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  “Wait!” said Michael. He put his hand on my arm to stop me. “There was something else. More than the other stuff.”

  He took a deep breath and jammed his hands in his pockets. My arm still felt warm from his palm.

  “This better be good,” I said, tapping my foot on the sidewalk.

  “Oh boy.” Michael reached up and covered his face for a minute with both hands. When he took them away, he looked embarrassed. He took a deep breath. I did not know where he was going with this.

  “I . . . You . . . you just looked so cute, asleep with your head on your folded arms, like a little kid. And it was so cozy in the room, and I felt like I was watching over you and it felt . . . good. I know that’s so weird and dumb, but anyway, that’s why. That’s why I didn’t wake you up. That’s all.” Michael looked away.

  Um. Okay. Now it was my turn to blush, and I looked away. I didn’t know what to say. Nearby, a little girl was holding her mom’s hand, crossing the street to go to the park with her scooter. We both watched for a minute until Michael spoke again. “I’m sorry, Sam. You can go now. I just had to say that because I didn’t want you to think it was just me being mean or trying to make myself look better than you. That’s all.”

  I cleared my throat, but my voice still came out a little croaky. “Okay. Well. Right. Um. I’m . . . glad you told me. And thanks? I guess? So. Just don’t ever get a job doing wake-up calls at a hotel, okay? ’Cause you’ll get fired.”

  It was a lame joke, but it broke the ice. Michael laughed a little and shook his head. “Okay. I won’t ever get that job. I promise.”

  “Good,” I said.

  We both stood there awkwardly, each of us looking off in a different direction. And finally Michael said, “So, I guess you probably don’t want to do the project with me anymore, and I totally understand. Since it was your idea, it can be yours. I’ll think of something else.”

  “No, it’s fine. Really. I don’t mind. We can be partners. On the project, you know. I mean.” Ugh, Martone! I thought. Why am I always saying inappropriate stuff?

  “And we still have the article,” he said.

  “Yeah . . . ,” I said.

  “Listen, Pasty, let’s just forget about all this stuff and you can come over and we can work on our article and the project, okay? Friends?” Michael put out his hand for a shake.

  With a sigh of relief, I agreed. “Sure. Friends.” And we shook hands. “Good thinking. Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  “Thanks a lot!” protested Michael, fake hurt.

  I laughed. “Oh, come on, Mikey!” I said, and resumed walking toward his house. He fell in to step beside me. There were a couple of minutes of extremely awkward silence. But then I tripped over a pinecone that was lying on the sidewalk and we both had to laugh at my klutziness.

  Journalist Overwhelmed by Anger, Embarrassment, and Love, Not Necessarily in That Order.

  At Michael’s, I laid out all of the research I had done to date on sleep and printing, as well as my list of questions for Mr. Dunleavy. Michael and I were all business after our little sidewalk chat, and I think it was comforting to us both to fall back into that routine and that way of talking to each other. That way we didn’t have to deal with all that other awkward stuff.

  “Okay, here’s what I have so far on sleep . . . ,” I began.

  “Wait. Don’t you think we should do the science project first?” asked Michael.

  I cocked my head. “Well, we were assigned the article first,” I reasoned.

  “Yes, but the science project is for a grade. It’s academic. I think it kind of beats the extracurricular.”

  “Hmm,” I said. He had a point. “But it is optional. . . .”

  “Yes, but we have opted to do it,” pressed Michael.

  I thought for a minute. “What’s the worst thing that could happen if we don’t hand in the article on time?” I asked.

  “We let down Mr. Trigg, but he already loves us,” said Michael with a shrug and a little grin. “And they run a file article in our place and our story runs the following week.”

  “Or sometime in the future when they need to fill a hole,” I said snippily. “A file article!”

  “Paste, I’m not sure what you have against file articles, but it can’t be all breaking news all the time. Life just isn’t like that.”

  “Mine is!” I said.

  “That is a pretty stressful way to lead your life. Is that the kind of reporter you want to be? Like a war zone correspondent?”

