Hetty and the Battle of the Books by Anna James

Author:Anna James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barrington Stoke Ltd
Published: 2022-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

The newspaper team don’t need any convincing to write about it. It’s an actual real-life scandal that they have the scoop on. We show them the plans, and Mr Collier is a bit stressed about the fact that we have sort of stolen them from Mr McCarthy’s desk. But Mei says that they’ll come up with some kind of story about it, and that sometimes journalists have to do some slightly sneaky things to find out the truth.

Ali and I tell them as much as we know, which isn’t as much as I’d like, and they start work straight away. Their plan is to put a big article about it in this Friday’s edition. We have no idea how fast the library will be turned into an office, and we need to make sure everyone knows what Mr McCarthy is planning as soon as possible.

“We just need to get this article out there,” the student editor says. “We’ll do as much research as we can, but we want to make a big splash. We don’t want to give Mr McCarthy a chance to come up with some clever explanation.”

The only potential problem is that Mr Collier is supposed to check everything in the newspaper with Mr McCarthy first. He doesn’t read every word, but Mr Collier has to show him a list of all the articles to make sure that the newspaper isn’t doing anything that he thinks will “not reflect the values of St Jerome’s”.

Mr Collier says he’ll have a think about his conscience – which I think means he’ll decide if he keeps the article a secret from Mr McCarthy or not.

The newspaper team is a pretty slick machine, so Ali and I hover a bit awkwardly on the edge as they plan and all talk over each other. We’ve already told them everything we know. After the initial enthusiasm and excitement, I feel a bit like the orange cream in a box of Roses – the one no one wants. (It might be a different chocolate in your family, but you get the idea.) I tap Mei on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I say, trying to seem cool and easy-going. “It seems like you have everything under control. Thanks for helping.”

“Thanks for coming and telling us,” Mei replies. “I guess I’ll see you in the library on Thursday when we come and print the newspaper?”

“I guess so.” I nod.

“Hetty,” Mei says as I turn to go.

“Uh huh?” I reply, trying to sound casual.

“Never mind,” Mei says with a shrug. “Nothing.” And she turns back to the tables where the others are making notes. I guess it’s over to them now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.