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street.
    I slunk into the house, shut the door behind me, and buried my hot face deep into the balled-up newspaper delivery sack.

Chapter 14

    The next morning I ended up using the stinky bag to deliver the Wexburg Academy Times . At the end of the day I went back to see if the papers needed to be restocked. I shouldn’t have worried. Hardly any of them were gone. I stuffed the nasty bag deep into a closet and determined to use one of my own bags, an Au Revoir, to deliver the papers.
    At lunch the next afternoon Melissa patted the seat next to her at the newspaper staff table. “Savvy, come on over here.” Gratefully, I brought my lunch sack over and sat down. “How have you been?” she asked. “It must have been awfully difficult to start school here, you being new and all that.”
    My eyes almost filled with tears. Someone understood! But I didn’t want to overplay it. “It was hard,” I admitted. “But it’s getting better.”
    “That’s the spirit,” she said. “Chin up and all that. You’ll be British sooner than you think.” She smiled.
    I was going to continue the conversation, but one of her friends came up behind her and whispered in her ear. They laughed for a minute and then walked off. Oh well. It was enough that she talked to me. And I’d done a bit of observing of my own. I saw Hazelle’s face go sour when Melissa acted friendly toward me. I’d actually been observing Hazelle for a few days. She idolized Melissa.
    Hazelle pointedly turned to talk writing with the new writer on the staff—the one who’d gotten the position I’d been offered. I bit into my mushy apple. As the delivery girl, I really had nothing much to discuss and therefore no real friend or connection here.
    It was clear I was going to have to do something else, and soon.
    My internal conscience alarm went off. I overrode it.

Chapter 15

    The next Monday I went to the newspaper office right before leaving school for the day. I wanted to make sure everything was set for the next morning’s delivery. The pressroom was quiet, and there was no ink smell in the air. Why not? I mean, the paper was supposed to be delivered tomorrow morning, early. Everything should be clicking along. What was wrong?
    When I got a bit farther into the room, I could see everyone crowded into Jack’s office, including the faculty adviser. I took a few steps in and then stopped. Who was I fooling? I wasn’t wanted here, or they’d have let me know. Jack looked up at me, and I waved and started to move backward. “I’ll come back later,” I said.
    “Good idea,” Hazelle said. Then I heard her whisper, though she made sure it was loud enough for me to hear, “Americans can be really unbearable. Always popping in uninvited.”
    Melissa frowned. “I think Savvy should come in. She is a part of the staff, after all.”
    “Oh, right, sorry,” Jack said. “I never thought to ask you to the meeting.”
    I sighed. Why wasn’t I surprised? But he did look sorry, and I was new. And I wasn’t in the office all the time with the rest of them. I would have liked to have crossed his mind a little more often than it seemed I did though. . . .
    “Come on in,” he said. But he looked distracted, and even before I pulled up a chair he’d continued with the discussion.
    Melissa leaned over to get me up to speed. “The headmaster took Jack aside today and told him that perhaps it was time to close down the paper. Newspapers all over London are shutting, and perhaps it’s time for us to quit too. We’re taking up a lot of the school budget. Budget that might be spent on different clubs.”
    “Oh no,” I said. “So it’s all over?”
    “No,” she whispered. “We’re not all sacked yet.”
    I looked around. Besides Jack, Melissa, Hazelle, and me, there were two year ten girls who did the layout for the paper and another year twelve guy, in the sixth form, or upper school, who was a main reporter. There was a nice, but really quiet, girl who