•••

For a hallway, the school's northern corridor, is considered, by all metrics that measure hallway magnificence, rather impressive.

Not only does it boast the original architecture of the building back when it had been a firehouse, before it was renovated to be the town's high school, but it also possesses un-paralled weather regulating features.

Peneloper always supposed the hallway was a kind of magic, and now with Heavensley's revelation, her theory seems less preposterous. The hallway carries a nice draft in the humid, dry summers, becomes rather insulated against the biting cold of the later months, and student secrets echo off its walls.

Not to mention, it also has a lovely selection of lockers, clean floors, plenty of lighting, and provides a panoramic view of school grounds.

However, the best perk, remains the lack of people.

Very few students traverse its path - students think it's haunted by the ghosts of Potter Oaks first fire fighting patrol, but just because a few trash cans happened to combust does not mean a ghost is the culprit. Correlation is not causation. 

In this hallway happens to be Crispen and Peneloper's next class - Chemistry 101. Outside the lab, looking all tall, dark and effortlessly handsome Crispen Heavensley leans against the wall, emitting a 'zero fucks given' type of attitude I'm told human children often exude.

As he is the current trending topic among the Oaks student body, more people than usual have visited the corridor, hoping to steal a peek. 

He ignores them. The girls peering out behind a row of lockers, the boys, structured like totem poles hidden behind water fountains and trash cans, all of which chirp to each other while flushing profusely. They neither infuriate nor interest him. He is here for Peneloper and Peneloper alone, his gaze rather singular. But given what I know of him, this is unsurprising.

With a scoff, he slips the headphones of his Walkman over his ears and presses play. Phil Collins seeps into his mind, clearing a space among the clutter, so Crispen can calmly reach out, and touch the pulsing white heart of his magic. 

He connects to it, and subsequently, to all things: all times, all places, all that ever was and will be. One might say he's been dialed-in to the universe.

And in that infinite, full place, he conveys a single thought, that reverberates on every thread of magic's tapestry. What a delight - sarcasm again - it's for yours truly. 

 You? Oh god, why is it you?

As an unbiased narrator - to which, Crispen scoffs, conveying disbelief I will easily ignore -  I have been tasked with providing this story in full and without much interference. I must confess, though, Crispen's breaking of all walls, whether first, second, third, or fourth, has my curiosity piqued.

But I resist the urge to answer, instead deciding it best to remain the nebulous, disembodied voice retelling the story from behind my curtained, two-bedroom studio apartment in the Upper East Side. 

Crispen glares at the control I've demonstrated -- why, it certainly is impressive -- and it is something so arresting, it penetrates every layer imaginable, exposing thousands of bodies, deceased, alive, and future-born.

I can ignore him no longer; my gaze meets his.

And why not me, boy of crows?  I respond. Am I not the most fitting to narrate her story?

Crispen shakes his head, curls tumbling in front of his eyes. Two girls huddled at a water fountain nearby burst into tears as their knees explode from under them. Though no gurneys are on standby, rest assured, they'll be rushed to Mr. Cardroy who will ease them down onto empty cots to sleep off the swoon while the overworked nurse quietly curses his lack of cold compresses.

Another angered Crispen thought crackles through the fabric of space and time, blurring the line of all things you thought you knew: You would tell lies to make yourself look better. 

Hmph. He understands my vanity well enough.

I understand you more than you'd like me to. 

Is that contempt in your voice, boy of crows? 

Crispen grunts. It's laced with something more vicious, reactive. 

Hate, I suppose. Very well. Feel whatever it is you desire to feel. But know this - Peneloper marches down the corridor as we speak and she is rattled, clearly. Haven't you been tasked with protecting her, boy of crows? 

He harrumphs. You are an embarrassment to all magic kind. 

Mr. Heavensley never fails to amuse.

• One Man's Fool •

It took Crispen but a second to identify the disturbance washing off Peneloper Auttsley in waves of unsettling crimson and yellow, signaling a severe, and underlying, unrest.

"Something's bothering you," he stated, matter-of-factly.

Peneloper seemed to resent his assertion, which she took in with a scowl and narrowed eyes. She sucked on her candy, mouth a dreadful, sea-monster blue. "You glean that from my thoughts?" she asked, venom laced through her words, her aura flaring a hotter, irritated red.

Crispen glanced at her locker. Noticing a smudge by its handle, he took the sleeve of his shirt and set to right the wrong – he knew the nature of objects, their need to be needed and how fragile even the strongest metal could be, and hoped an impromptu spot-cleaning might cheer the thing up, for he had noticed the way its corners had begun to sag, the universal sign for defeat.