  I hesitated for a fraction of a second and then I nodded vigorously, but Michael spied the hesitation and pounced. “You seriously want to be living out of a backpack in the Middle East or Africa, fearing for your life, trying to file stories over crummy and unreliable Internet while you wonder if your sources are still alive?”

  I just stared at him. “How do you know so much about that life?”

  “I’ve read about it, seen movies, TV shows. I thought about it. But that is not the life for me. I’d rather challenge the bad guys here in the good old US of A.” He grinned. “But I couldn’t live with the day to day stress of a war zone. Anyway, I need my sleep and my creature comforts.”

  “Yeah, like your cinnamon buns!” I teased.

  “Exactly.”

  I put my chin in my hand and thought about it for a minute. “I guess I just want to be at the forefront of where the action is. I like the urgency of a hot story.”

  “I get that. But it doesn’t mean that every week has to be like that. It’s so stressful and you’ll kill yourself trying to make deadlines. It’s like writing a column! Always trying to think up something clever or relevant on deadline. Something fresh. It would be horrible for me.”

  I almost blurted, “Tell me about it!” but I caught myself in the nick of time and managed a noncommittal, “Yeah.”

  “Anyway, that’s why I want to focus on the science project, okay?”

  “Wow, that’s a roundabout way of telling me, but okay, I guess, if you feel that strongly about it.” I shrugged and handed him my list of questions for Mr. Dunleavy.

  Meanwhile, I opened the link to the FlyPrint video from an e-mail I’d forwarded to Michael’s computer and began to watch it.

  Michael read my question list and half watched the video with me. He had lots to add to the question list (annoying because, as usual, he’d taken no notes last night). He wanted to know how much recycled paper FlyPrint used and where they got it and whether they recycled their own paper and damaged discards. He wanted to know whether the ink was unhealthy for the workers or for readers. He wanted to know about worker risk and injury.

  “He’ll never tell you that stuff about the workers!” I said. “And why would we want to include it in the science project?” I added, narrowing my eyes suspiciously.

  Michael shrugged. “Just looking for an angle.”

  “It’s not an article, though,” I said.

  “I know. But it might be. You said so last night.”

  Now it was my turn to shrug.

  “A file article!” teased Michael, and I had to smile.

  “Well, it’s a project first, I guess, and we should focus on the science of it first. Here’s the flow chart I did, showing the chain of events from harvesting the trees for paper through to recycling by the end user.” I set it out in front of him.

  “Pasty, this is really good!” said Michael with a low whistle as he looked over the page. “When did you find the time to do all this?”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re a hard worker,” he said, looking up at me. He gave me a warm smile.

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “I still feel like I’m piggybacking on all your hard work.”

  “That’s okay. I like working with you. And you always come through in the end.”

  Michael burst out with a laugh. “I don’t like the sound of that! Like you do all the front work and I come in at the eleventh hour?”

  I raised my eyebrows
and looked away for a second.

  Michael looked at me until I looked back at him. “Is that what you think?”

  “Sometimes. But this time I just took the initiative because it was interesting to me. No worries.”

  “All right, well, then why don’t you let me do the call with Mr. Dunleavy? Then I will have started to approach your level of effort to date,” he offered.

  “Oh no. I don’t mind calling Mr. Dunleavy,” I said. “I told him I would. . . .”

  “Sam!” said Michael. “You’ve got to stop being such a control freak. You can’t do every single thing in life by yourself. Especially when you have a partner who wants to help you! I will call him! Now, what else can I do?” He scanned my notes while I thought of my mom and her comments about feathers and nests. I gulped.

  Michael continued. “Get poster board, find images, type up overview. I’ll do all that. Lay out flow chart: kind of already done by you.” Here he stopped to fake glare at me; then he continued. “Do project title headline. Hey, do you think we’ll be able to fit this all on one poster board or should we tape two together?” he asked.

