Luz paced back and forth in front of the principal's office, staring down at the floor. Nerves and excitement fought for control of her body, only managing to make her feel queasy. She had one hand in her book bag, touching her stack of premade glyphs, rifling the pages back and forth with her thumb to have something to do with her hands. "Oh, man," she muttered to herself, "keep it together, Luz."
She turned around and spotted Amity rushing down the hall toward her, and she felt a wave of relief settle her stomach. "Amity! You made it!" She ran to meet Amity, then stopped and turned to walk with her back to the office door. "So? What did they say?"
"If we can convince Principal Bump, we're good to go." She smiled and brushed her hair back behind her ear. "You were right about what direction to take with them, I just asked if I could try and get permission to restart an old school publication, and my mother said," Amity cleared her throat and lowered her tone, falling into a snooty tone of voice, "It was about time you started taking more initiative on your school standings."
Luz snorted. "Wow, that sounded just like your mom. But that's great! I was scared I was gonna have to try and convince Bump on my own, and last time I was in his office I set his desk on fire."
Amity raised her eyebrows and cracked a smile. "Accidentally, I hope."
"Yeah, sure, accidentally." Luz let out a nervous chuckle. They stopped in front of the door. "Thanks for doing this with me, Amity. I just know that I'd be way in over my head if we hadn't planned everything out first, and I'd end up messing up trying to explain it on my own. It'd probably be a disaster without your help, you're a lifesaver."
"You're welcome, Luz," Amity said, her smile brightening. "Thanks for asking me." Her smile faded and she gave Luz a worried look.
"What is it?"
"Are you still set on not telling Principal Bump about the printing press?"
Luz sighed. "C'mon, we talked about this already."
"I know, and I didn't agree with you then." She pressed her mouth into a thin line and leveled her hardened gaze at Luz.
Luz shifted her weight from one foot to another, wavering under Amity's look, knowing that the reason she felt bad was because Amity was probably right. "Look, wherever that hallway is, we're definitely not supposed to be there and Bump's gonna want to board it up, but I'll tell you what. If he pushes, we'll tell him about the printing press, but if he doesn't, we'll just leave it …" She gestured her hand in a circle, saying, "Open to interpretation."
The iron in her expression faded and she gave Luz a nod. "… Okay, but he's probably going to push, so get ready to tell him."
Luz opened her mouth again, then snapped it shut as she heard the door open. She whipped around and smiled sheepishly at Principal Bump, holding her book bag out in front of her like a shield.
"Ah, Ms. Noceda, I see you're accompanied by Ms. Blight today," he said, low and gravelly. "That's good news indeed, when it's you on your own, I've come to expect that something's been broken, let loose, or set on fire, and I have fifty snails riding with a bookie in Bonesborough that our next incident will involve all three at once." He glanced over at Amity. "I suppose the precedent that's been set for the both of you is cleaning abomination mud off of the atrium."
Luz exchanged a nervous glance with Amity.
Principal Bump cracked a small, self-amused grin, then turned and stepped back into his office. "Now then, please enter, I believe you had, ah, school business to discuss?" He sat at his desk and let out a sigh, shuffling through a ledger. He muttered, "And how much is it inevitably going to cost?"
Luz shuffled into the room, feeling queasy again, and looked sidelong at Amity. "Well, um, Principal Bump, we were wondering, um, if we could—"
"With permission," Amity added.
"Start a school magazine? Err, restart one, I guess."
Principal Bump raised his eyebrows and sat back from the ledger, then frowned in thought. "Restart? I suppose you're referring to the Hexside Herald, those wretched, cursed souls." He spun his chair backward, facing the wall. "Putting out a school newspaper could certainly be put to discussion if you two are feeling up for headlining such a project, but there are many details that would need to be agreed to first. A newspaper would take quite a sizable staff, of which two is barely a start. You would need at least five other dedicated students and a well-defined plan before I would even consider presenting it to the board for approval."
As Luz nervously shuffled the stack of glyphs, she felt one sheet catch and go sideways. She sucked in a breath, and whipped her hand out of the bag, sucking on the papercut on her thumb. Her glyphs flew everywhere.
