Luz sprinted into the cafeteria and skidded to a halt. She craned her neck around, spinning in place, then grinned and raced off toward a table. "Amity!" she called.

Amity glanced up from her lunch, then broke out in a smile. "Hi, Luz!"

Luz slid onto the bench opposite Amity, then they both said at the same time, "I found out that—!"

They clacked their teeth shut and Amity waved Luz off. "Sorry, you go first."

Luz shook her head. "No, it's fine, you go ahead!"

A beat of silence passed as they stared at each other.

"So I—" they both started again, then groaned.

Luz tore open her lunch and took a huge bite out of her sandwich. She pointed at her stuffed mouth, then gestured at Amity to go ahead.

Amity cracked a smile and rolled her eyes. "So I was talking to Ed and Em about the printing press, and—"

Gus' voice cut over Amity, and Luz flinched. "So there you are! We've been looking everywhere for you, Luz." He slipped onto the bench next to Amity as Willow settled in next to Luz. Gus frowned at her. "Have you two been avoiding us?"

"Wha?" Luz forced out around her sandwich. "Nuh-uh." She shook her head.

Willow glanced between her and Amity with a worried look, then asked Amity, "Um … are we interrupting … something?"

Amity's eyes widened and she shook her head sharply, and Willow relaxed. Luz's brow knit in confusion.

Amity cleared her throat. "Sorry if it seems like we've been avoiding you, Luz and I have just been working on a school project together."

Willow raised an eyebrow. "A school project?"

Gus gasped. "Is it due soon!? What class did we forget!? Is it even one I'm taking!? I can't take this kind of pressure!"

Luz forced down her mouthful, then took a smaller bite that she could talk around. "Not that sorta project. We're gonna publish a school zi—erm, a literary magazine."

Willow and Gus exchanged a flat look, then Gus said, "Oh, okay. That explains why you didn't tell us about it."

Luz snickered and nearly choked on her food.

Amity frowned and gave all three of them a bewildered look. "What?"

"I told you it wasn't their thing," Luz said.

Gus sighed dramatically. "Look, I'm sorry, but even I want to call you both nerds, and look at me, have you met me!?"

Willow giggled and hid her mouth behind her hand. "It sounds like a great fit for you two, but you were right to assume I wouldn't be interested."

Amity's frown deepened as she turned to Luz. "So they both really don't read books for fun? You weren't exaggerating?"

"I know!" Luz said. "It's so weird."

"Nerds!" Gus gasped and clapped his hands over his mouth. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry! Witches do this to me for liking human stuff all the time! I'm becoming that which I hated!" He slumped forward on the table and covered his head.

Willow clicked her tongue and shook her head. "I think it's perfectly fine, admirable even, I just fall asleep halfway through the first page of anything that isn't about horticulture." She gave a guilty smile and shrugged. "We're happy that it's exciting for you two, even if it's not something we really understand or have much interest in." She gave Gus a pointed look. "Right, Gus?"

He dragged himself back up to sitting and let out a reluctant, "Right."

"And we'll help in any way we can, if you need it. Just … um …" She flashed Luz another worried look, and Gus flinched away.

"Don't worry," Luz said, "we're not gonna ask you to judge anything. We don't even expect you to write anything."

"You can if you want," Amity offered. The two turned to her with wary expressions. "You don't have to, but if you want! And it could be about anything. You could write about plants. Or … cell phones?" She glanced at Luz, who nodded encouragingly. She nodded back, then turned to their friends. "Cell phones! Or other human stuff. If you really don't want to, that's fine, it's supposed to be fun, but it isn't like you have to write the sort of stuff you find boring. And if you don't want to write anything, we won't be disappointed. Right, Luz?"

"Totally."

Gus and Willow exchanged another look, their expressions shifting to thoughtful. Willow shrugged again and said, "I'll think about it, I guess."

"Yeah," Gus agreed. "I … still really want to call you nerds, but I guess I could write about, like, humans or something."

Luz smiled. "It'd be cool if you did, but Amity's right, you don't have to write anything for it if you don't want to. And we're not going to ask you to help judge the stories anyone else submits, because you're both my friends and I don't want to torture you."

Amity snickered and shook her head. "But you don't mind torturing me? I might have to read something written by Boscha."

Willow and Gus looked at each other again with wide eyes, then joined in snickering. Willow covered her mouth. "Now I'm kinda curious."

Gus slapped the table. "If she does, you have to publish it, so I can buy a copy of the magazine and see it."

Luz grinned at Amity. "That is a compelling argument."

"Now, Luz, we agreed already that everything's going to be judged on merit."

"But doesn't our own amusement count as a merit?" Luz asked. Amity giggled and shook her head. Luz turned back to Willow and Gus. "Anyway, you two are off the hook on that sort of stuff, we've got it mostly figured out already. The thing we're not so sure about has to do with actually making it."

