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“Oh, and Kenny,” said Lynda, reaching the end of her list of instructions, “talk to Frazz about star signs. As in how many there are and the fact that Ariel isn’t one of them. It’s no wonder I can’t get anyone to take the Junior Gazette seriously.”
*
“Twelve?” said Frazz, listening to Kenny – or possibly not listening to Kenny, his face behind the Gazette’s sports pages and his feet up on the desk. “Nice one, but I’m not falling for that.”
Kenny folded his arms. “Seriously, Frazz, there are twelve signs of the zodiac. I’ve got a list here -.”
“Ha,” said Frazz, raising one finger. “Nobody’s catching me like that, not now I’ve got all thirteen sorted.”
“Frazz, how many months are there in a year?”
“I know that one,” Frazz said, putting down the paper for a moment. “That was what I thought, but you know what? They don’t match. Tricky, but I’m on it, don’t worry.”
Kenny decided he knew a lost cause when he saw one, and settled instead for sitting on the desk, and, inevitably, asking: “Thirteen?”
*
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Tiddler, following Kenny back to his desk, and plumping herself down on the edge of it. “Half my friends only ever buy the Gazette for the horoscopes. They think it’s great they get a new star sign every other week and they like spotting the joke ones.”
Kenny chewed his pencil. “Yeah, but they’re not actually jokes, and Lynda thinks it’s making us look like a kiddie paper.”
“Her story made us look bad, not the horoscopes,” said Tiddler. “Even you know that.”
“That’s not true,” Kenny returned, more out of loyalty than honesty. Spike, Lynda, an ongoing argument and a story – it could go either way for the Junior Gazette. Last week had been one of the disasters. “Well, not as much as listing Saxophone as a star sign.”
She shrugged. “Everyone knows horoscopes are rubbish. Ours are so rubbish people think it’s some sort of deliberate post-modern humour thing. You know – irony.”
“Yeah, I know irony,” said Kenny. “Intimately. And, really?”
Tiddler grinned slowly. “If we say so, it is.”
*
“An article on what?”
“Superstition,” Kenny said to Lynda. “Horoscopes, tea leaves, ouija boards, fortune telling, getting knocked down avoiding ladders – anything like that. You know, is it all a bit of fun, or can it be dangerous?”
“The Junior Gazette carries horoscopes. We could wind up looking like hypocrites.”
“Apparently, there’s a school of thought says we carry a column that subtly pokes fun at anyone who thinks some idiot on a newspaper can tell us what sort of week we’re going to have. In a humorous, post-modern way.”
Lynda paused. “It’s an idea, I suppose.”
“We need to move on,” he said, more quietly. “The old people’s home thing – it wasn’t your fault, Lynda. You didn’t know.”
Lynda’s face closed again. “Well, I should have.” Then she stole a glance at him. “Say we do – what angle do we take? Are we reassuring anxious adults that kids take this stuff with a pinch of salt – mostly – or warning the gullible?”
“Team meeting to decide,” said Kenny. “I was thinking a feature edition, maybe, with all sides of the argument. It’s only an idea, mind.”
“Could be our Hallowe’en special.”
“Sounds good, boss.”
Lynda smiled, and then said, “I take it from this that Frazz is still incapable of telling the difference between a star sign and a brand of washing powder?”
“Oh, no, no,” murmured Kenny, poker-faced. “He says he’s on top of it. He can name all thirteen.”
“Thirteen?”