The Last Reporter Read Online Free PDF

hadn’t been working much on story ideas. “Well, come on,” said Jennifer. “What are kids talking about? What’s the big news?”
    “You’re not going to like this,” said Sammy, the
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’s undercover food critic. “I know how much everybody hates those state tests. But every class, that’s all anyone’s talking about this week. The scores are out, and we did great.”
    Phoebe said that in her before school/after school mandatory/voluntary prep class for the state tests, they were having an old-fashioned ice-cream social to celebrate the third-grade scores. “We’re going to wear real plastic straw hats,” she said.
    “You know, I wasn’t thinking about it,” said Jennifer. “But we had a pizza party in English class to celebrate. And my mom, she said that the PTA was planning something for the school — she said Harris never had such a jump in scores.”
    “Sounds like a story,” said Adam. “I’ll do it.” Adam wanted to do some good news. The truth was, he was worn out investigating everything and everybody. The science fair. Devillio. The Willows. The
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being shut down. Finally, a happy, easy story. “We’ll talk about how much the scores went up in each grade,” he said. “We’ll get all the results. Sammy, we’ll need your help on graphics — like you did for your mashed-potato investigation. We’ll have bar graphs and pie charts and ice-cream cakes that show the numbers going up.”
    “And we should write about teachers, too,” said Phoebe. “The teachers must be way better, since the scores went up. And we should write about how much harder everyone worked than ever before. How great before school/after school mandatory/voluntary was. And how everyone’s getting smarter. I hope everybody knows what this means: We are the smartest kids in the history of this school.”
    They got quiet. Kids looked around at each other. Them? The smartest ever? Many were thinking of older brothers and sisters and how smart
they
were. Adam was thinking of this older boy, Franky Cutty, who was at the high school now and was the most impressive big kid he’d ever met.
    Smarter than that?
    “We’re number one,” chanted Phoebe. “We’re number one.”
    “I guess it’s possible,” Adam said softly.
    Sammy said his undercover food critic column was going to rate chocolate milk at restaurants around Tremble. Several staffers thought that was a bad idea — there wasn’t enough to it. Someone suggested that he might do chocolate milk and hot chocolate and chocolate milk shakes combined, since they’re part of the same family of liquids, but Sammy was quite adamant that there was more than enough to fill a column on chocolate milk alone.
    “I used to think the same thing,” he said. “But then, I don’t know, maybe a month ago, I ordered a chocolate milk at the West River Diner. It was a real letdown. The chocolate syrup was thick on the bottom and had not been properly stirred in. There was no bubbly chocolate foam on top. The glass had been completely filled, meaning you couldn’t put a straw in and blow bubbles without spilling on the table.
    “They didn’t even give me a straw. I had to ask twice. I know it’s hard to believe, but I swear I’m not making it up. And that wasn’t the worst. I tasted it. . . .” Here Sammy paused.
    “What?” said a photographer. “What?”
    “Warm.”
    A few shuddered. “Warm milk?” said a typist. “Gross.”
    “Room temperature,” said Sammy.
    It made Adam so uncomfortable that he pulled out his jawbreaker and gave it a couple of quick sucks.
    “You know,” said Sammy, “this isn’t just some big joke: rate the chocolate milks — which one gets 4 yummy-yummies? Oh, big deal, rah-rah. This story is a service to every kid in this community. We need to define the standards for chocolate milk here in Tremble. Draw the line. Who will do it if we don’t? There’s a lot of backsliding, precisely because too many people say it’s only