Tabloidology Read online

“Just because you don’t like my paper, doesn’t mean everyone else thinks the same way,” he said.

  Martin sat down behind his table, straightened up the stack of unsold papers and shouted, “Get you paper here! Read all about Upland Green’s new outside drinking fountain. Read all about it!” But as long as Martin sat there—through recess, lunch hour and for half an hour after school—not one single copy of the Upland Green Examiner was sold.

  After school, as Martin packed up his unsold newspapers, Ms. Baumgartner came over to buy a copy.

  “How did newspaper sales go today, Martin?”

  “Oh, about average,” he replied.

  “Still a lot of unsold papers, Martin,” Ms. Baumgartner said, flipping through the stack of newspapers. Martin just shrugged as the principal began to read the paper. “Your stories are all very factual, and as usual your spelling and grammar are impeccable. But have you considered changing the sorts of things you report on in the newspaper? Perhaps you should think about writing articles our students would find a little more…a little more…entertaining.”

  Martin leaped to his feet, clutching a copy of the newspaper against his chest. “Ms. Baumgartner, as I told you when I took this job, the purpose of a newspaper is to inform its readers with facts. Entertainment has no place in a school newspaper. If the students of this school want entertainment, let them read comic books!”

  Ms. Baumgartner sighed, left her quarter on the table and headed back to her office.

  FOUR

  Trixi didn’t walk to school the next morning. Her parents brought her. They drove from their home to school in silence. They marched across the parking lot in silence. They stomped up the front walkway to the school in silence, passing Ms. Baumgartner talking to Merlin Pen.

  “So, you’re sure it’s fixed,” Ms. Baumgartner said.

  “You bet! It’s all fixed and ready to go,” Merlin Pen said with a grin that showed off three missing teeth.

  “No more origami animals?” Ms. Baumgartner asked.

  “No more origami animals,” Merlin Pen replied.

  “What possibly could have happened to make the photocopier fold origami animals?” Ms. Baumgartner said. “I find it mind-boggling that it would do such a thing.”

  “These machines aren’t simply a collection of nuts and bolts, Ms. Baumgartner. Sometimes they can do things that are downright amazing.” Merlin Pen smiled again, made a deep bow and shuffled off down the sidewalk.

  Seconds after Merlin Pen was gone, Trixi’s parents barged through the front door with Trixi in tow and headed straight for Ms. Baumgartner’s office. The principal followed, closing the door behind her.

  “Please, have a seat,” Ms. Baumgartner said, but the Wilders remained standing.

  “I don’t know what kind of school you run here, Ms. Gaumbartner,” Mrs. Wilder said, “but my husband and I were getting ready for a business trip to New York, and do you know what Trixi did to my dear little white toy poodle, Mitzi? She dyed her hair purple! Did you hear what I said, Ms. Gaumbartner? Purple!”

  The principal nodded and said, “Yes, purple. And it’s Baumgartner.”

  “She said it was some sort of art project. I don’t know what strange ideas your teachers have about art, but dying my sweet Mitzi’s hair purple is not my idea of fine art!”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Ms. Baumgartner said. She glanced over at Trixi, whose eyes were fixed on the tops of her own shoes.

  “And this morning, she put glue on the toilet seat! Did you hear what I said, Ms. Gaumbartner? Glue on the toilet seat!”

  Ms. Baumgartner nodded. “Yes. Glue on the toilet seat. And it’s Baumgartner—with a B.”

  “She said it was some kind of science experiment! When I was in school, putting glue on toilets seats was certainly not part of our science curriculum!”

  “No, I’m sure it wasn’t,” Ms. Baumgartner replied.

  “Our daughter has never behaved like this before! There’s only one place she could have learned such behavior. And do you know where that is, Ms. Gaumbartner?”

  Ms. Baumgartner didn’t answer.

  “At your school, Ms. Gaumbartner. Yes! At your school! And as far as I’m concerned, it’s all your fault! Right, Reginald?” Trixi’s mother glared at her husband.

  Mr. Wilder was standing by the door, checking his cell phone for messages. “Oh, uh, absolutely,” he mumbled. “Totally the fault of the school.”

