“Where were you all day?” Hailey asked me, a little out of breath while I was loading up my bag with books to take home that afternoon. I had so much homework, I could scream. Thank goodness, at least the paper was almost put to bed, as they say in the journalism world.
“Where were you? I didn’t even see you at lunch,” I replied.
“Sorry. I hid in the library, cramming for a science quiz,” Hailey said.
Normally I might be hurt that she hadn’t asked for my help, but secure Sam took a moment. Maybe she just thought she could focus better alone. I certainly knew how that felt.
“But,” she said, her eyes practically popping out of her head, “did you hear what happened to Michael’s brother Tommy?”
My heart started to beat really fast. “No. What happened?”
“He was in a car accident. I saw Frank in the library and he told me,” Hailey said quickly.
“Oh my gosh. Was he hurt?”
“Not really, but I guess he could have been. And guess what?” she said, still wide-eyed and breathless.
“What?” I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to know. I felt a little shaky all over. Poor Michael. That’s probably why he was upset today. It had nothing to do with me.
“The reason he got into the accident was because he was”—she paused for a moment—“texting.”
Her words hit me like a rock. Boy Mysteriously Keeps Terrible Secret. I couldn’t say anything. I really wanted to talk to Michael. My joke must have seemed so awful to him, but how could I have known? Why hadn’t he told me?
“Sam?” Hailey asked, worried.
“Yeah, I’m just in a little bit of shock. What a terrible thing to have happened now. I need to talk to Michael,” I said. He must be feeling pretty bad right now, since he was the one who had dismissed the seriousness of the article in the first place.
“I saw him by his locker earlier,” Hailey said.
“Okay. I’ll call you later.” I picked up my bag. Hailey nodded.
I walked as fast as I could down one hallway and down another to get to Michael’s locker, but he was nowhere to be seen. I did see Frank up ahead.
“Frank,” I called out. “Have you seen Michael? Hailey told me what happened.”
“Yeah, I think he’s on his way home,” he said.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, just shaken up. But Tommy’s fine,” Frank replied.
“Okay, I’m going to try and catch up with him.” I hurried toward the main school doors.
I ran out the doors and squinted into the late-afternoon sun. Way up ahead, I saw Michael heading off toward his house. I took a deep breath. “Michael!” I yelled. A few kids turned around, but I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. I just wanted to make things right with Michael. He didn’t turn around. This time I yelled his name even louder. He stopped and turned around, scanning the crowd of students and buses. I ran toward him, waving my hand. He caught my eye and smiled. That was a good sign.
“Hey, Sam. Are you okay?” he called out to me, looking concerned.
I stopped to catch my breath. “I”—I took another breath—“heard”—breath—“about what happened to Tommy,” I finally managed to get out.
“Is that why you came running after me? I thought all the Voice office computers exploded or something!” he said, grinning.
“No, I was worried about you. And I felt really stupid about joking with you this morning,” I said, looking down at my feet.
“Hey.” Michael put his hand on my shoulder. I felt its warmth and wanted to just melt right there on the sidewalk. “You didn’t know. I was just really distracted. I didn’t mean to act so upset. I mean, I was, but not about your joke,” he explained.
“Oh, good,” I said, feeling incredibly relieved. “So what happened, exactly? I heard about it from Hailey who heard about it from Frank, but I didn’t get the whole story.”
This time Michael took a deep breath. His face went from happy to serious. “Well, Tommy had just pulled out of the driveway and at the same time got a text from his girlfriend. He took his eyes off the road for a second and swerved, hitting a parked car on the street.”
“Oh my gosh!” I said.
“And . . . the parked car happened to be my dad’s. I’ve never seen my dad so mad. They took away his driving privileges, like, indefinitely.”
“They should have!” I exclaimed. “It could have been so much worse.”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “Tommy was really shaken up too. It’s amazing that one split second can change things. We’re really lucky he wasn’t hurt and he didn’t hurt anyone else.”
“I’m sorry it happened at all. It’s kind of strange that it happened now,” I said, hoping that was okay to point out.
“Yeah. I can’t stop thinking about it. All along, I was thinking that getting distracted by texting was no big deal. I feel like I need to write about it.”
“You mean for the paper?” I asked.
“Yeah, like a sidebar to the main article. I’m planning to talk to Mr. Trigg tomorrow.”
“You absolutely should,” I agreed.
At the Voice office the next day, I went with Michael to talk to Mr. Trigg about the sidebar.
