CHAPTER 1 Stewart Mac McKenzie stares at his laptop As THE sportswriter for The Coyote Courier his middle school’s online newspaper Mac is in charge of reporting on all the biggest games As usual he’s working on a deadline And he’s running out of time Mac knows he should submit the story and be done with it The diehard sports fans in his school probably expected the game summary hours ago Besides Mac’s only in eighth grade There’s math and science and social studies and English homework to do But he keeps staring at his laptop Often Mac writes summaries of the game while it’s still going on He usually hits Submit as the final buzzer sounds But not this time This time he kept punching the keys of his laptop as the gym
emptied out He didn’t realize how much time had passed until he saw his mom standing in front of him her hands on her hips Without a word she grabbed his laptop and shoved it into his backpack which was hanging off the back of his chair while Mac wheeled himself out the door In the car she’d pretended to be upset After all she told him she’d had a long day at the emergency room she’s a nurse and she’d been waiting in the car for twenty minutes With his dad and older sister out of town visiting colleges and with the baby being only eight months old she couldn’t afford to wait around But they both knew she liked how seriously he took his job He never wanted to submit a sports story unfinished And this story It’s definitely unfinished Which is why he’s been staring at it ever since they got home It’s now 11 34 p m and all the lights are turned off in the house but
here he is on the living room couch looking desperately at the glowing screen of his laptop Sure the game recap already includes most of the basics who won who played well a standard quote from Coach Miller And frankly that should be enough In fact it should be more than enough The Predators opponent wasn’t good enough to get even this much coverage All Mac really needs to write is Our team beat a lousy team The end If the diehards want more info they can check the box score Then again the Predators victory isn’t the real story The real story is the unnamed fan who kept disrupting the game He might be unnamed in Mac’s game summary but he most definitely has a name in real life Larry Borders renowned attorney-at-law
