Going to Press Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Cover and interior photographs © DreamPictures/Blend Images/Getty Images (girl); © iStockphoto.com/Jordan McCullough (title texture).

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.

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  The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Going to Press is on file at the Library of Congress.

  ISBN: 978–1–4677–1373–3 (LB)

  ISBN: 978–1–4677–1674–1 (EB)

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – SB – 7/15/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-1674-1 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3342-7 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3340-3 (mobi)

  In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

  —Bill Cosby

  Dear Ms. Harris,

  Who? Lisa Harris

  What? A prestigious internship at The Rage, America’s premier music magazine. All expenses paid.

  When? Summer 2014

  Where? New York City

  How? You are invited to be part of the Harmon Holt internship program

  Why? Because of your work as editor-in-chief of Clinton High’s newspaper, The Blaze, your exemplary writing skills, and your high GPA

  It is my pleasure to welcome you, Lisa.

  It may be hard to see it now, but the distance between me and you is hard work and opportunity. I am giving you the opportunity. The rest is up to you.

  Sincerely,

  Harmon Holt

  ONE

  “Do it again,” I demanded, circling another typo with red ink and handing it back to Harmony. Harmony’s bottom lip trembled a little bit as she looked at the paper and then back at me. “I asked for a thousand words on the new cheerleading team, and you gave me five hundred.” I was tempted to backtrack because of the look on her face, but I needed the story yesterday and she hadn’t delivered.

  Harmony walked away, head down, and back to her computer.

  “Do you have to be so mean about it?” asked Jason Morgan.

  I looked up at him, surprised. He was good at his job—sports photography—and he covered an area that I knew nothing about. I opened my mouth to explain that this paper and everything in it was important to me. There was a reason I spent hours poring over my articles before they went to press. There was a reason I never trusted spell-check or Wikipedia. If it wasn’t good enough, then I would never get a scholarship, go to college, or get a job in journalism. One grammatical error, one incorrect fact, and I could be looking at a different career path. All I could say was, “I just like things done right.”

  “You can catch more Harmonys with honey,” he quipped before looking back at his screen. It was filled with pictures from the basketball team’s last big game. They lost, but it was a superclose call.

  I looked back at the computer. I had new mail.

  Dear Ms. Harris, … You are invited to be part of the Harmon Holt internship program.

  I screamed.

  “What is it now?” Jason asked. “Did someone not use enough commas?”

  I rolled my eyes at him, but I couldn’t even manage to frown. I had no one else to tell.

  “I just got an internship at The Rage!”

  TWO

  A week later I was standing in New York City in front of the NYU dorm where I would be staying and living out my dream to be a reporter.

  Harmon Holt’s assistant carried my one bag to my room. I wasn’t expecting such personal treatment from the billionaire media mogul, but it made him that much cooler in my imagination.

  The room was small—just a bed and a desk. But just outside my window was Union Square, a little park surrounded by shops and restaurants. A farmer’s market was filled with people on one side. This was the kind of New York scene that I had imagined my whole life.

  The room was a single. No roommate. I wanted to be all about my internship, no distractions. So this was good, right? But right this second I wished I had someone to tell about my view and gush to about how excited I was for my internship.

  “So, will I get to meet Mr. Holt soon? I’d really like to thank him,” I said.

  The assistant shook his head. “Unlikely. Mr. Holt takes a keen interest in the interns. But he is also a very busy man. He’ll get regular reports from your supervisors. But I doubt you’ll get to meet in person. You might, though, want to write him a note when the internship is over. He likes that.”

  As the assistant made for the door, he gave me his card and asked me if I needed anything.

  “No, this is perfect.”

  “I’m sure your friends at school can’t wait to hear all about the big city,” he said.

  “Um …” The truth was that I didn’t really have any friends back home. I was always so busy with school and the paper. Friends just didn’t happen. Not really. “Yeah, they can’t wait.”

  He said good-bye and was gone.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and took a picture of my amazing view. I wished I could call my dad, but he wasn’t supposed to take calls while he was driving his cab, so I texted the picture instead. Under it I wrote, I made it Dad! :)

  THREE

  When I walked into the Rage office, I realized right away I was overdressed.

  I was wearing a pair of slacks, a blouse, and heels. Everyone else was dressed like they were ready to go to a concert. Denim, leather, graphic tees, motorcycle boots … not one button-down in sight. I looked like a schoolgirl in sea of cool, rock n’ roll types. I scanned the modern newsroom, where reporters sat in supermodern egg-shaped chairs in cubicles made of red, blue, and yellow plastic.

  A girl with a honey-colored Afro and a dress over jeggings led me down the hall, which was wallpapered with Rage covers. I’d read most of them. There were pictures of hip-hop and rock stars on every cover. Beyoncé, Prince, the Rolling Stones, J.Lo, the list went on and on. It was like a wall of cool.

