Izzy, on the other hand, was “cool.” She was the type of girl who seemed to do everything that everyone wanted to do, from the way she dressed to the things she did in her free time. She had never really liked to play with toys when she was younger, and by the age of ten, she had given up on them entirely, preferring instead to write songs or go shopping. When Kristen and Izzy hung out that first day, there wasn’t exactly awkward silence because Kristen talks nonstop, but it was definitely awkward. Still, Kristen never seemed bothered by that, and she came back the next day.

  The next time she came back to our house, Izzy wasn’t home. My mom invited her in to wait. When she came upstairs to our bedroom, I was there playing with Barbies. After admiring my favorite Barbie house, she asked if she could play. The rest is history. We played together that day and most every day after that until my family moved out of Selinsgrove almost six years later.

  12

  Tuesday Nights

  The first year in Selinsgrove—the year I turned seven—was pretty wonderful. I mostly enjoyed school, played with Kristen, chilled in my room, and hung out with my family.

  One of the absolute best things was Tuesday nights. Every Tuesday, Izzy had a guitar lesson in the town where my Grammie and Grandpa lived. We would drop her off and go visit with my grandparents. My Grammie was pretty obsessed with food and eating, so immediately after we arrived, she would sit us on the barstools in her kitchen and begin feeding us snacks. Cookies, pastries, ice cream bars—you name it, she had it. This drove my mom, who was super obsessed with healthy eating, totally crazy. But my Grammie was very convincing. She had a BIG, vibrant personality and made every single thing she did seem like so much fun. She and my mom were very close friends. And even though they didn’t share the same ideas about junk food, my mom didn’t stand a chance against my Grammie’s sweet treats. Grammie won out every time.

  When Izzy was back from her guitar lesson, we would sit at Grammie’s big dining room table with my Grandpa, my uncle Andy and aunt Keri, and my cousin Boo for a big delicious (usually Italian) meal. There was always dessert and coffee afterward while the adults lingered and we played in the other room.

  My Grandpa was a professor of history at the local college. He loved reading and studying. He also had a photographic memory. We could pick any book off his shelf, turn to a random page, and begin reading a sentence, and he could finish it exactly. He wasn’t the most talkative person—that title would always go to my Grammie—but he would hang around as long as the conversation was interesting. We always knew when Grandpa was bored after dinner because he would get up without saying a word and go into his study, where he would read and listen to classical music.

  It would be dark when we made the half-hour drive back to Selinsgrove. With our bellies full and the car all warm and toasty, my sisters would often fall asleep before we made it home. I’ve never been able to sleep in the car, but I would look out the window as my parents’ voices faded in the front seat and think just how happy I was. There was no way to know how limited those Tuesday nights would be, but I like to think we all appreciated them as much as possible.

  One Tuesday night, my parents said we were going to leave a little early. My dad said he had a surprise for us. My dad is famous for his surprises—they could be anything from “Pack your bag—we’re leaving on a trip in an hour” to “Go look in my car,” where we would find a new pet. We never knew quite what to expect. So when he pulled into a car dealership in Grammie and Grandpa’s town, we just assumed we’d be getting a new car. But that was the least of the surprise.

  After what felt like three million hours later, we were all buckled into our new Chevrolet Traverse, heading to Grammie and Grandpa’s. The car was nice—there was a third row of seats, so Izzy and I didn’t have to be smooshed into the second row with Georgie’s car seat anymore. It was definitely an improvement, but not as good as a trip to the beach or a puppy.

  About a mile from my grandparents’ house, my mom turned the music down. “So, girls,” she began, “there’s a reason we bought this car today.”

  I really didn’t know what to think. I thought maybe we were going to get some ice cream or take that trip after all. Georgie was two years old now and had an impressive amount of stuff we had to lug around. Our next family vacation would be very uncomfortable in the old car. So as I was imagining all the different places we could travel to—maybe California since I had never seen the West Coast—my mom said these words: “Our family is about to get bigger. We’re going to have another baby!”

  It was all I could do to not barf all over the third row of our brand-new car.

  I’ve thought about this moment many times since. My mom and I have talked about it a lot. Still, I have no idea why my mom having another baby felt so horrible to me. It’s not like I was the baby anymore. It seems like it would have made sense for me to be upset about Georgie’s birth. I was younger and used to being the littlest. But that never bothered me. For some strange reason, this did. I remember my stomach felt like an elevator crashing to the ground as Izzy began cheering. Something I’ve always found to be out of character for Izzy is how excited she is when my mom is pregnant. For someone who isn’t very emotional or cuddly, Izzy loves babies. In the car that day, I tried hard to put a smile on my face, as Izzy was screaming with joy and trying to explain to Georgie that she was going to be a big sister. No one really noticed the dread I felt.

  I kept my feelings to myself during dinner at Grammie and Grandpa’s. I sat quietly, eating only the croutons out of my salad as everyone gushed about my mom’s pregnancy. Already there was talk that maybe this one would be a boy. My parents never cared about that stuff, but it seemed to be a big deal to other people. Even strangers, when seeing my mom with her three daughters, would say, “Trying for the boy next?” It all made me feel kind of gross.

