High School Newspaper – The Danger (fourth in the high school series)

By Paul Swearingen

Being newspaper photo editor when you’re only a sophomore may sound like a dream, but to Arianna the nightmare is just starting, with her little sister an unwilling participant. She discovers that her friend will never be her lover, her potential boyfriend really is a hunk, and most importantly that she can swing a tree branch and a length of iron pipe when she needs to defend herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Swearingen
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452429298

Paul Swearingen

Paul Swearingen is a retired English/journalism/Spanish teacher who managed to survive 34+ years in public, private, and government schools. He also was a radio newsman and disk jockey, a newspaper editor and photographer, a personnel manager for a large retail store (now defunct), and a long-time publisher of the National Radio Club's magazine, "DX News". He lives in Topeka, Kansas, where his main current duty is to keep his garden under close control.

Book preview

High School Newspaper – The Danger

Paul Swearingen

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Paul Swearingen

Discover other titles by Paul Swearingen at Smashwords.com:

High School Football – The Temptation

High School Diversity – The Clash

High School Yearbook – The Drama

High School History – The Treasure

High School Newspaper – The Danger is a work of fiction, and all characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblances to real events, locations, or people, living or dead, are coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

High School Newspaper – The Danger

Chapter One

Arianna slowly came awake. She somehow knew that the sounds that pulled her from a deep sleep weren’t from anything dangerous, but still, nothing and no one should be wandering around the upstairs floor of her house at … she glanced at the red numerals on her bedside alarm … 1:22 am.

I threw up.

Arianna sat up abruptly and looked toward her doorway. She could dimly see her sister Lindi Ann in her pajamas, hugging herself, and Arianna realized that the flushing toilet was what had awakened her. Poor Lindi probably had rushed into the bathroom and had left the door open.

Are you all right?

I think so. I had a bad dream, and maybe I ate too much leftover Christmas candy last night. I don’t think I’ll have to go again.

You want to stay with me for awhile?

All right. Lindi walked around the end of the bed, still hugging herself, and she crawled into the bed and stretched out under the covers. Arianna could smell her little-girl scent, and she wondered if she, too, had smelled like that before she was old enough to start using body washes and perfumes and cosmetics.

How’s your tummy feel?

Better now. And I made sure to rinse and spit and rinse and spit again. I’m sorry if I woke you up. Mommy and Daddy’s door was closed, and I didn’t want to wake them. I had to tell someone that I got sick.

It’s okay. You just lie there until you’re sure you’re going to be all right.

Lindi’s only answer was a sigh as she settled in with her back to Arianna. She lay back down and pulled the covers over both of them, and in just a few minutes she could hear Lindi’s regular breathing next to her.

* * *

Arianna knew that she was dreaming, and yet she couldn’t pull out of it. She was trying to move along in some kind of dark field, or maybe it was a forest, but her feet and legs would only move if she put a hand behind each thigh and pushed. Ahead of her she could see a light that moved slowly up and down. She had to get to it for some reason, but she knew that in order to do so she’d have to walk down a dark street in her flowing nightgown, and it was just too cold for that.

Again she awoke. Lindi somehow had pulled the comforter all the way to her side, and gently, Arianna pulled it back to her side and suddenly realized that her sister was no longer in bed with her. Oh, well. Maybe she thought that she’d be more comfortable in her own bed and went back to it.

The bedroom window was still open, and she could hear and feel the cold wind that had come up in the night. She sighed and slipped out of bed to close the window and checked her alarm: 2:13. Good. She’d at least be able to get enough sleep in to avoid feeling like a slug in just a few hours for the first day of the second semester at school.

She pushed the window sash down and turned the lock so that the window wouldn’t rattle. The wind was definitely in the north. She’d probably be wading through snow when she got off the bus in front of the school in the morning.

