Luz smoothed the last page of her stack against the wall, then stepped back to take it all in. Willow and Gus wandered over, still looking bleary and half asleep, and stood on either side of her.
Willow smiled. "That's a really nice-looking flyer."
"Yeah," Gus agreed. "You said you and Amity made them yourselves? I've seen worse ones from actual shops in town."
Luz puffed up her chest and grinned. "Aww, thanks, guys. It took a lot of time and practice first."
Willow adjusted her glasses and squinted to look, reading the flyer aloud. "Hexside students, do you have what it takes to see your name in print? The inaugural issue of Tales from the Isles will feature the creative writing talents of your fellow classmates and you! In the world of writing, anyone can shine, regardless of your track, so share that talent with the school and get ready to be amazed by the hidden depths of your friends." Willow skipped over the block of rules and deadlines that took up most of the rest of the page, and took another step to look at the fine print. "Presented by the Hexside School Publishing Club."
Gus nodded with a hand on his chin and his lips pursed. "Very, very nice. You've almost got me wanting to enter, and I don't even feel like calling you a nerd! Okay, a little bit still, but I'm working on it."
Luz's grin widened. "It's okay, Gus, I am a nerd, we all know it, I can accept it."
"What do you think I am, Luz? This nerd-on-nerd violence must end, I won't stand for it, even if I'm the one perpetrating it. Especially if I'm the one perpetrating it!"
Willow touched the flyer with her fingertips. "It's really nice paper, too, I was expecting it was gonna be like a newspaper. Definitely wasn't expecting it to be red, either."
"Yeah, Amity figured out we could change the type of paper on the printing press. I'm so thankful she's working on it, too. If I was trying to do this without her, I'd probably still be bumbling around and drenched in ink, failing to get it to print something other than a random page of a forty-year-old newspaper."
"That would have been really funny, though," Amity said from behind her.
Luz turned around and grinned. "Funny, yes, useful, no."
Amity laughed, then looked at the flyer. Other students walking around before the start of classes for the day stopped to glance at it, too. "They seem to be getting some good attention. Hopefully we'll get enough entries to put out something worthwhile."
"Yeah, hopefully." She clenched her fists and bounced on the heels of her shoes. "Oh man, it's getting so exciting now. Before it was just, like, this thing we were working on, but now that the ads are all up it's starting to feel real."
Sharing her grin, Amity nodded with enthusiasm. "I've felt the same all morning!"
Gus let out a huff and slapped his fist down on his palm. "That does it! I swear that I am going to write something for Tales from the Isles. It may not get in, it may not be good, it may not even be readable, but I will write it, and break down my own prejudices, one word at a time!"
Willow covered her laugh with her hand, then shook her head. She then looked at Luz and Amity. "I think I'll try to write something, too. Who knows, maybe it'll be fun!"
Luz said, "That's the spirit!" As Willow and Gus fell into a conversation discussing possible writing projects, Luz turned back to Amity. "How's writing going for you? Still have writer's block?"
Amity's smile faded and she let out a long sigh. "Yeah. I don't know, I keep starting things, getting a page or two in, thinking they're stupid, and throwing them out. The last thing I actually liked was …" She ran a hand through the back of her hair, looking down at the floor. "I don't know what it was, just some random thoughts I had, nothing that was going to turn into a story."
Luz shrugged. "We aren't just taking stories, you know. And hey, still got plenty of time before things are due, I'm sure you'll get something finished."
"Easy for you to say," Amity said, flashing Luz a lopsided smile. "You already finished writing yours."
Luz held up her hands in surrender. "Okay, yeah, you got me, writer's block sucks and it's one thing to say you'll get past it, but another thing entirely to actually be dealing with it."
Amity hugged herself around the middle and looked down again. When she spoke, she sounded smaller and more vulnerable than Luz was used to from her. "… Any pointers? Writing's something you have a lot more experience with than I do."
Luz felt her cheeks color and she scuffed her shoes on the floor. "I dunno about experience," she muttered.
"Only one of us was involved in writing a bestseller."
Luz's blush grew hotter and she looked away. "Okay, I guess that's fair. Um … well, a lot of time when I'm struggling, I try to just get something finished, anything. Even if I hate what I'm working on and think it's dumb, getting to where I can say that it's done helps a lot with feeling like I can actually write stuff. Plus, like, everyone who tries writing gets a ton of practice starting stories, but barely ever manages to finish any of them, so they never get to practice finishing a story. Getting that experience is really good, even if the story sucks."
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Plus, like, half the time when something starts off feeling bad and dumb, I end up thinking it turned out pretty good by the time I finish it. You just sorta figure out what about it was feeling dumb and can go back and fix it as you write, or you discover that the reason it felt dumb to you is you were feeling nervous and unsure at the start, but seeing it all finished, you can tell it ended up working out."
"Hm," Amity said, rubbing her chin.
"Being told to finish a story you hate doesn't feel the best to hear, though, so I get it if you really don't want to do that. There's plenty of stuff I thought was dumb that I just threw away. Maybe you could try taking that thing you said you wrote and liked and try to turn it into something? Maybe there's a story idea in it you can figure out, or maybe you can turn it into something else. I think finishing a thing is what's really gonna make you feel better about stuff."
