Young Writers Society

Elias snickered when he opened up his phone and saw Jerica's texts. Although their entire cumulative lifelong conversation was less than a minute long, he knew they were going to be best friends. Jerica was now his go-to person for memes. He quickly filled in her contact name and then shot her a text.



Elias then put his phone away and looked up at Jerica when she mentioned Mel. He smiled and nodded again, completely amused. "Bro, Mel's my girl. You met her? Imma invite her too. Let's make this a squad."

"Broooooo!" Jerica said grinning at him. "No shit? What're the chances of that?"

She took her crumpled poem back, still proud of herself. She already had the perfect idea of how she was going to introduce the poem when she stood up to read. She planned to be the very first person to go, before Benji could stop her somehow. This was art and art was meant to be shared. Much like Snoop Dogg.

"Yeah, get her in on the partayyyy," Jerica said, nodding. "Tell her if she doesn't come imma cyberbully her until she does. I can meme spam for dayzzzz."

Benji tried to object to Jerica's half of the poem, but Elias interrupted before he had a chance to. Before he knew, the two of them were deep in a conversation about their poems and meeting up after class. Benji was shut out of the conversation before he even had a chance to get into it.

...Even though he wouldn't have wanted to get high with them.

He leaned back and sunk into his seat.

Then he caught movement in front of him. Daniel - who had been preoccupied with doodling something in corner of a loose sheet of lined paper - turned to look back at who was behind him. His face immediately lit up when he saw Benji was there, but the bright glint to his eyes faded when he saw how Benji was sitting.

He glanced between Benji, Elias and Jerica.

"Changing the topic a little," Daniel said, loud enough for all three to hear him, "but speaking of chickens - did Elias tell you two about our adventure to get nuggets last night?"

Benji blinked. Since when were chickens involved in this conversation?

Jerica looked up as Daniel inserted himself into the conversation, not waiting to see if Elias was actually going to get Mel to join them or not. But she did hope Mel would show up -- she seemed cool, and it'd be nice to bond when Jerica wasn't drunk.

She hesitated a moment, wondering why fry-boy was now talking about chicken nuggets. Did he eat those weird, too?

And then her mind put the pieces together. The poem. The chicken. The nuggets.

"Wait, you actually made your chicken a cannibal?" She cackled. "Fuggettttt."

Morri figured he had given the students enough time to work, and for himself to daydream and pretend he wasn't in a lecture hall, but instead somewhere on a boat lost at sea, captaining a ship as the greatest pirate the Caribbean had ever oh no he was doing it again.

"Alright! Time's up! What do you all say we read the poems out loud?" a few kids mumbled at Morri's words, "I know it's only the first class and public speaking isn't the most fun thing in the world, but I promise if I get every group to participate today then we won't have any take home assignments this week!"

The murmuring became a little more cheerful.

"Alright, who wants to go first?" Morri asked, looking around.

Jerica was delighted.


Not only did she get to read their poem aloud -- but she also didn't have any homework for this class because of it. She was determined to be the first person to volunteer before Benji could have a say in the matter. He'd seemed entirely uncomfortable about literally everything, from the moment he sat down until now.

Jerica raised her hand as high as it would go, springing out of her seat almost before Morri finished asking who wanted to go first.


"I'll go!" She straightened her crumpled paper, looking around the room quickly before her gaze landed on Morri. "First of all, I would like to say, I'm fairly certain that Benji is wildly unhappy with your group pairings, Professor Morrigan. So we did a lil divide-and-conquer strategy, on my suggestion, which leads me to my second point: if anything in this poem offends -- or, as the case may be -- particularly delights you, then you can assume that I wrote those lines. My boy Benj innocent, yo."

She glanced down at Elias to see if she'd overdone it, but he seemed vaguely amused. Which was all the encouragement that she needed to continue her performance.

"Okay, okay, now, the poem. It's gold." Jerica cleared her throat dramatically and took on a particularly dramatic, pretentious tone, being sure to emphasize the rhyme at the end of each line. "Stars dance across the night [i]sky after the sun says its daily goodbye - a swarm led by a single butterfly flits underneath the light of Gemini."

