-bye. I’d probably take a year’s worth of detentions, maybe even suspension. Man, I bet Ms. Hardaway would kick me out of Ridgewood Arts & Tech altogether, and I’d have to go to the regular public school in Ridgewood City with all the regular kids who have no aspirations of winning a Nobel Prize or becoming president or inventing time travel. At least that’s what Ms. Hardaway, our headmistress at the RAT (it’s what everyone at school calls the place because we science nerds love acronyms), wants us to believe. That we’re different. Special. That we all got invited to attend school here at the RAT because we’d somehow been preselected at birth to run the world at some point. I guess it’s kind of like how my mom gets letters in the mail with You’re Preselected to Apply for a Personal Loan!! printed on the front.
I don’t believe in all that preselected crap, though. I figure I go to the RAT, like most of my classmates, because I obsess over stuff. Like big stuff. And medium-sized stuff. And small stuff. Like, if I organize all the items on my desk in my room just the right way, and all the pencil shavings are in the trash, and my paper clips are in their approved container with only one clip sticking up against the magnetic strip, and my set of multicolored erasers are lined up above my Post-it notes collection, and then—just at that moment—my twin brothers from the pits of second-grade hell come storming in like a pair of gargoyles and burn the whole thing to the ground. Not literally, of course. They just mess it up a lot and I have to arrange everything again, and then I’m wasting time and I hate wasting time.
That’s probably how I got myself into this mess in the first place, because I figured Trent Millsdale was the shortest distance from Point A to Point B—Point A being my news editorship and Point B being editor-in-chief of the whole darn newspaper. I know it’s just a middle-school newspaper (even though the RAT is one of those hyper-progressive halls of experimentation), but people take it pretty seriously here in Ridgewood City. It’s just that kind of town. Sleepy. Small. A few factories. Some cornfields. Pretty. Darn. Boring. I guess it’s the perfect formula to make people give a RAT’s ass (haha! get it?) about what a bunch of middle-school geniuses are doing while they’re working their real, adult jobs.
I mean, look at Trent. He’s the current editor in chief and I swear when he walks down a hallway a slight breeze kicks up and the sun shines a little brighter through the skylights in the robotics wing and his leather bomber looks extra cracked and extra cool and my classmates lie down at his feet and begin their daily worship. I’m not saying I want that…but I want that. I mean, I like journalism and writing and all that stuff, but I’ll always be a computer guy at heart. Plus, some things transcend the basic need for human communication. Like human nature.
Problem is, I’m not the only one who feels this way. There’s also Liberty Lennon—the weirdest and most annoying girl I’ve ever met. And she’s weird and annoying in the most unconventional way, like she doesn’t care what me or Ms. Hardaway or the ruler of the entire universe (whoever that may be) thinks about her. It bothers me a little and I don’t know why. I mean, sure, does it irk me when she turns an old shower curtain into a dress and wears it to school like she’s some kind of mystical fashion designer? Yes. Does it make my eyeballs curdle when she changes her hair color from black to green to pink in the course of a single school week? Most definitely. And do I want to straight-up puke every time she tells me drawing pictures on a wall is more important than the field of robotics? Oh, hell yes. But there’s something else about her. So many other things, actually, that I can’t decide what it is that bothers me most about Libby.
Maybe it’s that, despite all her weirdness, she’s a darn good writer (I swear, the page burned my hand when I wrote that) and a bulldog of a reporter. I mean, she’s good. You know what else that means? She’s competition. I know it and Trent knew it, too, when he called us into the Ridgewood Roar office one day last week during our lunch period. It was quiet and the lights were off except for the artificial glow of a SpongeBob SquarePants screensaver on the main computer.
He said, “Tony, I would really appreciate your help.” And then he said, “Libby, I would really appreciate your help.” He sounded like a robot, but kind of charming at the same time. I can’t explain how he does that; I don’t think anyone can. Liberty didn’t say anything, and her eyebrows darted in toward the bridge of her nose. Then Trent said, “Just the right amount of help and I can see one of you sitting in this chair next
So I helped him. But not exactly. I told you, it’s complicated. At the time, I assumed Liberty did the same but now I’m not so sure because she quit the staff of the Roar on Friday, and when I asked Trent about it he just shrugged and walked away. I didn’t ask any more questions because having Liberty out of the way paves a clear path that leads directly to the supreme swivel chair. Only I’m not sure I want it anymore, or if I’ll even last long enough at the RAT to take a single spin in that thing. At least not after today’s little situation.
It was third period. English class with Mrs. D’Amato started just like every other day, and then the speakers in her classroom unleashed this high-pitched chime and suddenly Ms. Hardaway’s voice was streaming through every classroom in the school. “All students report to Kaufmann Auditorium for an emergency assembly,” she said in a stern voice, and we all marched down the hallway in lines, like ants, and then filed on to the bleachers surrounding Ms. Hardaway and her static-enraged microphone. She didn’t look happy.
“It has come to my attention,” she said, “that the sum of one thousand dollars has gone missing from the ticket booth at the student gallery over the weekend.” The whole place collapsed under the weight of one collective groan from the student body. “The proceeds were raised on the backs of the dedicated students in the School of Arts & Humanities, who wished to donate the funds to provide clean drinking water for children in Africa.”
