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“You just dropped a book,” Bart said. “It happens all the time. Everybody drops a book so a curse had nothing to do with it.”

“I have to agree with Bart's point,” Mr. Rinaldi said. “Because I
have
dropped many books before Mr. Cougar was vandalized.”

“What about all the other things that have happened?” Jordin Ali asked. “Our football team has never looked this bad before.”

“Let's say the curse
is
real,” Sue said. “How are we going to break it?”

“Well, if we're thinking about this logically—and I'm not sure that we are,” Mr. Rinaldi said, “the logical answer would be that to break the curse, you would have to reverse the process that started it in the first place.”

“So the Cougar Curse won't be broken until we fix Mr. Cougar?” Jordin asked.

“If you believe in the curse, I think that's your answer,” Mr. Rinaldi replied. “Now let's get back to some ratios.”

The word from math class started spreading around the school. Soon everyone was talking about plans to fix Mr. Cougar. They wanted the student government to get involved to make sure that the Cougar Curse was broken as soon as possible. I suggested they talk to Anthony and Hailey.

“Hey, Martone,” I heard Hailey call as I stuffed my books into my locker before lunch period. “What's this I hear about Lauren Fields?”

“Can you believe it, Hails?” I said. “She
actually came to our
Voice
meeting. And she invited me to come to a postmortem!”

“What's that?” Hailey cried, alarmed. “At a morgue? Like where they have dead bodies?”

“Not a real postmortem, a
newspaper
postmortem,” I explained. “That's where the editors and writers and other staff from the paper meet to go over the latest issue and analyze it. They look at the things that were done well and the things that went wrong.”

“That sounds right up your alley.” Hailey laughed.

“There's actually a morgue at the
Gazette
, too,” I said. “It's where all the old issues are kept. It used to be a room filled with file cabinets and actual copies of the paper, but today a lot of morgues are digital.”

“Thanks for enlightening me,” Hailey said. “I will never think of a newspaper in quite the same way.”

“Did you hear about the plan to break the Cougar Curse?” I asked. “I think you and Anthony are going to be pretty busy.”

“I know!” Hailey said. “I was nearly knocked over after gym period. A crowd of kids wanted to know what we were doing to fix Mr. Cougar.”

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

“I was honest,” Hailey replied. “I said that we hadn't done anything because we figured that the school would handle it. But if the students wanted us to get involved, we would bring it up to Mr. Pfeiffer.”

“You're such a good VP,” I said, proud of my best friend.

“You're such a good journalist,” said Hailey, returning the compliment.

“I'd be a better journalist if my partner were pulling his weight,” I said. “I'm going to have to pin him down in the cafeteria. I'll talk to you later.”

“Good luck with that,” Hailey said.

“Thanks. Even though I don't believe in luck, I'll take it now,” I joked.

Michael Lawrence was scooping a pile of mac 'n' cheese into his mouth when I sat down next to him.

“Finished the interviews yet?” I asked.

“Almost,” Michael answered.

“Got any interesting insights from anyone?” I asked.

“Not really,” said Michael.

This was going worse than the time when I babysat my little cousin and he cried the whole time and wouldn't tell me what was wrong.

“Michael, we really need to get this story done,” I said. “Today in math class we were talking about how you get rid of a curse. Maybe that would be a good angle to take.”

“Sure. That's good,” Michael said. “Better than trying to figure out who did it. I don't think we'll get very far with that angle.”

“No, it doesn't seem like anyone is getting far with that angle,” I agreed. “Even the professionals like Officer Mendez and Lauren Fields.”

“Do you have any idea how to get rid of a curse?” Michael asked. “Because if I throw another interception, I might quit the football team.”

“I don't have a clue how to get rid of something I don't believe in,” I said. “But some of the kids in
math class think that the Cougar Curse won't be broken until Mr. Cougar is fixed.”

“Interesting,” Michael replied. “I'll finish my interviews and ask some other kids what they think will end the curse. You can look it up on the Internet, too. Then we'll write the story about different ways to end the curse.”

“Welcome back, Michael Lawrence,” I said, smiling. “It's nice to have my partner back. That sounds like a good plan.”

“I get it, Pasty,” Michael said. “And I'm sorry. I just really have been feeling cursed lately.”

“You could have told me that,” I said.

“Next time, I will,” he promised.

I was thrilled that Michael Lawrence and I were on the same page again, but that feeling didn't last long. Michael called me at home later that night.

“Hi, Sam. I have some bad news,” he said. “It's going to cost thousands of dollars to replace Mr. Cougar. Mr. Pfeiffer said that we don't have the budget to do it. Maybe we shouldn't do the story about breaking the curse. If everyone
believes that it won't be broken until Mr. Cougar gets fixed and he
never
gets fixed, Cherry Valley will be permanently cursed.”

“I disagree,” I said. “It's still a good story. It's what everyone's talking about. Real news is what matters to your audience. Our audience cares about the Cougar Curse.”

“Do you mind if I talk to Mr. Pfeiffer first and find out the exact amount?” Michael asked. “I'll do it first thing in the morning.”

“Okay. Just do it right away,” I said. “We can't hold off on writing the story much longer.”

Obviously, Michael's talk with Mr. Pfeiffer didn't go very well. He showed up at my locker the next morning looking like the sullen Michael Lawrence I had been hoping had disappeared forever.

“It's going to cost five
thousand
dollars to fix Mr. Cougar,” Michael reported. “Mr. Pfeiffer said the school can't afford to spend that much money on a statue.”

“Five thousand dollars?” I asked incredulously. “It's not like Mr. Cougar's made of gold. That's a
lot
of money.”

“Yup,” Michael agreed. “Looks like the curse will continue.”

“It
could
end right now if people stopped believing
in it,” I replied. “The curse is ridiculous.”

“Face it, Sam,” Michael said. “That's not going to happen. You may not believe, but there are a lot of us who do.”

“It looks like Mr. Cougar's going to be missing a paw for a while,” I said. “So you might want to rethink that and just move on.”

I didn't wait for Michael to answer. I had heard enough about the curse, and the bell for homeroom was just about to ring. I was really frustrated, too. How could someone with a brilliant brain like Michael believe in something as stupid as the Cougar Curse? It was mind-boggling.

Also mind-boggling were the letters to Dear Know-It-All. I opened them in the privacy of my room later that night—it was too dangerous to look at them in school and risk exposing my identity. I opened each letter, and they all sounded like they could have been written by the same person.

Dear Know-It-All,

Help! I've been cursed! I can't find my assignment pad anywhere.

-Looking for Luck

Dear Know-It-All,

Everything's been going wrong since Mr. Cougar's paw was broken. I don't know what to do. My dad yelled at me for my messy room. I'm so cursed!

—My Life's a Mess

Dear Know-It-All,

How long do curses last? Because I need the Cougar Curse to end right away. I have a math test next week and I don't want to fail another one.

-Math Cursed

I looked at the Dear Know-It-All e-mails that Mr. Trigg had screened for me, and they
weren't any better. It was bad enough that Michael was giving me a hard time with the cougar story. I thought Dear Know-It-All might be the easy assignment this time around. I was obviously mistaken.