word Mac has been digging around for is finally right on the tip of his tongue It’s the best word he knows how to describe his Coyote Canyon classmates behavior Scuttlebutt He’d learned the word last year from Ms Stark his seventh-grade English teacher Scuttlebutt is what you call the bucket of water sailors gather and tell stories around Made-up stories Far-fetched stories Stories meant to entertain not to report the truth According to Ms Stark the word has a double meaning Over the years the word has come to mean not only the bucket of water around which the stories are told but also the act of telling the stories When people make things up about others and then share the information like it’s the truth it’s called scuttlebutt As a reporter Mac hates scuttlebutt A less careful thinker or a less precise writer may have settled for rumor-spreading
or gossip to describe the Coyote Canyon Middle School’s student body’s treatment of Roe Danner Roe the school’s introverted tennis prodigy enrolled only this fall and by all accounts has said barely a word to any other student But Mac is nothing if not careful and precise He’s a firm believer in the dogged pursuit of facts and sticking to the story the sports story in his case People love to hear stories spun and exaggerated Mac likes novels and movies as much as anyone but when it comes to real people he sticks to the facts In his mind it’s only fair lot about his Mac admires a fellow students As Coyote Canyon’s resident sports reporter he has watched them push past hardship and achieve success He has watched them support one another in defeat And whether on championship or struggling teams Mac’s peers to be good teammates They like each other and treat tend
each other well Mac tends to like many Predator athletes off the fields and courts as well They are his close friends and his acquaintances his fellow sports fans and his enthusiastic readers Sure if one examined the entire student body they would find as Mac’s mother might say a rotten apple or two in the pile But day in and day out Mac likes to think the Predators are good to one other But They do have a nasty habit not unlike every other middle school student who’s ever existed Curious by nature the Coyote Canyon student body just can’t accept not knowing about something or someone They need to know what happened how and why It’s why they’re such avid readers of his articles In the absence of known facts however they make up their own They attempt to do Mac’s job Irresponsibly and it badly they do
Dangerously Unfairly They scuttlebutt turn to No one in Mac’s time as reporter has ever been so enticing to these manufacturers and consumers of scuttlebutt as Roe Danner This is because no one knows anything about Roe She doesn’t have a single friend at the school She doesn’t look anyone in the eye No one’s sure if they’re being honest if she has raised her hand at any point during a class or given a presentation of any kind If forced to work in a group she listens attentively and does her part but never contributes ideas out loud Even during her tennis matches which she nearly always wins she never calls or corrects the score something her opponents take advantage of at times though she tends to dominate them so thoroughly they can’t cheat their way to victory anyway It seems as if every Predator has a different
