Free Payback Time by Carl Deuker Page A

then opened my laptop and got to work. Chet the Jet had written a mediocre story for the
Times;
I was going to write a better one for the
Lincoln Light.
    I had less than a page to describe forty-eight minutes of football, but lack of space wasn't my main problem. The final score would be in the headline, so there'd be no suspense. Somehow, I had to capture my readers—and that made my first sentence crucial. I typed, deleted, typed some more, deleted some more, thought for a while, typed, and then stopped and read over what I had.
In a game in which sixty-five points were scored, it took the last-minute defensive heroics of newcomer Angel Marichal to preserve Lincoln's stunning upset victory over Mater Dei at Qwest Field in the season opener.
    A little wordy, but acceptable. I moved on.
    My next one hundred and fifty words recounted the accomplishments of Horst and Lenny Westwood and the other offensive players. I threw in a sentence on Marcus Bintz just to be fair. I closed by returning to my opening, but adding more bang, just like Mr. Dewey had taught me.
With an offense clicking under Horst Diamond's leadership and a defense strengthened by Angel Marichal, this year's Lincoln Mustangs have a chance to stampede all the way to the state title game in Tacoma.
    I read the article over, made a few small changes, and then called Alyssa. "I've got both the preview and the recap finished. I'll e-mail them to you."
    "That's great." I could almost feel her smile. "Mitch, I'll be working in the newspaper room at school all day tomorrow. Any chance you could help out?"
    "Tomorrow? Tomorrow is Labor Day. How are you going to get in?"
    "Teachers will be there."
    ***
    She was right. The next morning the main doors to Lincoln were all open; at least a dozen teachers were in their classrooms working. It turned out that Alyssa had gotten nearly everyone on the staff to write something. I spent the day helping her format pages, and then I drove her to the printer in Pioneer Square, south of downtown.
    Tuesday I drove back to Pioneer Square with Alyssa. We picked up the newspapers and took them to Lincoln High. She kept the first ten copies for herself, slipping them into a manila envelope so they wouldn't get wrinkled. Then we went from entrance to entrance, filling each rack.
    "You know something, Alyssa," I said when we finished. "I bet this is the first time a newspaper has been printed and ready to go on the first day of school. And I don't mean just at Lincoln. I mean at any high school. What you've done is amazing."
    She turned to me. "Thank you, Mitch. You don't know how much that means to me." And then she hugged me.
    I didn't know what to do, so I wrapped my arms around her, not daring to squeeze for fear she'd think I was a pervert. I was sure she'd pull away, but instead she started sobbing, and she kept crying, so I finally did give her a squeeze, and she squeezed back, and I decided that having a real live girl in my arms was definitely an okay thing, and that doing it on a regular basis would also definitely be an okay thing. Finally Alyssa stepped back and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me. I guess I'm just really, really tired." She snuffled once, and then she patted me on the chest. "You're a good guy, Mitch True."
    I did my run/walk soon after I got home. As I plodded along, I thought about Alyssa. Since newspaper is just an after-school club at Lincoln, nobody has to write anything. If I'd been elected editor, I'd have been lucky to squeeze out enough stories for two or three newspapers over the course of the year. Alyssa might not manage to print one every month, like she hoped, but she'd come close. I hadn't been cheated out of the editorship; she'd been the better choice all along.

PART THREE

1
    S CHOOL STARTED THE NEXT DAY. Wherever kids filed into the hallways, a stack of
Lincoln Lights
waited for them. I watched as student after student grabbed one, flipped through it