Read All About It: Dear Know-It-All

Chapter 1
KIDS TIRED OF TERRIBLE FOOD, BEG FOR MERCY
Can you keep a secret? I can’t! I’m a journalist, and journalists are all about making secrets public.
Anyway, it kills me that I have to keep a major secret from almost everyone I know. Even my best friend, Hailey Jones. But I will tell you, if you promise not to tell anyone, okay? Here it is: I am Dear Know-It-All.
Dear Know-It-All is the advice column in our school newspaper, the Cherry Valley Voice. Kids write in with questions about everything from homework to love lives to troubles at home. And each year one of the kids on the newspaper staff is chosen to anonymously write the answers, and this year it’s me! Can you believe it? I myself was shocked when Mr. Trigg, our faculty advisor, called me at home to ask me to do it. But it’s pretty fun, and an honor, even if it’s a lot of responsibility.
In my first column, I answered a letter from someone asking what they should do if they liked their best friend’s crush. Then I discovered by accident that it was Hailey writing in about liking my crush, Michael Lawrence! So after lots of angst, and a lot of thinking on my part, I wrote a column telling her to go for it—all’s fair in love and war and all that—and then I held my breath to see what would happen. Hailey ended up confessing to me that she’d written the letter to Dear Know-It-All, and I had to pretend I didn’t already know. The good thing was, in the end, she decided she didn’t really like Michael, anyway. Phew! ’Cause I still do! But that’s kind of another secret, okay?
So, as you can see, it’s crazy stuff. If I wrote it up as a story for the Cherry Valley Voice, the headline would be Advice Columnist Caught in Love Triangle. I love writing headlines, by the way. It’s one of my greatest strengths as a journalist.
Our new issue comes out today, and I can’t wait to see what people think of my latest column! Part of my job as Dear Know-It-All is to make my columns “jazzy.” This one is jazzy all right! I really went all out and gave some pretty rad advice, if I do say so myself. I think it will have everyone talking. Here’s what it was: A girl (who called herself Tired of Waiting) had written in to say she had had a crush on a guy for a long time and was tired of waiting for him to notice or to ask her out. She wasn’t sure he even knew she walked on the planet, let alone liked him. I had (anonymously, of course) replied that in this day and age, it wasn’t all up to the guy. She should be a modern girl and just take charge and ask him out herself. I was pretty proud of that answer. It was sassy and modern and brave, not to mention well-written, if I do say so myself. The funny thing is, I’ve been in the same situation for years and I would never dare to ask Michael out, but that’s because I’m such a chicken. I’ve learned that I can give pretty good advice. Following it is a whole other story!

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