  “Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s do two. Anyway, there are two of us. Maybe that way we could sketch it out and each work on half and finalize it at home. What do you think?”

  “Totally,” agreed Michael.

  We got busily to work and Michael dialed Mr. Dunleavy and began chatting away. I stopped to listen to him and was really impressed. He handled himself like an adult on the phone and was very polite while still getting the answers he needed.

  Breaking News: Watching Guys Work Makes Girls Swoon!

  When he hung up, he looked at me sheepishly. “Well? Tell me the truth. How’d I do?” he asked.

  “Great,” I said with a grin.

  There was a pause and then he said, “That’s all? No more comments from the audience?”

  “Nope. You did a great job.”

  “Huh. The control freak is softening,” he teased.

  I whacked him with a sheaf of paper and he laughed. “I’ve got miles to go before I sleep,” I said, quoting the Robert Frost poem.

  “Then let’s get cracking!” he said.

  Chapter 8

  INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER TURNS GUINEA PIG FOR SAKE OF JOURNALISM!

  So after all my research at Michael’s house, I am now an expert on sleep. No joke. We did a lot of Internet searching, we called the National Sleep Foundation to clarify a few points, we called my pediatrician (Michael’s idea, and a great one!) for some quotes, and we read some parenting books his mom had on the shelf. Here are some of the things I learned:

  ✓ Good sleep habits are called “sleep hygiene,” and mine are terrible.

  ✓ I should never consume caffeine after noon (good-bye, afterschool diet cola!).

  ✓ The worst thing you can do is have a digital clock shining in your face because its rays stimulate your brain (oops!).

  ✓ You should limit screen time (iPhone, computer, even TV) for at least an hour before bed (double oops!).

  And here are some of the things I should be doing:

  ✓ exercising every day (no wonder Hailey sleeps so well!)

  ✓ going to bed and waking up at the same time every day (good-bye, lazy weekend mornings!)

  ✓ opening my window or turning down the heat so my room is cool

  ✓ taking a cool rather than hot shower shortly before bed (in the dim light, according to Mr. Trigg!)

  ✓ having a light snack an hour before bed

  ✓ wearing socks to sleep

  ✓ reading before bed

  ✓ having a fan on for white noise

  ✓ following a strict bedtime routine that lets my brain know it’s getting toward sleep time

  ✓ not talking on the phone in bed; it needs to be a place only for relaxing and sleeping.

  Okay, no problem, right? Wrong! It was a lot to remember. Do this; don’t do that. It was sort of stress inducing in and of itself!

  The bottom line, though, is that you need to make sure all of your bodily distractions are taken care of (you can’t be hungry, too hot, or too cold; there can’t be too much noise or too much light) and that you’ve tired yourself out enough (exercise; cool shower makes your body work harder to warm up and that is tiring), and you have to build in cues to make your body know it’s bedtime (reading, white noise sound, etc.). It was almost too easy to be true.

  Michael and I decided it would be cool for us both to do a three-day experiment and report our findings in the article. We decided we’d do our first night as we usually do, and then the next two nights we’d use good sleep hygiene and see if it paid off. I thought it could be really interesting and hey, the worst thing that could happen is I’d get a good night’s sleep! (Investigative Reporter Turns Guinea Pig for Sake of Journalism!)

  The timing was perfect because of Hailey sleeping over tonight. It wasn’t like I could invite her and then just put on my socks and get in bed at nine thirty, right? I had to make it a little jazzy (bad sleep hygiene, here I come!). The plan was still for us to go downtown for pizza and then hit the mall for a little retail therapy. I called her as soon as I got home from Michael’s and she said she’d be over in an hour.

  “And I can’t wait to show you my hair!” she trilled.

  “Oh, phew. Good. Can’t wait to see the improvement.”

  Before Hailey came over I had just enough time to organize all the materials and notes from my session at Michael’s; then I showered and got ready for our outing.

  I was watching TV when Hailey arrived. I heard the door open—Hailey never rings the bell—and she called, “Anybody home?”

