Mena could hardly eat her food as she sat at an extremely crowded cloud table with her new entourage. She was surrounded by girls of all grades who were busy gleaning every drop of wisdom they could get from her. The young witch hastily shoved a purpling piece of casserole into her mouth in between words with her fawning admirers. After washing it down with colorful rainbow fruit juice, she lounged and relaxed, letting the girls orbit around her like she was the center of their universe.

“And so,” Mena said with her eyes closed, “I said, ‘Miserable magicaps, followed by wowie zowie…”

The red-haired girl slammed her hands down on the fluffy cloud table. “I would have never guessed that in a million years…you’re so unpredictably amazing, Mena!”

Mena flashed her white teeth and raised her bushy eyebrows. Her eyes would have danced with starry constellations if they could. “It comes with the years. But uh, aren’t you guys going to eat your food?”

A Groundborn with short, chin-length, brunette hair rested her blushing cheeks in her hands and remarked, “We don’t need to eat when we’re so full of you, Mena.”

Mena looked around until something caught her glimpse. She was getting the evil eye from two tables. Ashlan and the Tessellation’s sneered at her. Her sudden emergence as the most popular girl in school was off-putting to them and Janus and May looked horribly annoyed too.

“They’ll deal,” Mena said, as she breathed out a semi-guilty sigh onto the girl next to her.

The red-haired girl exclaimed, “Aiieeeeee! Mena breathed on me!”

Mena felt a painful tug at her hair. “Ouch! Hey!” she shouted.

She turned around to see the short haired girl pinch a string of hair in her hand. “So what, I’ve got a lock of her thick, stringy hair!”

With righteous indignation in her green eyes, the red-haired girl leaned across the table. “What’s one measly lock of hair compared to…” she began to speak in a sing-songy voice, “thousands of air particles and germs against my skin!”

The short-haired girl spat angrily in return and lunged across the table. “Too bad you don’t have any proof of that. You’ll have to carry around a microscope otherwise.”

The two girls’ death glares connected like a current of electricity. A flighty voice rose from behind them. “How about instead of fighting, you girls should let Mena enlighten us, on how she became so great.”

Mena craned her neck across the table to see Stellaris sitting on the opposite end. Her golden spikey hair towered high on her head. Mena quickly whispered to Fabias, “Fabias, did you use magic on my teacher?”

“No, babygirl,” Fabias chortled. “She showed up on her own.”

Mena looked in Stellaris’ eyes, which were filled with anticipation over her answer. “Please Mena,” Stella pleaded. “You gotta enlighten me. I want to be the cool teacher again. I want to be better than my sister and you seem to be the new in-thing!”

“Well,” Mena said, grinning coyly and looking upwards. “Being cool is not something you can learn, it’s simply what you are! But if I had any recommendations for you, it’s simply aloof and talk in a low voice. That’s what all cool people do.”

Mena reclined coolly and laughed, but rather abruptly, a loud snort followed. “Remind me to nix the snorting,” she whispered to Fabias as her cheeks blushed bright red.

“How about,” Stellaris said, completely oblivious to the snort. “I make you can be the top assistant with WCAL, and you can correct me on anything I do that’s uncool!”

“Wow, really? Wowie zowie, I’d love to!” Mena asked, absolutely dazzled by Stellaris’ words before taking her own advice and talking in a husky voice. “I mean, that’s cool.”

“All in favor of making Mena my official aid in coolness?” Stellaris asked before whispering quietly, “And preserving my reputation as the cool teacher?”

All the girls cheered loudly, causing Mena’s eyes to sparkle brightly. “I love being famous” she thought, “and wait until I write my masterpiece. They’ll have even more reason to call me the author of their dreams!”

***

As Mena reached her room, the young witch marched with triumph to her bed after a long day of being popular. Before she could, however, Janus blocked her bed in 9-inch black stiletto boots. With her spikey black hair making a bid for the ceiling, heavy layers powder white makeup on her face, Mena thought she looked like an angry gothic cockatoo. Her bright purple eyes glared with an intensity Mena had not seen since they confronted Professor Gaia on the night of his rampage. Her pixie high voice lowered as deep as it could. “Care to tell us what you were doing tonight?”

Mena tried as hard as possible to play off her behavior. “Oh,” she said, putting a hand forward. “I was eating with my friends.”

Janus’ face moved towards wry confidence. “Do you even know any of their names?”

Mena’s eyes widened, before she laughed and winked. “Janus, Janus, I’m more of a faces person. After all, have you seen mine?”

Janus placed a cold, clammy hand onto Mena’s wrist. “Are you really Mena?” the reaper girl asked. “It’s like you got bitten by the Tessellation twins and became a zombie snob.”

“Oh Janus,” Mena said, a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “I feel better than I ever have, and everyone can see it but you two.”

With her shoulders shrugged like she was giving up the ghost, Janus turned to May who reclined on her bed, drinking a plastic container of rainbow juice. “May? Anything you have to tell Mena?”

