The student sitting to her right glances over and advises with a hint of a smile, "I don't think they let you write in your own rules."

Dairine writes at the bottom of a section, "Furthermore, there is no rule against writing anything in the margins of the handbook regardless of whether anyone will read it," and holds this up.

"Sure they do, see, it says right here," she says with a crooked grin.

"Okay, you got me. No arguing with that. I am defeated. Vanquished."

"I will be magnanimous in victory." Magnanimous is a fun word to say. "I'm Dairine; what's your name?" She closes the handbook and sticks it in her backpack.

"Kestrel. I can't believe they actually printed that. I'm going to draw all over my handbook and no one can stop me." She opens hers, previously untouched, and starts doodling birds in the margins.

"Dude, nice name! Nobody can spell mine."

"Mine's in the dictionary, which you'd think would be an advantage for spellability, and yet." She has found the page where the handbook tells her she can write in it and is covering its margins in flowers.

"Right, exactly, you can go 'Kestrel like the bird' instead of 'no, not like diary, the other way'." She looks at the pretty flowers and then does a double take and pulls out her own notebook again.

"You would be surprised how many people have not heard of the bird before they meet me! I'm a walking education."

The handbook has all of Dairine's additions and amendments seamlessly integrated, the typesetting indistinguishable from original text.

"What . . . on Earth . . .? Hey, you know how I was writing in my handbook about how it's allowed to write in the handbook?"

"...n...o? You showed me the page, you didn't write that part. Unless you have remarkably typographic handwriting. If so, nice prank, how'd you get mine too?"

"I didn't . . . do it on purpose? I just wrote it in normal handwriting in mine. You probably think I'm just completely making shit up right now but I'm not. Mind doing an experiment to prove it?"

"Sure, I'm game. What's your experiment?"

"I'm going to make another minor change--how about crossing out 'three tardies gets you detention' and make it five--and then shut the book and open it again and see if it's suddenly in the notebook font. And/or copied over into your notebook." She sneaks her phone out of her bag and takes a photo of the page, makes the edit, takes another photo, then shuts the notebook.

In the process of making all of this very visible to Kestrel she fails at keeping the phone hidden behind the notebook. "No phones in class, put it away or it's mine," says the teacher.

Kestrel is flipping open her handbook and looking perplexed. "Okay, wait, run that by me again, you're going to do what that involves looking in my handbook?" She's not on the page about tardies; she's still on the flowers she drew all over the official permission to write in the handbooks.

Dairine explains the plan again as soon as the teacher has stopped paying attention. "I think whenever I write in my notebook it changes from handwriting to typed and also shows up in yours. Which I realize is ridiculous. So I want to test it and have us both watch it happening."

"That's pretty ridiculous!" she agrees. "Okay, so what were you going to change, where should I look?"

"I changed the tardy policy from three gets you detention to five gets you detention, so if everything is normal yours should say three and if everything is whacked out yours should say five. I have pics but I don't want to take my phone out again until passing period."

Kestrel raises her hand. "Hey, sorry, I can't find the tardy policy in my handbook, can you tell me what it is real quick?"

"Five minutes late is a tardy, five tardies in a semester you get detention, same as last year."

". . ."

"Thanks!" she chirps.

And turns to Dairine and raises her eyebrows slightly. "So, either you're pranking me real good, or..."

"Or I'm editing everyone's handbooks and also the school rules, retroactively."