  “I’m Tam, Holiday’s assistant. I usually handle all the intern stuff. I’ll get you started.”

  I nodded. For once short on words.

  Tam must have sensed my nerves. “Don’t worry, honey. She’s going to love you,” she said.

  Was I going to fit in here? I should have checked out their dress code. I’d reread the last five issues cover to cover. I’d thought of clever things to say about the latest issue. But I never thought about what I should wear. I tried to put my wardrobe malfunction thoughts away and not let my flowery blouse get in the way of the fact that I was working for The Rage for the whole summer!

  She set me up at the intern desk in a tiny corner of the office, near the coffee room. There was a computer with a screen saver of The Rage’s logo bouncing around in black space.

  “Holiday’s got meetings until four. But you’ll meet her then. In the meantime, let’s get you started,” she said. “Everyone here starts with fact-checking. It reminds us that everything we do here starts and ends with the truth.” She picked up a big binder and handed it to me. “This is the mock-up of the issue that’s going to press today. You can start by practicing with this.” She handed me a highlighter and a pen.

>   I nodded. This I could do.

  “Check every date, every spelling of every name, every fact. Start with the Internet, but stay away from Wikipedia. Only use verifiable sources like the AP. And if you can’t find it here, go to the source directly.” She pointed to the phone. “Then write down exactly where you got the info here.” She touched the computer and it came to life. A fact-checking grid came up. “Got it?”

  I nodded again.

  She pointed to the binder again. “You won’t find any mistakes in there. But I want to see what you can do before I give you some new articles to work on. I’ll be back to check on you in about an hour.” She strutted back to her desk.

  I cracked open the book carefully. My very first assignment.

  Even though Tam had said the proof was mistake-free, about an hour later, I found ­something

  I picked up the binder and brought it to Tam’s desk.

  “What is it, hon?”

  “I think I found something.”

  FOUR

  Tam knocked on the door of Holiday Martin’s office and then opened it. Inside, the editor in chief was wearing silver Converse, jeans, and a welcoming smile. She looked busy, but not too busy for her assistant. I liked her immediately. There was a girl sitting next to her desk who couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five. She rolled her eyes, looking annoyed by the ­interruption.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Holiday, but you have to see this. Our new intern found it,” said Tam. She put the binder on Holiday’s desk, open to the “Letter from the Editor” page. Tam touched my shoulder, prompting me to speak.

  “It says that your first concert was Michael Jackson’s Thriller. But it had to be his next concert tour, Bad, because the year is 1987.”

  “You’re right. How did everyone miss this?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Tam.

  Holiday shook her head. “It’s not your fault, Tam. We have a whole department. I guess no one checks the editor in chief’s letter.” Holiday trained her eyes on me.

  “Good work, Lisa.”

  Holiday Martin knew my name.

  “Harmon says you’re the next Naomi Jax, so it’s fitting for you to meet the original one,” Holiday said, gesturing to the girl sitting next to her.

  Naomi Jax was like a rock star herself. She’d interviewed everyone from the president to Nicki Minaj. She got to travel all around the world to interview people and write stories. I wanted to grow up and have a career like hers. Naomi smiled broadly and shook my hand.

  I gushed. “I am such a big fan. I’ve read all your work. That piece you wrote on the Sudan was life-changing.” Before I’d read it, I didn’t know that kids fought in wars. By the time I got to the end of the four pages, complete with pictures of little kids carrying guns, there were tears all over it.

  “Thanks, it’s my favorite piece,” she said with a smile. She seemed to soften a little.

  Holiday’s face lit up like she’d just thought of something really brilliant. “I’m so happy that you two are hitting it off, because you will be spending a lot of time together. Naomi, Lisa’s going to spend a week shadowing you as you write your next story.”

  FIVE

  “So, spill it,” Naomi’s smile turned into a frown. Maybe she wasn’t happy to have me as her shadow after all. “Whose kid are you?”

  We were back in the hall, and Naomi was walking fast. “Excuse me?” I stammered.

  “You must be related to someone,” she continued. “The editor in chief actually told me to be nice, and she wasn’t joking, so you must be somebody’s kid. Somebody the editor actually likes.”

  I shrugged. “I’m Jimmy Harris’s kid from D.C.”

  She frowned, revealing deep creases in her forehead. She must frown all the time. I could tell I wasn’t giving her the answer she wanted, and for some reason it felt good to keep her from having it. I got what she was getting at—that maybe I was getting special treatment because of Harmon Holt, a graduate of my high school. Harmon got me through the door. But I didn’t think I’d be here if I hadn’t spent the past three years working every spare minute on my school’s paper.

  “You get to be my shadow for the next week, yay!” I’d never heard a “yay” so forced before. She was not at all pleased. “I get the assignment from hell, but I get you as the icing on the cake.” She rolled her eyes. “Thank you, Holiday. Look, kid, it’s not you—you didn’t ask for this. I just hate getting fluff assignments. But I have to write them so that I can write the stuff that I want to write.”