"I read your aura," he said after shining the locker to his liking. He sensed, more than knew, a shift in the locker's attitude. It stood up straighter, caught the overhead lighting with more ferocity.

Peneloper shifted from one foot to the other, pondering in detail Crispen's latest reveal to all things magical. Auras, were they such foreign concepts to those flightless that the very notion of having one, let alone someone else being able to decipher the mood in each slash of color, that mind-blowing?

Crispen had to admit, it'd been a long while since he last interacted with those who did not understand the very magic of the world and found the whole affair exhausting. So much so, he might melt – literally, not figuratively as that distinction is an important one to make.

Then, without being prompted, his thoughts became those of Peneloper's and he responded, "Not all magic-kind can read auras. It is a special gift I possess." He hoped this response would go down smoothly to Miss Auttsley.

She pursed her lips, ripped open her locker, shoved her bag inside, and turned toward him, a coil of brown hair plunging in front of her eye. "Did you get in trouble?" A change in subject, proof his reading her thoughts continued to annoy.

Peneloper blinked at him, awaiting his response.

He had to think on this a moment. He'd forgotten about earlier, about meeting in the rain, about her refusal of his hand, his reveal of himself and the dire nature of his landing in the small town which a thorough searching for its precise location on Bing! led to an untimely immolation of his newest laptop. Of them being late, which held no great consequence: time never mattered much to him. He shook his head.

Miss Auttsley gathered her notebook and nothing else, though classes had begun, and they shared both math and history. "Course you didn't," she grumbled.

Crispen settled his hand on her locker, felt the pulse of its life gather beneath his fingertips. It desired a cleaning, and wax if Crispen would be so inclined. He promised to do what he could. "You didn't either," he said. "Principal Gale's fond of you."

Her mouth tensed. Stiff shoulders hovered centimeters below her earlobes while a grimace weighed down her lips until they nearly hung off her chin. "Something," she fiddled with the corner of her notebook, pages blurring under her coercion in milky-white, "something happened."

Crispen nodded. He knew it would. It was only a matter of time. "And did you die?"

Simple questions should have inspired simple answers. In this case, a yes or no would have sufficed. Though at times, distinguishing between death and life was harder than people imagined, that's why it never hurt to ask.

Peneloper snickered. "I'm not dead." She nodded toward herself, at the liveliness of her being – she swung her arms, stomped her feet, rolled her head, and took in a few deep breaths for good measure. "See? Not dead."

He remained unconvinced. Exclaiming you were alive, and truly living were, in his experience, two entirely different things. To put himself at ease, he leaned into Miss Auttsley, which prompted her shoulders and earlobes to become the closest of acquaintances, and flicked her forehead.

The extent of her reaction began and ended with a wince. No crumpling to the floor, thank goodness. No teachers needing alerted, or gurneys being summoned to whisk the fallen to the nurse's office where a cold compress, if one could be found, would help soothe the burn of the swoon.

Satisfied, he straightened himself and thrust both hands into his pants' pockets to finger the birdseed he stored in them. "Fine, so you're not dead. What then sought you out?"

Peneloper stared at her notebook, deciding whether she should hand it over. Crispen could read the indecision in her aura, in how the tapestry of color encased around her had begun to shear, one thread pulling out another, so on and so forth.

But then, she made up her mind, and with a resolve he could feel as much as see, for her aura had grown a determined steely grey, much like locker #157 in its days of better glory, she thrust her notebook toward him. "A blob invaded my notebook." She paused, waiting for him to take the proffered gift, to touch that which no other human hand had touched.

He did so, not because he wanted to, but because he wasn't technically, wholly human, and found his fingers wouldn't do much in the way of stain her treasure. He perused the pages with interest, seeing what would typically go unseen. There was the story of Captain Ire Stormholden written on the surface, but beneath that, in faded and erased charcoal, the words to another story, forgotten. And of course, he saw the magic – strong, slimy, coating every page in viscous black and moldy green. His skin buzzed as the magic ached for his touch, to be harnessed and used. But such impulses, such allures to the dark, Crispen had learned to ignore. He shut the book.

"It's Refracted magic," he said, handing Peneloper back the gift she'd deemed him worthy of possessing, if only for a fleeting moment.

"And is this the same Refracted who wishes to see me united with Death?"

Crispen paused, taking the moment to smack his tongue against the roof of his mouth, something he did when, as Genesis had said, 'his figurative feathers were literally ruffled.'

