The Fight for Kidsboro (50 page)

REALITY SETS IN

A
FEW WEEKS BEFORE
the budget debate, we had passed out an income tax form to all residents of Kidsboro. Everyone was supposed to keep good records of the money they had made over the year. People could try to lie, but in a town as small as Kidsboro, it was hard to hide how much money was spent where. We had records of most transactions.

When we added up everyone's salary and how much the new budget was going to cost, we figured out that the tax rate for this year had to be 19 percent. I knew this was a little high, but we had a lot of new programs to pay for. People were not going to be very happy about having to give up 19 percent of everything they made, but It was something that had to be done, and they all knew it was time for sacrifice.

When we came up with the 19 percent figure in the city council meeting, Nelson had almost fainted. He would have to fork over a huge amount of money. “I'm so glad I'm paying for vegetables I'm not gonna eat and a bathroom I'm not gonna use,” he said as he stormed out.

We calculated what everyone would have to hand over, and then Alice and I went door-to-door to collect. Usually she went alone, since she had no trouble squeezing money out of people—sometimes literally—by herself. But I went along this time to offer an explanation.

The first door we knocked on was Roberto's. Roberto was Jill's assistant at the
Chronicle
. He usually had very little to say about anything. But he had yet to see how much he owed.

“Eleven starbills?” he asked.

“Yes. That's what you owe in taxes for the year,” I told him.

“I don't have that much money,” he said with a Hispanic accent.

“I'm sorry, that's why we told everyone to save up. This is tax day.”

“I don't understand the taxes.”

“The tax rate is 19 percent, which means you owe the government 11 starbills. This was all explained in the memo we sent out to everyone.”

“I cannot pay that much.”

“Then we may have to set you up on a payment plan. Give us what you have now.”

“I have nothing.”

“You don't have anything?”

“No.”

“Well … then … you'll have to give us your full salary every week until you pay us back.”

“My full salary?”

“Yeah. How much do you make?”

“About three starbills in two weeks.”

“Okay, then it'll take about nine weeks for you to pay off your taxes.”

“Oh,” he said, the impact of this finally dawning on him, “almost the whole summer.”

I wasn't sure what to say. I'd always liked Roberto. He had been compliant with all our laws, he worked hard at the
Chronicle
, and he was a model citizen. I wanted to give him a break, but that would've been unfair. I wouldn't be giving a break to anyone else.

“Thank you very much,” he said, disappearing into his clubhouse. His shoulders were sagging.

Alice and I looked at each other. We had to do this 33 more times.

After crushing the hopes and dreams of 34 people, I went back to my office to take a break. Jill walked in as soon as I closed the door behind me.

“What is this?” she asked before she was even all the way inside. She was holding up a piece of paper.

“What is what?”

“Were you sleepwalking when you wrote this press release?”

“What do you mean?”

“It's got all sorts of spelling errors and incomplete sentences. I can't even tell what you're trying to say sometimes.”

“Oh,” I said with a slight chuckle. “That's my new secretary … er … administrative assistant.”

“Administrative assistant?”

“Yeah, this was her first dictation. She's still learning.”

“Why do you need an assistant?”

“I've got a lot of paperwork. And it's a government job.”

“Who is it?”

Right on cue, Lauren walked in with a handheld pencil sharpener. “I'm having … oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a visitor. Hi, Jill.”

“Lauren? You're his new assistant?”

“Yes. It's a great job, very challenging.”

“Really?”

“Ryan, I'm done sharpening pencils,” Lauren said. She handed over a shoebox full of sharp pencils.

“Thank you. Good job.”

We looked at each other as she moved away. She briefly touched my arm and said, “Thanks. You're welcome.”

“No problem.”

I watched her leave the room. She gave me a little wave as she turned out. Jill had her hands on her hips. “Lauren's your assistant?”

“She'll be fine. She just needs some time.”

“I'm so glad my tax dollars are being used this well.”

Ten minutes after Jill left, Scott walked in. He was wearing his detective outfit—a Sherlock Holmes coat with matching hat, a magnifying glass sticking out of his pocket, and a bubble pipe that he claimed helped him think when he was on a case. I figured he was on one right now.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I'm on a case.”

“What case?”

“I talked to Jake this morning at Whit's End. He told me that he wasn't the one who spilled the information about you to the
Barnacle
.”

