Tabloidology (16 page)

At 7:00 am, his mother banged on his door and shouted, “Martin! Time to get up for school!” But he was already wide-awake.

Just like any weekday morning, he washed, ate breakfast, grabbed his backpack and headed out the door. He still hadn't bothered telling his mother it was Saturday. It didn't matter. As long as he was out of the house, she'd be happy. As Martin closed the back door and walked down the creaky steps, he thought about where he could spend the day.

When Trixi turned up at the bus yard at exactly 8:00 am, someone was already hosing down one of the school buses. She could hear the thrum of a power washer and the rumble of a jet of water hitting the side of the bus. As she walked around the edge of the fence and through the gate, she stopped and shouted, “Hey! Did Baumgartner make you come and wash school buses too?”

Martin cut the spray from the hose and picked up a bucket of sudsy water, moving to the rear of the bus. “Ms. Baumgartner told me to look for a new hobby. This is it.”

“You call this a hobby? I call it punishment. Why don't you take up something more fun like picking up litter or writing lines?”

Martin picked up the power-washer nozzle and fingered the trigger. It was so tempting. Instead he said, “How do you know I don't enjoy washing school buses? Maybe I like blasting hunks of mud with powerful jets of water.”

“Sure. Maybe you do, but it's not my idea of a good time,” Trixi said. “Still, it's not like I've got a choice. I'm stuck doing this stupid job.”

“I'm surprised you didn't put any stories in your paper yesterday about automatic bus-washing machines,” Martin said.

“You heard about the paper, huh?”

“Indirectly,” Martin said. “I had a few phone calls from some of your friends. They thought I was involved in your last edition. I gather things didn't turn out all that well.”

“I'll say. The special edition was about as special as a moldy sock. Not one thing happened the way it was supposed to. Not a single one.”

“This must be the first time a prank of yours has backfired.”

“You got that right,” Trixi said. “And the worst part is that Baumgartner really deserved everything I wrote in that paper.”

“I'll say. I've never met a principal who was so unfair,” Martin said. He pointed the power washer at the school bus and pulled the trigger, blasting the back window.

“You know what's really weird?” Trixi said. “You and I finally agree on something.”

“Yeah, that's pretty strange,” Martin said.

“Well, I guess I'd better start work. If I'm late, Baumgartner'll probably add another week to my sentence,” Trixi said, taking the power-washer nozzle from Martin.

As she began to spray down the tires, Martin said, “So, after the flop of your last paper, are you having second thoughts about the first two papers?”

“What do you mean?” Trixi said.

“Do you still think all the weird stuff that happened at school was caused by the newspapers?”

“Yeah. Of course it was.” Trixi stopped the spray and looked at Martin. “Don't tell me you still think it was a coincidence.”

Martin took the soppy sponge out of the bucket of soapy water and squeezed it hard with both hands. “I'm thinking… I'm thinking that something very weird was going on,” he said.

“So you actually admit that the newspaper caused all that craziness?” Trixi said.

“I didn't want to believe it at first. But after the second time it happened, even I have to admit there must be some sort of connection,” Martin said.

“But I can't figure out why none of the stories came true yesterday,” Trixi said. She gunned the power washer and sprayed it back and forth over the windows. “I tried to do everything the same with the newspaper, but something went wrong along the way.”

Martin dunked the sponge in the bucket and began to wash the taillights. “Did you use the same computer?”

Martin said.

“Yep. Same computer.”

Martin paused and plunged the sponge back in the bucket.

“Maybe you used a different type of paper or different fonts or something.”

“Nope. I tried to make sure everything was the exactly same.”

“Hmm. That is strange,” Martin said. He picked up his bucket and moved to the front of the bus. “Maybe it had something to do with when you copied it. What time of day was it?”

“Early in the morning. I did it in my mom's office before our housekeeper brought me to school.”

“You copied it in your mom's office?” Martin squeezed the sponge, the soapy water dribbling onto his shoes.

“Yeah.” Trixi let the spray of water arc over the roof of the bus.

“You didn't use the school photocopier?”

“Well, duh! Do you think Baumgartner would let me copy my own paper on the school's photocopier?”

Trixi cut the sprayer and stared at Martin.

“It's got to be the photocopier!” Martin shouted as he threw the sponge against the windshield, leaving a soapy smudge in the middle of the glass.

“Yeah! The photocopier!” Trixi said. “It's the only thing that's different!”

“I hate to say this,” Martin said, “but in a weird sort of way, it makes sense. After folding origami animals, filling in test answers and translating everything into Japanese, this sort of thing shouldn't be a surprise.”

“Of course, it's the photocopier!” Trixi said, spraying a jet of water straight up in the air. “Why didn't I think of it earlier? If I could just reprint that special edition of the
Gossiper
, then Baumgartner would finally get what she deserves! But she's probably got that photocopy room locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”

A huge grin blossomed across Martin's face as water rained down from above.

“Why the idiotic grin?” Trixi said.

“When I used to copy the newspaper, I would go early in the morning before all the teachers arrived. That way, I wouldn't be printing the school newspaper when all the teachers wanted to use the photocopier.”

