Snuggle. "Your first school visit is tomorrow afternoon, since Julie wasn't expecting to be injured. The school's in walking distance, though, if you'd rather walk for a little under an hour than fly."

Okay.

What's it going to be like?

"You and Julie will talk to some administrators, and you can sit in on a class or two - Julie won't come into the classroom with you but she doesn't have to get out of telepathic range at any point if you need her. If you want to give her a list of questions to make sure she finds out the answers to besides the things you already asked about like restraints, you can do that now and I'll write it down for her, or tell her tomorrow."

She doesn't have questions exactly but she's worried about how they're going to deal with her not knowing, like, things.

"They generally have different levels of most everything. I'm more worried about your sleep schedule, I'm not sure what they have for that."

Being awake in the morning sucks but she can do it, she had to before. She's much less tired this way, though.

"Does it matter when during the morning? Is waking up at ten better than waking up at eight?"

She's never had a chance to check, but later might be better.

"Okay. If you want to experiment with that a little while we're looking into schools it'd be good to know."

She'll need an alarm clock, but yeah, she can do that.

"I've got an alarm clock you can have, I'll use my phone."

All right. She'll work on it.

Winona gets the alarm clock and plugs it in next to Dusk's bed, and then she too goes to bed.

She sets it for just a little earlier than she's been waking up; putting it a little earlier every few days seems as good a way to do it as any.

She doesn't get much sleep, anyway.

Julie's still up before she is. Lunch is sandwiches and yogurt; if yogurt is hard to drink she can thin it out with milk. "We're due at the school at one o'clock," she says, "so eat quick, I don't think I can tow a balloon today."

She investigates the yogurt, determines that she would need to thin it out, and opts to skip it instead; sandwich is fine, though she drops it at one point when she forgets to put it down before phasing out for a moment.

It takes her a couple tries, when that's done, to actually get into starscape and switch her wings out. She does manage it, though. And off they can go.

Julie leads her to the school, which is a public middle school named after Martin Luther King Jr. with sunflowers growing around it. The interior is conventionally schoolish; Julie frowns at a map on her phone, looking for the office.

One institutional building is much like another, generally speaking. Dusk follows, subdued and quiet and not looking at anything in particular.

Julie locates the office. A smiling black fellow is the person she's supposed to meet; they shake hands. "Mrs. Glory, good to meet you. This is Janet?"

"She's going by Dusk now. Theme name," smiles Julie. "Dusk, this is Tyler Abernathy."

"Dusk! Charming. My cousin calls herself Sunbeam but I think it's mostly an air dancing thing than everyday... anyway, your wife's email mentioned a couple things, let me bring it up here... educational neglect, unconventional communication needs, sleep phase disorder?"

"Right," says Julie. "She's experimenting with the sleep phase thing but it might not budge much."

"Right... I think I can get you two periods' worth of delayed start, which would mean starting class at nine fifteen," says Mr. Abernathy, "and then you could make up the classes in summer school, a homebound teacher, or maybe depending on the class online."

"Nine fifteen might not be late enough," says Julie, "we're not sure yet."

"Any later than that and I don't think you can easily make up the work," Mr. Abernathy says. "Maybe waiving art and music could squeeze another period out, but the core classes are core and the gym requirements are set a good bit higher up than just us here in this office. Well, we can hash that out. Dusk looks awake to me right now and I've arranged for her to shadow a student for his last two periods of the day, Dennis should be here any minute to pick her up."

"Thank you," says Julie. "Which classes?"

"English and algebra."

Possibly there's something interesting over in that corner or something but more likely she's just not paying attention.

Julie looks over at her a few times, but doesn't push her to say anything.

Dennis shows up; he is bespectacled and ginger. "Hey," he says, "are you Janet?"

"She's going by Dusk now," says Julie.

"...okay," says Dennis, "were you Janet?"

- yeah.

"I'm supposed to bring you with me for English and math."

Okay.

She follows.

"Are you okay?" asks Dennis, leading her through the halls.