Her lips quirked up into a little smirk. "And when I look up at the dark night sky, an emotion runs through me, so deep I can't deny: I want to go get high."


She nodded, grin widening as she took on a Snoop Dogg accent. "Just like dat dope-ass Snoop Dogg guy."

Then she bowed dramatically and took her seat.

The second Jerica told Elias that she was down to have Mel join their little Bob-Marley-themed gettogether, he whipped out his phone and started to text Mel.



He clicked away his phone, realizing he had zoned out of the conversation between Jerica, Daniel, and this Benji dude.

"Pfft, yeah. It's a Nug-eat-nug world," was all he was able to get out before Morrigan shushed the class and announced that the next assignment was for them to read the poem out loud. He watched with mild amusement as Jerica immediately got up, let out a dramatic speech, and then ended with style.

Elias snickered, liking his new friend's ballsy confidence. As for himself, he'd let Daniel take the reins on this one. Dude could use more points than him. Because the poem was pristine. And Morrigan would definitely give the reader more points.

"Here ya go. You read faster than me," he simply said, sliding the paper on top of Daniel's desk.

Benji looked absolutely mortified after Jerica finished reading the poem he had written with her. Daniel could suddenly understand why he seemed so distant from the conversation with Jerica and Elias even before they changed topics; a situation like this had to be his worst nightmare.

Daniel gave Benji a comforting smile and then turned back to the front of the room.

"Elias and I took a different approach to our poem," he said, standing up. "We alternated between some of the lines. Also, our poem is based on a mostly true story."

He cleared his throat, quickly glanced at Elias, and then started reading their poem.



He lowered the paper.

After an appropriately long pause, he said, "And that's our poem."

He sat back down in his seat.

Morri loved what he was hearing.

Bo had an instinctual feeling that Ned was itching to read his poem. It wasn't like Bo could read minds, but he saw the way Ned's face turned to grave disapproval and disappointment at Jerica and Daniel reading their poems. He saw the way Ned puffed up as he grabbed their poem and stood up, like the thought it was going to show everyone what real poetry was.

Bo just sighed internally. Ned didn't ask Bo if they should go next. He just stood up.

"Professor Morrigan, we were inspired by something you said at the beginning of class. You told us to write about flowers... so here is our poem. Titled: sunflower, my beloved," Ned said in his nasally voice. He sounded like he was trying to sound dramatic, but it wasn't really working. Bo just sat and decided right then and there that whatever embarrassment he'd feel from this poem, it wasn't going to be forever, and it wasn't going to be as bad as he imagined it.

This wasn't high school. Nobody cared! It was fine. He drew a little sunflower. It was a shame Morrigan wouldn't see it in addition to the poem.



Bo could hear Ned's enthusiasm waning in the second stanza, but he pulled through. Good for him.

Ned gave a glance to Jerica and bowed himself, but far less dramatically. Just a simple bow forward with his head, mostly. Then he said down, looking like he'd just show her... shown her what? Bo didn't know. He needed to stop overanalyzing Ned's brain.

He pulled out his own notebook and started doodling sunflowers.



Carter stood up next. He felt he was right to assume Rek wouldn't be in the mood to read the poem, especially when he wasn't at all in the mood to write it. It wasn't like they were both hungover or anything, but Carter would pull his weight, and hopefully, this favor would earn him some sense of rapport with Rek after the previous night's unfortunate events.

"We'll go next. Rek and I got the prompt: love. Since love can mean a lot of things in different contexts, we decided to narrow it down to love within a family. Specifically the love of a father for his family. So here it goes."

He paused just a moment, preparing to read the poem in a posh, hoity-toity voice. Which he did. Because he had to make up for its mediocrity somehow.



He dipped his head.

"That's all," he said, reverting back to his normal voice. "Thank you."

Then he sat down.

As another group stood up to read their poem, Clandestine and James turned to each other in hushed whispers.

"Do you want to--" they both said in quiet unison.

"You go," James decided.

"Really? Are you sure?" Clandestine asked.

"Yeah, you can read it," James assured her.

Clandestine smiled and nodded. "Okay," she said, holding the paper in both hands. She waited for the other group to finish before standing up.

