You may recall some of Mina's past with Baxter from this page. If you're enjoying Paranatural, I would strongly encourage you to support it on Patreon and/or Ko-fi! I also recently posted a small sample of the D&D art I tend to post on Patreon over on my art blog if you're interested in taking a peek. That's all for now! Thanks for reading!

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[Transcript]

        “Where was I? Oh, yes!” Principal Pleezdoo cheerfully chirped, humming to herself as she perused her tea selection. “Devilora. Yes, she said she’d seen you, Doctor, just the other day! So many memories of you came rushing back in an instant, let me tell you!”

        “...All good ones, I hope,” droned Zarei, knowing full well that they weren’t.

        Somehow Pleezdoo’s awkward chuckle overcame the preemptive protection provided by the Doctor’s barefaced sarcasm; Zarei scowled at her in mild offense at the honesty she’d implicitly reciprocated.

        “I, er... I told Devi how sad I was to learn that I had missed you,” Principal Pleezdoo struggled on, redirecting the subject as best as she could, “but she said that she was certain you’d be back! And here you are! Imagine that!”

        “...Is that all?”

        “Hm?”

        “Is that all that Devilora had to say about me,” came Zarei’s clarification, her narrow eyes ice-cold with tempered loathing.

        “Er... more or less?” a nervous Pleezdoo said.

        “You told me that she asked about me,” replied Doctor Zarei, idly running a razor-sharp nail against her bottom lip. “What was it that she asked you?”

        The principal gulped and dropped a teabag like an outlaw from the gallows.

        “Oh, you know, that’s, um. She just asked about the old days. Sort of waxing nostalgic, you know. And, er, she wanted me to let her know if, erm... if I saw you again. At school. Perhaps to catch up? Properly?” Principal Pleezdoo chucked awkwardly and chose an extra calming tea for Mina. “Er, but yes, it was that and Devi said something about you ‘staying out of her way if you knew what was good for you’ and something else about ‘reaping a vengeance most richly deserved’ but that’s, you know... I’m sure she didn’t mean it, whatever it is that she meant.”

        “...There’s that rosy skepticism I recall so well,” Zarei said, donning a smirk bereft of mirth. “Children and the elderly, they say the darndest things. You simply cannot take them at their word, which needs no further action once confided in a puppet.”

        “Oh, I am glad that my little trick was helpful for you, truly,” sighed a relieved Pleezdoo, completely missing Mina’s clear hostility. Even an empty glass was half-full of potential for an optimist like Bayview Biddle School’s figurehead principal. “I’d be pleased as a puppy at the park, Doctor, to learn that I played any part in making you the fine young woman that you seem to be today. It would certainly smooth out some age-old regrets! Oh-ho ho hee!”

        Pleezdoo met Zarei’s eyes with an apologetic simper.

        “I really am sorry, you know, dear, about the way things were for you back then. Those girls that you had so much trouble getting along with... and how afraid you were of everything! Every meeting, it was like you’d seen a ghost!”

        Ironically, Zarei considered with a morbid scoff, Principal Pleezdoo had arrived at yet another near-miss diagnosis: Mina had only seen faint shades until the summer June had saved her. Were it not for her intervention, the day that Mina first saw ghosts would have been the day she fully fell prey to the Witch.

        “I was always unsure of how best to support you,” Principal Pleezdoo lamented. “I remember there was that, er, get-together I arranged after school at the library—”

        “It was detention,” Zarei corrected her, “for passing notes in class.”

        Mary Rose Baxter and Sophie Sybil had “passed notes” the same way that a quarterback passed a football, with Mina as their unwilling receiver. It was only fair that the whole team had faced a penalty, therefore, when at last their airborne insults had been intercepted by an apathetic teacher. Miss Pleezdoo, as a troubled Mina’s designated advocate, like the bumbling fairy godmother she was, had only intervened to put a wishful spin upon the sentencing.

        “Oh! Detention! Yes, of course, of course. But I thought you three would get along, you know, with just a little push. I hope it wasn’t too much,” Pleezdoo fretted. “It’s hard to tell a dipped toe from sink or swim when it comes to therapeutic immersion. Believe you me, at my height, I’m off the deep end well before I’ve left the shallows! Ho ho! Hm. Ahem.” She cleared her throat and took a breath to pour their tea. “I did, er, think you girls might just emerge from the experience as friends. At the time, I...” Pleezdoo hesitantly glanced over at Mina. “I had recently watched The Breakfast Club.”

        “Ah,” said Mina.

