The School Story Read online

  Thanks,

  Tom

  As Hannah read the E-mail, her throat tightened up. Her heart raced and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Hannah knew this feeling. It was fear.

  Looking at the heading of the E-mail again, she saw that her copy was a “bcc”—a blind copy. That meant Tom Morton had sent Hannah a copy of his message to Letha, but Letha didn’t know about the copy.

  Hannah took several deep breaths to try to clear her head. She thought, Doesn’t Tom know what an impossible situation this puts me in? Doesn’t he know it’s already hard enough to work for Letha?

  Nervously Hannah jumped up from her chair. Standing on her tiptoes in her doorway, she peeked over the top of the cubicle dividers to look across at Letha’s office. Letha was there, talking on the phone, smiling and nodding. Hannah thought, She must not have read it yet.

  Hannah sat down again and looked at the E-mail still open on her computer screen. She tried to think calmly, but she couldn’t. The message was like a time bomb in Letha’s computer, ticking away. Any minute now Letha would click it open and—boom!

  Hannah shook her head. She had to admire this Zee Zee Reisman. Sending the manuscript directly to Tom Morton was a gutsy thing to do. She thought, This woman is incredibly brave—or else she’s incredibly stupid.

  “Hi.”

  Hannah almost jumped out of her shoes. She wheeled around. “Oh! . . . It’s you, Natalie! Ooohhph—you surprised me.” Instantly Hannah turned around and grabbed her purse from the bottom drawer of her desk. She pulled out two dollars and said, “I think you’d better go up to the lunchroom and study this afternoon, honey. Here’s some snack money.”

  Natalie looked at her mom. She said, “Are you okay, Mom? You look . . . you look kind of . . . funny.”

  Hannah laughed nervously. “Just a lot going on today, that’s all. Now, you run along—and stay put. I’ll come up there and get you on my way out, okay?”

  “Sure, Mom. See you later.”

  • • • • •

  Letha Springfield stomped off the elevator onto the sixteenth floor. It was six minutes after four o’clock. Five minutes earlier Letha had read her E-mail from Tom Morton.

  Grim, unsmiling, Letha didn’t slow down. She glared at the receptionist, who scrambled to push the security button just as Letha reached the door to the executive offices.

  Striding on, Letha approached Tom Morton’s office. She had a piece of paper in her hand. As she went marching right past Kelley Collins into Tom Morton’s office, she waved it and said, “Mr. Morton is expecting me!” The office door slammed shut behind her.

  Kelley kept tapping away at her keyboard. A nearly invisible smile tickled the corners of her mouth. She wished she could be a fly on the wall in her boss’s office.

  • • • • •

  At four forty-five Hannah was working on a letter to one of her authors. She heard a rustle of papers behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Hannah tensed and then turned her chair to face the doorway. It was Letha.

  “Here.” Letha’s voice sounded like a shovel plunging into a pile of gravel. She handed Hannah a manuscript. Hannah didn’t have to look to know what it was, but she did. Then she did her best to look surprised. Letha said, “I’ve decided you should handle this one. After all, we don’t want our sensitive little Miss Author to get her tummy all tied up in knots, now do we? So I want you to take it from here.”

  Hannah tried to keep the right mixture of surprise, confusion, and obedient acceptance in her voice and gestures. She said, “But . . . well . . . I’ll be glad to. Are you sure you want me to?”

  Coldly, evenly, Letha said, “Very sure.” And with that, she turned and walked briskly back toward her office.

  Hannah took three or four deep breaths. She thought, If I ever get fired from here, I’ll go train tigers for Ringling Brothers—it’ll feel like a vacation!

  • • • • •

  When her mom came to get her in the snack room, Natalie thought her mom’s face looked strange. She seemed to be in a big hurry, too. She was silent in the elevator, and once on the ground floor, she took Natalie’s hand and practically dragged her across the lobby and then squeezed into the same compartment of the revolving door with her. Once they were out of the building and down the block near where they caught their cab, her mom started to laugh and swing Natalie’s arm back and forth, almost giddy.

  Natalie said, “What’s all this about?”