  “And to make matters worse, Trixi’s still getting terrible grades. I was appalled to see the trouble she’s having in English class. Her spelling is atrocious and her grammar is just awful. Reginald and I were both honor-roll students all through school, so I don’t know what you’re teaching at this school, but it isn’t working. Right, Reginald?”

  “Absolutely. Atrocious,” he said.

  “We do everything we can for our daughter,” Mrs. Wilder continued, rapping a scarlet fingernail on Ms. Baumgartner’s desk. “We give her piano lessons, swimming lessons, dance classes. We bought her a new computer for her room. Last Easter we sent her skiing with her cousins to Whistler, and last summer she spent seven weeks in Europe with my two sisters! What more can we do? Isn’t that right, Reginald?”

  “Oh, uh, absolutely,” Mr. Wilder mumbled, checking his watch.

  “Granted, our careers keep us both busy, but we’re doing our part, Ms. Gaumbartner. Unfortunately, you’re not doing yours. Right, Reginald?”

  “Oh, uh, absolutely.”

  “We expect accountability. We demand that you do something!” Mrs. Wilder straightened her suit jacket and skirt and marched toward the office door. “We’ll be back from our business trip in three weeks. By that time, we expect you to have fixed the problem. Right, Reginald?”

  “Oh, uh, absolutely,” Mr. Wilder muttered, holding the door open for his wife. Without another word, Mrs. Wilder strode out of the office, followed in silence by Mr. Wilder.

  Trixi sat in the small yellow chair and finally looked up at Ms. Baumgartner. She wondered what her principal was going to say. How was she going to fix the problem? Would she give her some lines to write? Maybe schoolyard litter duty. Or maybe—worst of all—she’d give her an in-school suspension. Trixi would have to spend every recess and lunch hour sitting in the paper storage room doing math worksheets.

  But Ms. Baumgartner didn’t say anything. She just took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Twice more, the principal took slow deep breaths. Finally, she looked as if she was about to say something.

  But before one word left Ms. Baumgartner’s mouth, the office door swung open and three teachers crowded into the office, each waving fistfuls of paper.

  “What is it now?” Ms. Baumgartner said.

  “It’s the photocopier, again!” shouted Ms. Marshall.

  “More origami animals?”

  “No! It’s much worse than that. Every time we run a test through the photocopier, the copies come out with all the answers already filled in!”

  “Are you sure?” Ms. Baumgartner said. “That’s unbelievable. How could a photocopier do such a thing?”

  “Here, look for yourself!” Ms. Marshall said, handing a pile of papers over to the principal.

  Ms. Baumgartner carefully examined a few of the copied tests. A geometry quiz had all the shapes drawn in and all the angles measured. A geography review had all the capital cities of Canada filled in, the main exports of South America written down and even a paragraph on the government of Great Britain written out, complete with a topic sentence.

  “I won’t even bother checking the user’s manual on this problem,” Ms. Baumgartner said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do until I can get Mr. Pen back to work on the photocopier.”

  Ms. Baumgartner picked up the phone, but before dialing, she glanced up at Trixi. “We’ll have to talk about our meeting with your parents later, Trixi. You can just head down to your classroom and wait for the bell.”

  Trixi had to smile. She’d been so busy with the dog and the toilet sea
t last night, she never got around to studying for her geography review test. The next time she saw Mr. Pen, she’d have to thank him.

  Trixi left the office and headed to her classroom. But halfway down the hall, she noticed something almost as strange as Merlin Pen’s photocopier. Water was seeping from under the doors of the library and running into the hallway. Trixi tried to open the doors, but they were locked. The library was only open in the afternoons.

  Trixi sprinted back down the hall to the office and ran past Mrs. Sledge, saying, “It’s an emergency!” Without knocking, she threw open the principal’s office door and shouted, “Ms. Baumgartner! There’s water! Lots of it! And it’s coming out of the library!”

  Ms. Baumgartner was just hanging up the phone, when her head snapped toward Trixi. “There’s what coming out of where?”

  “Water! H-two-O! Clear liquid that comes out of pipes! And it’s coming out of the library!”