“Yeah. Right,” I said sarcastically.

“Pardon me for walking the earth, but don't you think that's weird? I mean, if Jake really did do it, wouldn't he love to tell everyone? He would love it if everyone knew he'd exposed you.”

That was true.

“Plus, you let him into Kidsboro because he knew about your past. That's how he got you to do everything for him—blackmail. So why would he play the only card he had? Seems like he would've tried to hold on to it to get something else out of you.”

Maybe the bubble pipe really did work; all of this made sense. “Who else could it be? No one else knew that stuff.”

“I don't know, but it could be worth some investigation. I say we head over to the
Barnacle
.”

I was tired of thinking about taxes and the budget, so I decided to follow him. I couldn't imagine that we would turn up anything.

The
Barnacle
office was a regular clubhouse, only bigger than any of the ones in Kidsboro. Max Darby was King of Bettertown, and he wanted his town to be bigger and better than Kidsboro in every possible way.

For whatever reason, there were very few people in town. On most days, tourism was high, and the place was buzzing with activity.
Maybe they're all someplace shedding their skins,
I thought to myself with a mischievous grin.

Scott knocked on the door of the
Barnacle
, but no one answered. Neither of us heard any rustling inside, so Scott took a quick glance around to see if anyone was looking, and then he opened the door.

I followed him but immediately protested, “This is breaking and entering.”

“I'm just visiting the newspaper office.”

“Max will hang me if we get caught breaking a law on his turf!”

“Don't worry about it. We'll be in and out in 10 seconds.” He scanned the room. It was littered with papers—all over the desk, on the floor, tacked to the walls. A filing cabinet in the corner was half open. I had no idea what we were looking for, but Scott seemed to think the filing cabinet was a good place to start.

He opened one drawer and flipped through the labeled tabs on top. “Nothing,” he said, moving on to the next drawer.

I scanned the table. There were handwritten notes on yellow sticky paper everywhere. The notes said things like “Kidsboro police corruption,” “Kidsboro lawyers corrupt,” and “Judge Amy paid off?” The
Barnacle
specialized in scandal.

“Bingo,” Scott said in true TV-detective fashion. He pulled out a file labeled “Cummings” and leafed through it. He gave me a stack of papers from inside and took the rest himself. I didn't hesitate to look at it, even though this was surely illegal.

“Look at this,” Scott said. “Notes from the interview.”

“Let me see that.”

He turned so we could look at it together. It was hard to read the chicken scratch. It looked as if someone had written quickly to keep up with someone talking. It was a list of random facts about me. I read some of the things that appeared in the article—where I lived, my real name, the names of my pets …Wait a minute.

“Something's wrong,” I said. “There's information here that wasn't in the article.”

“They probably decided not to print everything.”

“The name of my cat when I was little is in here.”

“Not very print-worthy.”

“This is impossible. The cat was dead before I ever knew Jake. He couldn't have known about it.”

“Did you ever talk about your cat?”

“I was three. I barely remember it. I doubt I ever mentioned it, and if I did, I can't imagine Jake remembering it.”

I scanned more of the page. “There's more stuff in here that he couldn't have known.”

“So you don't think it was Jake?” Scott asked.

“Not unless he talked to my dad.”

“Does he know where your dad is?”

I shook my head. “Nobody does.”

“Then who?”

I stormed out of the
Barnacle
, not caring who saw me. We had to find the writer of that article. I just might have punched the wrong guy.

The reporter's name wasn't on the article. The
Barnacle
kept its authors secret because if the facts in the article were proven incorrect, which they almost always were, then the person who was offended by the article didn't know who to be mad at. But I did know the editor: a boy named Leo, who'd been a citizen of Bettertown since it began the previous fall. He had wanted to be a citizen of Kidsboro, but all he'd wanted to do was be the editor of a newspaper. There were no openings at the
Kidsboro Chronicle
since Jill was already the editor and she had a reporter, Roberto. So when Bettertown opened up, Leo pounced on the opportunity, even though working for the
Barnacle
meant he would have to publish garbage. I don't think this was what he really wanted, but in Bettertown, everybody did what Max told them to do, or they were thrown out. Leo had started the
Barnacle
reluctantly, but I got the feeling that he was starting to enjoy publishing scandals because the articles were getting more and more mean.