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[Transcript]

        Lisa Larkspur Periwinkle Pentagraham (so named after her mother’s favorite flowers in an effort to antagonize the horde of aunts competing for the onomastic honor) was descended from a long line of apothecaries, florists, and morticians. The incentives this trichotomy created—for the pharmacists of the Pentagraham clan especially—had poisoned the entire bloodline with a morbid sense of humor... and a mind to keep their shady family business in the dark.

        It was, perhaps, the Pentagrahams’ clandestine, cradle-to-grave grip on three consecutive links of life’s supply chain that inspired Lisa’s enterprising conquest of her school. Through blackmail, she could puppeteer the only rival rumor mill in town—Suzy Starchman’s silly pamphlet—and inject whatever gossip struck her fancy straight into the vulnerable veins of the student body. Through bribery, she could control the Biddle School’s bullies, sending them out to collect unpaid debts or calling them in to keep the Student Council’s storm troopers at bay. She’d made her swanky School Store speakeasy a cornerstone of counterculture here at Bayview Biddle School; there wasn’t a single Starchman Star in circulation that hadn’t crossed her bar to buy her silence, her cryptic guidance, or her concerningly caffeinated beverages.

        Lisa was the spider at the center of a school-wide web, and, thanks to her sprawling network of friends and flunkies, she knew EVERYTHING that happened anywhere within its walls.

        It also helped that she had access to every single security camera in Bayview Biddle School.

        Lisa stood up from her swivel chair in the secret control room beneath the School Store. The limited system she’d set up for Mr. Spender—for a price, and for the chance to plant a bug in his computer—could hardly compare to Lisa’s superpowered spying nexus. Monitors shone in iridescent green on every wall, surrounding her like the inverted eyes of an inside-out housefly.

        Lisa, however, had seen enough for one morning: Coach Oop slumping out of his truck while Ollie trundled down from the school bus; Mr. Spender and Garcia chatting flirtatiously in the “privacy” of the Activity Clubroom; Ms. Baxter alone in the teacher’s lounge, crying into her breakfast salad, then throwing a stapler and a bunch of crayons out of a window just to feel something; a severe-looking stranger pulling into the parking lot on a motorcycle; the first rumblings of a large-scale and unscheduled Student Council meeting.

        As she rose, Lisa caught sight of Cody on a far-flung screen. She always kept an eye on him—he was her friend, and a useful rival for the focus of her rival, Jeff, that haplessly charming yarnball of a boy, in her bid to win back Violet’s wandering attention (which Lisa had not enjoyed exclusively since the halcyon days of fifth grade, when they had been inseparable besties). Lisa was also about ninety-nine percent certain that Cody was, in fact, her greatest enemy as well: the secret, scheming Student Council President.

        She’d first seen him on her cameras minutes earlier, when Cody had arrived outside the Biddle School, as he always did, in a lightproof limo driven by two plainclothes police officers, his wealthy father’s loyal henchmen. Now, though, Cody had diverged from his usual routine. He’d crept out of a back door of the Biddle School, not bothering to fake a pleasant smile, and begun an urgent beeline towards the spooky Blackened Annex.

        “...Now isn’t that ever so interesting,” Lisa hummed aloud in her typical whispery typewriter-tap tone of voice.

        By that, she meant that it was deeply frustrating: the Blackened Annex was a blind spot in her all-encompassing surveillance network. For some reason, that decrepit dump was still fed electricity—a lot of it, in fact—and yet her efforts to rig the ruin with bugs and cameras had been nothing but a headache. Signals from all over Bayview crisscrossed through its power lines; Lisa’s provisional equipment had spat back only static, scattered clips of public access television, and very little useful information.

        Annoyingly, though Lisa had since cut the connection to the old wing’s grid she’d set up down in the Biddle School’s dark basement, some lingering ghost of the Annex’s aberrant airwaves still remained. Every so often, clips of Little Witch Tuffet’s Puppet Theater would intrude upon her monitors, looping saccharine, stuttering life lessons until she stood to slap the screen or kill the feed. As much as Lisa, a consummate goth, enjoyed indulging in the macabre and Halloweeny, the constant puppet jumpscares were beginning to get on her nerves. She’d long since come to expect the unexpected to appear upon her monitors—empty suits, sourceless scratch marks, a preponderance of poltergeist activity—and yet sheer repetition had replaced all of her preferred nightmares with pasta pirates and pastel phantasmagoria. That other students had reported similar dreams and worse was little comfort; like her secrets, Lisa was as loath to share her fears as she was keen to learn and leverage other people’s.

        Ah, well. It hardly mattered. A children’s television show, like whatever Cody was up to, was nothing but a passing curiosity. Lisa was above it all, a silent witness from the sidelines, and there was nothing that could touch her on the table where she played her little game. Lisa scraped the dregs of the curds and whey she’d had for breakfast into the trash can at her side. She flipped a switch, and the iridescent insect eyes around her flickered out, as dead as a specimen staked in the dark of a scientist’s drawers. Lisa climbed the ladder back up to the School Store without any light to aid her, having memorized the motions like she’d memorized the lyrics she was humming:

        “With liquid cheese courage, no threat can discourage... a brave witch from saving the day...”

        Lisa’s pupils shrunk to pale blue dots as she emerged into the gloam of her café.

        “Oh, hello, Max!”

        “YEAH, DUDE??” was the best that he could muster in this moment of true terror—while awaiting Lisa’s arrival at the bar alongside Johnny’s gang, other mercenary minions, and the School Store’s morning crowd, Max had heard Lisa’s muffled humming from beneath the creaking floorboards. He’d peeked over the countertop just in time to see her rise up like a zombie from a seamless trapdoor grave.

        “Dear me, Max! You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

        He had, but that was hardly relevant to his current racing heartbeat. Max groaned something grouchy in response and reached over the bar to steal a drink