  “What’s the assignment?”

  “A puff piece on the Side Effects. We’ve got a week of interviews with them,” she said, as if she was talking about something on the bottom of her shoe. The Side Effects was the hottest band in the whole country.

  SIX

  Outside, we raced past a line of people waiting to hail cabs and down the block to the subway. Naomi swiped her Metro card twice. I followed her through the turnstile. She informed me that we were meeting the boys at their penthouse suite in the Mandarin, a hotel that overlooked Columbus Circle.

  While I struggled to keep my balance as the 1 train rumbled uptown, Naomi explained what was wrong with interviewing the Side Effects. “I could write the whole thing without even meeting them,” she quipped. I wasn’t convinced.

  As we got out the subway, she handed me an iPad. “Use this. Take notes.”

  “Thanks! I’ll give it right back.”

  “No, keep it,” she shot back. “It’s a spare. The office already got me the new one. And I still use a recorder anyway.”

  When we got there, the boys were already sitting in the living room of their lavish penthouse. They were cuter in person. Just being in the same room as the band made my heart speed up. I’d never met anyone famous before. They weren’t like other boy bands to me. I liked that they all didn’t look the same. Superproducer Ari Singer had done a talent search, picking out these five boys from hundreds all over the world.

  Liam James, one of the lead singers, was British.

  Henry Blue, the other lead singer, was African American and from the Bronx.

  Manny G. was the band’s drummer. He was from Mexico.

  Cameron Madison played bass. He was a surfer from California.

  And Hu was from Japan and played lead ­guitar.

  They were fifteen when they started—just a bunch of nobodies. Now they were seventeen, and they were always topping the charts. But Naomi was right about the interview—she could have written it without even showing up. The boys took turns answering questions. It seemed like they’d done it a million times before. Like it was a script.

  But she was wrong about something else. Even though the answers were canned, I didn’t find the boys boring at all. They had that star quality people always talk about. Maybe it was the confidence that came with being good at something. At being famous. Maybe it was the hundreds of screaming girls outside the hotel. Maybe it was the millions of screaming girls around the world. Maybe it was because each boy was cuter than the next. But I felt myself leaning toward them, like they were magnetic. My iPad, the one I was supposed to writing observations on, fell to the ground.

  A second later, Henry Blue was picking it up for me. When he handed it to me, our hands touched. My mouth opened to thank him, but nothing came out.

  He laughed, like he was used to having girls forget how to speak in front of him. He took his place back on the couch.

  Naomi, who had witnessed the whole thing, stared at me. Either she was trying to give me a chance to make up for it, or she wanted to see me fail more. But she finally introduced me to the guys.

  “This is Lisa. She’s my intern. Lisa, do you have any questions for the Side Effects?”

  I paused and bit my lip. Every one of the boys was looking at me. Liam, the lead singer, sniggered under his breath like this interview was finally getting interesting for him. The other boys joined in the laughter, except the one who had just touched my hand. Maybe he felt so
mething too.

  I shrugged it off. That was ridiculous. He was a world-class rock star. I was a normal high school student from D.C. I racked my brain, thinking of everything I’d ever read or heard about the Side Effects. I had to come up with a good question. Not only to impress the guys, but also to prove my potential as a journalist to Naomi.

  “Going once, going twice …” Liam said. He began to get up, but Henry waved him down.

  I found my voice. “You guys are missing out on a lot to be who you are. Like prom and school and all the normal kid things. Is it worth it?”

  Liam perked up. “Are you asking us to prom?”

  The other boys laughed. I was shocked. Henry smiled again, and it put me at ease. “I’ll take this one,” he volunteered. “Yeah, our classroom is us camped out in front of our laptops on the tour bus. We don’t get to go to football games or eat in the cafeteria or hang out with friends on the weekends … well, besides each other, of course…. But where we are now—that just can’t be beat. We have been dreaming of this opportunity forever. And we don’t have to wait ’til we grow up. We’re doing it right now. So yeah, it’s a tradeoff. I miss my mom’s cooking, my little brother, and my friends back home. But this …”

  He looked around at his bandmates and at then at the view of Columbus Circle out the window. “This doesn’t happen every day. I could have gone my whole life wishing and dreaming. But we got our chance now, and we had to take it. Who knows if it would have come around again?”

  Naomi smiled at me like my question had sparked one of her own. Awesome, I thought, I’ve made an impression. “I have one last question. You all come from different places and different backgrounds. You all say that it feels like you’re brothers now, but you were put together by a manager. And like most bands—the Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, TLC—you don’t have a long shelf life. When the band finally does break up, where do you see yourselves going? Will you stay in music or pursue other interests? And will you keep in touch?”