. . . but it’s a fact the bomb was set to detonate approximately 30 minutes into the movie showing. Police offer the standard “no comment” when asked about suspects, but no one should ignore the fact that Bobby Milner, member of a local “freethinking” group, went on our local radio station and said, “This should make Frank Hughes think twice about allowing the showing of such religious movies.”
Frank Hughes is the owner of the theater. He was unavailable for comment.
Robert “Bobby” Milner was arrested last December for a violent offense.
What do YOU think? Should Bobby Milner be considered a suspect in the attempted bombing? Sound Off, Senators. Leave a comment with your thoughts. ~ Sam Sanderson, reporting.
“Your blog post this morning has gotten over a hundred comments already,” Ms. Pape told Sam as soon as she entered the newsroom for last period on Tuesday afternoon.
Sam stared at her. “Really? Is that good?” She dumped her books onto the desk.
“It’s a great response,” Ms. Pape said as Aubrey joined her. “Especially for the first day the blog’s been live.” She didn’t smile. “Some of the comments are referring to Mr. Milner’s arrest record. I’m still not sure I should have allowed you to include it in the piece.”
“It’s a matter of public record, Ms. Pape. Just like Aubrey agreed this morning,” Sam said. She was still impressed that the editor had put the news before her personal dislike of Sam.
Aubrey faced the teacher, turning her back on Sam. “May I speak with you for a moment, Ms. Pape?” She cut her eyes over her shoulder at Sam. “At your desk?”
As soon as they moved to Ms. Pape’s desk, Celeste and Lana surrounded Sam. Lana slid on top of the desk. “You are rockin’ it, girl. Good going.”
“Did the other posts get comments, too?” Sam gnawed at the corner of her nail.
Celeste grinned. “Sports got four, student corner got two, and teacher tips got one. Yours has one hundred and four, as of last hour.” Her smile spread even wider, the freckles across the bridge of her nose seeming to dance.
Sam resisted the urge to jump into a toe-touch right there in the classroom. With a student body of about eight hundred, having over a hundred comments seemed pretty good to her.
“And the comments are great. They aren’t just lame posts. People are talking about Mr. Milner and the bomb. I spent all last period in computer lab, and Mrs. Forge let us check out the blog.” Lana swung her legs back and forth, her jewel-studded boots rubbing against the leg of the desk with every pass, making a scritch-scratch noise.
Sam’s throat got a little tight. Dad had told her not to accuse someone without proof.
Scritch-scratch . . . scritch-scratch.
But she wasn’t really accusing Mr. Milner of anything. She just wrote what was already up on the radio station’s website.
Scritch-scratch . . . scritch-scratch.
That wasn’t really accusing him, right?
“Good work, Sam.” The voice behind her made her mouth go dry.
She turned, forcing her smile to hold in place. “T-Thanks, Luke.” Heat filled her cheeks and she dropped her gaze to the floor.
Ohmygummybears! Ohmygummybears!
Luke Jensen, the cutest boy in seventh grade. Well, at least to Sam. He had sandy blond, wavy hair and eyes that reminded her of dark chocolate. They’d gone to school together since kindergarten, but lately, every time she got near him, Sam’s mind refused to remember how to speak. As if the English language wasn’t her native tongue.
“You’re a good reporter,” he said.
Her head shot up. His face was a little red, too. She didn’t even bother answering, just smiled.
Luke flashed a dimpled grin, then headed off to join the other guys who circled in the back corner and talked sports.
Sam sat with her tongue still tied into a knot as Aubrey stalked to the front of the room. “Okay, people, listen up.”
Lana slipped off the desk and into a chair beside Celeste and Sam. Everybody took a seat and focused on the editor-in-chief.
“While Ms. Pape and I go through the comments and respond as we see fit, those of you who have blog posts due in the morning can do research in the media center. For those of you who don’t, we still have the bi-monthly paper to put out, so you can help Kevin and Nikki with the layouts,” Aubrey said.
What, nothing else? Sam felt more than a little disappointed that Aubrey didn’t even bother to mention her post. Everybody in school was talking about her blog post. Ms. Pape had seemed impressed with the number of comments, even if she had been a bit nervous. No wonder — Sam had had to argue with her about leaving in the part about Mr. Milner’s past record. They’d gone round and round before school this morning until finally, and surprisingly, Aubrey had pointed out that an arrest record was a matter of public record, and as long as Sam didn’t stray from the facts of the record readily available to the public, it could be included. Ms. Pape had reluctantly agreed.
“Come on, let’s go to the media center.” Celeste grabbed Sam’s arm. “I have the student corner tomorrow and need to find some stuff on Charlie Lacey. Do you know him?” She waited while Sam scooped up her books before she led the way out of the newsroom and down the breezeway toward the media center.
“Doesn’t he play basketball or something? He’s in eighth grade, I think.” Sam’s mind was already on her next blog post. At least Makayla had study hall this period, so she would be in the media center. She could help.
Sam and Celeste quietly entered the oversized room. No way did they want to make noise and bring the wrath of Mrs. Forge. She had short gray hair that stuck out all over her head and glasses that made her eyes look bigger than a frog’s.
Celeste headed to the corner where some of her friends sat around one of the round tables. Sam scanned the tables for Makayla, and finally she spied her in the back corner, her eyes glued to a monitor. Sam made her way over and eased into the seat beside Makayla.
“What are you doing in here?” Makayla whispered.
“Working on my next story. What about you?” Sam nodded toward the computer. “Going boldly where no one has gone before?”
Makayla wrinkled her nose and snorted. “Ha ha. I’m finishing my homework. I want to have it done before I get home. Mom was in homework master-mode last night. Standing over my shoulder, checking every little thing, even though I told her I knew I’d done it all right.”