        “By any chance, erm...” Principal Pleezdoo set her teapot back in place. “Not that you, er, seem the type to hold a grudge, but, um... did you ever... manage to, er... to make nice with that Miss Baxter?”

        Doctor Zarei, who had no idea that her ex-bully turned ex-messy-highschool-girlfriend was employed here at the Biddle School, decided to throw a beleaguered Principal Pleezdoo her very first bone. 

        “...She was my date to junior prom,” said Mina, cutting all the bruises from the truth’s old brown banana.

        “Oh! Oh!” Principal Pleezdoo clapped her hands. “You made VERY nice! Oh, goodie! Oh, The Breakfast Club! How wonderful! I’m sure that you can, er—” Her smile faltered. “I do hope you can patch things up with Vice Principal DuNacht, um... in the same way. In a similar way. You needn’t woo her! Tee hee hee!”

        “That is a true relief,” Zarei said flatly.

        “I know that she was strict with you, and that wasn’t, I don’t think, what you needed at the time...”

        Zarei scowled. Even if DuNacht, the less-than-mild-mannered alter ego of Fauxbia, the Fear Witch, had truly been nothing more than the overzealous disciplinarian she’d pretended to be while shaping Mina’s future—selecting Mina as her dark successor—“strict” would still be an understatement as a description of her attitude. Zarei had had three bullies back in middle school: two girls her age, and one adult, a relentless denigrator who’d nearly convinced her, in the end, that she had earned her watchful ire and her constant, petty punishments... that it was Mina who was wicked, and not her.

        Principal Pleezdoo missed Zarei’s reaction; she’d turned her back to the Doctor to stack two tiny saucers high with cookies.

        “If I could do it all again,” said Pleezdoo, “I would never have insisted you had nothing to be scared of.” 

        “...Oh?” Zarei left her brooding behind to cast an inquisitive look at the principal. She’d assumed her regrets would center less around not validating Mina’s fears and more around slightly missing the perfect center of all possible sides in the conflict. Zarei would hardly be surprised if Pleezdoo still thought King Solomon wise even after he bisected that baby for real.

        “Children have so much to be afraid of! The world is big and bright and dark and new to them. It doesn’t really matter if it’s all in your head, does it? The fear is real, no matter how patiently you’re reassured your nightmare’s just a dream.” She sighed and took a prim bite of a cookie. “Crooked old ladies can frighten the faint of heart without meaning to—believe me, lately I’ve been spooking MYSELF in the mirror!—and Devilora, well... she certainly loomed large over you children, way back when. She might have seemed a harmless grouch to me in worldly Kansas, but in Oz, you know—in the imagination of a sensitive young girl like you—she must have played the role of, well...”

        “The Witch, Miss Pleezdoo?” Zarei smirked, sitting back and steepling her fingers.

        “Oh, Mina,” Pleezdoo giggled. “We really should be on a first-name basis by now. Don’t be scared! You’re all grown up!” Her tray of treats rose from the table. “Call me Posy.”

        Zarei spared her a condescending smile. 

        “...Well! Er. Hm. What was it we were talking about?” the principal asked, turning around with her refreshments.

        “You were about to give me the job.”

        “Oh-ho, well! Hee hee. I love that confidence, Doctor,” said Posy, giving her a wink as she set down her spread on the desk. “There’s a few more hoops to get through first, though, so... er...”

        Zarei’s sharp eyes and silent smile brought a frown back to her face.

        “So we’ll skip those hoops, and um...” Principal Pleezdoo chuckled nervously. “You can start tomorrow?”

        “I start today,” Doctor Zarei said.

        “You start today?”

        “Say it again, without the question mark.”

        “...You start today,” said Pleezdoo, sagging in her chair.

        “Wonderful,” Zarei replied. She took an elegant sip of her tea. “I’ll need a map of the school, a master key, strict privacy in my office, and a custodian’s help transporting some specialized equipment from a truck I’ve leased, arriving in... six minutes,” she said, glancing over at a cutesy cuckoo clock on the opposite wall. “The school will reimburse me for the fee.”

        “Oh! So it will,” said Pleezdoo. She was very used to this—only half the faculty was not defrauding or blackmailing her. Her therapist had told her to accept the things she couldn’t change, such as the ever-rising price of her appointments.

        “It’s been lovely catching up, Miss—Posy. Ah, yes,” Zarei added, rising from her seat. She’d taken the cookies and tea, and Pleezdoo’s fancy dishes with them. “Before I forget. Where does Devilora make her lair these days? I’m eager to bury the hatchet as soon as I can.”

        Principal Pleezdoo blinked and quaffed a mighty gulp of calming tea.