  Hannah stopped to catch her breath and at the same time held up her hand to flag a vacant cab. Then she giggled and said, “You’ll never believe what happened at work today!”

  But her mom was wrong. Natalie believed every word of it.

  CHAPTER 18

  The Long Arm of the Law

  Ms. Clayton sat at a small, round table in the Linden Room with Natalie and Zoe on a Thursday afternoon. It had been just a week since they sent Tom Morton a copy of Natalie’s manuscript, but with Hannah Nelson handling the project, there had been rapid progress.

  Hannah had found Zee Zee Reisman to be a very cooperative agent. When Hannah offered a royalty advance of six thousand dollars, Zee Zee accepted right away—not a single counteroffer. Hannah could have paid as much as ten thousand dollars for the book—she had authorization from Tom Morton himself. Zee Zee, on the other hand, had been told by Natalie to take the first offer with absolutely no negotiating. Accepting that offer without arguing was one of the hardest things Zoe had ever done.

  Thanks to Hannah’s efficiency and Zee Zee’s cooperation, the entire membership of the Deary School Publishing Club was now staring at a stack of paper on the little, round table. It was the contract, all fourteen pages of it, in triplicate. By signing the contract, Cassandra Day (“hereinafter referred to as THE AUTHOR”) would grant permission to Shipley Junior Books (“hereinafter referred to as THE PUBLISHER”) to publish The Cheater (“hereinafter referred to as THE WORK”) for “the full duration of copyright”—which meant all of Cassandra’s life plus another fifty years after she died.

  At the end of the fourteen pages there was a place for Zee Zee Reisman (“hereinafter referred to as THE AGENT”) to sign, and there was a place for Cassandra Day to sign. Cassandra Day also had to write her Social Security number on the contract. All three copies had to be signed and dated and returned to Shipley Junior Books as soon as possible.

  Patting the stack of paper, Ms. Clayton spoke first. “I know I’m supposed to be your adviser, but I really don’t know what to tell you. This contract is a legally binding document. I’m pretty sure you have to be at least eighteen years old to sign a contract yourself, maybe even twenty-one—and I know you should completely understand all the words before you ever sign anything.”

  Zoe had been enjoying her role as the big-shot agent, the queen of the problem solvers. With a little toss of her head she said, “I know all about contracts. You write down the deal, then you sign it, and then you do what you said you would. My dad says that’s all there is to it.”

  Natalie gave Zoe a sideways look. “If that’s all there is to it, Zoe, then every cab driver in New York City would become a lawyer.”

  Zoe made a face at Natalie and then said, “So, what do you think we should do, Ms. Clayton?”

  Looking from Zoe to Natalie, she said, “I don’t think we have any choice, girls. We need to talk to a lawyer.”

  Natalie nodded, and glancing at Zoe, she said, “I agree—a real lawyer. I think we should talk to Zoe’s dad.”

  “No way,” said Zoe. “No parents, remember?”

  “But remember what you said to me about my mom? It’s the same kind of thing. He’s not just your dad, Zoe. He’s your lawyer.”

  “But what if he says he has to tell your mom about everything?” said Zoe. “He might feel like he really has to.”

  “Not if I tell him he can’t,” said Natalie. “If you tell something to a lawyer, he’s not allowed to tell anyone else, right, Ms. Clayton?”

 
; Ms. Clayton nodded. “That’s true. So what do you think, Zoe?”

  Zoe shrugged and said, “Well, I guess it’ll be all right. I know my dad can figure out what we should do . . . and he probably won’t charge us anything either.”

  At noon on Friday, Natalie called her mom. She asked if she could ride home with Zoe after school. Her mom said, “That’ll be fine. How about I pick you up at her house at six o’clock. We’ll get some food in the city—and maybe I’ll call your uncle and see if he wants to see a movie with us.”

  So it was all settled. Except Natalie and Zoe weren’t going to Zoe’s house after school—at least not right away. First they had to have a talk with their lawyer.

  • • • • •

  Zoe and Natalie walked into the reception area of Crouch, Pruitt, and Reisman at three fifteen. Zoe had been to her dad’s office only once or twice on a weekday, and that was a long time ago. The receptionist didn’t recognize her.