Principal Bump droned on. "I can't say either of you struck me as the journalistic type, but I suppose it takes all kinds. If you do the necessary groundwork and present a compelling case for staffing, management, logistics," he lowered his tone to a growl to say, "and budget," then continued, "I will consider it."
"Well, um," Luz said, glancing at Amity as she snatched papers out of the air and shoved them back into the bag.
Amity looked back and forth between Luz and the desk, then chimed in, "Actually we weren't thinking of a newspaper, Principal Bump."
His chair rocked forward, still facing the wall. "Oh?"
"A newspaper does sound like it would be too much for just the two of us," she said slowly, eyes darting from Luz to the chair. Luz caught the last few errant sheets and Amity let out a breath, her tone returning to normal. "We were thinking of putting out a literary magazine."
After a moment, Bump reclined. "Interesting."
As Luz shoved the glyphs back into her bag, one sprung free, and she clapped it between her hands.
The glyph burst into flames and fell to the floor.
"So a single large publication for the semester rather than several smaller ones on a set schedule," Principal Bump mused. "That wouldn't require as much of a dedicated staff to organize, I suppose. And likely presents fewer logistical considerations. Hrm."
Amity mouthed, 'How?' at her as Luz stamped at the fire, which dodged and weaved around her foot. Luz shrugged and gestured at the desk. Amity smacked her forehead, then straightened and spoke slowly. "We were thinking that we would need some others to help with judging entries."
While Amity spoke, Luz frantically dug through the haphazard mess of glyphs until she at last found a rumpled ice one. She smoothed it out, then slapped it down on the growing fire. A rush of water splashed away in a wave. Luz let out a sigh of relief and straightened, feeling her damp socks squish in her shoes.
Amity pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head, then continued speaking, saying, "But other than that, I think we could manage the rest by ourselves."
"Reasonable, reasonable," Principal Bump muttered in thought, the back of his chair rocking back and forth.
Luz rubbed at the scorch mark on the floor with the sole of her shoe and mouthed, 'Thank you,' to Amity. Amity mouthed something back that Luz thought looked an awful lot like, 'You're an idiot.'
"Very well," Principal Bump said as he spun back around, making both Luz and Amity jump. "You have my attention, how do you envision this literary magazine?"
Clearing her throat, Luz said, "Um, well, it would be open submission for everyone who attends Hexside. We'd want to announce it soon, so we could set the deadline for entries for a while from now, that way everyone who wants to enter could have the chance to write something new." She shuffled in place, then stopped and stood rigid when her socks squelched. "Then for judging entries, uh …" She looked to Amity.
Amity took over, saying, "We discussed running it blind for the judges, so they don't know who wrote the piece they're judging, and then they'd cast a vote yes or no. After all votes have been cast, entries with the most votes will be included, with the cutoff being partially determined based on the number of entries we get for the magazine and number of judges we have."
"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm," he mused, "And what would the requirements be for entries?" He looked to Luz.
"Prose or poetry of any kind, with maybe a max length? Something like twenty or thirty pages, I'd hate to have to turn away something that's really good, but we aren't going to have room to publish anyone's novel, even if they'd deserve to be in it."
"Well reasoned. And after judging is concluded?"
Amity said, "We would lead the editing and layout, maybe with the help of one or two of the judges, then print it."
"Ah, and now we get to the meat of the matter, and why I will likely have to say no," Principal Bump said, bending back over his desk and flipping through the ledger.
"What?" Luz cried. "Why?"
"The process of printing it," he grumbled, settling on a page and running his finger down the paper. "Unless Ms. Noceda's bag is full of quotes from local printers and not other copies of the spell she just used to light my floor on fire—"
Luz squeaked.
"—then I'm afraid you two have quite a bit of legwork left before you'll be capable of submitting a budget."
"We don't need a budget," Luz said.
Principal Bump's eyes brightened, standing up from his chair. "Oh?"
"Yeah, we, um, have access to a printing, erm, service, that's … uh …" She saw Amity raise a finger and gave her a warning look. Luz shot back a glare. "… Not going to charge anything?"