  “Down here!” I replied from the den.

  I heard Hailey skip down the flight of stairs and I turned around. “Hey! How did your hair turn out?” I called. She appeared in the doorway grinning and I gasped.

  “Don’t you like it?” asked Hailey, holding out an imaginary skirt and twirling.

  I was speechless, for Hailey’s hair had obviously been taken back to normal and then all of the tips had been redyed electric blue.

  By the time I found my voice, Hailey’s smile had faded. She stomped into the den and flopped on the couch. “You hate it,” she cried, crossing her arms. “Now I hate it too!”

  “No . . . I . . .”

  “See?” she said.

  “Wait. Hailey. I was just surprised. I mean, you hated the pink, and you had to get it out. Then Allie was helping, and I was expecting . . . well . . . not this!” I said. “But it’s . . . kind of cute. I . . . I think I’ll get used to it. It’s better than the pink!” I added cheerily.

  “Better than the pink. I have to remember that. It’s the weakest compliment I’ve ever received. Huh . . .” Hailey sighed heavily. “I mean, I know it’s silly. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. And Allie swore it was cool. She said all the high school girls are coloring their hair ends bright colors.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You know you have to take Allie with a grain of salt. Did she dye her own hair too?” I realized I hadn’t seen her since Hailey was over this afternoon.

  Hailey shook her head slowly, and I smacked my forehead. “Of course she didn’t! What was I thinking?” I said with a laugh.

  “What was I thinking?” Hailey wailed suddenly.

  “Look, Allie has that effect on people. She can make anyone do anything. Don’t worry about it. It’s just, I guess it’s because you have short hair, it’s more noticeable. But hey, I like it better already. I mean, by later tonight I won’t even be noticing it anymore. For real.”

  Hailey ruffled her fingers though her hair. “Oh whatever, right? I can always rinse it out or cut my hair or something. It’s kind of fun. At least for the weekend. That’s what Allie said.”

  “Well, whatever Allie says . . . ,” I said sarcastically.

  Hailey chose to ignore that comment. “Okay, so when are we going out?” she asked, squinting at the cable box.

  “I’m r
eady!” I said, jumping up. We needed a change of scenery.

  “Me too!” she agreed.

  Hailey and I went upstairs to ditch Hailey’s bag and get my mom to drive us.

  Can I just say that Slices pizza is really the best food on earth? I mean, if I could choose only one thing to eat for the rest of my life, it would be Slices pizza. It’s thin and crispy on the bottom. There’s not too much sauce or cheese, it’s perfectly seasoned, a tiny bit salty, and washed down by an icy diet cola? Yum!

  Hailey and I each had three slices and then walked over to the mall. We saw a few kids we knew in both places, but no one special (like you know who, of course!). Hailey usually has some crush going, but she’s in a dry spell these days so we were just focused on ourselves, not chasing any guy around the mall. It was relaxing, actually. We played with smart phones and tablets in one store, tried on makeup in another, shot baskets at the sporting goods store, stopped for some ice cream, and actually had a really good time. It had been so long since I just chilled, it felt great.

  Just as we were getting ready to call my mom to pick us up, we turned a corner and came face-to-face with whom else but Molly Grant. Her hair was still bright pink, even though she had a baseball cap crushed low over her face.

  “Hailey! OMG, your hair looks amazing!” she gushed instantly. Her two friends nodded and smiled enthusiastically when Molly turned to them for confirmation.

  Hailey blushed and ruffled her hair like she always does when she’s embarrassed or nervous.

  “Oh yeah, thanks.” She shrugged. “Sam’s sister did it for me earlier.”

  “I love it! It’s so cool!” said Molly. “So much better than the pink!”

  That seemed to be the going compliment these days.

  “Yeah, well . . . thanks . . . ,” said Hailey, who seemed determined to keep walking and not stop to chat with these people.

  But Molly wasn’t going to let Hailey get away that easily.

  “What are you guys up to here?” asked Molly.