Revenge of the Sluts

THREE

St. Joe's buzzed with gossip and theories the entire day. Most teachers gave up on trying to teach lessons effectively, turning the day into basically one long study hall. The collective student body was anxious to get out of the building. The halls were empty on the walk to the Warrior Weekly office, a very rare occurrence since meetings were directly after the last class of the day.

"Okay, so," Ronnie's mouth was partially full, and she placed her slice of cheese pizza back onto a paper napkin, "here's what we know: An email was sent out at 9:23 this morning, which is toward the end of first period. The assembly was announced at 9:36 and then started around 9:50, near the start of second period."

My computer was open on my lap in front of me. Nearly the entire staff was in the newsroom, a group of about fifteen of us, lounging in rolling chairs and on an unfortunate-looking leather couch with uncertain origins. The newsroom was a surprisingly cozy place that felt more like a former-classroom-turned-lounge than anything else. It was a second home and one of my favorite places to be, both for Warrior Weekly meetings and for when I needed a quiet place to study.

Ronnie and I spent more hours in this office than anywhere else in the school, but I didn't mind that much. It was nice to be out of my house and Ronnie and I worked well together, making our seemingly endless hours of writing and editing genuinely productive. I would still make it home by five or six, which was the same as the theater kids or athletes with after-school practices.

It was one of the few spaces on campus that felt like ours; the only place on campus where Ronnie's intelligence and leadership abilities weren't questioned, where I wasn't told I was basically white.

It wasn't built that way, though. Based on previous staff pictures, Warrior Weekly had been primarily white for decades. It wasn't until last year when Naira Bhatti took over that we had an editor in chief of color. She'd worked with Ronnie, who was then executive editor, to diversify the staff the best they could and introduce discussions of social issues—like the social gap between scholarship and nonscholarship students or the school's "suggestion" that a student who was a lesbian shouldn't bring her girlfriend to St. Joe's homecoming—at St. Joe's and beyond.

Naira had a gift for writing about social issues without really writing about them, doing her best to inform without ruffling feathers. In a way, it worked, but I could also tell Ronnie was frustrated with skirting around the truth to make others comfortable. She ran for editor in chief unopposed, clearly the most passionate and best-suited on staff to take on the role. Even then, there were students and teachers who assumed Kolton was higher ranked than Ronnie.

And, despite our efforts, we were a somewhat underutilized and underfunded part of the St. Joe's campus. Unless we were an editor or reporter with social pull, like how our sports editor was close with most of the athletes on campus, we weren't inherently popular. The bylines were never as important as the subject of the stories.

Recruitment was difficult, too, since students rarely wanted more writing assignments on top of the assignments they already had for school. Articles weren't taken seriously by either St. Joe's students or faculty; the only pull we had was that, if people talked to us, they could see their name in print. It was surprisingly effective, but it meant we overindexed on fluff pieces like student profiles. Other than that, it was a lot of events, like covering school plays or football games.

But part of the thrill of the paper was that we were entirely independent in the office. Technically, we had a faculty supervisor, Ms. Polaski, but her involvement was limited at best. She taught chemistry and had little interest or background in journalism other than a brief stint as a science writer at her college newspaper.

Despite it being just past four, the sun was starting to set, casting only shadows and fading light into our already dim room. It was late October in eastern Massachusetts, and we were bracing for what was expected to be a cold winter. Temperatures had already started dropping and it could be felt in the office. As it got increasingly dark outside, the linoleum floors and large windows made the room cave-like and almost icy.