Peeled; Chapters 8-13

Pages 69-124

The Core is starting to slowly decline. Hildy and the rest of the team are trying to improve the writing quality, plus make the paper more useful. The mayor is trying to reassure the people of Banesville and tell them that the town will be improving, not to worry, etc. Hildy tries to question Mayor Fudd on the issues of, both, the ghost and when the auditorium roof of the high school will be repaired due to a cave-in. He doesn't say much and seems to be annoyed by her. He actually tells her that she asks too many questions, but yet he seems more patient with another reporter. An odd woman comes to Banesville because of the ghosts. She is a psychic named Madame Zobek. She is very creeperish, and I wouldn't trust her with anything! After that, Hildy was at Minska's restaurant, where Baker Polton was drunk. He talked about what makes a good paper, what he's gone through at previous jobs, and informs Hildy to find another profession that she wants to do. He left in a cab that Minska called, with Hildy and Tanisha walking him to it. The chapter closes with Hildy emailing Polton about how to stand up for the truth.

Chapter 9 opens up with Baker Polton at a Core meeting. He'll be the new advisor for the paper until the semester ends. Everyone is intimidated by him, at first, and to tell you the truth, I think some of them still are. He is hard on them... showing tough love. He takes what The Bee publishes and tells them what is wrong about it. They, then, avoid making the same mistakes in The Core. Elizabeth, Hildy's cousin who, also, works on the paper, thinks that Mr. Polton is mad. I admire him, though. You can tell that he's passionate about what he does, and is so tough to make the students better. One of Mr. Polton's pet-peeves, besides The Bee, is the small closet that The Core's team calls a classroom. He picks on Elizabeth because of her creative writing instead of just getting the facts down. Hildy is walking in town, later on, and she sees Madame Zobek's office. She doesn't like her presence in town, and neither do I.

In Chapter 10, Hildy learns from Mr. Polton how to get to the heart of a story. We find out that he has an ex-wife and a son. He wants her to get more information on the Ludlow house mystery. He wants her to get information on Sallie Miner, the girl that was killed on the Ludlow property. Hildy follows his advice, and gets into contact with her 3rd grade school teacher, Mrs. Leary. She gives her Sallie's father's first name and tells her that he lives in Miami, but she finds 11 Lawrence Miners, and she decided not to call everyone and ask them if they have a dead daughter... Hildy conducts a school tour of their orchard for 29 first graders. A girl named Missy Grimes comes up to her, closing the chapter, telling Hildy that she "saw it" and when Hildy asks her what it was she says that it is "a secret".

Chapter 11 starts out with an article in The Bee that catches Hildy's attention. It's about a girl that was hurt near the Ludlow house, riding her bike. It says that a tree branch fell, causing her to fall off of her bike. She went to the hospital for minor injuries. The girl said that she saw the ghost's head floating and that it was big. When Hildy was babysitting Missy, she asked her about seeing the ghost and just some details about what happened. Her story is completely different than what The Bee reported. Hildy starts having even more doubts on the truth of the paper. The next day, Hildy and Tanisha go to wait for Pen Piedmont after his shift was over. Lev pulls into the parking lot, first, and talks to Hildy and Tanisha before asking Hildy out again. I just figured something like this would happen, just because of how the author makes Hildy talk about boys. He asks her out, which she says no to. He's one of her exes. Then, Zack comes up and talks to them. Mr. Piedmont comes out. Hildy tells him that she doesn't think that his stories are accurate. He yells at her saying that they are, and he drives away!

Darrell, the editor of The Core, walks into a meeting saying that the coroner's report on Lupo is that he had a heart attack while on the property, to start off Chapter 11. He wasn't murdered. The Core looks at The Bee's news article on how seeing a ghost could cause a heart attack. Madame Zobek's column on the topic almost took up a whole page! Later on at night, Hildy went to look at the Ludlow house. Zack comes up to her to talk about getting the facts straight, with him being a scientist. She talks about that with a reporter's point of view. Pinky Sandusky and two old women with Elders Against Evil on their sweatshirts came up to talk to Hildy and Zack too. After they left, Zack tells Hildy that he likes to fight evil with her, and she agrees with him... Typical Hildy, very flirtatious!

Zack is now a part of The Core team. He's very good at making assumptions. His first project is to interview students about the Ludlow mystery. Elizabeth and Hildy decide to go interview Ann, an ER nurse that was at work when Missy went to the ER. They don't get much information from her. Only to figure out that the article on Missy's accident that The Bee wrote is more than 50% wrong. Hildy feels that she and Elizabeth let Ann off easy. Ann wasn't very cooperative. When they were leaving the hospital, Madame Zobek pulled beside them, looked at them for a while and smiled. They got creeped out, and so would I! Elizabeth thinks that she's interesting, but Hildy doesn't. Hildy ends up making her mad at her.