Wonder Made

Four, Part Two

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.