A scraping noise outside her door made her turn around. She looked toward her open door and saw a figure move slowly down the hallway. What on earth? The window at the end of the hallway behind her sister let enough of a street lamp’s illumination in to show that Lindi Ann was walking slowly towards the stairway. Oh, my god, Arianna thought. She’s sleepwalking again, something she hadn’t done since she was about five. Arianna grabbed her robe from its hook inside the closet and pushed on her bunny slippers as quickly as she could, tying the belt in front of her as she walked silently behind her sister.

Lindi Ann stepped steadily down the exact center of the stairway, not touching the railing, and she stopped in front of the outside door in the living room and didn’t move for a long moment. Arianna moved slowly down the stairway behind her sister and sat on a step, waiting to see what her sister would do next.

Finally, Lindi Ann reached for the door and pulled it open. Although the outside storm door was supposed to be tight against the cold – Arianna had even helped her father replace the caulking around the edge of the doorway last summer – she still felt the cold air curl around her ankles, and she shivered as she watched Lindi Ann standing in front of the door.

Arianna squinted her eyes. She couldn’t see very well without her glasses, but she knew for sure that the dark object at the end of the sidewalk was a car parked at the curb, and she could feel somehow that a man was inside it and watching them. What would she do if Lindi Ann opened the storm door and walked out? Would she be able to run out into the cold and snatch her up back into the safety of the house?

For a long moment, perhaps two or three minutes, Lindi Ann just stood there, unmoving with both arms at her side. Finally, Arianna heard a starter grind, and the car moved forward slowly, darkly. She stood up and took one step and then another until she was standing directly behind her sister, who still hadn’t moved. Arianna could see the moving car through the bay window in the living room, and the taillights suddenly winked on, but no bright light from headlights showed in front of it. Whoever was in it must have turned on only the parking lights. She watched it until it disappeared from her line of view and shivered. Had her sister sensed that someone was parked in front of the house and sleepwalked directly to the front door to check them out?

Finally, Lindi reached for the door and pushed it shut. She turned and brushed past Arianna as if she wasn’t there and marched up the stairway. Arianna reached behind herself to make sure that the door was securely latched and then padded up the stairway behind her sister, who walked surely down the hall, turned into her own bedroom door, sat on the edge of her own bed, sighed deeply, and then crawled under the covers and pulled them over her body. Arianna watched the dark mound in the bed for a moment and then moved to the window and felt the latch. The window was closed and latched. Lindi would be all right, she decided, and she walked back to her own bedroom, tossed the robe over a chair, kicked off her slippers, and crawled under her own covers and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep almost immediately

* * *

Arianna stopped and peered inside the newspaper staff room from the safety of the hallway. She had walked confidently through that door dozens of times or more in the past, and several of her photos had already found a home on yearbook pages, but now that she was a part of the newspaper staff, the youngest member at fifteen-going-on-sixteen, she wasn’t sure that she should be here today.

She shrugged her shoulders, stepped into the room, and dumped her backpack onto the nearest table, unsure if she should sit by herself or find someone she knew to sit with. None of the other girls looked her way, so she pulled the backpack off the table and dumped it underneath, pulled out a creepy-looking salmon-colored plastic chair with a suspicious stain in the seat, and sat down. The room smelled the same as always – floor polish, chewing gum, soy ink, burnt coffee – and the familiarity of the scent calmed her.

A tall boy suddenly materialized next to her. He nodded at her and walked to a table at the front of the room and sat at the end opposite the two girls who pretended not to stare at his curly dark-brown hair and the horn-rimmed glasses nestled in it. Arianna had never seen him before, and she realized that she wasn’t even pretending not to stare and looked around the room instead.

It hadn’t changed much over Christmas break. A scribbled-over ladder diagram for yearbook was tacked onto the bulletin board behind her, next to assignment pockets that she knew were for newspaper stories and other tasks to be completed. The crack in the corner of the wall next to the windows hadn’t been filled, and another flake of paint was missing from next to it. The room radio was softly playing nondescript classical music from the NPR station in the next town, and as usual she could barely hear it over the chatter from the staff members.

