Darnell Rock Reporting (2 page)

“If you can't do anything positive, why are you coming to school?”

“To learn,” Darnell had answered.

“To learn? To learn
what?
Your grades are terrible,
your behavior is terrible, and you don't do one thing for this school!”

“I was thinking of joining the school newspaper,” he had said, remembering the announcement they had made over the loudspeaker that morning.

“You?” Mr. Baker looked at him with his head to one side. “Am I hearing right?”

“Yes, sir.” Darnell tried to remember the whole announcement, but couldn't think of anything more than that it was being run by Mr. Derby.

“Okay, Darnell,” Mr. Baker said. “I'm going to see if you do anything on the school paper. But if you don't get yourself straight soon, I'm going to have to speak to your parents and maybe even suggest they try another school for you.”

He hadn't told anybody what Mr. Baker had said, not even Tamika, and surely not his parents.

Before it became a middle school, South Oakdale was the town's oldest high school. Larry Keyes, Darnell's best friend, said that the red brick building was so old that George Washington once dropped by and borrowed an ax from the shop class to cut down a cherry tree.

“They made it a prison for a little while,” Larry said. “That's why the windows are so small, so the prisoners can't get out. Then once they were sure that the building wasn't fit for kids, they made it into a middle school.”

It was September, and there were a lot of new kids at South Oakdale, so there was a lot to look at as Larry and Darnell headed toward the corner near the
gym. Larry was exactly the same height as Darnell but looked a lot bigger because he was heavy and had shoulders that were straight and wide. He looked like a tough kid, but he had a little high voice that reminded everybody of the Chipmunks. He was funny, too. At least he was funny most of the time. His parents were divorced, and when he thought about that he wasn't funny at all.

“I heard that if you go down in the basement/' Larry went on, bobbing his head as he walked, “you can still find the bodies of some high school kids who were on detention/'

“What gets me about detention/' Darnell said, “is that you can't do anything when you get it. You just have to sit there.”

“I don't like it at all,” Larry said. They were approaching the school from the rear. There was a basketball game going on, and they changed their direction to get a better look.

“Did I say I liked it?” Darnell asked. “Did I say I liked it? All I said was that it is even worse because you can't do anything except sit there and be stupid.”

“If they had you doing something it would probably be something like breaking up rocks or something like you were on a chain gang,” Larry said.

“Here comes Freddy,” Darnell said. “I didn't think he was going to South Oakdale.”

“They letting anybody in now,” Larry said.

They watched as Freddy Haskell cut across the lawn toward them. The collar of the white shirt he
wore was crumpled, the way his collars always were, and the tie was off to one side.

“Hi, Larry. Hi, Darnell,” Freddy said with a wave of his hand. He stopped a few feet in front of Larry and Darnell.

“You talking to seventh-graders, man,” Larry said. “When a sixth-grader speaks to a seventh-grader he's supposed to say Mister. You can call us Mister Larry and Mister Darnell.”

“Aw, man …” Freddy smiled.

“What you mean, ‘Aw, man’!” Darnell tried to lower his voice but it just sounded a little hoarse. “He said you got to call us Mister. He didn't say anything about no ‘Aw, man.’ “

Freddy waved his hand and started away.

“Next time you see us you better call us Mister,” Larry yelled at him.

“He's so neat I bet his mama irons his underwear,” Darnell said.

“He's okay, though,” Larry said. “Just too neat.”

“That's catchy, too,” Darnell said. “You hang around him for a few hours and you find yourself wanting to get neat. One day he walked me all the way down to Terry Street and I got this urge to go in and put on a tie.”

“I got to stay away from him, then,” Larry said. “Hey, you want to play basketball after school?”

“Can't,” Darnell said. “Got a meeting of the newspaper people.”

“You like that newspaper stuff?” Larry asked.

“How do I know?” Darnell asked. “They're just having their first meeting today. I'll tell you one
thing, though. If it's like homework, or something like that, I'm quitting.”