  Over the next few months, my mom’s belly grew and she began to take naps in the afternoons. My dad was still home all the time, working on a new book. I wasn’t feeling quite as upset about the baby anymore. I just didn’t feel as happy as before. And I was getting bored of my routine. I loved having a big house and being close to my grandparents, but I missed the hustle and bustle of New York City. In our old neighborhood in Brooklyn, there were tons of coffee shops and restaurants on every block. In Selinsgrove, the downtown was one block long and had only one or two places to go. I took advantage of riding my bike to the local coffee shop, the Kind Cafe, and browsing in the Mustard Seed (a thrift shop I loved), but that only passed so much time.

  What I really missed was going reporting with my dad. Kristen would go along with playing journalist Barbie games for only so long. I was sick of playing. I needed something real and exciting. Maybe there wasn’t much in the way of excitement happening in my life, but there were real things. Maybe I didn’t need my dad after all. I grabbed a red crayon and set to work.

  13

  The Some Times

  I didn’t even stop when my hand cramped up. I had been writing for over an hour, with only a short break to go interview my mom. After my story was all written down in red crayon, I stopped for a long moment to think of a title for my new newspaper. At this point, I wasn’t sure how often I would be able to put a copy out, so I didn’t want to name it something with “daily” in the title, like the New York Daily News had. Since the paper was going to cover news for my family, I thought about using our name, but Lysiak wasn’t exactly catchy. When I thought more about how often I would be able to put a newspaper out, the answer I came up with was “sometimes.” Then it hit me—the Some Times! My seven-year-old self thought it was very clever.

  The next thing I had to do was make a copy for each member of my family. After the last word was written, I shook my aching hand out, put down my crayon, and set off to find my family.

  “Family announcement!” I shouted.

  Family announcements were taken very seriously in my house. Any member could call one, but it had better be for something that didn’t waste the other members’ time. (I learned this the hard way when I called a family announcement to tell everyone my favorite doll was going to have a baby.) Today I was sure of myself. I had something really good.

  My mom and dad, Izzy, and Georgie were all crammed onto the couch in our living room. As I handed each of them a copy of the Some Times, I watched as my dad’s face lit up.

  “Exclusive! Mom Gets New Car,” he said, reading my headline out loud.

  Since I had interviewed my mom for the story, she probably wasn’t very surprised, but she did a good job of faking it.

  “Hilde! This is so great! I can’t believe you did all this by yourself!” she said.

  “I can,” my dad answered. “This one’s got reporter’s blood in her.”

  I handed out my next issue four days later. This time, I wrote about my mom being pregnant. I interviewed Georgie about how she felt about becoming a big sister. I was careful to leave my feelings out of the story. Although the unhappiness I felt probably would have been news to my family, I remembered my dad’s lesson on staying objective.

  A few days later, when I picked up another crayon and began writing the next issue of the Some Times, I began to feel silly. What was I doing? Whatever it was didn’t feel like real journalism. It felt more like a baby paper: something that adults could smile about but that no one took seriously. How could anyone respect a paper written in crayon? I knew I could do real reporting, but making it look legitimate was another matter.

  I knocked on the door to my dad’s office. “Hey, Dad, I need to talk to you about something,” I said.

  He made a noise that meant I could come in. He was still staring at the screen of his computer when I walked through the door. It was his writing face. That meant I only had a quarter of his attention, at most.

  “I want to do real reporting. You know, like we used to do,” I said.

  “That’s great,” he answered, his eyes still glued to the screen.

  “I can do it all myself, I just need some help making it look real,” I added.

  “Great,” he repeated.

  I bit my lower lip. I could feel the anger rising up from my toes.

  “DAD!”

  It came out louder than I had meant it to, but at least my dad finally looked up, his eyes wide. I had his attention.

  “I want to do my own newspaper and not a baby one with crayon, but I don’t know how and I need help making it look real,” I repeated.

  My dad looked me in the eye. He knew I was serious. “As you know, reporting can be a lot of hard work,” he said. “If you decide you really want to run your own newspaper, I will help you with the layout and printing, but you would have to do all the reporting and take all the pictures.”

  I didn’t need to think it over. Writing those stories was the most excitement I had felt since we left Brooklyn. Since then, I had been trying to come up with more ideas, but not that much was happening in my family at the moment. It also occurred to me that I wasn’t exactly giving them news they didn’t already know.

  “Deal!” I told my dad. “But I don’t know if I’ll have enough interesting stuff if I just cover our family.”

  “Well, why does it have to cover just our family?”

  14

  The Orange Street News

  Shortly after moving to Orange Street in Selinsgrove, we became close friends with our neighbors, the Groces. Sue and Brian were a bit older than my parents and had a teenage daughter, Maggie. They also had an awesome swimming pool that they invited us to use all the time. My family spent many late summer afternoons there. My parents would chat with Sue and Brian, and Maggie would play games with us while we swam. She even babysat for us sometimes.

