Gale snorted, reclined in her chair, and brought her hands to rest behind her head. "I feel here I ought to impart on you the importance of school, but--"

"But--" Peneloper echoed. 

"Why bother?" Suddenly, Gale rose from her seat, grabbing at a squarish bulge in her front pocket. "You and I both despise lies." She nodded at the window after fishing around her pocket for a crumpled box of cigarettes. "Mind if I?" 

Peneloper shrugged. "Doesn't the saying go, 'Your school, your rules'?"

Gale nodded, stepped to the window, a cigarette balanced between her fingers. "No telling Miss Grandly." She cracked the window and leaned so her shoulders hunched, while her lips level with the opening. Fresh air invaded the space, whisking away the stale Chinese and sour 'apple juice' stink.

Gale put the cigarette between her lips, ransacked her pockets for a single match, and struck the windowsill. It ignited and within seconds, she was inhaling to her heart's content, while a sign tacked to the school's red brick façade outside exclaimed in cautionary yellow Potter Oaks High's commitment to being a smoke-free zone. In seconds, curls of smoke were sucked outside, obstructing the sign in a gauzy cloud of chemicals and cancer.

"Mr. Howell," Gale said at the tail-end of an exhale after flicking a few ashes from her lapel, "wanted to do the punishing." Peneloper grimaced, hand tightening around her notebook. "Of course," Gale cast her a sideways glance, the cigarette tip dipping as her lips curled into another smile, "I wouldn't let him."

Peneloper released her grip. "Because you cherish our interactions that much?"

The older woman took another long drag, her face smooth and placid, her enjoyment pastorally picturesque. "Sure do." With another delicate heft of wrist, slivers of ash fell off her cigarette to land by her feet. Without looking, she ground the evidence of her crime into the cream-colored shag.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were showing me favoritism."

Gale turned away from the window, letting the cigarette linger between her lips, balancing in that limbo between used and useless. "As Principal, every student happens to be my favorite."

Peneloper leaned over Gale's desk and poked at an empty Styrofoam container splattered with the remains of egg-roll, "I thought you and I despised lies."

"Cheeky as usual, Miss Auttsley." The admonishment carried with it a hint of admiration.

Peneloper nodded, as Gale continued to smoke, and all was quiet and well until, out of the corner of her eye, a shadow broke away from its fellows.  

Typically, such a sight would not be cause for alarm. Where light thrives, shadows survive. However, this shadow moving on its own, slithering from wall to floor, presented Peneloper with something extraordinary. She watched on enthralled, the shadow's abdomen swelling and contracting as it crept along the carpet toward her.

She gave no sign of any distress. No gasps or yelps. Her forehead and armpits remained dry as deserts. She simply waited, her curiosity hooking her in place. 

"Try not to be late, again," Gale said in a semi-reprimanding way that could have passed for responsible adulting had it not been followed up with, "Save me the trouble of listening to Howell's hawing."

The shadow creature continued contorting its way across the carpet.

"--iss Auttsley?"

It inched closer, side-winding across the floor, a figurative snake in shag grass. Crispen had warned of death moments before and now a literal shadow was after her. Coincidences like this were hardly put there by mistake. 

"--iss Auttsley?"

The shadow reached her chair. Peneloper tensed as it cocked its shadowed head and released a hiss of smoke.

"--eloper?"

Too enchanted by its appearance and entranced by the wicked theory of its purpose, Peneloper watched as the shadow coiled around her chair leg, pulled itself up and jumped into her lap. The startle of cold emanating from the shadow's bulk, coupled with its unexpected weight, caused Peneloper to shriek, and jump back. She tumbled to the floor.

"Peneloper!" Gale, in an uncanny showing of reckless abandon, threw down the last third of her cigarette and sped to Peneloper's side. "Peneloper," the woman's voice spilled into Peneloper's ear, pained and frantic, "what is it? Are you okay?"

 Something inside Peneloper urged the use of extreme caution, though she knew not why. The shadow certainly didn't emanate danger. It hadn't lunged for her neck or an eye to gouge. Even now, it had returned to its shapeless form seeking out her notebook with vigorous purpose.

As one touched the other, a bolt of blue shot from the notebook's cover. The blob recoiled at first, but as seconds passed, it extended part of itself in tiny, handless arms, and reached out. Again, sparks raged from the notebook's cover. Peneloper inched a finger closer to the shadow, curious to experience how darkness felt when it flattened and seeped into her notebook.