No magic-conjured eyes were needed in the back of his head for Crispen to feel their leers. Or witness the interested and somewhat annoyed way they watched him interact with Peneloper. He could sense awe, suspicion, admiration and resentment slipping through their auras like oiled eels.

There were three. Poking their heads out of one of the science labs to his right. He smacked the roof of his mouth again, annoyance mounting.

"Mr. Heavensley?"

He held a single finger to his lips. "Forgive me, but please allow me this one moment, Ne--" Remembering his earlier interaction with Peneloper, Crispen course corrected immediately and steered clear of the nickname she did not want him espousing. "This moment, Miss Auttsley, to deal with some pests."

"What pests?"

Crispen turned and rolled up his shirtsleeves, confronting those daring to stare at him  from afar. Without so much a warning and lacking any fanfare or flourish, he released upon them the downfall of many a teenage girl in similar predicaments  - a smile. So bright and white, and perfectly aligned. A smile a fraction of its true power, because unleashing it without restraint would cause the sun to explode. 

At this, the girls' reactions were typical for unnamed, side characters in a genre such as this. Their auras flushed with the warm tones of love and admiration before being slowly polluted by those tragic feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and waning self-worth. 

They all fell to the ground, one after another, like stunned dominoes, clutching at heaving chests, their breathing heavy and uneven. Teachers rushed upon the scene, brows arched, wrinkled faces exuding wave after wave of alarm, as the girls continued reeling from the unseen adversary, Love, which, much as Death, had its share of victims.

Satisfied with the turmoil he caused, Crispen turned back toward Peneloper. "Care to join me outside?"

Peneloper raised a brow. "You did this?" she whispered. "Didn't you?" Crispen grinned. "Is that a part of your magic as well?"

He shrugged. "Not my kind of magic. More a universal one anyone can tap in to, given enough practice."

Arms folded across her chest, Peneloper nodded and allowed Crispen to lead her down the hall, toward the back parking lot. She would have let him lead her anywhere, if it was away from a classroom stuffed with peers, teachers, and learning.

"Handsomeness is as much a plague as I've ever seen," she said but once, offering up her insight without Crispen having to root around in her mind.

"It has its benefits."

"Escape by mass swooning." Peneloper snickered. "Never would have thought such things possible."

"You live in a world of impossibility, Miss Auttsley." Shoving his hands in his pockets, and with a coy smile tugging on his lips, he headed down the corridor, Peneloper following at his back. 

*

It took mere seconds to navigate  the somewhat confounding layout of the school, before finding the exit door and ripping it open. It still rained, strong and steady, and the heat of that day, combining with the abundance of moisture, created a humidity that immediately soaked each of their brows.

The teacher's parking lot stared back at them, a miserable sea of grey, brown and black mini-van and pseudo-luxury sedan. The only pop of color came from a green Volkswagen Beetle, which totted a pair of lilac fuzzy dice hung off the front mirror.

Crispen plopped to the ground, took a cigarette from his pocket, and stuck it between his lips. "Care if I?" He riffled through his belongings a few seconds longer before producing a match and striking it against the blacktop.

Peneloper shook her head, settling in beside him, mindful to maintain a distance wherein there could be no accidental brushes of skin against skin.

Crispen chuckled. "Principal Gale smokes as well?" He lit the cigarette.

Peneloper frowned. "What did I tell you about reading my thoughts?"

"Not to?" Crispen leaned back and expelled a cloud of smoke. "It'd be easier if your thoughts weren't so loud or interesting."

"So you're blaming me for your blatant and criminal disregard of personal privacy?"

Crispen shrugged, letting the conversation lull as he enjoyed the rain and his cigarette. Peneloper grew agitated, spikes of violet-blue shooting from her aura. She squirmed as she sat on the concrete landing, arms folding and unfolding with every other blink of eye or bat of lash.

Her thoughts came in lightning speed: her anticipation of their interaction, her irritation at his silence, her confusion at this seemingly needless detour to the outside (though it wasn't class so that's a perk), her interest in why he'd brought her here of all places, and her desire to learn how he'd managed to call forth such a potent smile that it had rendered her classmates, some of which she'd regarded as strong, independent and swoon-immune, so defenseless.

Finally, having finished his cigarette, Crispen stood, turned toward his companion, and outstretched his hand. Peneloper's shock and caution alighted in flickers of orange across her aura. "Let me," he said, giving her a little bow, for showmanship was important at the point of no return, "show you the worlds."