"Up front?" Principal Bump finished for her, looking up and tapping his chin. "That does make things considerably less complicated. You will still need a budget, however, you can't guarantee that the publication will be a success and pay for itself through sales. At the bare minimum, you will need funds to cover the cost of material plus printing fees. Unless by anything you were implying that they were going to work at cost?"
Luz looked sidelong at Amity, who looked back at her. She swallowed, tried to put on a confident smile, and rubbed the back of her head. "Yes? In that the, um, supplies are getting … donated, so the cost is nothing."
Principal Bump's eyes widened and he sat down slowly, not saying anything.
"… We, uh, the reason we wanted to ask is because we'd found it—err, them first. Right, Amity?"
"Yeah," Amity muttered darkly, "we just stumbled across them."
Luz felt sweat bead up at the back of her neck. "Yep! Sure was lucky!"
He looked back and forth between them, then settled on Amity. "Ms. Blight, are Ms. Noceda's statements regarding the costs of your proposed magazine accurate?"
Luz could see Amity flex her jaw before she said with an even tone, "It is true that with the method we plan on using, we will not require a budget to cover printing costs."
In silence, Principal Bump paged through his ledger and took out a quill. Luz felt the back of her shirt turn as damp as her socks as he meticulously wrote on the page, then carefully removed the sheet, pressed down an embossed stamp over it with a chunk, and held it out for them. "Well, Ms. Noceda, Ms. Blight, the reestablishment of the Hexside Herald has been approved."
A rush of excitement made Luz leap into the air. She landed on the ground with a wet slap and ran over to grab the paper, flipping it around to read it. "Oh, thank you, Principal Bump, thank you, thank you, thank you!" She rushed back to Amity, still bouncing with excitement, and watched the reservation melt away in Amity's expression. "This is going to be so much fun!"
Amity laughed and nodded, taking the sheet from Luz and looking it over. She raised an eyebrow and looked back at Principal Bump. "So that's it? I thought you said it would need to be approved by the board of directors?"
"Budgets need to be approved by the board of directors, Ms. Blight. The Isles revolve around budgets, as I'm sure you're well aware. Well aware, and very well played, I might add." He turned a page and re-dipped his quill.
Amity frowned. "Huh?"
"It makes perfect sense as soon as you take the family into account. Complex project management would look good on any witchling's resumé, and would look especially appealing to the emperor's coven. Further, the decision for the cost to be handled as a silent sponsorship is quite the masterstroke that adds more legitimacy. I really must applaud your parents, though doing so would require acknowledging it publicly, and I'm sure they'd much prefer I express my admiration through discretion instead."
Luz watched Amity's face go from ashen to inflamed as Principal Bump spoke. She grimaced and took a step back.
Amity raised a shaking finger and stammered out, "But they didn't—"
"I already said well played, Ms. Blight, no need to justify anything to me. Of all the students currently in attendance, you'd earn control of this magazine based off merit anyway, so the cloak and dagger maneuver is just added style." He smiled indulgently at them. "The inclusion of Ms. Noceda is an interesting choice, but I suppose her passion and creativity are well-suited for this specific undertaking of yours, a choice that will lead to the finished magazine having high quality content, which both shows your own passion for the project and will serve even better on a resumé."
Amity's face darkened further, and she gestured aggressively at Luz. "But it was her id—!"
Principal Bump raised a hand for silence. "It does not surprise me that you have an elaborate story prepared, but I assure you, it is not necessary. You have your magazine, and you have full control over it as well, so there is nothing left to need to justify. There will be enough eyes watching to see how you fare on this new endeavor without my interference." He waved them away and returned to his work. "After all, great things are expected of you, Ms. Blight."
Luz watched Amity with a pain-stricken look, as Amity's expression rippled through different levels of rage and mortification. She looked down at the signed slip, holding it tight enough in her fingers that Luz could see the creases, and for a moment Luz was sure that Amity was going to tear it to pieces. Amity raised her gaze and locked eyes with Luz, then reached out, grabbed Luz's hand, and led them both out of the office.