“If it was me,” Larry said, rubbing the end of his nose with his palm, “I'd quit right away.”

“South Oakdale has had a newspaper just about every other year,” Mr. Derby said. “It all depends on how many kids are really interested in the paper at the beginning of the school year and how many stay with it. We really need at least eight people to put out a decent paper.”

“We got ten!” said Tony O'Casio. He had dark eyes and heavy eyebrows that moved up and down as he spoke. Everything in the school seemed to excite him.

Darnell looked around as Mr. Derby counted the kids. There were ten, as Tony had said. There were two kids Darnell had never seen before, and he figured them to be sixth-graders.

“Okay, we're going to meet two days a week, Wednesdays and Fridays,” Mr. Derby went on. The history teacher was tall, with almost white hair even though he was one of the younger teachers. “If you can't make a meeting, please call someone and find out what happened. What I want you to do is to think of the
Gazette
staff as a team. Every time we put out a good newspaper, we win.”

“We're going to use the computer?” one of the kids Darnell didn't know asked.

“Yes, but first I want everyone to introduce themselves,” Mr. Derby said. “And if you think you know what you would like to do on the paper, now would be a good time to bring it up. We'll start with Tony.”

“Okay.” Tony's fingers were drumming nervously on the desk as he spoke. “My name is Tony O'Casio, but everyone calls me Tony ‘O,’ and that's the name I'm going to have on my column. Mostly I'm interested in sports.”

“I never heard anyone call you Tony ‘O,’ “ Paula said.

“Who asked you?” Tony asked.

“Go on, Paula.”

“My name is Paula Snow, I'm in the seventh grade, and I'm interested in being a reporter,” Paula said. Paula was dark and pretty and got the best grades in the school.

Kitty Gates was next. She was the second-tallest girl in the school, and some of the guys used to call her Skinny Minny because she was so thin. You could always tell how she felt because when she was happy she had a very wide smile and when she was sad she looked as if she was just about ready to cry.

“My name is Eddie Latimer, I'm in the seventh grade, and I want to take pictures.”

“You have a camera, don't you, Eddie?” Mr. Derby asked.

“He's got three cameras,” Mark volunteered.

“Yo, man, I don't need you to answer my questions,” Eddie said. Eddie was shorter than most of the guys in the school, but he had enormous eyes and he could draw as well as take pictures. “I have four cameras/' he said. “But one of them is broken. I got sand in it.”

Mark Robbins was an eighth-grader with a round face that some girls thought was handsome. He was smart, but he talked so fast that sometimes it was hard to understand him. He said that he could do anything on a newspaper. “I can lay the paper out, or I can do reporting … anything,” he said.

Darnell was next, and he tried to think of what he was going to say. Mr. Derby looked at him as Mark was finishing. Darnell knew that the principal, Mr. Baker, had asked Mr. Derby to take him on the
Gazette
staff.

“I understand you're interested in sports, too,” Mr. Derby said.

“Yeah,” Darnell said.

“What's your name?” Angie Cruz asked.

“You know my … my name is Darnell Rock, and I'm interested in just being on the paper,” Darnell said. “What's your name?”

“My name is Angelica Cruz.” The pretty Puerto Rican girl took off her glasses. She was cream-colored with soft brown eyes and hair that she wore combed out and down her back. “And I would like to write either an advice column or news.”

Everyone in the school knew Linda Gold. If there was ever a list with kids who had done something or won something, you could always find Linda's
name near the top of it. She was blond with gray-green eyes and a sprinkling of freckles around her nose. She also had a running battle with Miss Green, who accused her of violating the school rules by using lipstick.

Donald Williams and Jessica Lee turned out to be the two sixth-graders who had volunteered to work on the
Gazette
staff. Donald said he was eleven, but he looked as if he were ten, especially when he took off his glasses. He said his father worked in computers and he knew a lot about them.

Dark-haired Jessica Lee spoke with a slight accent. She said that she could draw.

“Are you Chinese or something?” Tony asked.

