“Dogs chasing Frisbees, kids frolicking, squirrels . . . squirreling. That’s what this second grader was expecting when she rode her bike to Riverside Park yesterday afternoon.”
“Cut,” said Maya. She put down the camera. “Squirrels squirreling?”
Ash shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. What would you say squirrels do?”
“Creep people out,” Maya said, giving a passing squirrel the side-eye.
“Kids frolicking, squirrels creeping people out.” Ash shook her head. “It doesn’t really go.”
“Neither does the first part,” said Lucy, who was making her way across the monkey bars. “I mean, who says ‘frolicking’?”
“No one says ‘frolicking,’ ” quipped Sadie, who was hanging upside down. “It’s unnatural.”
Ash sighed. They’d come to Riverside Park to record footage at the scene of the crime. But it was hard to be anchorwoman when everyone and their mom had an opinion about what she should say. (Literally. All the kids at the park were weighing in, as were their moms.)
“The sound is terrible here,” Maya said with a frown. “The phone is barely picking you up at all because of the wind and the little kids running around.”
“Frolicking,” said Lucy, which made Sadie giggle.
But not Ash. “Do you want me to report on your missing bike or not?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s just record Lucy’s interview,” Maya suggested. “We can do your parts in the studio or on voiceover, and Brielle can edit it together.”
“Good thinking.” Ash looked up at Lucy, who was now doing the monkey bars two at a time. “Let’s go over to the fence where you parked your bike yesterday.”
“Wait!” Maya shouted. Then she shrunk back, embarrassed, and talked quieter. “If Brielle’s going to be editing anyway, let me get some footage of Lucy up there. For background shots.”
That was all Lucy needed to hear. The second the camera was on her, she began breaking out all her tricks. She skipped bars, hung upside down, spun by two fingers, and traveled the whole circle in what had to be world-record-worthy time. Sadie cheered from the ground, Olive whooped from the bench, and baby Beckett clapped from his stroller.
Once Lucy dropped down, Maya filmed her walking to the place where her bike disappeared.
“Tell me what happened yesterday when you got to the park,” Ash said.
Lucy launched into her story with even more energy and passion than she’d displayed in the stairwell. She spoke loudly enough for the camera to pick up her voice clearly—and for other families in the park to hear what was going on.
“You have to be careful with your stuff around here,” one of the moms said. “My diaper bag was stolen from this park about a year ago. It had my phone in it too, but not my wallet or keys, thank goodness. I filed a police report, but they never found it.”
Ash could hardly believe it—or her luck. “Can I ask you about it on camera?”
The mom paused. “What’s this for? A school project?”
“It’s not part of school,” the anchor replied. “It’s for a show we’re making ourselves called The Underground News.”
The mom looked from Ash and Maya to Olive, who waved from the bench. Then she looked at her own toddler, who was picking up handfuls of mulch and carefully arranging them along the bottom of the slide. “All right,” the mom said, getting excited. “I actually used to play ‘news show’ in my room when I was a kid. I’d report on what I saw out the window, and I’d interview my stuffed animals.”
“Cool,” Ash said. She hoped she sounded convincing, even though having a pretend news show in your room wasn’t that cool. Not compared to having a real show that people could watch all over the world. “Now’s your chance to be on a real show, online,” she told her.
The mom fluffed her hair and smiled at the crew. “Is there food in my teeth?”
Lucy checked carefully before saying “You’re good.”
That interview took only three minutes to record, which was good because Olive said they had to leave in five. Sadie and Lucy spent the last two minutes on the swings while Maya got some slow pans of the park, in case they needed more background footage. When their time was up, they all walked Lucy to her house, which was in the opposite direction of Ash’s. Then they had to drop off Maya at hers, which was also out of the way, and along the route the dog poo bandit (or independent, home-owning dog) must have walked that day. By the time the Simon-Hockheimer crew got home, the sky was getting dark. Beckett was fussy, Sadie was snippy, and Olive was barely holding it together.
“There you all are,” said Dad, who was straining a pot of pasta. “Big news day?”
Ash’s feet ached and her stomach groaned, but she’d never felt more energized. “Live, local, and late-breaking,” she said. “Just wait till you see.”