Luz shut the door behind them, then turned Amity around, holding her shoulders. "Are you okay?"
"I'm …" Amity's eyes shone wet, then she blinked and let out a long sigh, crumpling in on herself. "No, but it's fine."
"It isn't fine. Do you want to talk about it?" She glanced around the empty hallway, then turned in the direction of the school's main entrance, gently guiding Amity by the shoulder. "Maybe not here? Wanna go grab an ice scream? My treat."
Amity smiled faintly and leaned her shoulder into Luz. "Thanks, Luz."
She gave Amity a gentle squeeze. "Of course, Amity."
They walked in silence through the school, passing the small pockets of students attending their own clubs and extracurricular activities still in the building, and went out the main entrance, heading in the direction of Bonesborough. On the outskirts, still close enough to the school to tempt anyone playing hooky, they stopped at Frieda's Frozen Frights. Luz held the door for Amity, who stepped inside.
As Luz watched Amity pick out a flavor, which let out a shriek of despair as it got scooped into a cone, Luz felt a wave of relief as Amity's spirits gradually lifted. She ordered her own scoop and paid with the spare snails she had in her bag. The two of them crossed over to a table at the back of the shop and sat down.
Luz gave her ice scream a lick, which whimpered in response, and smiled at Amity. "Yours good?"
Amity nodded, her tongue already dyed blue by the ice scream.
"So, uh … if you wanna talk about all that stuff, I'm here. If you don't, we can just eat some ice scream and talk about something else."
Amity sighed and licked at her ice scream. "It's okay. I know what people think of me, it's been this way for a while, none of this is new. I guess it's just … easier to pretend that people don't look at me and see my parents, at least for a while."
"I don't look at you and see that."
Amity looked up from her ice scream and smiled at Luz, dots of pink rising on her cheeks. "I know you don't, Luz. And that means … a lot. It means a lot to me." She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, returning to her ice scream. "I knew when you asked me for help on this it was because you wanted my help, not because of any connections I had that might make getting approval easier. It didn't even cross my mind to think that. Which I guess is why it caught me off-guard when Principal Bump said it."
Luz shifted back and forth in her seat, working on her own cone to buy time to think. "I'm … sorry it's like that. I wish I could do something about it, but …" She shrugged, grimacing. "Even if I could, which, like, how? I still wouldn't know what to do to help."
"It's okay. I don't think it's a problem that can be fixed. You understanding and being on my side is all I could really ask."
"I … don't know if I understand it really, I've never had to deal with anything like that and can only guess about it, but I am definitely on your side, and I'll always listen."
Amity gave her a shy smile, then slurped on the tip of her ice scream, causing a particularly sharp wail. "Thanks, Luz. It really does mean a lot to me." She leaned back and let out a sigh, brushing her hair behind her ear. She leaned forward again. "So anyway, what's the first step? We got the go-ahead to put it out, so we have to figure out how to do that. I haven't tried to publish anything before, have you?"
Luz straightened in her seat, happy to let the heavy subject drop, but filing away in her head the need to try and support Amity as much as she could with the whole being a Blight thing, and let her attention shift to magazines. "Um, well, yes and no. I haven't physically printed anything ever, but I've gotten published … in a way."
Amity raised her brows. "You've been published?"
"Yes. No. Sorta? Not really." Luz grumbled and flopped back on her seat, sucking on her ice scream and feeling old bitterness well up again. "I wrote, like, half of the first draft of Ruler's Reach, before King threw all of it out and changed everything."
"You wrote part of Ruler's Reach?" Amity said, her eyes widening. "That book did really well!" Her expression turned embarrassed. "I never read it, but …"
Luz gave her a lopsided smile and shrugged. "Don't worry, I haven't read it either, at least not all of it. All that's really left of my writing in it is King making fun of my ideas and ruining my characters."
"… This is a sore spot for you, huh? Want to talk about it?"
Luz sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "I dunno. No. Maybe." She sighed again and shook her head. "I've already had it out with King over everything and I forgave him, so it's in the past. I don't want to be annoyed with him about it anymore."
