The Ugly Club (On Hold)

Issue No. 3: Blessings Come in Punk-Rock Disguises

From then on, Journalism club wasn’t for the school paper anymore, and the basement room went through a transfiguration.

The lame and grungey posters were taken down and replaced with new bulletin boards with names and mugshots of everyone and anyone we could write about. (The perks of having access to the Picture Day files.) Perfect and ugly faces of all students we passed in the hall daily stared back at us at all times. We debated who the next issue would cover, drew up ideas, and planned reconnaissance missions.

Cara, Clara, Celeste, and I spent half an hour one day scrubbing the whiteboard clean of cuss words, doodle hearts, and dry-erase tags made by past graduates when the room had been used for detention. Soon, the room was teeming with life.

Marnie brought in stacks of colored paper and new Expo markers to liven up the space. We dragged an old desk that had been buried in the corner to the center of the maze of computers for the head editor, chief, and lead investigative reporter of The Ugly Club- me. Angie and Kim worked together to design the face of the publication, inventing a whole new color scheme and layout. Dev and Misael fixed up old machinery and hunted around the school for colored ink cartridges they could take without anyone noticing.

Dev wired the old printer to use 40% less ink than before, exclaiming wildly, “Take that Earth Club!”

Simon started a long search through the photo archives of the journalism files, searching for not-so-nice pictures of our future headliners. Luke, Kyle, and Marnie did what they could to plan out the editions and sections of the paper, planning how we would keep it running and how often new issues would come out.

We weren’t just the Journalism club, anymore.

We were the TUC crew.

There was a certain sense of danger and belonging that came with going ot club everyday that cause an adrenaline rush much stronger than the sugar rush from Simon’s mom’s cookies (which we ate in copious amounts). Being a vigilante is hard work.

Kim and Angie developed the signature ‘look’ for TUC’: bright pinks, oranges, and turquoise. Our slogan was a general contribution. It was slapped down on the front page, in swirling hand written letters, “Life in plastic is definitely not fantastic anymore.”

I was suddenly in love with that room. The environment was electric. I moved rapidly, emerging here or there on the project. I truly was their leader, and everyone seemed to want my approval. I guessed they knew I’d succeeded once, and trusted me to do it again. After only a few hours in the new atmosphere of the TUC headquarters, I knew we had done the right thing. I felt it more than anything.

Altogether we made short work of choosing our next victim: Arnie Schwartz. Senior, varsity letterman, wrestler, jerk. Everyone was vaguely aware of my history with Lizzie Maine because of Marnie’s big blathery mouth. So that’s where everyone wanted to start- all our old bullies. It made the whole operation that much more personal.

Before choosing Arnie, we all chipped in our own thoughts about who should grace the cover of the second issue. Kyle mentioned he had Arnie in gym last year. He said he could remember Arnie always tripping people while everyone ran laps. And once, he stole a boy’s regular clothes from the locker room. Kyle said Arnie and his friends had laughed together at the prospect that the poor boy would have to go naked. They weren’t smart enough to realize until later he was just stuck wearing the sweaty gym outfit all day. We wrote the story down of course, and were about to file Arnie’s name away for another time when Simon finally confessed to us a secret no one expected.

Arnie’s face had been hung on the bulletin board for a few minutes while everyone worked. Simon abandoned his post at the computer to come and look at it, inspecting the fuzzy red beard Arnie had tried (and failed) to grow before picture day. Anyone could see he was troubled, expression like a brewing storm.