First Encounter with a Newspaper

 

The Georgia Writers Museum mailed Zoë a copy of the newspaper her story was printed in and she tore open the envelope with gusto. 

"What in the world!?" she exclaimed as she unfolded and unfolded and unfolded the paper. "This thing is huge!! Are ALL newspapers this large?"

"Looks about right," I said.

Fun fact! I used to have a paper route!

I took over from my brother when he started early morning seminary. I'd get up and fold newspapers and then ride around on my bike and deliver them around town in the wee hours of the morning. 

I gave it up when I started early morning seminary myself a couple of years later, but...yeah...I guess you could say I'm pretty familiar with the general dimensions of newsprint. 

"For real?!" she squealed. "I thought newspapers were like…magazine-size…or something. But no! Look at this thing! That actually makes a lot of sense…when you think about it."

"What does?" I asked.

"Well," Zoë explained, "That reading a newspaper makes a good disguise. You always read about that in books or see it in movies—like we just saw that in 101 Dalmatians. I always thought they were exaggerating about the size of newspapers. Like, how could someone hide behind a piece of paper? That’s not going to be very effective. But, no!! Newspapers are ginormous! I can totally see how that would be a good disguise."

She was thrilled to see her name in print!

I linked to her story (and Benjamin's) on Halloween when it first came out, but I'll also put it down below in case the link at GWM ever breaks:

The Mystery of Doll's Head Trail

The late October sun cast an auburn glow on the grotesque dolls, making the Doll’s Head Trail seem even more ominous than it really was. Elaina walked on the trail, stooping down to see a moldy doll with one eye missing, moss growing on its moth-eaten petticoats. Elaina thought that this doll was scarier than all the others, somehow more intimidating than its peers. She had the feeling she had seen it before. As she watched it, the doll’s lone eye blinked.

Behind her, Elaina heard the crunching of disturbed leaves. She spun around, her black hair whipping her face as she turned. She looked down and saw a doll’s eye rolling toward her. She stared confoundedly at it. It stopped and stared back. She let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, relieved. It was just a doll’s eye, rolling down the hill. Her breath caught in her throat again, though, when she heard a whisper surround her.

“Need to kill! Need to kill!”

The whisper seemed to be emanating from the eyeball, although it had no mouth. Without thinking, Elaina started to chew the ends of her hair, a nervous habit of hers.

Ring, ring! Ring, ring!

Her mom was trying to call her!

Elaina answered her phone. “Hi mom! What’s up?”

“Elaina, you need to get—the dolls are—please come back now.”

“Mom! I don’t understand! What do I need to get?”

Elaina was in a frenzy. What are the dolls? Why does she need to go back home? She had so many questions coursing through her head as she waited for an answer.

“This number has been disconnected,” a robotic voice answered, not a hint of emotion in its words.

The lock of hair Elaina had been chewing on was now a soggy knot.

She bent down to touch the one-eyed doll. When her fingertip grazed the doll, everything started spinning. She felt her hair being pulled, her limbs went stiff, and it felt as if her fingers were welding together. When at last the spinning stopped, Elaina looked around dizzily. Everything was bigger. She reached for a lock of her luscious, long black hair, but when she looked down, she saw ratty white hair, the same plasticky hair that was on the doll she had touched. She looked at her hand and saw a grubby doll’s hand instead. Her body was getting stiffer. She felt numb. She blinked. Her left eye fell out and rolled away. Soon it focused on a boy, walking along the trail with his younger siblings. The picture was projected straight into her mind where three words ran on repeat: Need to kill.