Chapter FourteenAll day at school Gilbert was distracted by thoughts of Valerie. He looked for extra newspapers lying around that he could pilfer, an old magazine, anything—but people didn’t read the way they used to. They got their news online, read their magazines online, and loose newspapers for making anonymous notes were hard to come by.
Gilbert wondered what the old-school kidnappers were going to do now that their main stationery source had disappeared. During science class he cooked up a long story in his head about two hapless would-be criminals who snatch a little girl from the playground while her mother is talking to a friend, but when they cannot find enough newspapers to spell out their ransom note, they give up and let the girl go.
Amusing, at least for the duration of sci