  The tall young woman put her hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone headset looped over her right ear. She smiled and said, “May I help you?”

  Zoe said, “We’re here to see Robert Reisman.”

  The receptionist’s smile dimmed, and she said, “I see. Do you have an appointment?”

  Zoe said, “No, but I know he’s here.” Zoe had called her dad’s secretary from school at noon to make sure about that.

  The receptionist frowned slightly and raised one eyebrow. “And who may I say is here to see him?”

  Zoe smiled sweetly and said, “Tell him it’s his favorite daughter, Zoe.”

  Three minutes later a surprised Robert Reisman was sitting in a chair across from Zoe and Natalie. Zoe had settled back into the cushions of the couch, but Natalie sat on the front edge.

  Looking from face to face, he said, “So, what’s going on here? I mean, I’m happy to see you, Zoe, and you, too, Natalie . . . but let’s hear what’s on your mind—unless this is a purely social visit.”

  As planned, Natalie spoke first. Opening her backpack, she took out the contract and handed it across the coffee table to Zoe’s dad. “No, this is a business visit, Mr. Reisman. I need to have a lawyer look at this contract.”

  Zoe’s dad was already doing that, peering down through his reading glasses, flipping from page to page. Nodding his head, he said, “This is a publishing contract—looks pretty standard. What’s this got to do with—” He stopped in midsentence, his eyes fixed on the last page. Looking up quickly at Zoe, he said, “‘Zee Zee Reisman, agent for THE AUTHOR’? Is this a coincidence? This is a project for a class, and you want me to look at it, right? Is that it?”

  Zoe smiled a knowing little smile at her dad and nodded toward Natalie, as if to say, “Ask her.” On cue, Natalie said, “No, it’s a real contract. I wrote a book, and my pen name is Cassandra Day. And Zoe—that is, Zee Zee—she’s been my agent.”

  Robert Reisman sat back in his chair and looked at his daughter. “No kidding?”

  Zoe said, “No kidding. We wanted to get Natalie’s book published, and we’re this close, but our adviser at school said we needed to talk to a lawyer to see if we could even sign this contract.”

  Leaning forward again, Mr. Reisman said, “Your adviser? At school?”

  Natalie nodded. “Ms. Clayton. She’s our English teacher. She helped us rent the office where we get mail and phone calls.”

  “You have . . . you have an office?” Robert Reisman looked from girl to girl as they both nodded yes.

  Natalie ignored the lawyer’s amazement and quickly described the steps that had led to the contract. Then she said, “So what we need to know is, can we sign this contract and have it be . . . you know, legal?”

  “Legal?” Mr. Reisman was at a loss for words, something that did not happen to him very often. Making a visible effort to think like a lawyer, he said, “Well, you are both underage—but you have in fact already delivered the manuscript to the publisher, correct?”

  Natalie nodded.

  The lawyer went on, “And it could be argued that concealment of the author’s age was not an effort to commit fraud but was merely part of the same principle leading her to use a pseudonym in order to have her work taken seriously—is that a fair statement of the facts?”

  Natalie nodded again, expecting that any moment he would ask her to put her hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  “And at any time did any person at the publishing company indicate that the age of either the agent or the author might affect whether or not the work was acceptable or this contract could be issued?”

  Each girl shook her head no to that.

  “And did anyone ever ask you your age, or did either of you ever volunteer false information about your age to anyone at the publishing company?”

  Again, each girl shook her head no.

  “Then I think that each of you should be able to sign this contract and have it be legally binding—provided, of course, that you each have a parent sign an affidavit that says you are entering into the agreement with their full knowledge and consent.” He winked at Zoe and said, “I think I can find someone to vouch for Zee Zee.”

  Natalie looked at Zoe and then back to Mr. Reisman. Natalie said, “But that’s a problem for me. You see, my mom? . . . Well, she works at Shipley Junior Books. She’s an editor . . . and she’s the editor for this book. So I can’t really have her sign that . . . whatever you called it, saying it’s okay. I mean, I’m sure it would be fine with her, but I don’t want to let her know it’s me until the book is all edited. And my dad, well, you know about my dad.”