Amity tapped on the table. "Which gets us back to what I was going to tell you, Luz, I found out where the printing press is in the school, and I don't just mean through that door in the Secret Room of Shortcuts, I mean what part of the building it's in."

"Whoa, really?" Luz asked, her eyes widening. "Because I found out what happened to the newspaper club!"

Willow and Gus stared at each other, then Willow looked at the two of them and said, "You lost us."

Luz shifted on the bench. "Okay, so there was a school newspaper here, like, forty years ago called the Hexside Herald that was run by a group of students that dug up dirt on all the teachers and published tell-alls about them."

They both raised their brows in surprise, but it was Amity who said, "Whoa, wait, really? They were blackmailing the teachers?"

She turned to Amity, her tone rising in excitement. "Not blackmail, they didn't have any demands, they were just causing trouble! And none of the teachers knew who the staff was, or how to stop them from publishing it! They did it all in secret, not even the teachers knew where they printed the newspaper from!" She turned back to Willow and Gus. "Then, like, forty years ago, part of Hexside exploded and they never put out another newspaper again."

"Whoa," they both said.

"Nobody's even sure who the students that wrote the paper were. Three classes of students died in the explosion, so we can guess that whoever they were, they belonged to those three classes. At least enough of them so that if anyone was left, they decided to stop."

Amity cut in, saying, "Or maybe not, the staff could all have been fine, but just didn't have the printing press anymore." As Luz gave her a confused look, her expression shone with excitement. "That's the part that I found out about, Luz, the part of the school it's in through the Secret Room of Shortcuts, it's in a school wing that's on a right angle from the rest of the school and goes straight down from the atrium into the Titan. It's called the under wing, and it's what exploded forty years ago."

"Whoa," Luz, Willow, and Gus all said.

Luz raised a finger, dropped it, opened her mouth, snapped it shut, then slapped the table. "Wait, if it exploded, why is it there now?"

"Ed and Em said they think it rebuilt itself over the last forty years."

Luz frowned and turned to Willow. "Do buildings do that here?"

Willow hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Sometimes. And Hexside's probably the right sort of building for that to happen, yeah?" She turned to Gus.

"Oh, absolutely." Gus started counting off on his fingers, saying, "It's really old, has been cursed multiple times, is extremely haunted, and has at least three legendary monsters that live beneath it, which is where the under wing apparently is."

Amity nodded. "That's the reasoning Ed and Em used. Apparently the teachers don't like talking about the under wing and say it's from a dark time in the school's history for some reason, so if they just sealed it off and left it destroyed, they wouldn't even be aware that it's rebuilt itself."

Luz frowned. "Well, if you think about it, it was a pretty dark time, a whole wing of the school blew up and killed three classes worth of students." Her friends looked at each other with expressions of discomfort, then glanced away, not meeting Luz's gaze. "… Am I missing something?"

"… Um," Amity said. "It's just …"

Gus gave her a strained smile. "Stuff like that happening is maybe a bit more common than you might be thinking."

Willow rubbed the back of her head and let out a nervous chuckle. "It might be a lot more common than you're thinking."

Luz looked between the three of them, then sighed. "Whole classes disappear all the time, don't they?"

"Oh yeah," Gus said.

Amity chewed her lip. "At least five since I started coming here."

Willow's tone rose in a false bravado. "We've had a pretty good streak recently, though, we all just nearly got eaten by that Greater Basilisk last year, and the lake monster only drowned three kids from the baby class."

"My dad says the school's going soft," Gus grumbled.

Luz sighed again and slumped sideways, propping her elbow on the table and resting her head against her hand. "Okay, so kids dying doesn't count as a dark time, maybe they just meant the newspaper itself? Eda said that the Herald was still something the teachers were complaining about when she was going here. Plus then Eda was going here, and doing her best to wreck the place. Sounds like pretty dark times if you're a teacher."

Amity rubbed her chin. "That does sound like it fits together timewise, Ed and Em said the explosion happened only a few years before mom and dad started attending, and they were in the same class as Lilith."

Luz straightened, still frowning. "I guess that explains a lot of it, but now some stuff is more confusing."

Knitting her brow, Amity asked, "What do you mean?"

"Like, if it was just that all or most of the staff blew up, then yeah, that's why the newspaper stopped, nobody was around to write it anymore. But if it's that the printing press blew up—or at least the only way for anybody to get to the printing press did—then that meant that the printing press was just in that room and didn't, like, magically teleport around or something. Why did none of the teachers ever find the newspaper then? Eda said the Herald was full-on banned from the school, where getting caught with a copy meant detention and they burned every issue they could get, they were looking for the newspaper, trying to shut it down. What, did they all just hide the printing press from the teachers? It isn't small."

Amity's expression sunk into a deep frown. "… Hm."

Willow and Gus looked at each other again, then Willow cleared her throat. "This, um, might be a stupid question, and in my defense, I don't know anything about writing, but what exactly is a printing press?"