“I don’t care about her,” May said, in a surprisingly jilted voice. “She’s mummy’s pet now.”

Mena laughed like the words didn’t sting. “Look guys, I’ll pencil you in for next Thursday. Unlike a lot of stars, I’ll never forget where I came from.”

Without hearing a goodnight from either May or Janus, Mena relaxed in her bed. She was thinking about the future, and more specifically what she’d write. She immediately knew the premise of her best-selling book. She’d write about Gena going to a Princess Academy where she dazzled each and every person there, teachers, students and even the dragons. And even better, Mena could use her own classes as inspiration. “Tomorrow,” she whispered to herself in a non-lisping voice. “My life becomes a storybook.”

The next day, Mena and Janus sat in their first Night Elixirs class with Professor Apo Carrie. As the short, buck toothed professor lectured the class from the top of his stool, Mena clutched Love Across Dimensions tightly and daydreamed about how Princess Gena would prevail in the Princess Academy. “And now,” Professor Carrie lisped, shaking Mena awake. “It’s time to use a bit of alchemy to transform my words into your next night potion!”

“Wait, what?” Mena asked, looking at Janus who refused to meet her eyes. “What are we doing?”

“Oh,” Janus said, her voice airy with sarcasm. “You didn’t hear him? Perhaps I could pencil you in next Thursday and tell you.”

Mena cursed her own made-up curse, but in response, she scrawled in Love Across Dimensions below the desk. A sly expression was fixed on her face. Several words were added to the Unwritten Chapter before Mena set out to make her potion.

After 10 minutes of brewing, Apo Carrie traveled the room, sampling everyone’s elixirs. When he approached Mena’s, he was astounded. Instead of a potion, there was a freshly brewed cup of coffee with eye of newt spices floating at the top. “Hmm,” the short professor said, pressing his hand to his chin, before taking a swig of the latte.

“Leapin’ lettuce!” the professor exclaimed, as he drank more and more. “This is so good I forgot what you were actually supposed to make.”

He placed an emptied cup on the table and as he shuffled away. The professor promptly forgot to check anyone else’s elixirs. Mena grinned at Janus and gave her a wink. “Sometimes you don’t even need to make the right thing when you’re so talented…plus, I put Forget Me Not Not flowers in there.”

Gaping in shock, Janus’ skeletal mouth dropped off its hinges onto the table.

As Mena joined May in Professor Caligari’s dreary, darkened classroom, Professor Caligari headed Mena off as she entered. “I hope you’re doing alright, Mena,” Caligari said, as Mena met her words with another toothy grin.

“I’ve never been better,” she responded and looked down at Fabias who gave her a wink.

“Good,” Caligari responded with a head nod, “because before we start your third year in Night Creeper Defense, Gemini asked me to prepare a pre-test for you.”

Mena groaned, but Caligari said, “Don’t worry, it’s easy. Remember last semester? How on the first class I asked everyone to disarm their attackers by reading their dreams? That’s what we were studying the whole semester. I know you missed it, but hopefully Mr. Gnominski went over the essentials. I simply want you to read my dreams and disarm me.”

Mena let out a sigh. She’d much rather been anywhere else than an icy classroom in the middle of winter. Especially if she could write about how Princess Gena made the best eye-of-newt-spice lattes in the universe.

“One second, professor,” Mena said writing in her book once again. “Ok, I’m ready.”

Mena confidently walked to the center of the classroom. Caligari assumed an attack position but Mena remained cool, calm and collected. “Well, aren’t you going to figure out my weakness?”

Lifting her hand to her head, and with cruelty in her eyes, Mena laughed. “Waxing.”

“Whuh…” Caligari responded, raising her singular eyebrow.

“Waxing…” Mena snickered. “Maybe Gemini would like you more if you waxed your unibrow every once in a while…”

The terrifying phantom professor’s mouth trembled. Drops of water formed in the corners of her eyes. Her pale face glowed red like the center of a beacon and she howled, “Willow!”

“Hey, you told me to do it,” Mena laughed cruelly before giving her a wink and a thumbs up. “You might want to wax that ‘stache too. I already took care of mine!”

A charged pulse of lime green ectoplasm charged up in her hand as Caligari meditated about hitting a student with it. Instead, she vanished into the darkness sobbing.

“Class is over already? This is the easiest semester yet,” Mena laughed, shrugging her shoulders, and causing everyone to cheer but May. May’s dimpled cheeks dropped into a scowl.

***

That night, after having dinner with her new-found army of fangirls, Mena arrived in her dorm to find herself blocked by both May and Janus.

“Mena, there’s something we need to talk to you about,” they both said in unison.

“What?” Mena asked and snidely added. “Didn’t we go over this last night?”

Janus frowned from her reattached jaw. “This time we really think you’ve crossed a line. Last night, you were a snob, but now you’ve gone straight from a snob to a flat-out jerkface.”