Disclaimer: Smallville does not belong to me.
They made much ado about the transition between the eighth and the ninth grade. She was not sure why it was perceived to be such a large step. Other than attending classes in a different building, there were not many drastic changes to be found. The players of sports would still play them. The academically gifted would continue with scholastic achievement. The ins and outs and social pitfalls of the school hierarchy would continue unabated. She couldn't see much difference between the eighth grade and the ninth. There was a far wider gap in the realities of a tenth grader and a senior and not nearly as large of a deal was made about the transitions during that period of time. She had heard people argue that the entrance into high school was the beginning of the end, but she never really understood people who looked at the end of high school as an actual end either.
There was one significant change to be looked forward to in the upcoming transition - one and one only as far as she was concerned. She had been mentally preparing herself to argue her way through any potential opposition for weeks now, and she was not going to let anything (or anyone) stand in her way. The day had finally arrived - the Smallville tradition of a summer evening dedicated to the new ninth grade class roaming the halls of their new environs and wandering through the tables attempting to lure them into membership in various activities that would be laid out in the gym. Chloe was prepared to do battle if necessary, but there would be only one table that garnered her attention (and she would not be leaving until she had achieved her desired result).
Chloe had one goal and one goal only for this so-called "freshmen orientation" event. The Torch was going to be hers. She refrained from adding the megalomaniacal, villainous laugh that those words seemed to call for inside her head. Truly, she was going to be doing the school a favor. She would have been doing said favor already but for those pesky regulations that the administration had steadily insisted precluded the mixing of junior and senior high in activities.
That poor school paper had been woefully mistreated during the entirety of her tenure in the Smallville educational system (relatively short as that time may have been). Who knows how long it had been left to languish in a half-hearted (and too often improperly spell checked) format that was clearly not being given the attention that any journalistic publication (no matter how lowly) deserved. It physically pained her to see the sadly lackluster single sheet (not even front and back!) that appeared each and every week, and yet she still kept making the trip to the high school to pick up a copy each time as if she was suffering from some need to torture herself in solidarity.
That was all at an end now.
The poor neglected darling was about to be rescued.
She had plans - so many plans. She knew that building a reputation for The Torch as something worth reading would take a lot of effort and a not insignificant amount of time, but dedication was something that she had in spades.
It was not as if she was opposed to sharing - a publication could not function at a level of excellence without it being a team effort. She, however, would be the one setting the tone and guiding its direction. She would be gracious and open to suggestions when necessary, but she would also ensure that everyone even tangentially involved would remember that there were standards which were nonnegotiable.
If Pete and Clark side eyed her as she mumbled to herself while waiting for the completely unnecessary introductory spiel from the principal to conclude, then that was by no means an unprecedented behavior on their part.
If they gaped as she was the first person out of her seat as it ended (and halfway down the bleachers and heading toward a table two rows in and just left of center before half the crowd even realized that the principal had stopped talking), then that was not entirely without precedent either.
The already tired looking (school wasn't even in session yet!) English teacher sitting at the table in question never even got out a greeting before Chloe had launched into her well-reasoned and thoroughly planned out rationale for why the whole enterprise was going to be handed to her to manage.
In the end, she's not sure the woman even really listened beyond the first three sentences. There were (perhaps not unexpectedly) no other applicants for the position - a few students who expressed a half-hearted interest in perhaps providing material for articles from time to time, but no one interested in anything that required the kind of commitment involved in being in charge. She would have to find a way to be inspiring to those wishy washy souls (in which her two best friends were included). Failing that, she would need to find ways to discourage such mediocre levels of participation. She could understand that not everyone would be making this the center of their high school experience the way that she intended, but she had little to no tolerance for taking on tasks that one had no intention of following through upon.
There would be time to figure out the best way to manage that. She imagined that she would probably make the occasional heavy handed mistake along the way. It would take her a little time to smooth everything into a reliable and functional necessity of student life, but the most important battle had already been won. There were four glorious years of time stretching out in front of her in which The Torch was going to become something worth not only reading but remembering as well.
She could hardly wait to get started (in fact, she had already been promised a key for the first day of school).