Sadie Sinclair's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Thursday night Sadie stayed late in the newsroom and helped stack the Friday papers into gray bundles. The story ran on page one under a headline Mr. Sorrentino set himself. She looked at the top copy and felt the ink cold under her thumb. Then she remembered how the papers moved every week. A senior wheeled the cart to the front office at seven, and the office staff handed stacks to first-period teachers. The front office would open the top paper before the cart left the counter. The story would die on that counter. She found Mr. Sorrentino locking the supply closet. He was her editor and the only adult in the building who had signed off on the story, and he looked older tonight than he had that morning. "They'll pull it at the front desk," she said. "We need another route." He set the keys down. "Then don't send the cart." "They'll come looking when it doesn't show." "Send an empty one," he said. "Load a decoy. Put the real bundles somewhere they aren't watching." She thought about the broad brick face of the school, the three floors of windows, the two front doors students used every morning. Everyone came through those doors. Nobody was searched. At six the next morning she rode in with her father and carried four bundles under her coat, two trips from the car. She stashed them in the girls' locker room, in the band room cubbies, and behind the trophy case near the side stairwell. She kept the last bundle under the sink in the third-floor bathroom. She left a stack of blank newsprint on the delivery cart in the newsroom and covered it with one real paper on top. At seven the senior wheeled the cart to the front office as always. Sadie watched from the stairwell. The secretary lifted the top copy. A man Sadie did not need to name stepped out of the principal's doorway and took the whole stack off the cart. By seven-fifteen Sadie was in the second-floor hallway with the bundle from the trophy case. She cut the twine with her house key and started handing papers out one at a time as students passed. A sophomore took one and stopped walking. A junior read the headline and swore. Two more kids grabbed stacks and ran them down the freshman hall. By the time the bell rang, the paper was in three hundred hands. Phones came out. A picture of the front page went up before homeroom. At 7:52 the intercom crackled. "Sadie Sinclair to the principal's office." She pulled the camera strap over her head and checked the memory card was still in her pocket. The story was out. Now the building knew her name, and so did the man whose signature she had printed.