Miss Perfection Personified

1. | Press Publish

1. | PRESS PUBLISH

"YOU'RE kidding me, right?"

Miss Brown gave me a look that strongly suggested otherwise.

Actually, I wasn't entirely sure why I'd even said that – of course she wasn't kidding. Miss Brown didn't kid. She had a rather pointy face and bony elbows, and always drank her coffee without milk.

If you're wondering how that correlated with her inability to humour people – it didn't. But dad once said to me that the kind of coffee one drinks is very telling of their character. It was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life, and I'd told him so, but seemed to influence my view of people anyway.

Right now, however, I was far too preoccupied by what she'd just told all of us. Dropping the bomb would be an understatement at this moment. Catastrophic nuclear destruction at a mass-scale was a more fitting way to describe it.

"They can't get rid of us," Kitty murmured hotly beside me, her nails digging sharply into her blue folder. "They just can't."

"They can, and they already have," Miss Brown responded grimly. To others, she may have seemed a touch too nonchalant, under the circumstances, but the slight hunch in her shoulders revealed everything you really needed to know. Miss Brown had given her heart to our Journalism society, the only thing she, and perhaps the rest of us members, looked forward to at the end of a soul-sucking day at school.

"Can't you send the student council an appeal? Or – or send them some of the articles we've written. Elliott's piece on raising awareness for LGBT pupils was brilliant, revolutionary, really—" Jane piped up behind me. I could feel her hand flapping furiously in the air, and the enthusiasm practically leaked out of the slight tremor in her voice. Although Jane and I didn't get along at the best of times, it was nice to know she had my back when it counted.

"Although you did fail to mention LGBT pupils of colour in your article," she added quietly, leaning close to my ear.

Never mind then.

"Believe me when I say I've begged with the student council," Miss Brown sighed, looking down at her shoes. "Cajoled, stomped my feet, sent out e-mails in all caps. I think I may have sworn in one of them, actually." She frowned as she looked back up at us. "Does 'damn' count as a swear word?"

"Why are they getting rid of our society?" I inquired. "Are we too scandalous? Because we could easily tone down on the Marxism." I shot Jane a pointed look. "And that stuff on veganism too."

Jane opened her mouth, obviously ready to spew out vehement objections but Miss Brown raised a foreboding hand.

"We've no time to bicker," she said. "What's done is done. The school did allow us the opportunity," she rolled her eyes at the word, "to print one last journalistic piece for the school by the end of this term. Giving us our last laugh, I suppose. And I'd like for us all to go out on a triumphant note."

Beside me, Kitty already had her pen out and was scribbling furiously on her little pink notepad.

"With all due respect, miss," I said, "you didn't answer my question."

Miss Brown quirked up an eyebrow. I stared right back at her. Intimidation would not work. Not now, when my beloved society was about to dissolve – or had dissolved.

It'd been central to my existence, the reason I breathed, the highlight of my life, the pinnacle of my—alright, so maybe I was being dramatic about it. And who wouldn't, if their dreams were about to be stomped on by a bunch of stuffy teenage bureaucrats. Wow. I was even beginning to sound like Jane. This really was a crisis.