Flesh and Bone

Chapter 14: Our First Day

It wasn't the first argument to break out at the Press Club daily briefing, but it definitely was the one that made Isen think that the reporters were actually going to get into a fight. And it was over the topic of Blyke, his best friend of all people!

The club itself had been expertly navigated into an ingrained part of student life and class scheduling thanks to Cecile's status as Queen during her time as its leader. When Isen assumed the role after Arlo had deposed her, and then again when she was sent to the hospital over a month ago, he couldn't help but admire it all.

Student reporters and other personnel could get themselves out of class with a get-out-of-jail-free card predicated on them maintaining a certain grade-point average. This let the club meet at virtually any time in a room previously closed off for perpetual repairs that never seemed to come until Cecile had procured it from school administration.

Otherwise, the club constantly flowed in and out of different empty rooms after school like any other one did. Before it was a fleeting little get-together of meek, awkward students and gossip sharks to write up paltry zines, but when Cecile was in charge the Press Club became a full-fledged institution.

If he wasn't leading the club at the moment, he would've been stuck in his Literature and Writing class practically snoring through the lesson. It was his best class for obvious reasons and his only one where he maintained a high grade, so he was more than happy to schedule mid-day Press Club meetings then. If he was going to sail through this one class, then he might as well use it wisely.

And at the beginning, it seemed that the meetings would continue on as orderly as they were when Cecile was leading them. It was great! He could just sit back and everyone would go about as they should, bringing up topics for him to approve or disapprove; they'd go one at a time and update him on their different assignments, and then Otis as the guy who managed the physical shape of the newspaper would cap it off by reminding everyone about due dates he'd need their finished work by or any change in word counts.

These days, though, things were starting to get out of control. First it was mild back-chat between reporters that disagreed on a subject or were bitter one of them got a scoop over the other. Then, that quiet resentment morphed into a pervading cloud of hostility that roiled through again and again. He tried putting his foot down with the reporters or other club members that got involved, and at first it seemed to do the trick, but now his injunctions just served as a pause button rather than a full stop.

He'd given thought to ejecting the worst troublemakers, but the problem had long since escalated to different people chiding, backbiting, and otherwise causing drama with each other. It had no beginning or end; some days nothing happened, and other days the bickering started back up as if the days in between never happened.

One journalist, a low-tier with dark purple hair tied back in a little pony-tail, had stood up and said that they should start doing positive coverage of Blyke and the Safe House. Their reasoning, when they managed to get it out after being interrupted by a couple grumbles, was that with all the bad news lately it'd pick people back up to hear about how Blyke was fighting the Jokers.

Without even having time to shelve that idea out of the interest of not starting debate, Isen was interrupted by a mid-tier standing up to accuse the low-tier of trying to curry favoritism with him.

The low-tier pushed back, denying that they were trying to be a suck-up, saying that Isen was irrelevant to their decision to push for this idea. Rather, it was because not even two months ago they were publishing Joker news sensationalizing a student masking up as a 'Shadow King'. It was up to them to try and put the genie back into the bottle, so to speak, and help out the Safe House with some good press. The current state of that moribund club was not lost on anyone, least of it all its former or hidden supporters.