  “Water? Coming out of the library?” Ms. Baumgartner shot out of her chair and began a wobbly sprint on her high heels down the hall toward the library. By now, the water had spread all the way across the hall and was flowing toward the back doors. Ms. Baumgartner pulled a ring of keys from her pocket and undid the lock. She pushed both doors open, unleashing a wave of water that rushed past them into the hall.

  Trixi looked up and saw the sprinkler heads in the ceiling showering water into every corner of the library. Every book, magazine, poster, kit and manual was turning into a pulpy mushy mess. A computer crackled and sparked before dying in a puff of smoke, and a wooden model of the Ugly Duckling bobbed in the story corner.

  “Why are the sprinklers on?” Trixi said.

  Ms. Baumgartner grabbed the C volume of the encyclopedia, held it over her head and began to wade across the library. “There must have been a fire for the sprinklers to come on!”

  “If there was a fire, I think it’s probably out,” Trixi said.

  But Ms. Baumgartner had already disappeared out the fire door.

  The school was evacuated until the maintenance department could be called in to turn off the sprinklers and the water in the hall could be vacuumed and mopped up. Fortunately, most of the water had run straight down the hall and out the back door, leaving the classrooms dry. Unfortunately, every book, magazine, encyclopedia and computer in the library was waterlogged and useless.

  That afternoon, the entire school was called down to the gym for an emergency assembly. Trixi sat obediently in a row with the rest of her classmates. Some were leaning forward and looking her way, while others were pointing. “What?” she whispered. “It wasn’t me! I had nothing to do with it!”

  Trixi knew she had a reputation for pulling some pretty amazing pranks in the school, but they couldn’t blame her for this one. None of her pranks ever caused damage to school property. And they certainly never came close to the chaos caused by the sprinklers in the library. At least, they’d better not blame it on me! she thought.

  Trixi noticed Ms. Baumgartner’s hair was still wet and tangled from her shower in the library that morning, and she was wearing an old pair of gumboots she’d borrowed from the custodian.

  “I just want to reassure everyone in the school that the unfortunate flood in our library was a complete accident. I have heard some nasty rumors circulating about this being a prank, but I can assure you it was caused by faulty sprinkler heads. The bad news is that the contents of the library have been ruined by the water.”

  There were gasps from various parts of the gym. Hands shot up.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Baumgartner,” Greg Olson said. “Don’t tell me all the Tintin books are gone!”

  “I’m afraid so, Greg.”

  “How about Tom and Liz Austin? And Anne? And the Hardy Boys? And Nancy Drew?” Ella Brown called from the back. “Did they survive?”

  “Sadly, no, Ella. Pretty well every single book was damaged beyond repair,” Ms. Baumgartner said. “Unfortunately, our insurance will only cover damage to the building. It does not cover the replacement of our books, computers and other materials. This means we’re going to have to do some fundraising to restock our library. Not only that, we’ll have to take money normally used for other school activities to buy replacement books. To save money, I’m afraid some of our field trips, sports events and other special activities will have to be cut back.”

  Ms. Baumgartner blinked as a light flashed in front of her. Martin was crouched in the front row, taking a picture for the school newspaper.

  FIVE

  The next Thursday at recess, Martin sat in the hall at his table with yet another stack of unsold copies of the Upland Green Examiner. Once again, the only one to stop at his table was Trixi Wilder.

  “So, Marty, with all the excitement of the flood in the library, I bet you wrote one humdinger of an article, giving all the gruesome details. People love reading about disasters. You might actually sell a few copies for a change.”

  “As with every edition of the Upland Green Examiner, I have stuck to the facts—the cold hard facts,” he replied.

  Trixi snatched up a copy of the paper, but this time Martin didn’t even bother asking her to pay.

  “Library Experiences Increase in Water Content. That’s it?” Trixi said. “That’s your great headline about the biggest disaster in the history of this school?”

  “Before judging the article, I suggest you read it,” Martin said, his hands clenched into fists.

  Trixi held up the paper and read the article out loud in her best tv news-anchor voice. “Last Friday, due to some faulty plumbing, a leak occurred in the overhead sprinkler system in the library. The water caused extensive damage to much of the library’s collection. The library will be closed until further notice. That’s it?”