"Our prompt was 'lost dragon,'" she said. "So here's our poem!"



She paused for a moment and then turned the paper towards Morrigan. Since they were in the front row, it looked like she was showing him her drawing. James leaned forward a little bit to see her finger pointing at the little cartoon dragon curled up in a sad ball.

"The End. Maybe we can write a part 2 with a happy ending later," she said with a small smile. She then sat down and looked to James for some signs of approval. He smiled back and nodded. That seemed to make her smile grow, and she mouthed: "thanks" before turning her attention to the next group.

Jerica leaned forward to pat Elias on the shoulder as soon as Daniel sat down, congratulatory at how amazing their poems had both been. She lazily looked over as the nerd -- she couldn't be bothered to learn his name -- stood up. She cringed at how nasally his voice was. Good lord, poor Bo.

He looked embarrassed.

She didn't blame him.

Their poem had been pretentious, and she was almost certain that Ned had bullied him into writing a terrible poem just like she'd bullied Benji into making their poem good. She gave Bo a little smile and nod but wasn't sure if he saw it.

She glanced up at the nerd as he finished reading his poem, and they locked eyes. Then he gave a bow. She raised an eyebrow. Excuse you, that's my move, bitch. And then he settled down in his seat and looked at her smugly, as if his "marvelous sunflower dame" was anywhere near as good as her dope-ass Snoop Dog rhyme.

She looked at him flatly, staring at him until he started to squirm under her gaze.


Then she looked over as Carter started reading his and Rek's poem.

She cringed sympathetically.

Their poem was... fine. But Rek was usually so good at poetry. He'd written Nykim so many love poems before they broke up. But poor Rek, getting the love prompt after... last night. And, he looked hungover too. She wished he wasn't sitting in front of her, so she could give him an air-heart, but he wasn't looking at her. She'd give him a hug after class. Hugs always seemed to make him feel better.

She pulled her phone out, not bothering to listen to the next group to go. If she didn't know the people, she couldn't care less about listening to shoddy poems.

She smiled down at Mel's messages, deciding to spam her back to entertain herself.


She looked up as the chick with James stood up and started reading. She smiled. Their group seemed to be the best paired of any group -- wholesome writing with wholesome.

She zoned out again as more people that she didn't care about started reading their poems. She leaned down so her head was next to Elias's ear, actually volume-controlled now. "I texted her too. Won't be able to resist our combined charm."

Lordy pulled up to the parking lot near the football field where the big, sweaty jocks were practicing. The sheer size and number of them would be enough to intimidate any normal person, but not Lordy- Lordy was built different.

Lordy got out of his car and started to approach the familiar round figure of Coach Herbert roach, who was too busy yelling and screaming himself red to notice Lordy coming, "ROACHY MY BOY!"

Herbert jumped at the sound of Lordy's voice and turned to him, "Who the- Lordshire? What? Why are you here?"

It was hard to tell if the beads of sweat that lined Herbert's forehead were caused by the physical exertion of being as useless as he was or by the sight of Lordy, but Lordy ignored them for the moment, "Keeping out of trouble I hope?"

"Why," Herbert grit his teeth, "Are you here?"

Lordy stepped closer to Herbert, who was a solid foot shorter than him, "I know you know better than to use that tone with me, Roach."

Herbert's cheeks pulsed as he bit back his words.

"Now I need to have a word with one of your kids. JR was his name? Send him over to me will you?"

Herbert hesitated for a moment before he shouted over to the field, "JR! Over here now!"

The walking slab of chicken fat that Lordy had seen earlier that day stumbled over to Lordy and Herbert, "What's up, coach?

Herbert tilted his head in Lordy's direction, not seeming to want to say the wrong thing. They both turned their heads to face Lordy.

"Hello my boy, I'm Dean Lordshire, mind if we have a little chat?" Lordy asked JR.

JR looked towards Herbert before giving an answer, "Sure?"

"Excellent!" Lordy put his hand around JR's shoulders, or as far across as they could go, and guided him away from the field, "I just need to ask you a few questions, alright?"