She shot to her feet, notebook falling from her hands.

"Miss Auttsley!" Gale rocked back and slammed into the corner of her desk. At having tempted fate one too many times in her life, the clutter she'd been perfecting over the school year, came tumbling down.

Peneloper plucked up her notebook as papers momentarily sprouted wings before dying on the carpet. Pen caps and markers pelted them like rain and hail. Gale's mug arched over them, and as the so-called apple juice shot from it, a curious thing happened – the fluorescent overhead coupled with the natural sunlight from outside in just a way that the golden, sour liquid dazzled, leaving a fully actualized rainbow in its wake.

A knock sounded on the door, followed by Miss Grandly's rushed cadence. "Regina!" Another knock, a twist of the knob. "Regina! What's wrong?"

Peneloper flipped through her notebook's pages, hopeful to discover an ink stain blotting one of them, but found each page smudge and shadow-free, cleaner than they originally were, if she was being honest.

"Nothing, Miss Grandly," the principal replied.

It wasn't until a hand closed around her ankle that Peneloper was reminded she was certainly behaving odd, and that such a display, warranted explanation. She closed her notebook. "I'm fine, Principal Gale. A spider crawled up my leg."

Peneloper offered her hand, and Gale seized upon the opportunity to once again be on steady ground. "Must have been one helluva spider to inspire such a reaction." Gale brushed bits of pencil shavings from her trousers.

Peneloper nodded. "It was devastating."

Gale seemed to accept this, as one did when being forced to swallow cherry cough syrup -- objectively the worst flavor of syruped anything -- and said nothing more on the subject. Instead, she turned her attention on the door, which was in the middle of taking such a beating from Miss Grandly the wood bowed inward.

"Miss Grandly," Gale said in her fiercest voice.

It was the kind of tone Mother Auttsley had used to silence her children, when an argument about what movie to watch that evening had gone on long enough and she sought swift and immediate victory, if only to end what could fuel an all-out war. A tone that brokered no rebuke, that chilled bones, iced veins, and made grown men call up their mothers and apologize for decades of what they now understood to be incorrigible, reprehensible behavior.

Silence fell on the other side of the door, as Gale continued, "We are fine in here. Twas a mere spider-sighting," her gaze darted over to Peneloper, "I've been reassured the spider was of the correct size to have elicited such a sizable disruption." Her palms pressed against the door, as if easing the wood back into place.

"And you're alright?" came Miss Grandly.

Gale pressed her forehead against the door. Sweat trickled down her cheek. "Yes."

Peneloper stared at the mug, now emptied of its contents, and the darkening spot on the carpet. "Looks like your," she performed air quotes here, "apple juice will need replenished."

Gale nodded. "I'll get some from the cafeteria."

Peneloper quirked an eyebrow. "They have that in the lunchroom?"

Gale smiled. "They do when I ask for it."

She opened the door, revealing a Miss Grandly who typed frantically away at her keyboard, eyes bloodshot and weary. Peneloper took this as what it was: a conclusion.

She gathered up her bookbag and started for the door. "I'll have to try some," she quipped as she reached Gale, "your apple juice. Think if I give them your name, I'll be privy to your stash?"

This did exactly what she'd hoped it would do: it made Principal Gale smile. "Wait until you're twenty-one before you try any of my apple juice."

Peneloper grinned. "Apple juice with age restrictions? Must be some juice."

"It's the best," Gale said. "Will cure any ailment, and have you seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. Everything will be kind and good and just in your eyes."

"Can't wait to have some, once I'm of legal juice-drinking age." A chuckle followed Peneloper out of the principal's office.

On her way to class, Miss Grandly stopped Peneloper and offered her a choice of lollipop. She took the blue one, thanked Miss Grandly, and, after turning the corner, bolted toward the northern corridor. Crispen ought to be there and she needed to see him asap.

As far as made up sayings went, "When there's something strange, and it's fighting with your notebook before vanishing inside its pages, you call on Crispen Heavensley. Even if he had angered you earlier."

Peneloper was adamant she would not apologize, she was the sufferer of the infraction, not its creator, but she'd act civil for as long as it took for him to explain what in the world had just transpired.