Free The Landry News by Andrew Clements Page B

ZZ [not his real name] to bring some toast to the bus stop for me, so I was okay. At the end of three days, I mentioned to my mom that I thought I might like some of those Cocoa Puffs, and that the chocolate and marshmallow Pop Tarts might be something I could eat, too. The next morning, there they were, like magic—right on the kitchen counter.
    AR: Well, JJ, that’s certainly an inspiring story, and I know our readers will appreciate your sharing it with us all.
    There was a book review every week, a video-game tips column, a “Best of the Web” listing, and a “Best TV Movies of the Weekend” column. Since Christmas and Hanukkah were not that far off, there was a “Holiday Countdown”—a column listing the top ten presents that kids on the red and blue teams were hoping for.
    Tommy read a lot, and when he was in fourth grade he had started collecting slang expressions that he thought were funny. He eventually discovered that there were whole dictionaries of slang. He asked Cara if he could have a column about slang, and the editor in chief said okay, as long as everything in the columnhad a G rating. Tommy agreed, and a column called “That Slang Thang” was born.
    Section B—the second sheet of The Landry News— was a hodgepodge. If there were some good columns that wouldn’t fit on page two, they ended up in section B. There were two regular weekly comic strips and usually a cartoon or two, as well as short stories and vacation travel stories about places kids had visited—like the Grand Canyon or the Field Museum. There were poems and jokes, and LeeAnn had surprised everybody with a completely creepy mystery story that had a new installment every week.
    And then, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Michael Morton came up to Cara after school at her locker and asked if he could give her a story that a friend of his wanted to have printed in the newspaper. Michael was a computer whiz, the kid who did the “Best of the Web” listing for the paper each week. He kept mostly to himself. Cara said, “Sure, Michael. I’ll be glad to look at it.” Cara stuck the sheets of paper in her backpack, grabbed her coat, and ran to catch her bus.
    Late that night, Cara remembered the story, got it out of her book bag, and lay across her bed to read it. It was only two pages, written in black ballpoint. There were tons of cross outs and smears on each page, and the writer had pushed down so hard with his pen that the back side of each sheet reminded Cara of Braille, the raised alphabetfor blind people.
    There was no name at the beginning, just the title “Lost and Found.” The story began with this sentence: “When I heard that my parents were getting divorced, the first thing I did was run to my room, grab my baseball bat, and pound all my Little League trophies into bits.”
    Cara was hooked. The person in the story was a boy, and Cara was amazed at how similar his feelings were to the ones she’d had when her dad left. The same kind of anger, the same kind of blind lashing out. And finally, there was the same sort of calming down, facing facts. The story did not end very hopefully, but the boy saw that life would still go on, and that both his dad and his mom still loved him just as much, maybe more.
    When Cara finished reading, she was choked up and her eyes were wet. She noticed that there was no name at the end of the story either. That’s when it hit her that this was not fiction. It was real life. It was Michael Morton’s own story.
    Cara slid off her bed and went out to the living room, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her robe. Her mom was on the couch, watching the end of a show, so Cara sat with her for about five minutes.
    When the show ended, Cara picked up the channel changer and shut off the TV. Then she handed her mom the story. “Would you read this for me, Mom? Someone wants me to put it in the next edition of