Luz and Amity exchanged a look and Luz slapped her own forehead. "Oh, right. How do I keep forgetting this sorta thing?"

Amity sighed, then started giggling. "The bigger question is how I forgot when I was born here."

Willow looked back at Gus. "Have you heard of a printing press?"

"No? Though … wait, they call journalists the press, so I'd guess it's what you'd call the journalists that work on actually making the newspaper? You know, enchanting the quills, making sure the Gunkloogies stay properly hydrated, they'd be the press who does the printing, the printing press. Did I get it right?"

Luz's frown deepened and she leaned halfway over the table. "Hold up, you call journalists here the press?" She turned to Amity. "That's a nickname humans use for journalists because newspapers are printed on printing presses!" She sat back down hard and buried her face in her hands. "What is this world, and how does language work here!?"

Amity shifted between Gus and Luz, her eyes widening. "That is a very good question, and now I'm very confused, too. Obviously there's some sort of connection between the languages of the Isles and the human realm since Islespeak and English are identical, but the connection must be deep enough to where when the language changes in one place, it changes in both places, and … we are getting really off-topic here." She sighed and shook her head, refocusing on Gus and Willow. "Luz went exploring through the Secret Room of Shortcuts and found a machine in the under wing that was used for printing the newspaper. It isn't like anything witches have ever used for printing before, and according to Luz it isn't like the human machines that get used to print books or newspapers, either. In hindsight it's obvious why the teachers never found where they were printing the paper, even if they found it, they didn't know what the machine was."

Luz brightened. "That makes a lot of sense! But … wait, Eda told me that the Herald was a totally normal newspaper before that group of students started working on it, it was an official school club and everything. Why would they keep secret how they made it and everything when it was just a plain, boring newspaper?"

Gus said, "I feel like I have to object to calling newspapers boring on my dad's behalf, but let the record show that my heart isn't in it."

Willow smiled and rolled her eyes at Gus. "I might still be missing something, but it sounds like Luz is right, so either the teachers did know about the printing press thing and forgot, or the old newspaper didn't use the thing. And it's … really unlikely that they forgot."

Amity nodded. "The only explanation that makes sense is that the printing press wasn't used before the, ah, rogue version of the newspaper started. Before that they must have used more traditional techniques for production. Principal Bump was expecting us to get quotes from different printing shops in Bonesborough when we were getting permission to reform the club, I'd guess that the original newspaper was made using one of those shops."

Luz frowned and rubbed her cheek in thought. "Which just begs the question … where did the printing press come from?" A long, thoughtful silence fell over the table. "… Any ideas?"

Willow shrugged and said, "Don't look at me or Gus, we just heard about this thing, and I don't even have an image in my head to picture. All I could gather from the conversation was big machine."

"We'll have to show it to you later," Luz said. "Not because we want you to work on it, just because it's kinda cool." She turned to Amity. "Do you have any ideas, Amity?"

"Not really. There is the possibility that the students who worked on the rogue newspaper brought it into the school or built it themselves, but that seems unlikely, because even if the teachers didn't know what it was, there's no chance that they didn't know it was there. A group of students building a giant machine in an empty classroom is going to raise questions, even if they didn't know what the machine was for. Heck, that would probably raise more questions for them."

Luz's frown deepened. "… So … that would mean that either the teachers brought it in …"

"Which is unlikely," Amity added, "since they would probably know what it did before bringing it into the school."

"… Or it just appeared one day any nobody knew where it came from."

Amity frowned. "That … I really hate to say it, but that seems to be the most likely answer. And if that is what happened, then we really need to figure out what exactly it is before we get too comfortable using it."

Luz shifted on the bench with unease. "… Eda said something about the printing press seemed familiar to her and she was gonna look into it. Hopefully she can find something that'll help us."

The overhead bell let out a shriek.

Luz jumped up off the bench and started jogging in place. "Ah, crud, I was gonna try to talk to Mr. Hide about the potions exam before class starts. See you after classes, Amity?"

Amity smiled and nodded as she stood up and gathered her things. "Of course. I'll meet you at the press, I think I've figured out how to get there on my own now."

"Cool." She turned to Willow and Gus, still jogging in place. "If you two wanna come and see what we're talking about, you're welcome to, maybe you'll be the ones to figure out how to get the paper cutter to work."

Willow gave her an apologetic smile. "I'd love to help, but I've got a history report I need to finish tonight."

Gus' eyes widened as he stood up. "Is that due tomorrow? There was a project I forgot about and it is for a class I'm in! Oh, Titan, I hate pressure!" He groaned and sunk back onto the table. "Guess I know what I'm doing after school, too."

Luz gave a nervous glance at the clock, then took off toward the potion homeroom, calling back over her shoulder, "No problem, next time then, see you guys later!"

As Luz ran through the west wing hallways, she didn't have time to think about how she'd noticed that Amity looked relieved when Willow and Gus said they had other plans