With a frown, Amity gave Luz a piercing look. "But it's still bothering you. You know you can forgive King and still be upset about it, right?"
"Yeah." Luz gave a glum look at her ice scream, slurping up a blob threatening to run screaming down the side of the cone. "I guess it's just that writing's really important to me, you know? That's what I always wanted to be, back before I came here and started trying to become a witch, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write something like the Azura books and maybe be as important to some other weird kid as those books are to me."
Amity smiled and nodded. "I understand."
"I worked really hard on that first draft. I dunno if it was any good or not, and it probably wasn't, but I worked really hard on it, in some ways harder than anything I've ever worked on in my life, and … the version King wrote that was him basically dunking on me becoming a bestseller kinda stings, you know?"
"… I don't know what dunking means, but I think I follow you." She gave Luz a pained look. "And I'm sorry you went through that, Luz. I think I understand what it would feel like. But … Principal Bump barely knows you at all, but he's right. You're one of the most creative people I've ever met and you throw yourself into everything. And you're earnest. Maybe your first draft of Ruler's Reach wasn't any good, or maybe it was, I don't know, but you can write other things, and those things could be really important to a weird kid who's just like us some day." She smiled at Luz, and Luz couldn't help but smile back. "You can be a witch and a writer."
"… Thanks, Amity. That really means a lot." She looked down at the dregs of her cone and bit off an end, listening to it whine as she chewed. They sat in contemplative, comfortable silence for a few minutes, finishing off their ice screams. As Luz ate the last bite, she straightened in her chair. "You're not gonna get in trouble for not going straight home, are you?"
Amity shook her head as she chewed the last bit of her cone, then swallowed. "No. My parents know we had a meeting with Principal Bump, and that if we got approved, we'd have an official club now and would have club business to work on, and they definitely assumed we would get approved." She shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "Glad I didn't have to have the conversation with them about us getting denied," she muttered.
Luz looked around the shop, with its thirty-one wailing flavors all on display at the counter, trying to escape from their vats. "Well … I guess eating ice scream and pouring out our fears and dreams to each other counts as official club business."
Amity giggled, hiding her mouth behind her hand. "Think of it like going over the minutes from the last meeting."
Luz grinned. "Okay. And does this mean you're gonna be off the hook from needing to go straight home more? It's easy to have club meeting times that get your parents out of your hair when you're the one who's setting the meeting times."
"I'm not going to push my luck, but this will free me up a little. We'll just have to use most of that time working on this … together." Amity's eyes darted away from Luz and spots of color rose on her cheeks. She blinked and turned back to Luz, her tone jumping to chipper. "So going back to before! What should the first step be, now that we've got approval and can get to work?"
Luz frowned in thought and leaned back in her seat. "Well … we'll need to set a timeline for everything, probably in reverse, from when we're planning on publishing, then going back to announcing it to the school, and we'll wanna do that last one as soon as possible, so everyone'll have a chance to write stuff before we run out of time for judging and putting the thing together."
Amity nodded. "That makes sense."
"We want to get this done before the semester's over for sure," Luz said, swinging around her book bag to her lap. She fished out some spare sheets of paper and some pencils, handing a set over to Amity, and started writing down notes. "I think we'll probably want to be done with all the stuff with printing and putting all the issues together a week before we put it out, just in case stuff goes wrong, so we'll have a cushion …"
"Yeah, the less of a chance we get behind, the better. Still, is most of the time we're scheduling really going to end up being time for everyone to write?"
"It probably has to be, right?"
"I guess, but we don't want it to be too long, or people are just going to put it off or forget."
Luz scratched her chin with the pencil. "That's a good point."
They worked together, tossing out thoughts and ideas and scribbling down notes and trading their sheets back and forth, until they had a rough working timeline settled on that they were both happy with, but with some leeway in case things didn't go according to plan.
Luz flipped her sheet over and tapped her pencil rhythmically on it. "What are we gonna call it, anyway? I don't think we can keep it the way it was, Hexside Herald is just a newspaper name."