“What’s up with that?” Sam asked. “Everyone knows you’re brilliant.”
Makayla shrugged. “Some homeschooling friend of hers said at karate practice the other night that kids in public schools score lower on tests or something. I hope she’s not gonna be like this all year. I’ll go crazy.”
“Crazier than you already are, you mean?” Sam laughed as Makayla nudged her. “You always get the highest score of anybody in our grade. Your mom’s just being weird.”
“Tell me about it.” Makayla opened the internet. “So, what do you want to put in your next article?”
“Gotta be something different.” Aubrey had been very clear that everything had to be fresh and new and informative, or she’d hand the assignment off to someone else. She would be looking for a reason to snatch it away from Sam and give it to Kevin or someone. Sam didn’t want that to happen.
“What if you ask your dad to take you to the theater tonight? Maybe you could talk to the owner,” said Makayla. “Or maybe you could talk to someone in the bomb unit. Your dad could tell you who.”
“Maybe.” That was a good idea, but she didn’t think Dad would be willing to help her in her reporting. To tell the truth, Sam wanted to do it on her own, to prove to her dad that she was mature enough to be taken seriously.
Makayla lifted a pen and began to doodle on the notebook beside the keyboard. Nothing new there — if she was idle, she was drawing. Sam smiled at the anime faces, all with hair covering one eye; the sunflower; the unicorn; the bus; the . . .
Wait a minute. Bus. Why was that sticking in Sam’s mind? “Bus,” she whispered.
“What?” Makayla whispered back.
“Hang on, let me think.” Sam closed her eyes. Bus. Buses. Ms. Kirkpatrick’s nasal voice . . .
Her eyes shot open. “Search ‘bus ads in Little Rock’ in Google,” said Sam.
Makayla gave her a funny look, but typed it into the search engine. Within seconds, the results loaded. Sam leaned over and scanned the results.
Sam clicked on one of the links and skimmed the information until she found what she needed. “Listen,” she whispered. “ ‘The Central Arkansas Coalition of Reason purchased over five thousand dollars’ worth of anti-God ads to run on the Central Arkansas Transit Authority buses serving Little Rock. The ads read: Are you good without God? Millions are.’ ”
Makayla shook her head. “Oh yeah, I remember now. Mom got upset about those ads.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
“A judge ruled the ads fell under the free speech law. Mom said the liberals were going to ruin our democracy altogether.”
Sam didn’t respond. Her mom often talked about free speech and how every journalist should fully support the law. Mom said that even though this coalition pushed the wrong message, they should have the right to take out an ad stating their ideas. But Sam didn’t want to argue the point right now with her best friend, so she clicked the mouse to scroll down the page. “The local spokesperson is Jessica Townsend.”
“Never heard of her.” Makayla leaned closer to the monitor. “What does it say about her?”
“She ‘wants to bring together humanistic, secular, and nontheistic organizations in the Little Rock area in a nonviolent manner,’ ” Sam read.
“Is that why her group went to federal court to get those stupid ads put on the buses? They ran them the two weeks of all the big revivals in town,” said Makayla.
“How do you remember that?” Sam asked.
“Because a friend of Mom’s was the planner of one of the revivals. Mom got pretty upset about it all. Don’t you remember it being on the news and all?”
“Yeah. Now I do.” Sam nodded. “The About Us part of their site says they proclaim ‘the understanding of what is good relies on human reason and compassion, and not on theistic or supernatural beliefs.’ ”
“So they’re basically saying that everything good is from humans being reasonable and compassionate?” Makayla rolled her eyes. “They think God has nothing to do with it?”
“That’s how I understand it.” Sam had reviewed almost a year’s worth of the high school paper’s format and how they managed to link one story to another, so she had several ideas for articles. Linking the coalition to the bombing would be an amazing hook.
“These people are crazy enough to plant a bomb,” said Makayla.
“Maybe not,” Sam answered.
Makayla narrowed her eyes and shifted to stare Sam in the face. “How do you figure that?”
Sam shrugged. “Well, think about it. They go to court to get the right to put ads on public buses. Just makes me think they wouldn’t do something like planting a bomb.”
Makayla snorted again. “They only went to court to get the publicity.”
“So how does bombing a movie theater get them publicity?” Sam asked.
“What’s been on the local news the past few days?” Makayla sighed . . . heavy, as she rolled her eyes.
“That doesn’t get any publicity for them.”
“Maybe they didn’t want publicity. Maybe this time they wanted to hurt their opposition — Christians.”
“I just don’t know,” said Sam.
The five minute bell rang. Mrs. Forge clapped her hands. “Students, close your files, shut down the computers, and prepare your personal items for dismissal.”
Makayla hit the button to shut down the system. “Want me to see what I can find on their leader tonight?”
“Sure,” said Sam. “Thanks. I’m sure you’ll find something. You usually do.”
Makayla grinned as she turned off the computer. “That’s because I’m a genius. And a ninja. I’m a ninja-genius.”
“And so modest, too.” Sam chuckled and pushed her chair under the table.
“Hey, I checked out your blog post right before you showed up. Did you know you have almost a hundred and fifty comments?”
Man, she’d gotten almost fifty more in what, less than an hour? “I haven’t gotten a chance to look yet. Ms. Pape and Aubrey were going to answer the ones they felt they needed to, I guess. I can’t wait to read them.” But she wanted to do it when she could take her time and enjoy the moment.
“Check when you get home,” said Makayla.
The bell rang and students rushed out of the classrooms like ants toward watermelon at a fourth of July picnic.
“Text me when you’re done with cheer practice.” Makayla rushed toward her locker.
How was she going to make it through cheerleading practice when all she wanted to do was get home, read the comments, and do more research on the coalition?
And wouldn’t Dad just love her questions tonight.