Read Online Breaking News by Rachel Wise - Free Book Online Page B

all the time. Everybody drops a book so a curse had nothing to do with it.”
    â€œI have to agree with Bart’s point,” Mr. Rinaldi said. “Because I have dropped many books before Mr. Cougar was vandalized.”
    â€œWhat about all the other things that have happened?” Jordin Ali asked. “Our football team has never looked this bad before.”
    â€œLet’s say the curse is real,” Sue said. “How are we going to break it?”
    â€œWell, if we’re thinking about this logically—and I’m not sure that we are,” Mr. Rinaldi said, “the logical answer would be that to break the curse, you would have to reverse the process that started it in the first place.”
    â€œSo the Cougar Curse won’t be broken until we fix Mr. Cougar?” Jordin asked.
    â€œIf you believe in the curse, I think that’s your answer,” Mr. Rinaldi replied. “Now let’s get back to some ratios.”
    The word from math class started spreading around the school. Soon everyone was talking about plans to fix Mr. Cougar. They wanted the student government to get involved to make sure that the Cougar Curse was broken as soon as possible. I suggested they talk to Anthony and Hailey.

    â€œHey, Martone,” I heard Hailey call as I stuffed my books into my locker before lunch period. “What’s this I hear about Lauren Fields?”
    â€œCan you believe it, Hails?” I said. “Sheactually came to our Voice meeting. And she invited me to come to a postmortem!”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Hailey cried, alarmed. “At a morgue? Like where they have dead bodies?”
    â€œNot a real postmortem, a newspaper postmortem,” I explained. “That’s where the editors and writers and other staff from the paper meet to go over the latest issue and analyze it. They look at the things that were done well and the things that went wrong.”
    â€œThat sounds right up your alley.” Hailey laughed.
    â€œThere’s actually a morgue at the Gazette , too,” I said. “It’s where all the old issues are kept. It used to be a room filled with file cabinets and actual copies of the paper, but today a lot of morgues are digital.”
    â€œThanks for enlightening me,” Hailey said. “I will never think of a newspaper in quite the same way.”
    â€œDid you hear about the plan to break the Cougar Curse?” I asked. “I think you and Anthony are going to be pretty busy.”
    â€œI know!” Hailey said. “I was nearly knocked over after gym period. A crowd of kids wanted to know what we were doing to fix Mr. Cougar.”
    â€œWhat did you tell them?” I asked.
    â€œI was honest,” Hailey replied. “I said that we hadn’t done anything because we figured that the school would handle it. But if the students wanted us to get involved, we would bring it up to Mr. Pfeiffer.”
    â€œYou’re such a good VP,” I said, proud of my best friend.
    â€œYou’re such a good journalist,” said Hailey, returning the compliment.
    â€œI’d be a better journalist if my partner were pulling his weight,” I said. “I’m going to have to pin him down in the cafeteria. I’ll talk to you later.”
    â€œGood luck with that,” Hailey said.
    â€œThanks. Even though I don’t believe in luck, I’ll take it now,” I joked.

    Michael Lawrence was scooping a pile of mac ’n’ cheese into his mouth when I sat down next to him.
    â€œFinished the interviews yet?” I asked.
    â€œAlmost,” Michael answered.
    â€œGot any interesting insights from anyone?” I asked.
    â€œNot really,” said Michael.
    This was going worse than the time when I babysat my little cousin and he cried the whole time and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.
    â€œMichael, we really need to get this story done,” I said. “Today in