Just as the final bell sounded, the advisor swept into the room with a can of Diet Dr Pepper in one hand and a handful of papers in the other.

All right! I made it! He tossed the papers onto his desk and set the can on a folded, stained, well-used paper towel on the desk and crossed the room and snapped off the radio. He looked around the room and smiled. One, two … twelve, thirteen. Lucky us, huh?

The students tittered at the joke.

Yeah. Well. We could use another thirteen in here, but you guys will just have to get used to working double overtime, I guess. Are you up for that?

Silence.

Okay. I might as well level with you from the beginning. I had to boot out three dead bodies at the end of last semester. And four more left in addition to them. I guess there was too much turmoil in here, what with the original advisor … um … removed for her little disappearing tricks with money, and the unfortunate death of her replacement, poor lady, and they wanted something less strenuous in their … ah … curriculum. So in a sense all of you are survivors, including our recruit from journalism class, Arianna. He nodded at her, and Arianna felt the eyes of everyone in the room on her and tried not to slide any farther into her seat and disappear under the table.

So that’s the bad news, although having a recruit from journalism class and another from out of state – he gestured at the tall, curly-headed boy – Welcome, Newlin – certainly isn’t bad news. And the good news is that we have new computers and new digital cameras on the way, and they’re in the building somewhere right now being bar-coded. They may even be delivered sometime before the end of the hour, although I’m not holding my breath. He paused and took a sip of Diet Dr Pepper.

Not the same here at Niotaka High as it was when you were in radio, huh? The question came from a red-haired, freckle-faced boy whom Arianna remembered to be the newspaper editor.

You got that right, Jared. I could make a phone call and have stuff delivered by the next day when I was on the air in Kansas City. Here … well, it’s fill out a requisition and wait a couple of months while the powers that be, and the board of education, approve and pass the papers on to someone else. Although I must say that the principal acted pretty quickly on his promise to bring us into the electronic age with new G5’s and digital cameras with real, interchangeable lenses. Thank you, Mr. Barnshaw. Can you all say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Barnshaw’?

They could, although somewhat weakly. Again? The chorus was stronger this time.

Hope you all are up to learning a few new digital tricks.

Arianna looked around to see what newspaper photographers were still on staff, and she suddenly realized that she was the only photographer there that she knew of, unless they were hiding in the darkroom as photographers were known to do … no, with digital equipment on the way, they’d have nothing to do in the darkroom. She felt her stomach churning. Who would … ?

So we’ll now be able to lay out pages and send them to the printer electronically instead of having to print them off and paste them together like a puzzle. No more cutting between words and letters, and best of all, no more rubber cement fumes and goober balls bouncing off the walls!

A weak laugh from the staff members.

So, yeah – there are fewer of you, but you’ll be able to do a lot more from now on. All right, Jared – why don’t you meet with your staff and get them organized. Here’s the tentative list that we discussed last period; I’ve added the names of the new enrollees …

The door banged open, and a heavy-set boy wearing a plaid lumberjack shirt over a neon-yellow t-shirt walked in.

Well. Kenny. I thought you’d …

Changed my mind. My sixth-hour teacher is a jerk. Can you get me back in here?

Mr. Stadler eyed the boy, grimaced, and nodded. Sure. I don’t mind making more enemies on the teaching staff. Did you need that class to graduate? Or was it just another half-credit?

I signed up for it because I thought shop would be an easy credit. Too easy for me. I already built all the projects I needed to in middle school. I need a little challenge in my life, and … jeez, I can’t believe I’m saying this, Mr. Stadler, but I missed you … so here I am.

The advisor pretended to cover his mouth and gag, but Arianna couldn’t help but notice that he was smiling when he moved his hand away. "And so you are. Jared, if you want to get your staff together next door and add Kenny here to your list