  “Those are the plain facts. The facts and nothing but the facts,” Martin said, his arms now folded tightly across his chest.

  Trixi flipped through the rest of the paper. “Mrs. Brown’s class going on a field trip to the fire station, Mr. Eastman’s class making mobiles out of recycled coat hangers, a day in the life of a school custodian and the weather forecast.” Trixi shook her head and slammed the newspaper back on the pile. “Oh, well. At least you didn’t leave out anything great I did this week. Although, next week, I’m sure I’ll have something spectacular for you to write about. Good luck with sales. I’ll let you know if anyone needs to line the bottom of a birdcage.”

  Moments after Trixi had loped off down the hall, Ms. Baumgartner came by. Without a word to Martin, she snatched up a copy of his newspaper. After a quick read, she shook her head. “Couldn’t you make the front-page article just a little more exciting, Martin? You’ve described the flood as an ‘increase in water content.’ Don’t you think you should jazz your writing up a little?”

  “Absolutely not, Ms. Baumgartner!” Martin said, jumping up from his chair. “I reported the flood in a responsible, factual manner. There’s no room for sensationalism in my paper!”

  “Obviously not,” Ms. Baumgartner said. She slapped the paper down on the stack of unsold papers and walked off without a word—not one mention about his fine spelling or his grammar, and not even a hint of her usual smile. Not only that, she didn’t even buy a copy. This was not a good sign. Martin could sense something was in the air. He didn’t know what, but something at Upland Green School was about to change.

  That night, Razor’s band practiced in the living room until 2:25 am when the neighbors finally phoned the police.

  At 2:55 am, three fire trucks answered a call, roaring out of the fire station with their sirens wailing.

  At 4:42 am, Sissy’s dogs got loose, ran upstairs and jumped up on Martin’s bed.

  At 4:55 am, two fire trucks answered another call.

  At 5:15 am, the freight train rumbled past Martin’s house, and the engineer blew the whistle three times.

  At 5:45 am, Martin’s mother arrived home from working the night shift and tripped over the cat in the front hall.

  At
5:55 am, three fire trucks answered another call.

  At 7:30 am, Martin dragged himself out of bed to take a shower, but there was no water. All he could find for breakfast was a can of sardines, a box of stale crackers and a jar of pickles.

  He took the last bruised apple and the rest of the crackers for his lunch and headed for school.

  Trixi woke up to find a note stuck to the outside of her bedroom door.

  I forgot to tell you last night that your father and I had to leave for New York a day earlier than planned. If you behave yourself while we’re gone, we’ll pick up something special for you at Saks Fifth Avenue.

  Be Good,

  Mom

  Right after the first bell rang at school, Ms. Baumgartner’s voice was heard over the pa speaker in Martin’s classroom. “Mr. Branch? Could I please see Martin Wettmore in my office?”

  What with the superintelligent photocopier and a library that turned into a wading pool, yesterday had been a strange day. Now, today was off to a strange start of its own. No one in his class could believe that Martin “Never-Broken-a-Rule-in-His-Life” Wettmore was being called down to the office.

  At first Martin figured, in his half-awake state, that he hadn’t heard right. But his teacher said, “Martin, you’d better get going. Ms. Baumgartner’s asking for you.”

  “There must be some mistake,” Martin said. “Maybe there’s another Martin Wettmore in the school. Or maybe there’s another kid who looks just like me and she’s gotten us mixed up.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mr. Branch said. “Let’s go, Martin! To the office. Right away.”

  A moment later, Ms. Baumgartner’s voice came over the pa speaker in another class. “Mrs. Green? Could I please see Trixi Wilder in my office?”

  This was no surprise to anyone. Trixi’s visits to the office were routine.

  Unlike Martin, Trixi had a pretty good idea why she was being called down to the office. After her parents’ visit to the school yesterday, Ms. Baumgartner never did get around to telling Trixi how she was planning to fix the problem. When Trixi walked into Ms. Baumgartner’s office and saw Martin Wettmore already sitting in her yellow plastic chair, she wondered, Why is he here? Is he some sort of witness? Is he going to write a first-hand report on my punishment for his boring school newspaper?