  Robert Reisman sat back in his chair again and rubbed his chin. “Hmm. Yes, I can see the problem. You don’t feel free to get your mom’s prior consent because if she knew, she could be accused of giving you special treatment—it’s called a conflict-of-interest situation. Hmm . . .” And the lawyer paused again. Then he asked, “How about a grandparent, or some near relative we could inform of the situation? That way, if this matter ever came before a judge, we could show that we wanted to make sure you had guidance from an adult who had your best interest in mind. Anyone who fits that description?”

  Instantly Natalie said, “Uncle Fred! He’s my dad’s brother. He lives here in the city, and he’s the one who helped us with everything after my dad died, and sometimes we go on trips with him in the summer, and he comes to our house all the time, and we go to his—he’s a close relative, right?”

  Zoe’s dad asked, “Do you know his phone number?”

  Natalie said, “No, but I know his address, and I know he runs an advertising company called Nelson Creative.”

  Mr. Reisman handed Natalie a pad of yellow paper and a pen, and she wrote down Frederick T. Nelson’s address.

  Three minutes later Natalie was talking to her uncle at his office through the speakerphone on Mr. Reisman’s desk. “Uncle Fred? It’s me, Natalie.”

  “Natalie? This is a surprise! Is everything all right? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “That’s because I’m using a speakerphone. Everything’s fine, but I need to ask you something. I’m calling you from the office of my friend Zoe’s dad. He’s a lawyer, and he’s helping me with . . . a problem.”

  Natalie took about five minutes to tell her uncle what was happening, and Zoe chimed in whenever she thought Natalie left something out. Then Natalie introduced Mr. Reisman, and he and Uncle Fred talked about the details. When he’d explained the legal situation, Mr. Reisman said, “I’ve looked over the contract, and it’s a fairly standard publishing agreement—which means it heavily favors the publisher. Still, if you can sign an affidavit that states you and Natalie understand what’s going on, and that until her mom can be informed, you are acting as next-of-kin adviser, then I see no reason why my daughter and your niece can’t sign the contract and move ahead with this.”

  Fred Nelson said, “Well, if you think it’s all right for your daughter, then I guess it should be fine fo
r Natalie. If you send me the affidavit, I’ll sign it and get it notarized and get it back to you right away.” Then Uncle Fred said, “Natalie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Way to go, kid. Sounds like a great book, and I can’t wait to talk to your mom after she finds out it’s yours. And another thing—tell your agent there that whenever she’s ready, I’ve got a job waiting for her here at Nelson Creative.”

  Zoe had been slumped on the couch, feeling a little neglected. She perked up and said, “Thanks, Mr. Nelson.”

  Grinning across his desk at Zoe, Mr. Reisman said, “Sorry, Fred, but Zoe’s already an honorary partner right here at Crouch, Pruitt, and Reisman.”

  Then Natalie said, “Hey! I want everyone to remember that first of all she’s my agent!”

  Uncle Fred said, “Well, hang on to her, Natalie—she’s pure gold.”

  Natalie beamed at Zoe and said, “I know, Uncle Fred . . . I know.”

  • • • • •

  The buzz of the intercom startled Ms. Clayton as she sat at her desk marking some eighth-grade essays.

  It was Mrs. Fratchi. The school secretary didn’t like teachers getting phone calls at school, and when Mrs. Fratchi disapproved of something, she never tried to hide it. “Miss Clayton? There’s a personal telephone call for you on line two in the teachers’ room.”

  Ms. Clayton said, “Thank you,” but Mrs. Fratchi had already clicked off the intercom.

  Thinking it must be Natalie, Ms. Clayton hurried down the hall and into the empty lounge. She picked up the handset and punched the blinking button. “Hello?”

  A woman’s voice said, “Ms. Clayton?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “Please hold a moment.”

  Then a clear, strong voice said, “Ms. Clayton, this is Robert Reisman. I’m Zoe’s father.”

  “H-hello, Mr. Reisman.” She gulped, and her heart started pounding. “Did . . . did the girls come and . . . and talk to you?”