Everyone sighs and Sini grins. I bet she threw that magical punch at me.

“A worthy topic, for sure,” Joakim says. “But I think the school’s policy is quite clear on this matter.”

“What about student familiars not being allowed in school, or why we have PE, or how the Kamchatka Reservoir was recently declared depleted?”

“This is the Myrsky Messenger, not the UCMW Gazette.” Cludd does his best to sound as condescending as possible. “Know your audience, Taika.”

“A valid point,” Joakim says. “We’re looking for content that will engage young readers, and PE is part of the national curriculum, whether we like it or not. Anyone else? Sini?”

Summarily dismissed, I stab my page with my pencil, wishing it was Sini’s face. Maybe I should’ve run with my Kekri idea or interviewing Morgan.

“Given how Kekri is happening soon,” Sini begins, and I rip a massive hole in my notebook, “I was thinking of an article about that and how our school doesn’t let us dress up, you know, like in Halloween costumes. A lot of students want to dress up for real. Maybe the younger kids could even go trick-or-treating in town?”

Joakim nods and Cludd smiles, which all but guarantees Sini the front page with the Kekri story that could’ve been mine. Seriously, I need this day to end—better yet, for a black hole to open up and swallow this whole stinking school.

I’m so tired of seeing Sini Sininen’s byline every time I open the website for the Myrsky Messenger. Last week her article about a norovirus outbreak took center stage, meanwhile my piece on the school’s poor recycling habits got squashed into a side column on the third page.

Today isn’t shaping up to be any different as Cludd assigns the main article to Sini. He’ll be writing his usual editorial piece and collating ads for school events, while the seventh graders promise their usual slice-of-life snippets, which amount to taking photos of kids around the school and turning them into memes. There’s about as much real journalism happening in this club as in Magicians’ Weekly. I mean, seriously, magicians? They can’t even get the mage bit right.

The meeting continues as the others discuss the poetry and short story submissions. Joakim insists we post at least four creative pieces in each issue. Cludd reads the submissions out loud and asks the others to vote for their favorites. I don’t bother raising my hand and no one even notices. Almost all the submissions are awful anyway, and even though one poem is slightly less terrible, Sini votes for it, so I sit on my hands.

After almost an hour, the meeting comes to a close and once again, I’ve been forgotten. I don’t know why I bother.

Waste of space, worthless, useless, the voice sings to me. Screw it, what do I have to lose.