Darnell Rock Reporting by Walter Dean Myers

Author:Walter Dean Myers [Myers, Walter Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-51939-9
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 1994-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

“Hey, you're in the Journals!” Tamika knocked over the container of milk on the table, sending a stream of the white liquid toward her father.

“What?” Her father jumped up, knocking his chair over backward.

Mrs. Rock grabbed the milk container with her right hand and wiped most of the milk up with one swipe of the dishrag in the other.

“I'm in the paper?” Mr. Rock asked.

“No, Darnell is,” Tamika said, spreading a copy of the Oakdale Journal on the table. “Listen to this: ‘Mrs. Estelle Joyner spoke at the City Council meeting last night, asking them to continue their plans for building a parking lot at South Oakdale. She said she had heard that they had seen an editorial in the school newspaper that had influenced them. The editorial was written by Darnell Rock, a seventh-grader. The Council put off a decision on the parking lot until the next meeting’ ”

“You were down to the City Council meeting?” Mr. Rock was picking up the chair.

“No,” Darnell answered. “I don't even know what it is.”

“‘It's where the city does its business,” Mrs. Rock said. “They pass laws, decide on what taxes they're going to have, and determine how the city is going to spend its money.”

“Somebody must have sent them your article,” Tamika said.

“You're going to find out when you get to school,” Mrs. Rock said. “I'm anxious to find out myself. This is the first time anybody in the family has been in the paper.”

“I was in the paper,” Mr. Rock said. “When I went into the Army they had me in a list of all the guys that went in from our neighborhood.”

“Sweeby, too?” Darnell asked.

“I guess so,” his father answered gruffly.

“You guys better get out of here before you're late.” Mrs. Rock took the bowl of cereal from in front of Tamika.

“I'm not finished,” Tamika said.

“Yes, you are,” Mrs. Rock said as the phone rang.

“I bet that's somebody who read about you in the paper,” Tamika said.

She beat her mother to the phone and answered it. All eyes were on her as she answered. She shook her head twice, then said that she would “see if he is in.” All the time she was pointing to Darnell and at the newspaper.

“It's somebody from the newspaper!” she whispered as loudly as she could as she handed the receiver to her brother.

Darnell felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn't want to talk to anybody from the newspaper.

“Hello?”

“Darnell Rock?”

“Yeah?” Darnell looked at his mother. She was drying a dish and looking at him with wide eyes.

“My name is Peter Miller, and I'm going to be at South Oakdale this afternoon to interview the principal—I think his name is Mr. Baker—about the parking lot thing. I wonder if you'd be available at lunchtime?”

“Yeah,” Darnell said, “I guess so. But I don't know how the City Council got my article.”

“Some mother saw it when she came to school to bring her kid's flute for band practice,” Peter Miller said. “Her husband's on the City Council, and she gave it to him.

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