“Yeah? So? What are you getting at?”

“To get into the photocopy room, Ms. Baumgartner gave me this…” Martin reached into his soaked shirt and pulled at a string tied around his neck. On the end of the string dangled a key. “She didn't ask for it back when she shut down the newspaper.”

“You have a key to the photocopy room?” Trixi said. She let the power-washer nozzle clatter to the ground. “Let me have it, and I'll sneak in and—”

“Not so fast,” Martin said, shoving the key back into his shirt. “Before any more copies of the school newspaper get printed, I want to have a say in what stories are in it.”

“Ah, come on, Marty! The
Gossiper
isn't your kind of paper,” Trixi said, throwing her hands up. “There's none of that factual mumbo jumbo. The
Gossiper
's all about having some fun and stirring things up in the school. You know, give Baumgartner a headache or two.”

“I know exactly what kind of a paper the
Gossiper
is,”

Martin said.

“Marty, listen. If we're going to take the chance of sneaking into the photocopy room, we've got to write a paper that's really good. I mean REALLY good, like sewer rats and mummies and flying outhouses. Stuff like that!”

“I'll admit that the stories in my newspapers weren't all that exciting. That's why we have to work together.”

“What do you mean work together? You're beginning to sound like Baumgartner!”

“So what? The point is you want your newspaper to cause all kinds of trouble in the school. But I'm the one with the key to the photocopy room. If you want to use my key, you have to let me work on the next edition of the paper.”

Trixi sighed. “Why would we bother to write another paper when I have a perfectly fantastic edition ready to copy?”

“Because instead of using the next edition of the school newspaper to
make
problems for Ms. Baumgartner, we could use it to
solve
her problems.”

“That doesn't sound like any fun at all. Why would we want to do something like that?”

“Why, Trixi? Because you're washing school buses on Saturday mornings, and I don't have my school newspaper anymore. That's why.”

“But those are the very reasons why we should make a bunch of trouble. It's called
revenge
, Marty.”

“All revenge will do is get you washing more school buses, and it certainly won't bring my newspaper back. Instead we'll use the paper to get ourselves
out
of trouble,” Martin said.

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“You're the ideas person, Trixi. Just think about it for a second. Other than us, what's the biggest problem Ms. Baumgartner has right now? The library, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“So, you and I use the paper to help rebuild the library. We'll become instant heroes! And when we're school heroes, Ms. Baumgartner will have to take you off bus-washing duty, and she'll have to let me run my newspaper again!”

“But causing trouble's way more fun,” Trixi said.

“Maybe so, but where will it get you? If you cause any more trouble around here, Ms. Baumgartner will probably have you washing every car in town six days a week.”

“You may have a point there,” Trixi said. “But before I agree to anything, I've got to hear every detail of your little scheme.”

“Okay, here's what I'm thinking. Next week is the Fall Fair Fundraiser…”

Trixi listened to the rest of Martin's plan and said, “As the queen of wild and crazy ideas, I have to hand it to you, Marty—your plan doesn't sound too shabby. It might even work. Then again, if it doesn't work, it was all your idea.”

FIFTEEN

O
n Saturday night, a shadowy figure crossed the railway tracks, skulked up the lane past the fire station and went through the back gate of a ramshackle old house. When the gate swung shut, there was a chorus of yelping and yapping. The porch light flickered on; then suddenly all the lights in the house went out. The back door creaked open, and a flashlight shone down on a person standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come on in. Don't worry. The power usually comes back on after a while.”

Trixi walked up the wobbly steps to the back door. As soon as she stepped into the kitchen, five dogs leaped up at her, followed by five long slobbery tongues, licking her hands and face.

“You've…got…really…friendly…dogs, Marty,” Trixi said.

“They're my sister's dogs. Just ignore them,” Martin said. “Follow me.”

Trixi pushed the dogs away and followed Martin through the kitchen.

“Someone must like cucumbers,” Trixi said, walking around dozens of boxes of miniature cucumbers stacked around the kitchen.

“My mom. She makes her own jars of pickles and sells them at the farmers' market. The ones she doesn't sell, we have to eat.”

“Yummy,” Trixi said. “I love pickles.”

“You wouldn't love pickles if you had them in your breakfast cereal, on your sandwiches at lunch, and cut up in your macaroni for dinner. I am so sick of pickles!”

“What's that funny burning smell?” Trixi said.

“My sister's trying to bake dog treats. We're lucky the power went off,” Martin said. “She specializes in charcoal-flavored dog treats. Not even dogs'll eat them.”

Trixi followed Martin up a dark narrow staircase that creaked and groaned with each step.

“Don't lean on the handrail,” Martin said. “My brother just stuck it back on the wall with duct tape. And watch the fifth step. My brother accidentally broke it with an axe.”

Trixi was feeling her way up the stairs when the lights suddenly flicked back on. Along with the lights, came a blast of sound that made the walls and floor vibrate.

“WHAT IS THAT?” Trixi shouted.

“RAZOR!” Martin said.