“I think that sounds brilliant,” Mr. Trigg said. “But we’ll need it by Thursday. The paper goes up Friday. Can you write it that fast?”
Michael nodded. “I know exactly what I want to write.”
“Give it a go, then. It sounds like you’ve got something important to say.”
While Michael started drafting his piece, I went over to Jeff’s computer and checked out what he was working on.
“Wow,” I said, also taking a look at some of the photos he was uploading into our article.
“You like?” he said, turning around to face me, a big smile on his face.
“Don’t get me wrong. It looks great. But I can barely recognize anyone. This is not a fashion magazine. And even then, I think those magazines go way overboard,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t hurt Jeff’s feelings. Still, I had to say it.
“So looking like an upscale magazine is a bad thing?” Jeff scoffed, immediately getting defensive.
“Well, yeah, since that’s not what we are,” I said back at him, hands on my hips.
“I’ll bet if you brought any of these people in here, they’d all rather look a little better than a little worse,” Jeff replied.
“Jeff, that’s not the point. I was just—,” I started to say, but Mr. Trigg interrupted.
“What’s all the hullabaloo?” he asked, throwing his scarf over his shoulder.
Jeff and I glared at each other.
“Jeff has Photoshopped all the pictures in our texting article! He’s literally changed the way people look. I thought we were supposed to be covering reality here.” My emotions were starting to get the better of me.
“I’m just doing what people do. We have the technology. I don’t get why you don’t want people to look better,” he said, turning to me.
“That’s just your opinion. I think people look fine the way they really are,” I shot back, my voice becoming louder and shrill.
“Okay, okay. Take a breather, folks,” Mr. Trigg said, putting his hands on our shoulders like a referee in a boxing match. “Jeff,” he went on, looking at him square in the eye. “I admire your Photoshop talents, but I must admit that I agree with Ms. Martone on this one. We’re a newspaper. We let people make up their own minds and opinions. That’s the difference. We are not a beauty magazine pushing a certain image here. We’re just running photos of the kids in the story. Now, I don’t believe in running purposefully unflattering pictures—that’s another kind of journalism. But we need to run photos that are an accurate representation of the students.”
“Okay, but what about this guy?” Jeff showed us a picture of a student with a big smear of what looked like pizza sauce on his mouth. “Are you saying I shouldn’t touch up anything?”
“No,” I said, a little calmer now. “I think that falls into what Mr. Trigg said about purposefully publishing unflattering pictures. I think it’s okay to fix something like that and just make him look like he normally does.”
“You’re on the money, Martone,” Mr. Trigg said. “Let’s try to stick with those principles.”
Jeff sighed and nodded. “Okay. I guess I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”
I was thankful that Mr. Trigg had been there to take my side before Jeff turned the Voice into Vogue. Before I left, I stopped over at Michael’s computer. He was totally lost in thought, writing his piece, typing away. I didn’t want to disturb him, but I wanted to say good-bye. I leaned over and said in a low voice, “Catch you later, Mikey.”
He jumped when he heard me, and his notebook, which was on his lap, fell to the floor. Out slipped a photo . . . of me. Not just any old photo either—the Photoshopped version that Jeff had taken in the ice-cream shop! I stared at it, my mouth dropping open. Michael stared at it too for a second before grabbing it.
“That’s weird,” he said, nervously looking at the photo like he’d never seen it before. I noticed his cheeks were growing a little red. “I don’t know how that ended up in my notebook. It must have gotten mixed up with my things when I was working with Jeff.” He still kept his eyes on the photo instead of me.
“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”
“I’ll give it back to him after I’m done with this article,” he continued. Then he slipped the photo back into his notebook and turned his attention to the computer screen.
“Okay, I’ll let you work,” I responded in a perky way, trying to pretend what just happened hadn’t totally freaked me out. Boy Likes Photo Better Than Actual Girl is what came to mind.
As I left, I saw Jessica sitting with Mr. Trigg, going over the paper on-screen. She was smiling and looked much more relaxed than I had ever seen her. She caught my eye as I left and gave me a thumbs-up. I gave her one back. I was glad I had told her what I really thought. If I hadn’t felt confident enough to do it, she might not have heard what she needed to hear and would still be stressing out over every little word and driving us all crazy. One major thing being Dear Know-It-All has taught me is not to be afraid to say what I think. Most of the time, even with my sometimes frizzy hair and less-than-perfect skin, I thought being me, the real me, as in the un-Photoshopped version of me, was pretty cool. I just hoped Michael thought that, too.