That’s when the accusations started to fly. One student (I recognized him because he hung around Liberty’s locker and because he always wore a skull cap and never trimmed the four hairs that sprouted from his chin) stood up and shouted, “Who is responsible for this?” Another girl screamed something at the same time that sounded like, “Resist the obstructors!” but it was kind of hard to hear. It could have just as easily been “Insist on good truckers!!” I couldn’t be sure. Then the whole place turned into a melee of rogue voices, like if you threw a bunch of sentences into a blender and liquefied them down beyond the letters.
I didn’t say a word. I just craned my neck and searched down a few rows of bleachers for the cracked leather bomber. And Trent’s eyes caught mine and stayed there for a few seconds while I tried to find clues hidden under the carefree smile that stretched across his face. Then he winked and the force of it almost blew me out of my seat. And I wasn’t the only one. Two rows behind me, Liberty tried to play it cool, as if she hadn’t been caught studying Trent’s reactions to Ms. Hardaway’s announcements just like I had. But I had caught her. Red freaking handed.
So now I’m thinking Libby has more to do with this mess than I do, or maybe that’s just what I’ll have people think when I put this on the official record. All I know is I need to make this story fly as far away from me as possible, like a long-range test missile heading out into the middle of the Nevada desert to explode and be seen no more. But the only firepower I possess is the power of the press, so I guess I have no choice but to launch the first assault in this war.
Missing Funds Create a Stir at
Ridgewood
By Anthony Ravello April 2
RIDGEWOOD CITY—Classes came to a screeching halt at Ridgewood Arts & Technology School yesterday when Headmistress Sally Hardaway called for an emergency assembly of the student body. All students were summoned to Kaufmann Auditorium, where Ms. Hardaway briefed them on a large sum of money that has allegedly gone missing.
Just over a thousand dollars in fundraising proceeds had been stored inside the ticket booth at the student gallery on Friday night after members of the Visual Arts and Photography Clubs hosted an event for their Arts 4 Africa initiative. The drive would have provided children in impoverished regions of the continent with clean drinking water for up to six weeks. Now the coffers are empty and the initiative will have to start from scratch.
“It is not clear if this was a theft or the money was simply misplaced,” Ms. Hardaway told the crowd, although some students in attendance didn’t seem to be so patient.
“Those gadget freaks in the tech school have it in for us,” said seventh-grader Tyler Ames, a junior photographer. “I guarantee they stole the money,” Ames added.
Ninth grader Henry Stodds, the president of the Visual Arts Club, advised this reporter to “follow the order forms,” adding, “there’s no doubt those eggheads will have some idiotic contraption delivered in the next two weeks.”
Ms. Hardaway could provide no clarity on any of the students’ concerns. What was clear at the assembly, however, was the general unrest of the student population upon hearing the news. Accusations flew back and forth during the assembly itself, and heated exchanges in front of half-opened lockers were a common visual throughout the day.
One point this reporter has found to be abundantly clear is that the ticket booth office and the entirety of the fundraising money were at all times under the lock and key of the Visual Arts Committee and its members. Any theft, misplacement of funds, or negligence associated with the missing proceeds would have to be tied to them. Any speculation of a rogue team of robotics students having planned a siege of the student gallery ticket booth seems far-fetched at best.
The Ridgewood Roar will follow this story closely throughout the week. Look for our coverage on the front page of tomorrow’s issue.
NewRecording_473
APR 1 4:04p
Id: RebeLiberty76
Hi, Liberty. It’s me! Liberty Lennon. Your best friend in the whole wide world. Your most trusted friend in the whole wide world. Your ONLY friend in the whole wide world.
Ahem. My dearest audio diary, it’s me again. No name necessary. Okay, it’s Liberty. It’s also April Fool’s Day and the fools were on full display at the RAT. That has nothing to do with April Fool’s Day, actually. It’s like that every day at that place. It’s mostly the boys, but the girls are pretty foolish themselves. It’s like all they care about is quantum physics and Princeton University and keynote addresses, so they forget how to be in eighth grade. Like really just be in eighth grade and worry about the problems that face us in an eighth-grade classroom, like chewed-up gum under the science lab tables that stick to a brand new skirt you may or may not have fashioned out of an old shower curtain. I’m just saying. Or even if these fools took their faces out from behind blank canvases for a few seconds and thought about how they could help poor kids here in Ridgewood City instead of searching for problems all over the world. There are plenty of them here if they just took the time to look with their actual eyes instead of through someone else’s who just happens to want them to buy something… Wait…I’m way off track again. Let me start over…
Ahem. Dearest audio diary. It’s me. Yet again. Here’s a list of things I need to remember for my article. One. Ms. Hardaway sure seemed to look like a person who’d been robbed. I’m not sure what you look like after you get robbed. I’ve never been held up or anything. One time, when Dad and I were living on the base in Arizona, a homeless man asked us for change and Dad gave him a five-dollar bill, but I wouldn’t call that robbery or anything. But I’m pretty sure if it had been robbery I would have had deep wrinkles on my forehead like Ms. Hardaway did at the assembly. She told us over a thousand bucks just got up and walked out of the ticket booth on its own, but what she really meant—and this is Point Two—is that it was stolen. That’s right, stolen. I think most of the students at the assembly would have agreed, and if all of the shouting and name-calling that took place was any indication, they did.
