Hoof Beat Read Free

WILLOW CREEK GAZETTE . Her knees felt weak. She took a deep breath. It didn’t do anything to make her knees feel better. She knocked on the door anyway.
    “C’mon in!” a gruff voice responded from inside.
    She opened the door and peered around it.
    What she expected was something like
The Daily Planet
city room—a sea of desks, each with its own computer screen and keyboard, most being operated by frazzled and dedicated reporters, determined to tell the truth to the news-hungry people of Willow Creek.
    What she
saw
was something different. There were three desks. Each looked as if it had been rescued from the junk pile. One did, actually, have a computer onit. One of the others had an old-fashioned desktop manual typewriter. The third may have had a typewriter on it, but Lisa couldn’t be sure. It was piled too high with back issues of
The Gazette
to see anything else.
    “Mr. Teller?” she asked timidly.
    “That’s me,” the man said, pushing his glasses onto the top of his head. He was mostly bald, with a craggy face and very bushy eyebrows that made him look a little frightening. “And you must be the girl who called about the horses—Lisa, is it?” He smiled at her. He had one of the nicest smiles Lisa had ever seen. As soon as he smiled, she wasn’t frightened any more.
    “Lisa Atwood,” she said, sighing with relief.
    “Come sit down,” Mr. Teller said. He glanced around. “There must be a chair here someplace. This office is famous for its walking piles of papers, you know. If I turn my back on a clear space, some pile of papers comes to fill it up!”
    Lisa laughed. He stood up and moved some papers off a chair onto the floor. Lisa sat down quickly. She turned to the pile he’d just made on the floor. “Sit, and stay!” she commanded.
    Mr. Teller laughed at her joke. “I think we’re going to get along,” he said. Lisa knew he was right. “Now, tell me again about this idea of yours.”
    “It’s about horses,” she began. “See, I ride at Pine Hollow. A lot of other girls and some boys in town do, too. It’s a very busy place. There are lessons andclasses, horses being born and trained. There are shows and events. Not everybody is interested, of course, but there’s so much going on there that’s
news
for the young riders in town that I think you should have a column about it in the paper.”
    “Interesting,” Mr. Teller said, sitting back in his chair. “Any idea who might be able to cover the subject?”
    Lisa knew he was teasing her a bit. He already knew that she wanted to write it because she’d told him on the telephone.
    Lisa blushed. “Well, I have a lot of experience writing,” she said. “I do well on my papers in school—I’ve brought you a few samples …” She reached for her portfolio.
    “It’s okay,” Mr. Teller said. “I believe you get good grades, but how well you write classroom essays may not have anything to do with how well you write newspaper columns.”
    “I thought you might say that,” Lisa told him. “That’s why I also brought you some samples of the writing I did for the school newspaper last year.” She handed him three of her favorite stories. One was about a new science teacher. The other two covered her class field trips.
    “Good thinking,” he said. He glanced quickly at the clippings. “Hmmm …” He looked up at her. “Okay, Lisa, you can write. What’s the angle here?”
    This was the moment Lisa had dreamed about alllast night—when she’d been sleeping. She’d actually spent most of the night awake, worrying about this interview. In her imagination, it had
never
gone as smoothly as this. “ ‘Hoof Beat,’ ” she said, looking Mr. Teller straight in the eye. “The name of the column is Hoof Beat.” Lisa thought that was pretty clever. Since the subject a reporter covered was called a beat, and since she’d be covering horses, Hoof Beat seemed the perfect choice.
    Mr. Teller leaned back in his chair again.