"I don't know, I haven't really heard of any zines before, that's a human realm custom, I think. What are zines normally called?"
"I think a lot of them go with Review instead of stuff like Herald or Times." Luz shrugged. "Most of them don't have a standard sort of name like that and usually have cutesy names that have to do with writing, like Inkwell or From the Typewriter."
"What's a typewriter?"
Luz lifted her hands in surrender. "Don't look at me, I have no idea." She tapped at the page, then started doodling flowers in the corner. "We could keep Hexside in the name, since it's gonna be for the school, but it's not like we have to. We could just go with Hexside Review, but that sounds kind of boring. Any ideas?"
"The … Hexside Inkwell?" Amity grimaced at herself and shook her head. "You should take that as a 'no,' and pretend I didn't say anything, okay?"
Luz giggled. "Deal. How about …" she wrote as she spoke, letting her penmanship flow from the flower doodles into a looping script. "… Tales from the Isles?"
Amity smiled. "I like it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. If you're happy with that, I am." She wrote it down on her own sheet and leaned back from the page. "Tales from the Isles it is."
"Awesome," Luz said, grinning down at her page. Looking at the title written out, then flipping it over and seeing the smudged-up schedule, the whole project started to feel more real to her. A bubbly contentment rose up in her chest. "We're really gonna do this, huh?"
"Hopefully," Amity said, her own expression lit up with excitement. "So what's next? We've got a few weeks before we want to start advertising, and there's still a lot of planning to do. Should we start looking around for other judges?"
"Not yet, I don't think. If we're worried people are gonna put off and forget writing for it, it'll probably be worse for judges, half of 'em will say yes, then change their minds about it in a couple weeks without telling us. I think the next step," she said, her smile falling as a pang of worry hit her. "Is making the ads to put up around the school." She looked up at Amity. "Which means figuring out how the printing press works."
Amity let out a breath and leaned back. "I guess that is what's next. Ugh," she said, then frowned and gave Luz a guilty look. "Sorry, I am looking forward to this, and I'm curious how something like that printing press works, too, it's just … I don't know. Thinking about going back to that part of the school creeps me out, I guess."
With a grin, Luz nodded. "Yeah, it is kinda spooky. Might be worth bringing down some candles and stuff so it won't feel so much like wandering down a boarded up, abandoned hallway." She wiggled her fingers and dropped into a spooky ghost story voice for emphasis.
Amity smiled and rolled her eyes. "That and we'll be able to see better." She slid the pencil back over to Luz, then looked over her sheet of notes. She folded it up neatly and stuck it in the hem of her school uniform, then stood up.
Luz got out of her chair and walked with Amity toward the door. The salesdemon gave them both a polite wave as Luz held the door for Amity, sending the bell by the doorjamb tinkling. The ice screams also waved and moaned at them as they left. They stopped outside of the shop, looking at each other.
Luz straightened her book bag and glanced off in the direction of home. "So wanna start trying to figure out the printing press now, or wait until tomorrow? Eda's not really expecting me, and doesn't really care when I get home, so long as I don't miss dinner."
Amity looked off in the direction of the school. A look of concern passed briefly over her expression, then she looked back to Luz. "Let's wait until tomorrow. I could probably spend some more time in the school now without my parents getting angry, but not that much time. Also, I'd like to see if I can find any books on printing presses, either at the library or at home. We might be able to figure it out ourselves, but instructions would make it go faster."
"Yeah, and we'll be less likely to break something."
Amity giggled and nodded. "So see you tomorrow?"
"You bet." Luz opened her arms for a hug.
After a moment's hesitation, Amity stepped into it and hugged her back. "Thanks for the ice scream. And … for listening."
"Thank you for listening, too." They stepped back, Amity glancing away and looking at the ground. They headed out in different directions and gave each other a final wave before Luz turned a corner into the forest path and Amity disappeared from view. Luz took a deep breath and grinned as she walked, her imagination playing through all the different ways figuring out the printing press could go right or wrong as she and Amity worked on it together. And in the back of her mind, dozens of different story ideas churned and bustled for attention, waiting for her to write them.
