Copy Errors

I’d like to say that being a writer for multiple departments of The Spectator has its perks. It broadens your horizons, exposes you to some hot tea before the rest of the school gets to it, and even gives you a peek into the crippling corruptness of the Spec Board. However, my curiosity is usually never satiated with glimpses. There is the delusion that my “unique Stuyvesant curiosity” should make me into “an innovative genius” with the potential to “revolutionize the world”; I should theoretically be able to spin the world of American writing off its axis. Instead, I’m just wasting my “potential” on stupidity, like being the editorial board’s personal voyeur.

Of course, my curiosity rose to all-time highs when every department sent out an e-mail screeching that the Copy department would do unmentioned, but negatively foreshadowed, things to writers if the writer in question chose to react to any edits from “Anon,” or the Copy department. Each and every department even went as far to say that the Copy department was a scary force that would have no qualms about having a “nice convo” with any writer who executed that violation in future drafts.

I shrugged and deleted all of those warning e-mails. If the Copy department wanted to start beef over my 2:00 a.m. second-draft proofreading errors, I was ready to haul the entire cow. Hell, I was ready to herd the herd. And being the innate klutz that I am, it only took two minutes after I trashed those e-mails to not only “accept” or “decline” various edits, but to comment on them, too.

The next morning I woke up and found an eerie message in my inbox stating that I was to report to the Spec room during 10th period. I rolled my eyes and carried on with my day. I was even tempted to forgo going to the room completely, but instead I marched in with my laptop in hand and amethyst pendant around my neck (gotta ward off that negative energy somehow).

The three Copy editors were seated in the center of a pentagram drawn on the ground. On the chalkboard was the message: “We Warned You!!!” Apparitions of former editors bubbled up from the walls and the floor in fluorescent green transparent blobs. It felt like some low-budget, live-action version of a Martin Mystery episode. I would’ve left the room had it not been for the fact that the door had shut and locked itself behind me with a click as a warning that there would be no unfinished business left over after this “nice convo.”

“Where the heck is Garfinkel?” I asked, perplexed.

Michelle Lai, seated at the far left, held up what resembled a voodoo doll of the faculty advisor. I shivered. I noticed that Jonela Malollari and Jeanette Cheung were creating a doll similar to it, only with features resembling my own. I tried stepping forward, but the energy of the pentagram pulled me to the ground.

“We told you not to interfere with ‘Anon’ edits,” they chanted satanically, trying to lure me into a trance. The amethyst around my neck started quivering.

“We told you not to interfere with ‘Anon’ edits.”

“We told you not to interfere with ‘Anon’ edits.”

“We told you not to interfere with ‘Anon’ edits.”

“Copy has made an error.” I ripped the amethyst off my neck and shattered it into the pentagram.

“Clarify your statement,” they responded eerily, a new spooky aura beginning to emerge from them.

“You fools, those ‘Anon’ edits were ‘Anon’ indeed, but they were my own edits from my Gmail and not my stuy.edu e-mail.”

The room was silent for a few moments. Then the Copy editors erupted into a fit of apostrophe-shaped tears. Figuring that the awkward atmosphere would make for an easy escape, I kicked the door open in anger (I really wasted my 10th period for this? Smh), leaving the spooky scene open to any desperate News or Features editors who needed a spicy article to fulfill their article quota for the semester.