After a moment, Amity nodded and gave Luz a small, shy smile. "Thanks, Luz, that does sound like a good idea. I'll think on it some."
Luz rubbed the back of her head and chuckled. "Oh, good, I'm glad that made sense to you, I was worried I started blathering a bunch of nonsense."
Amity laughed and shook her head. "That's just most of the time."
The bell cried overhead, and Luz gathered up her schoolbooks, waved goodbye to Willow and Gus, and then started walking with Amity toward their shared abomination class. She grinned again as she saw different groups of students gathered up around the flyers she and Amity had put up around the school. "So I guess now we just gotta wait for a while and give people a chance to write. It's gonna be weird not working on the printing press all the time."
"Yeah," Amity said with a sigh. "I definitely got used to going there every day."
"I'm not going to miss getting that dirty all the time, at least."
Amity laughed. "True. We do still have to put up some ads for judges, so there's that mess to look forward to."
"Sure. But I think we've got a couple weeks free before then." They walked in silence for a moment, and Luz felt a sense of disappointment churn her stomach. "… I guess it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if we can figure out anything else it can do. And even if we got everything worked out for what it can do, we still have no idea where it came from, and maybe there are some clues we can find. Or, like, just make sure nothing with it breaks or something. It'd be a nightmare to go down there expecting it to just print stuff and find that something got messed up and we need to fix it first."
Amity shivered. "Yeah, you're right, that'd be the worst." Luz felt her mood brighten in contrast to the topic, and Amity's tone seemed to match. "We won't have to do much with it, but we should probably check on it pretty regularly."
Luz fiddled with her armful of books, looking down at the floor. "You, uh, sorta bummed because you were having fun hanging out all the time in there, too?"
She flinched and shot Luz a guilty look, then nodded. "… Glad it isn't just me."
Luz chuckled. "It isn't. Maybe we can skip, like, coming up with excuses to fight with a dirty machine and just hang out more."
Amity's smile widened. "I like how that sounds, but …" She sighed. "My parents are fine with me spending time at the publishing club meetings, but hanging out is for weekends and holidays. And only if I don't have other, more important things to do."
"Well … you could tell them it's for the zine." Amity gave her a look of discomfort. "Okay, I get it, not your style. To be honest, I probably wouldn't be able to do that with Eda, she just doesn't care about this sorta stuff, so it never comes up."
"Sorry, Luz."
"Hey, parents are parents, I get it. We'll just … have to work on the next ad very carefully. And take lots of breaks while working and talk about other stuff, so we don't burn out on it. And since we just need to double-check on the printing press every once in a while, we can work on the next stuff pretty much anywhere we want." She flashed a smile. "Like, y'know, Frieda's or something."
Amity smiled and shook her head. "That sounds really nice, but I can't keep burning through all my pocket snails on ice scream, you know."
"I know. That's why it'll be my treat this time." They shared another smile as they got to the abomination classroom, and Luz grabbed the door. They made their way over to a shared lab table and settled into it, stacking their books and setting up their abomination supplies.
Amity frowned as the rest of the class filed in and got set up, dropping her voice low so only Luz could hear. "Going back to figuring out where it came from … has Eda said anything about it? You said she was looking into something."
Luz sighed and shrugged. "No. That was a while ago now, she probably forgot or got bored. Might not have been anything for her to find out, either."
"That's too bad." Amity fiddled with the trays and beakers full of elements for making abominations. She spun a finger and a muddy face rose to the surface of a tray of earth, then melded back in. "It really is weird. I've still been looking everywhere, too, and I can't find anything at all. I asked the librarians and I've looked through pretty much every book at home, and … nothing."
Luz nodded. "Yeah, I haven't found much, either. I did get ahold of a couple of old issues of the Hexside Herald, though."
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah. They're kinda fragile so I left them at home, I'll have to show them to you soon." She grinned. "Eda wasn't kidding about the rogue version, it is brutal."
Amity grinned. "More brutal than our extras?"
"I dunno, those are pretty brutal. Anyway, I also found an issue from back before it got cool, and our guesses about it were right. The normal one had a couple lines advertising the printing shop in Bonesborough that did the work. The rogue one didn't."
"Makes sense." Amity rubbed her chin. Their teacher came into the room in the arms of his abomination and went to his desk. Amity dropped her tone lower and leaned in. "That does pretty much confirm our suspicions. Plus maybe they know something we don't, did you look the printing shop up to see if it's still there?"
"I tried, but I couldn't find it, it might be gone now. Maybe it just moved."
Amity's frown deepened. "Maybe. Do you remember what it was called? I might recognize it."
She shook her head. "Just a sorta normal printing shop name with an address on it that's a used clothing store now."
"Hmm. Well … this sounds like pretty official Hexside School Publishing Club business. Maybe we should look at those newspapers after school and see what else we can find."
"Okay," Luz said, pretending to sound pained, "but that means not getting ice scream today."
Amity smiled and rolled her eyes. "We can do both."
