Larissa gets up and leaves before finishing her Rice Krisipie treat, though she does take it off the tray before bussing it.

Crap. She shouldn't have mentioned it. She didn't even get to ask about patrol.

After school she brings her bike to the general vicinity of where she and Larissa and Aaliyah met last time, close enough that they'll see her but far enough away that they'll have the option to pretend they didn't

Aaliyah's there and Larissa isn't.

Well that's . . . a way for things to go. Does Aaliyah respond at all if Margaret nods at her?

"Hi Margaret! I was waiting for you!"

"Hi Aaliyah! Want to pick the direction this time?"

"Yeah, sure." Aaliyah picks a direction and then takes a turn a couple blocks later. "I don't know why Larissa and Hattie are making such a big deal out of the thing."

"Well, it's got to be pretty awful having your personal business revealed by magic like that. I think if I was in Hattie's shoes I would try to pretend I hadn't heard anything and hope everybody else did the same."

"The thing is that Hattie actually told her six months ago."

"Huh. I guess that explains why Larissa didn't say at the time whether she liked her back, I would've expected either happiness or letting her down gently. Still, now all of us know instead of just the two of them."

"Larissa doesn't wanna date somebody outside the Church and Hattie's an atheist," Aaliyah explains. "And then Hattie kind of laughed it off and let everybody think she got over it. For a while she was dropping hints that she was dating some girl who's not in the club."

"She could be dating some other girl and also not over it."

"I think the other girl is made up but yeah that too."

"I don't usually say this but that's a piece of information I would love to never find out." As soon as she says this she swaps into her gym shirt for a few seconds, just in case.

- Aaliyah stifles a laugh when she does that.

Her laughter is contagious. "It seems to like to be on topic", she explains. "I should probably avoid gossip altogether." She casts around for another topic. "What's not gossip? Oh, I saw a style consultant on Tuesday."

"You do look a little more put together, I'm bad at figuring out exactly what's different but I noticed."

"Thanks! It's mostly jewelry and boot improvements. I think I got a decent amount of magic out of it."

"Does that make the spell more convenient or does it just make it go off more?"

"I don't have much of a sample size yet, but my last couple have both been pretty convenient. I got some costume advice out of it the other day, and then in bio lab it told me that magical girls' animal parts have animal DNA. Which I could probably have found on the internet, but still."

"Huh, I didn't know that. So I have cat DNA?"

"Pretty sure you do, Yeah! And goodness knows what's in my wings."

"Maybe you could clone a dragon."

"That sounds unlikely and like a terrible idea and like a totally awesome idea all at once."

"You should so clone a dragon," says Aaliyah. "...or try to get your power to comment on cloning a dragon."