“Fin glad that you're curious about the people around you,” Mr. Derby said. “But as a reporter you have to know how to ask questions, and when to ask them. You have to be careful not to offend people with the way you ask questions/'

“Okay,” Tony said. “My folks are from the Dominican Republic. Where are your folks from?”

“Taiwan,” Jessica said.

“Fine, that was good,” Mr. Derby said. “Fm glad to see that most of you have specific interests, but we're going to find that we have to do a lot of different jobs to get a newspaper out each month. What we're going to do today is to choose some assignments and maybe talk about what we want in the first issue.”

“I'll be the sports guy,” Tony said. “Tony O! on sports. That's an ‘0’ with an exclamation point.”

“We'll start with editor,” Mr. Derby said, ignoring
Tony. ‘The editor in chief more or less runs the paper, and makes assignments. Now, is there anybody here who wants to be editor in chief? wants to be editor in chief?’'

Darnell watched as seven hands went into the air. He had thought about being the person who wrote about sports, but Tony had spoken up first.

“I always get good marks in English/' Linda Gold said.

“So do I.” Mark Robbins always looked as if he had a smile on his face, even when he wasn't smiling. “Are we going to go by marks?”

“I think we should go by who wants to be the editor,” Eddie Latimer said. “And since just about everybody wants to be the editor, let's have a vote and get on with it.”

“Is that what you call great English?” Linda asked.

“Voting's a good idea,” Mr. Derby said. He passed out three-by-five cards. “Put down your choice of editor, and we'll count them. But remember, we're voting for the person who's probably going to get stuck doing more work than anyone else.”

He wrote down the names of the seven candidates on the board, and everyone voted by writing a name on the card and turning it in to Mr. Derby.

Mr. Derby read off the votes as he added them up.

“Jennifer, one. Linda, one. Linda, two. Mark, one. Donald, one. Kitty, one. Kitty, two. Kitty, three. An-gie, one. Kitty, four. Looks like Kitty will be our new editor.”

“Way to go, Kitty!” Angie Cruz was the only one who looked happy with the outcome of the voting.

Kitty Gates was nice but very quiet. Darnell had
been to her birthday party two years ago, mostly because his mother had made him go.

“Okay, how about making me the official photographer?” Eddie said.

“Is that okay?” Kitty asked Mr. Derby.

“Sure, if it's okay with you,” Mr. Derby said.

“And Tony will be sports writer,” Kitty said.

“Naturally,” Tony said.

“Fve got an idea for a column,” Angie Cruz spoke up. “I could do something on what people are talking about around the school.”

“Fine,” Kitty said.

“Suppose nobody's talking about anything?” Mark said.

“Then I'll do something and write about that,” Angie said.

Then Mr. Derby wanted to know what the first lead story was going to be. Everybody looked at Kitty and she didn't look particularly bright.

“What do you think?” she asked, looking around at everybody. “Do you know any news?”

“A dog got into the library last week,” Donald said.

“That's not important enough for our first issue,” Kitty said.

“Hey, it's news,” Mark said. “We're supposed to print anything that's news.”

“No, we're not,” Kitty said, looking over toward Mr. Derby. “We're supposed to figure out what kind of newspaper we're going to be.”

“How about a paper,” Eddie Latimer said, “that prints stories about dogs that come to school?”

“How about world peace?” Kitty said.

“Give me a break!” Linda was still mad about not being editor, and she showed it. “What are we going to do about world peace?”

“Write about it!” Donald said.

“So world peace will be the focus of our first issue,” Mr. Derby said. He stood up and they knew the meeting was over. “I want everybody to pick up copies of the old school newspapers from my office sometime this week. And I want everybody to make sure they read at least one regular newspaper each day.”

Kitty told the staff to go around and interview students and teachers about world peace. Darnell felt good about being on the staff, but he didn't want to go around talking to students because he didn't want anybody getting on his case about being on the paper, especially Chris McKoy. Chris, besides being the toughest boy in the school, was the unofficial head of the Corner Crew.