  That summer—the summer of 2014—I had taken my dad’s advice and decided not to limit my newspaper to our family. Because I would be branching out of our house, I chose to release the newest version of my paper once a month. This gave me time to find story ideas and arrange interviews, as well as the freedom to publish more than one story per issue. After many suggestions from friends and family, I decided to call the paper the Orange Street News. My aunt Keri almost talked me into naming it the Hilde Herald because it sounded cool, but in the end, I didn’t want the paper to be about me. It was all very exciting.

  It was also incredibly overwhelming. How would I get enough stories to fill an entire issue? Who would even want to read it? What if it totally stank? What if I couldn’t do it at all? I imagined going up to my dad and telling him that I had failed. Even though I knew my dad wouldn’t be disappointed in me, how could I ever tell the best reporter I knew that I wasn’t able to do it? The thought of it made me want to die of embarrassment.

  Since those early days, I’ve been in many high-pressure situations. What I’ve learned is that it’s OK to allow yourself a moment to freak out. The key is you just can’t get stuck there. You need to acknowledge that you’re afraid and then move on. My mom has always told us, “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. Being brave is feeling that fear and doing it anyway.” If I hadn’t listened to her, my paper would have died with that last paper copy written in red crayon.

  One evening in September, we were sitting outside of Brian and Sue’s house. They always made a big deal of celebrating before they closed the pool for the season. Maggie, who had gone to college for the first time in August, was even back for the weekend. I still had my newspaper on my mind and was zoning in and out of the adults’ conversation when I heard something I found interesting.

  “It’s super gross—I literally have to shower with shoes on,” Maggie was saying.

  “What?” I asked, snapping to attention. “Why?”

  As Maggie began to explain the various foot fungi that existed in the bathroom of her college dorm, it occurred to me that she had already answered three of the five important questions a reporter should ask. Maybe you’ve heard of them? Sometimes called the Five W’s—who, what, where, when, and why—they are questions that when answered will give a complete idea of something that has happened. They can be used to understand books or movies; they’re especially helpful when trying to solve a mystery, and as my dad taught me early on, they are the backbone of any good news story.

  The three W’s I already knew that day at the Groces’ pool were:

  • Who: Maggie Groce

  • What: Students at Maggie’s college have to shower with shoes on

  • Why: College dorm bathrooms are disgusting and gross

  Even though I knew that Maggie was “away at college,” I didn’t know exactly where that was. To get that fourth W, I just needed to ask for the name of the college she attended and where it was located. The last W, the when, was also pretty easy—according to Maggie, “All the time!”

  There was something else that was very important to do. Another lesson my dad taught me that first day I went out reporting with him was that you always have to introduce yourself as a reporter before you start asking questions. Not everyone wants their name in the newspaper. By introducing yourself as a reporter, you give the person an opportunity to say whether they want to talk to you. That is the person’s right. As Maggie went into more detail, I knew I had to stop her.

  “For real . . . this girl I knew two doors down forgot her flip-flops and literally all the skin is peeling off her feet—” Maggie was saying.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I interrupted. “But I’m putting together a newspaper, and I’m wondering if I can use this for one of my stories?”

  Maggie laughed. I’m not sure if it was because she thought I was silly and cute (something I would never get used to) or if the idea of talking about foot fungus for a newspaper was funny. The most important part was that after she laughed, she said yes.

  I pulled out my small blue notepad and pen and quickly began writing down everything Maggie had just told me, being extra careful to write her words exactly as she said them. It wasn’t easy! When I was just listening, I felt like I had a handle on the interview. It wasn’t much different from a conversation. I just had to be especially curious. But when it came to having to listen and ask questions while writing everything down, I felt like my brain might explode! I had to stop a few times and ask Maggie to repeat herself. It made me feel like I wasn’t doing the best job, but I told myself to just keep going.

  The next afternoon, my dad called me into his office. “I thought you might like to use my computer to type out your story,” he said. “You can sit at my desk, if you’d like, so that you can have your privacy.”

  When I think back, we had no way of knowing how many hours upon hours I would end up spending at that desk. So many, in fact, that my dad would let me hang an ORANGE STREET NEWS sign on the door.

  But first, I had to get more stories to complete my first issue. And things were about to get very interesting.

  Hilde in action, reporting on construction in Selinsgrove.

  15

  “The Worst Day of My Life”

  So maybe “interesting” is a bit misleading. Most people probably think of interesting as something good. A reporter thinks differently. Like I mentioned before, some of the best news is actually very sad. Unfortunately, as I was in the exciting process of completing my first issue of the Orange Street News, things were about to take a turn for the worse.

  First of all, as my eighth birthday approached, my mom still hadn’t had the baby. Izzy’s birthday was October 30, the day before Halloween, and my birthday was November 2, just two days after Halloween. Izzy didn’t want to share her birthday with the new baby. Neither of us wanted her (yep, another girl—everyone was wrong again) to be born on Halloween. My birthday party was scheduled for the day before my birthday, so I didn’t want her coming then, and of course not the next day on my birthday. So as I dressed in my scary Elsa costume (basically my answer to the question, What would happen if Elsa from Frozen got attacked by an ax murderer? . . . It seemed like a good idea at the time . . .), I wished my hardest for my mom to stay pregnant for at least three more days.

 

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