"Make sure you have him back befo-"

"ROACH if you don't keep your SLIMY sack of SKIN that you call a MOUTH SHUT you INSOLENT RODENT." Lordy barked at Herbert before continuing to walk with JR, "Let's head to my car, huh?"



Lordy had driven them a few miles from the school. They were in a gorgeous wooded area that Lordy only reserved for special occasions- the definition of special varying wildly depending on his mood. They were standing outside of his car, Lordy leaning on it while JR stood in front of him.

"Tell me kid," Lordy looked at JR, "You get your rocks off making people feel smaller than you?"

JR didn't seem offended at he question, "Why are we out here? I thought you were a dean, where's your offi-"

"Nevermind where we are. I need you to explain to me what I saw this morning."

"You talking about with Ainsley chick? I was just teaching her a lesson. What, is she a snitch now?" JR smirked.

"She didn't tell me anything. If you saw anything past the tip of your own nose maybe you would have seen me standing there the whole time."

"Maybe next time don't peek your nose into the football teams business mister big bad dean." JR scoffed.

Lordy's lip started to twitch, "You do realize that I can make sure you're never allowed back on campus again, right?"

JR shrugged, "I'm the best player on the team. The whole school needs me too much for you to try to get rid of me."

"Alright," Lordy rubbed his temples, "I'm going to give you one last chance to tell me this will never happen again."

"Oh of course!" JR put on a fake pouty face, "I'll definitely make sure I'm a good boy from now on."

Lordy stared at him blankly. Well... I did give him a chance. With a quick movement, Lordy lifted his cane and jabbed the bottom of it right into the center of JR's kneecap. Within moments, JR was on the ground grasping at his knee and screaming.

Lordy gripped his cane with both hands and lifted it above his head, "I did honestly try to talk this out," he brought it down on JR's other knee and was met with more screams, "I mean honestly, how stupid can you be?" He slammed the cane down again, this time on the first knee, "Did you think you'd just say stupid shit and get away with it?" And again, "I knew you were dumb but I didn't realize you were also brain dead."

"Please!" JR cried, "I'll get you into a frat party please! Just stop!"

Lordy blinked at him and lowered the cane he had over his head, "I'm not sure how to tell you this, but I'd rather stick a toothpick in my big toe... and kick a wall... than have to go to a party with you."

At this point, JR had turned into a sobbing mess. Lordy almost felt bad for him. Was all this really worth the complaints of a single student? Lordy was seriously putting his entire career and life in jeopardy for a student who probably didn't like him.

Then again, Lordy thought, I'm not really doing this for her, am I?

He raised his cane once more, and found his new target- JR's big head. A smiled crept on to Lordy's face as listened to the voice of JR fade away. It was going to be a long day.

When Clandestine was done reading, James found himself starting to check out. It was a big class, and there were many more poems to be read. He quietly pulled out his phone in his lap and checked his messages. The first ones he saw were from Elias.



After replying, he glanced over at Evaline, and after some thought, messaged her.


He wasn't sure if she was going to reply, but she had a mac, and she was working on something on her laptop. It looked like she paused to reply in the messaging app. He glanced at her and replied back.

He waited for a moment and glanced over to see her give him a shy, thankful smile. When she turned back to look at her screen, though, she looked like she hesitated with a reply, like she wasn't sure what else to say. He saw the speech bubble popping up and disappearing on his phone several times. After a few moments of it looking like she was struggling to come up with something (and maybe giving up), he decided to send another text instead. Change the subject a little.



Then, they both sent a text at the same time.


James started hurriedly typing back.


He assumed she wasn't paying attention to when Clandestine read it. She'd looked focused on whatever she was working on, anyways. That, or she'd been spacing out. Either was valid.

He sent her the poem, waiting for her response.


At that point, the poetry reading was just about over, and the class was starting to draw to a close, and their conversation ended naturally as Morrigan spoke up again.

Elias gave Daniel a "good job bro" nod, and after listening to a few one more poem, he started to zone out. He pulled out his phone and started to text Mel, sending her a pic of her poem as well as a (sneaky ninja) picture of Jerica's.

Then Jerica leaned in and said she was also texting Mel. He raised a brow and immediately looked down at his phone and started a new group chat.